LAKE COUNTY OHIO - BIO:  WIRE, Samuel

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File contributed to the Lake County, Ohio Biographies Project by
Deb Breniser
rbcobb@ncweb.com
January 6, 2000
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This biography is taken from Biographical History of Northeastern Ohio,
Embracing the counties of Ashtabula, Geauga and Lake; Lewis Publishing 
Company,
1893.


Samuel Wire

Samuel Wire, one of the prominent men of Lake County, Ohio, now engaged in
the saw mill business in Perry, has long been identified with the interests
of this county, and it is eminently fitting that some personal mention of
him should be made in this work; indeed without a sketch of his life a
history of Lake County would be incomplete.  

Samuel Wire was born in Yates County, New York, September 11, 1818.  His
farmer, Samuel Wire, born in Connecticut, December 13, 1786, was a son of
Thomas Wire, a native of Ireland.  Thomas Wire went to England, and there,
at the age of fourteen years was pressed into the English army.
Subsequently coming to America, he deserted and settled in Connecticut. His
son Samuel grew and married in Connecticut, and after his marriage went to
New York, first fixed settling in Auburn and afterward living in parts of
that State.  In 1835 he came from Ontario County, New York, to Lake County,
and took up his abode in Madison Township.  In the fall of 1839 he moved to
Perry, this County, and in 1841 went back to New York and located in
Canadaigua.   His next move was Walled Lake in Oakland County, Michigan,
where he passed the closing years of his life and died at the age of 82
years.  He was a clergyman of the Free will Baptist church; was engaged in
the Ministry at the various places where he was located, and was in active
service until a year of his death.  He was an earnest and efficient worker
for the Master of and was the means of accomplishing a vast amount of good.
His wife, whose maiden name was Abigail Sherman, was born in Connecticut
April 17, 1789, and died at the age of 60 years.  She, too, was a member of
the Baptist church, and was in full sympathy with her husband's noble work.
They had eleven children, all of whom reached adult years, or nearly so,
the first of the number to die being sixteen years old.

Samuel, the subject of our sketch, was the sixth born in this large family.
He was in his teens when his father moved out to Ohio, and went to school
some after coming here, his education being obtained in the log
schoolhouses of that period.  When he was twenty-one he started out in life
on his own responsibility, working at whatever he could get to do, chopping
wood, have ditching, etc. When he was a mere boy his father hired him out
to work in a mill, and since then a saw mill has always had a fascination
for him, and much of his life has been devoted to milling business.
From 1839 until 1851 he was engaged in grafting trees, traveling through
Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, NJ, Mississippi
and Arkansas, and during that time made and saved money enough to buy a
farm.  The land he bought and settled on after his 

marriage is now occupied by the Western Reserve Nursery, just north of
Perry. In 1851 Mr. Wire bought a tract of timberland and erected the first
steam saw mill in Perry township.  He operated this mill until 1862, when
he sold out. The following year he bought a mill in Perry.  In 1869 he was
sheriff of Lake County, was reelected at the end of his first term, and
served a second term. As an officer he faithfully discharged the duties
devolving upon him. In 1880 he built his present large sawmill, in which he
has since done an extensive business.  His residence in Perry he built in
1868.

Mr. Wire married in 1849, to Miss Mary A. Sinclair, a native of Vermont,
who came with her father, Milton Sinclair, to Lake County, Ohio, in 1837.
Their only child, Dorr, died at the age of ten years.

Mr. Wire is a good example of the self-made man.  His father, a pioneer
minister with a large family, had little with which to start his children
in a business life; and that Samuel Wire has risen to a position of wealth
and prominence is due to his own industry and good management rather than
to any financial aid he ever received.  During his long residence ate in
the county he has witnessed nearly all the improvements that have been made
here, and few men in Lake County are better known than he.  Politically, he
is a Republican.  He voted for William Henry Harrison in 1840.