Lewis Skillings

As printed in 1881

LEWIS SKILLINGS, deceased. The father of this deceased pioneer was born near Berlin, Prussia, in the year 1750, and was a soldier in the Hessian army, which the English Government purchased of the German States to aid in crushing American liberty, but, in 1776, he, with three others. deserted, rather than fight against a people struggling for freedom. narrowly escaping detection. Mr. Skillings moved farther away from the scene of conflict. settling in Maine, where he was married to Mary Blagdon, to whom were born the following children: Lewis, John, Charles, Hannah. Mary and two whose names are unknown. While working in the forest of his adopted State, he was killed by a limb of a tree falling upon his head, leaving a family of small children to the care of his widow and his eldest son Lewis, who was then but a small lad, yet faithfully did he discharge the trust, and by constant toil he cared and provided for the family until his 22d. year, when he started for the Far West in search of his fortune, his mother surviving for many years, dying in 1857, aged 94. Lewis Skillings was born in Maine in 1789, and, in 1810, we find him at Cincinnati, Ohio, where he was engaged in carrying produce, on flat-boats, down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Soon afterward, he came to Clark County, and settled in the northeastern part of Green Township, moving thence across the line to Springfield Township, where his son Eben now resides. He was married to Ann Craig, daughter of John Craig, who was born near Onion River, Conn., March 29, 1792; came with her parents to Ohio in 180%, and the following spring settled in Harmony Township. Of this union seven children were born, viz., Mary, the deceased wife of James. Laybourn, deceased; Hannah, the wife of Jonathan Mason, of Green Township; Sarah, the wife of Abel Laybourn, of Harmony Township; John, deceased; Lewis; Eben: and Wesley, deceased. Itisunnec. essary to speak of the privations and hardships undergone by Mr. Skillings and wife in their early married life; suffice to say, that their was the lot of every pioneer of the Mad River country, and nothing but the patience, pluck and energy, which it-was their good fortune to possess, could have converted the country from.a dense forest into one of the finest improved counties in the State. He and wife were life-long members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and he was a Class-leader in Fletcher Chapel for twenty years; his wife died June lð, 1866, and, in December, 1869, he also died, leaving to their children a handsome property, the result of industrious, economical habits, owning at the time of his death 300 acres of first-class land. In his will he left $20 per year for twenty years to Fletcher Chapel, and there in that same graveyard this honest. upright old couple, found their last resting-place on earth, leaving to their posterity a name and character above reproach. Peg

As printed in The History of Clark County Ohio, (1881). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.