pgs. 294-296

DELAWARE AND BUCHANAN COUNTIES.

HIRAM W. SABIN is a representative of Delaware county's enterprising citizenship, a farmer, and one who has made farming pay, albeit he has not done so without a large amount of hard labor, and an unusual degree of close, economical management. Mr. Sabin is a native of Cuyahoga county, Ohio, and was born June 8, 1848. He was reared in his native county, and resided ' there till coming to this county. He is a son of Nathaniel C. Sabin, one of Delaware county's best citizens, a sketch of whom appears in this work; and in that sketch will be found the facts relating to the ancestral history of the subject of this notice.

Hiram W. Sabin came to Delaware county with his father in February, 1869. He has resided here since. As the dates will show, he had not attained his twenty-first year by a few months when he came to this county. His residence here there­fore has covered something over half of his life, and that by far the more act­ive period. He lived with his father in Delaware township, where the family set­tled, and, having been brought up to farming pursuits, naturally took to them on beginning the solution of the bread and butter problem for himself. He bought the tract of land on which he now resides not long after he came to the county, paying a small amount down, all that he then had to pay, and he resolutely set about to dig the balance out of the ground. He was then unmarried, and he had in contemplation the making of a home, and worked at his self-imposed task with vigor and enthusiasm. In 1872 he went back to Ohio, and on December 27th married a young lady of Cuyahoga county, whom he had known from girl­hood up, and whose future happiness, as well as his own, he had always kept in view in every important step he had taken since leaving his old home.    Returning, he settled on his place and began in earnest a career which, it is but simple truth to say, has been a successful one, and one that ought to be eminently satisfactory to him.   Mr. Sabin has persistently stood by the home of his adoption, and has steadily followed the course outlined by himself now more than twenty years ago.    Dur­ing this time he has had the usual amount of ups and downs that fall to the lot of the farmer, and he has not infrequently labored under trials and disappointments that taxed  his courage  and   energy to what seemed their utmost tension.    But these, fortunately, have never failed him, and each succeeding year has witnessed a slow but gradual improvement in his condition, and with the gradual rise of his fortunes, and the meeting and successful manage­ment of difficulties, an increased strength and  a happy consciousness of growing power and ability which make the future more hopeful as he surveys with satisfaction the past.  Mr. Sabin has a farm of one hundred and sixty acres, lying three miles north of Manchester,  one hundred and forty acres of which are under cultivation, representing the last twenty years of his labor.   It lies well and is productive.   He raises the usual kind of crops grown in Delaware county, giving considerable attention to grass   and  stock.    He has a comfortable set of buildings and all needful conveniences.    He has not, as many farmers do, left art wholly out of his calculations in improving his place.  His pleasant  home, crowning a gently sloping eminence, is surrounded with spacious grounds, orna­mented with shrubbery, showing taste in selection,  skill in planting and neatness and industry in keeping.    But his place is not a flower garden, where all is ease, cul­ture and enjoyment.    It is more a hive of industry, where every day means from ten to twelve hours of labor, where the cares of life increase with  increasing fortune and  a growing  family of children.    In performing this labor and in meeting these cares   Mr.    Sabin   has   been   cheerfully seconded and ably assisted by an excellent wife,  who  has  shared  them all and  in every  instance  done a wife's  full  part. Mr. and Mrs. Sabin have been  married now   for   more   than   seventeen   years. What they have is largely the result of their joint labors, and what is here said of the husband as to industry, management and success applies  with equal force to the wife.    To make this record the more valuable as one of reference, as well as a chronicle of progress, the facts of Mrs. Sabin's family history may here be inserted.   Her maiden name was Eva Gates, and she is a daughter of Charles and Celia (Rathbone) Gates, the father having been a native  of   Onondaga   county,   N.   Y., born November 9, 1812, and the mother a native of Onondaga county, N. Y., born December  2, 1822.    These  accompanied their parents to  Ohio  at an early  day and  settled in  Cuyahoga county, where they  subsequently   met   and   were   mar­ried, and where they spent their entire married life, the father dying there August 20, 1871.    In early life he was a tailor; later he followed farming,   He was a man of industrious habits, quiet disposition, and withall a useful citizen.  The mother is still living, dividing her time as to residence between the families of her daugh­ters, Mrs. Sabin and Mrs. John B. Ruther­ford, of the same community. Mrs. Sabin was born in Cuyahoga county, Ohio, De­cember 27, 1852. She is next to the youngest of a family of five children, the others being—James, who was born Jan­uary 17,1841, and now resides in the town of Orange, Ohio; Jane E., who was born in 1813 and died three years later; Helena, now wife of John B. Rutherford, of this county, a sketch of whom appears in this work, and Charles T., who was born No­vember 24, 1859, and died March 9,1862.

Mr. and Mrs. Sabin are the parents of five children—Charlie M., born November 6, 1873; Harry D., born March 13, 1877, and died March 19, 1887; Jerome G., born November 18, 1878; BerniL born March 23, 1881, and Lewis LeRoy, born September 11, 1884.

To their family and their home Mr. and Mrs. Sabin are greatly attached, as they have every reason to be. In politics Mr. Sabin is a republican, having in early years been a stanch supporter of the prin­ciples of that party and still an adherent of its doctrines on national issues. He possesses strong temperance views and has given the weight of his influence and his votes also to the cause of prohibition in recent years. He belongs to the Knights of Pythias, and in the benevolent purposes of that order exhibits a commendable interest.

 

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