PORTAGE COUNTY OHIO - GRIDLEY

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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by
Betty Ralph 
bralph@hiwaay.net
February 19, 2000
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Bios:  Gridley - Portage County, Ohio, from "History
of Portage County, Ohio" published by Warner, Beers & Co., Chicago, 1885

Copyright © 2000 by  Betty Ralph. This copy contributed for use in 
the USGenWeb Archives.  bralph@hiwaay.net


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WILLIAM GRIDLEY, carpenter and machinist, Kent, was born in Hampden County,
Mass., August 12, 1807; son of Oliver and Mary (Bradley) Gridley.  His
educational advantages were limited, as he was bound out on a farm in New
Haven County, Conn., until he was twenty-one years old.  When nineteen years
of age he ran away, and arriving in Hampden County, Mass., he served an
apprenticeship of two years at the millwright trade; worked in the
cotton-mills at Chicopee Falls, Mass., fourteen months as a journeyman
mechanic, after which he engaged as a master mechanic in the mill of A.
Denslow, at Windsor, Conn., where he remained about three years.  He made,
but did not invent, the first machine that made cotton batting out of waste;
then went to work on the Boston & Albany Railroad as a mechanic and
inspector of lumber, and in August, 1844, he came to Ohio, locating in 1845
in Kent, where he has worked at his trade of millwright, carpenter, etc., up
to the present time.  Mr. Gridley was married in December 1832, to Clara,
daughter of Calvin and Lydia (Grinnell) Bedortha, of Hampden County, Mass.,
by whom he has had five children:  Talbot, William (killed at the battle of
Gettysburg, in July, 1863), Benjamin (killed at the battle of Cedar
Mountain), Laura (Mrs. O.S. Nichols) and Clara (deceased).  Our subject’s
first wife dying March, 1853, he next married Mary Chatman, daughter of John
and Martha Twitchell, by whom he had one child, Lilian (Mrs. Dr. R.F.
Hamblin).  His son Talbot served in the late war in the Seventh Regt.
O.V.I., and was wounded in the shoulder at the battle of Winchester; his son
William was a member of the Eighth Regt., O.V.I., and Benjamin was a member
of the Seventh O.V.I.  Mr. Gridley is a member of the Episcopal Church; the
I.O.O.F.  In politics he is a Republican.



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