BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES, BELMONT COUNTY, OHIO

"History of the Upper Ohio Valley" Vol. II, 1890.

Presented by Linda Fluharty from hard copies provided
by Mary Staley & Phyllis Slater.


Pages 659-660.

HENRY NEFF

About the year 1810 Henry Neff, a native of Allegheny county, Md., son of
John Neff, of German descent, settled in Belmont county, and began the
work of clearing a farm in the wilderness. Soon afterward he was called
to the service of his country, and participated in the war of 1812, being
one of the soldiers betrayed by the surrender of Gen. Hull. In 1820 he was
married to Elizabeth Blocher, a native of Cumberland, Md., and they had
three children: George, John A, and Sarah Jane, of whom the second is the
only survivor, the father died in May, 1830, at the age of fifty-one years.
John A. Neff, now one of the substantial farmers of Belmont county, was
born in Richland township, 1823, and reared in the log cabin home on the
farm entered by his grandfather, which is now part of his possessions. He
attended school and afterward taught four winters in the pioneer school-
houses of his county, and taught one winter also in Bedford county, Penn.
Learning the trade, of a brickmaker, he bundled up his wardrobe in a
cotton handkerchief, in 1842, and walked to Mt. Vernon, Knox county, where
he worked about six months, and then walked home 125 miles with seven
dollars cash and the balance, that had not been traded out in a note. He
had previously worked two days picking brush for an old German, who paid
with one fish hook, so that Mr. Neff is well acquainted with the wages of
labor in the "golden age" that is past. After returning from Mt. Vernon he
and J. S. Anderson hulled clover seed for quite a number of farmers in the
surrounding neighborhood. In the spring of 1843 he went to Cumberland, Md.,
where he finished his trade of making and burning common and hand-pressed
brick. He spent four years in Maryland, after which he made and burned a
great many kilns of brick in Belmont county, Ohio and West Virginia.
Monuments of his burning of brick number over thirty farm-houses, seven
churches and quite a number of school-houses, the school-houses in St.
Clairsville and Morristown, the brick to rebuild the burnt block in St.
Clairsville that was destroyed by fire in 1866, and the brick for the
Belmont county infirmary. He now has a splendid farm of 320 acres, with
a substantial two-story brick house. From 1842 to 1884 he carried on the
manufacture of brick, and the material for the building of the Methodist
Episcopal church, school-house and many other structures were supplied
from his yards. He is a leading member and trustee and steward of the
Methodist church, of which his wife is also a member, and he has served
on the school board for thirty-five years, and as trustee of his township
one term. Mr. Neff was united in marriage, in 1851, to Elizabeth Giffen,
who was born April 5, 1830, daughter of Alexander and Mary (Hinkle) Giffen,
and of the seven children born to them, six are living: Alice, wife of
Joseph Frazier, and mother of one child; George A., who married Martha
Gerard, and has one child. Emmet M., who married Neva Fozeman, and has
two children; Mary: wife of Newton Warnock, and mother of one child; Sarah,
wife of George Fulton, two children; and John W., who is now attending
the commercial college in Wheeling, W. Va.