Charles Wright Durbin

As printed in 1902

CHARLES WRIGHT DURBIN.

The subject of this sketch, who was a prominent citizen of Fredericktown, Knox county, Ohio, was born in Morris township, that county, August 17, 1864, and died at Fredericktown, December 25, 1891. His parents were John and Elizabeth (Wright) Durbin, who settled at Fredericktown when Charles was six weeks old. There the boy grew up and was educated in the village school, later taking a classical course at the Wesleyan University, at Delaware, Ohio. For five years succeeding his graduation he was superintendent of schools at Fredericktown, and for about four years he filled the office of county examiner of teachers. In politics he was a Republican, and his convictions on religious questions led him to affiliate with the Methodist Episcopal church.

Mr. Durbin married, December 28, 1886, Lina Craven, daughter of Leander and Leonora (Ewers) Craven, who bore him three children: John Vincent, born May 2, 1888; Pauline, born June 29, 1889; and Elizabeth, born September 7, 1891. Mrs. Durbin was born in Wayne township, Knox county, 'March 7, 1865, and was educated in the district schools near her childhood home and at the Union school at Fredericktown, graduating in the latter in May, 1882. Her parents were natives of Loudoun county, Virginia. Her father was born in 1818, her mother in 1824, and the former died November 28, 1895, the latter June 20, 1898. They were the parents of five children. Their daughter Clara died in infancy, their son, William Franklin, at the age of seventeen years, and their daughter, Marcejla, married Elias Cooper and died in 1886, aged thirty-eight years, leaving daughters named Mildred and Ada. Their daughter, Lilian Elizabeth, married Milton Grove and lives in Morrow county, Ohio.

Mrs. Durbin's paternal grandfather, IMahlon Craven, was born in Virginia March 13, 1786, and married Hannah Iden March II, 1810, and they had children named Shelton, Samuel, James, Leander, John W., Thomas, Martha, Sarah E., Eliza and Mary. When their son Leander, father of Mrs. Durbin, was about fifteen years old they located in Knox county, Ohio, and in 1857 Leander settled in Wayne township, where he cleared and improved a large farm. Mrs. Durbin's maternal grandfather, Gregg

Ewers, married Elizabeth Ashford, who bore him the following children: Leonora, Elizabeth, Harriet, William Fenton and Mary. Leonora and William Fenton Ewers are dead. Mr. and Mrs. Ewers were of English birth, and they seem to have been brought when young to America by their parents. Mrs. Durbin has a sugar bowl that one of her great-grandmothers brought over with her from her native land, a memento which Mrs. Durbin prizes highly and which is an object of much interest to her many friends.

As printed in The Biographical record of Knox County, Ohio : to which is added an elaborate compendium of national biography (1902). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.