Yolney E. Williams

As printed in 1913

VOLNEY E. WILLIAMS.

Volney E. Williams is classed among the important landowners of Pitt township, owning and operating three hundred acres of land, and he is also well known as a breeder of high-grade racing horses. He has spent his entire life in Pitt township and no man of this section of the state is more widely and favorably known. His birth occurred on J january 2, 1850, his parents being Benjamin and Elizabeth (Hitchcock) Wil-

YOLNEY E. WILLIAMS liams, natives of New York state, where the father was born on the 17th of September, 1818, and the mother in February, 1817. Benjamin Williams was a farmer by occupation and spent the later years of his life upon his property in Pitt township, where he died in 1911, having survived his wife for a number of years, her death having occurred February 20, 1900. He was one of the earliest settlers in Wyandot county and operated a saw and gristmill for the Indians in the early days and laid the foundations of his future prosperity in his trade relations with the savages. He and his wife became the parents of six children: Mary J., Anna, Yolney E., John E., Franklin B. and one child who died in infancy.

Yolney E. Williams attended district school in Pitt township and high school in Upper Sandusky, leaving the latter institution at the age of twenty in order to assist his father with the work of the farm. He left the homestead in 1881 in order to begin his independent agricultural career. That he has met with success in the years which have come and gone is indicated by the fact that he is today the owner of three hundred acres of fine land on sections 15 and 16, Pitt township. On his place stand a fine residence and substantial barns and outbuildings for the shelter of grain and stock. Mr. Williams follows the most modern methods in carrying on his work and each year gathers abundant harvests of all kinds of farm produce as a reward for the care and labor he bestow upon his fields. He is also extensively interested in stock-raising, owning twenty horses, three hundred sheep, seventy-five hogs and twelve head of cattle. Of his high-grade racing horses, of the breeding of which he has made a specialty since the beginning of his active career, “Bay Dick” was the first. He bought him for thirty-five hundred dollars and subsequently sold him to William H. Vanderbilt, in 1882, for seven thousand dollars. Another famous horse “Ambassador” he sold to Brown Stockbridge at Kalamazoo, Michigan, for the high sum of eighteen thousand dollars, these figures being indicative of the quality of his horses.

On the 20th of December, 1881, in Mifflin township, Mr. Williams was united in marriage to Miss Angenette Straw, a daughter of Joel and Mary (Swayze) Straw, the former a prominent farmer in that section. He died in 1867, at the age of fifty-eight, and was survived by his wife until 1898, her death occurring when she was eighty-eight years of age.

Mr. and Mrs. Williams became the parents of two sons, Harry S. and Robert W.

Mr. Williams gives his allegiance to the democratic party and his interest in the cause of education is indicated by the able and effective work which he did during his term of service as a member of the school board. Having resided in this township during his entire life, covering a period of sixty-three years, he is well and favorably known here and is widely recognized as a prosperous and progressive business man as well as an upright and honorable citizen.

As printed in Past and present of Wyandot County, Ohio; a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement; (1913). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.