West Jefferson in Days Gone By - series 83 by Charlie Miller
____May 14, 1884 – The newly appointed assistant physician at the Ohio State Pen is Mr. John Gerhardt, a former West Jeff boy. (John was born June 8, 1858, in Ohio, and his father Christian Gerhardt was born in 1805 in Germany. After his first wife died John married Marguerite Wilson who didn’t die until 1955.)
____February 18, 1885 – Daniel Priest drowned in Little Darby Creek, he came to Jeff in 1871 and operated a cooper shop. (A Cooper was one who made wooden barrels, plenty of oak was cut around West Jeff from which he made them. A lot of oak was also shipped on the railroad. His shop was on Pennsylvania Ave. west of the Railroad House. Daniel was born in 1818 in Massachusetts and died February 17, 1885, and is buried in the Pleasant Hill Cemetery. He had a son, Daniel Jr. born in 1864, and had moved to Columbus and worked on the railroad. He died in 1950 both Daniels are buried at Pleasant Hill.)
____Wilson Burrows Post No. 389, G. A. R. has been located in Jeff. (G. A. R., Grand Army of the Republic, was formed right after the end of the Civil War, it was comprised of men who fought in the Union Army. Post No. 389 was formed on November 6, 1883, at West Jefferson. It had 20 charter members. The first Commander was Lot D. Hull. The Post was named after Wilson Burrows who was killed on April 19, 1863, during the battle of Tullahoma, Tenn. On June 9, 1885, Village records state that “Received from the G. A. R. for use of the Upper Village Hall, $8.70.)
____Village records indicate that a fire company was formed sometime before 1885. In 1885 the Fire Department members were: Ben Hoe, A. L. Martin, A. R. Jones, W. H. Brown, S. M. Stickley, C. Bradley, Martin Kuehner, Lester Burnham, and Jerry Gearing.
_____July 1, 1885 – William Haislett, an experienced Tinner, opened his store on Main Street. (Haislett was born in 1852 in Pennsylvania. He was a Tinner by trade and around 1887 he came to Jefferson and erected a building which is now the site of the parking lot of the Huntington Bank. There he had a hardware store downstairs on the west side and living quarters on the east side and upstairs. His wife Patty Haislett, was born in England in 1854. He died in 1926 and she died in January 1941. I was just a kid but I can remember her, we kids thought that she was a witch, she looked the part. It was always dark and dingy in the store. There were no family survivors, when William Culp handled the estate he found several bank accounts in different banks under different names)
____August 11, 1885 – An ordinance was passed prohibiting any vehicle to be pulled by an animal to exceed 8 MPH on village streets. (Did they have speedometers on the buggies?) In the mid-1880’s Main Street was graded and graveled.
____September 29, 1885 – An ordinance was passed condemning the Baptist Church at the end of N. Center St. $300.00 was given to the church for the right of way through their lot. Dirt from the excavation of the new Baptist Church on the southwest corner of Main and Center Streets was hauled across the street to fill in the town hall lot in August of 1886.