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Addison H. Loomis

Addison H. Loomis, a lumber dealer of Clermont, has carried on business in that line since 1885. He was born in Portage County, Ohio, June 4, 1835, and is a son of Asa and Sarah (Burr) Loomis. He traces his ancestry back to Joseph Loomis, who was born in Baintree (?) England, in 1590. He was a woolen draper by trade and sailed to the United States in 1638, bringing with him five sons and three daughters, to whom all the Loomis's in this country trace their ancestry. They settled in Windsor, Conn., on a tract of twenty-one acres which is yet in possession of the family, and a college is to be built thereon by three wealthy members of the family - Senator James Loomis, of Bridgeport, Conn.; Col. John Mason Loomis, of Chicago; and Mrs. H. Sidney Hayden (Loomis), of New York City. The object of this institution is first to furnish free education to all of the name of Loomis, second to the sons of Connecticut and lastly to mankind in general. The title to this tract is the oldest in the United States that has remained in one family. The family has produced some able men, among them Elias Loomis, the great mathematician. The grandfather of our subject, Asa Loomis, was an officer in the Revolutionary War and his sword is now in the possession of Addison. Asa, Jr., was born in Torrington, Conn., March 3, 1786, and on attaining to mature years wedded Miss Burr, also born in Torrington. They were among the first settlers to locate in what was then the wilderness of Portage County, Ohio, where they developed a good farm. Both were members of the Congregational Church, and in politics he was a Whig and afterward an Abolitionist. His death occurred at the age of seventy-two years, and his wife was eighty-one years of age at the time of her death.

Our subject is the youngest in their family of eleven children. In the usual manner of farmer lads his boyhood days were passed, and in the pioneer log schoolhouse he acquired his early education. When he was old enough to earn money he supplemented that knowledge by a course in Hiram College, during which time he was one of the pupils of President Garfield, after which he worked on the farm summers and taught school winters. In the summer of 1858, he was employed as traveling salesman for the Kirtland Writing Fluid Company, but that fall being tendered the principalship of the Poland Union Schools, of Poland, Mahoning County, Ohio, he accepted and remained in that position until the fall of 1861, when he came to Clermont as salesman in the store of Palmer & Calvin.

It was near this place, on the 8th of May, 1865, that Mr. Loomis married Marian Warner, a daughter of Horatio and Mary J. (Dunn) Warner. Her father was born in Huntsbury, Vt., in 1806, and her mother near Buffalo, N. Y. The Warner family was founded in America by three brothers of English birth. The great-grandfather Dunn was born in Boston and his father died on the ocean while crossing from Scotland to America. In 1848, having married in Ohio, the parents of Mrs. Loomis became residents of Clayton County, and in the spring of 1851, coming to this county, Mr. Warner entered land on section 2, Pleasant Valley Township. On that farm was born in April, 1848, Fayette Rudsell, who was named after the county and was the first white child born in this neighborhood. Both Mr. and Mrs. Warner spent their last days in this county, he dying at the age of seventy-two, and she when sixty-six years of age. Politically he was a Whig, and his wife was a member of the Methodist Church. In their family were four children, one son and three daughters, but only one is now living. William served over three years in the Union army as Captain of Company C, Twelfth Iowa Infantry, and died in the hospital at Memphis, Tenn., from exposure during rebel prison life.

Unto Mr. and Mrs. Loomis have been born four children, but Cora, the eldest, died in infancy; and Robert W., the third, died at the age of ten years. May and William W. are at home. Mrs. Loomis enjoys a distinction that until of late has not been accorded to her sex - she is now serving her third term as a member of the Board of Trustees of the State Industrial Institution. After having engaged in merchandising for several years in Clermont, Mr. Loomis removed to a farm and gave his attention to its cultivation and development until 1877, when he returned to this place. For the past five years he has been engaged in the lumber business and has built up a good trade. He still owns his farm of two hundred and eighty acres. In politics he is a Republican. They have a pleasant and hospitable home, and their friends throughout the community are many."