Biography of Jacob B. Casebeer, M.C. pages 850/851/852/853/854.  History of 
De Kalb County, Indiana.  Inter-State Publishing Company, Chicago, 1885.

Jacob B. Casebeer, M.D., was born in Holmes County, Ohio, April 11, 1839; is 
the seventh child of thirteen children born to David and  Rebecca 
(Kenestrick) Casebeer, natives of Pennsylvania and Maryland, respectively, 
and of German descent.  The parents of David, John and Nancy (Best) 
Casebeer, settled in Tuscarawas County, Ohio, when he was a child, in which 
the greater portion of his after life was passed.  He was married Oct. 26, 
1826, to the above-mentioned lady.  Nine of the thirteen children born to 
them are living, viz.: Susana, Enos L., David W., Rebecca M., Elizabeth N., 
Margaret C., Eliza E., Howard M. and Jacob B.  Sarah A., Martha J., John 
and Joshua are deceased.  Mr. Casebeer possessed an exemplary character, 
in which were harmoniously blended those admirable traits which so grandly 
embellish the life and career of the honorable and just.  He was soundly 
converted at the age of six years, and ever after every deed and act of 
his life was animated by a pure Christian spirit.  He lived nearly eighty 
years after his conversion, during which time he was an active and 
consistent member of the Methodist Episcopal church.  His death occurred 
February 25, 1885, aged eighty-five years and four days.  Mrs. Casebeer 
was a daughter of John and Sarah (Hivner) Kenestrick, and a most estimable 
woman,  who possessed those sterling qualities of mind and heart, which 
alone give grace and beauty to the highest types of true womanhood.  As a 
wife and mother, no praise can commensurate what the deeds and acts of her 
life justly merit.  Christianity was the illumination which lighted her 
along life’s pathway, and what she professed in the Methodist Episcopal 
church of which she was a useful member, she practiced in the daily walks 
of life.  Her death occurred at Fredericksburgh, Ohio, July 18, 1873, aged 
sixty-four years, one month and seventeen days.  The early life of the 
subject of this sketch was passed in a manner common with farmers’ sons.  
He attended a district school during the winter seasons, in which, by 
close application to study, he had mastered the rudimentary branches when 
only thirteen years of age.  He than attended the Middleton High School, 
two and a half miles from home--to and from which he walked night and 
morning during a few terms.  He was successful in passing a rigid 
examination by the County Board of Examiners, and the ensuing winter 
taught a country school; subsequently he attended the Fredericksburgh 
seminary for several seasons, which was alternated by teaching winter 
school, and was eminently successful, having won by the faithful 
performance of duty, the confidence and esteem of both patrons and 
pupils.  At the age of twenty he went to Kentucky and engaged in teaching, 
first in a district school and afterward in a select school at 
Stephensburg, where he won an enviable reputation as an instructor.  
During the latter period of his term of school at the above place, the 
“war feeling” began to pervade the minds and hearts of the “fire eating” 
Kentuckians, who never lost an opportunity to personally annoy the “school-
teaching Yank” (a term derisively used by the unenlightened, and at that 
time unterrified ones), and numerous written imperative commands did he 
receive, ordering his prompt departure from “Dixie’s land.”  Despite the 
threats of violence from the more radical ones, as well as the milder 
requests from conservative sources, he manfully stood his ground till his 
term of school by virtue of contract had expired, at which time he crossed 
the Ohio River into patriotic atmosphere of the loyal North.  The 
presidential election of 1860 came off several months previous to his 
departure, and on the morning of said election he astonished the “natives” 
by presenting himself at the polls, Abolition ticket in hand and although 
violence was threatened if he persisted in voting for Mr. Lincoln, he 
boldly declared himself a citizen of he Government and a legal voter of 
the State, and demanded to be peaceably allowed to exercise the right of 
suffrage as guaranteed to such in the Constitution of the United States.  
His fearlessness and cool determination so disconcerted the excited rabble 
opposed to him that his Republican ticket was formally entered on the 
election books (a mode of voting then in vogue in Kentucky), and afterward 
received due credit in the count, as did that of his brother, L. Casebeer, 
there being the only two Republican ballots voted in that precinct.  For 
one year following his return to Ohio he taught in Middleton school, and 
the subsequent year was Principal of the Fredericksburgh graded school, in 
which he won new honors as an educator and disciplinarian.  During this 
latter term of school he began reading medicine under the direction of Dr. 
James Martin, a skillful physician of more than local note, who was his 
preceptor till the winter of 1863-’64, at which time he matriculated a the 
University of Ann Arbor (Michigan) School of Medicine and Surgery.  After 
taking a course of lectures he returned to his former tutor’s office, and 
soon after the Government Medical Purveryor of Ohio appointed and assigned 
him to duty in the Dennison U.S.A. Hospital at Cincinnati, Ohio.  In 
February, 1865, he was commissioned by Governor Tod, of Ohio, Assistant 
Surgeon of the One Hundred and Third Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry.  
He immediately joined  his regiment in North Carolina, he was honorably 
discharged from the United States’ service, June 27, 1865, entered the 
Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York, which institution conferred 
on him the degree of Doctor of Medicine, March 1, 1866.  Immediately 
thereafter he located in Auburn, where since he has devoted himself to the 
demands of a large, constantly increasing and remunerative practice, in 
which he has been eminently successful.   He is devoted to his profession---
a hard student, sparing neither labor nor expense to keep himself well 
abreast of the foremost in the rapid advancement of the sciences of 
medicine and surgery.  His library of medical works is large and well 
chosen embracing volumes of all best known authors, and in his cabinet is 
to be found all modern appliances and instruments which facilitate 
operations in the most delicate cases, and give an approximation to safety 
before unknown in the more hazardous ones.  His writing have gained for 
him considerable celebrity as an author; two of his papers, written at the 
request of the America Medical Association, before which they were read, 
have been extensively copied by leading journals of the United Sates, 
receiving favorable comment where ever they appeared.  He has also written 
numerous articles which have been read before the County and Northeastern 
Indiana Medical associations, which never failed to elicit meritorious 
praise for their conciseness and logic.  There is in all his productions a 
style peculiarly laconic and terse, yet so comprehensible as to be entirely 
devoid of ambiguity.  Of all the above societies he is a valued member, 
and of the last mentioned he is ex-President.  Socially the Doctor is 
urbane and complaisant in speech and manner; never indulges in sophism nor 
pedantic generalities; is methodical and systematic in all his doings; and 
his conclusion are always founded on honest convictions, and if ever wrong 
he has the moral courage and frankness to admit his error.  He is an 
uncompromising antagonist to immorality of every kind for a quarter of a 
century he has been an acceptable, active and consistent member of the 
Methodist Episcopal church---a greater portion of which time he has served 
on the official board.  In the religious, as in every other relation of 
life, the Doctor is no laggard, shirking responsibilities   and content 
with the small “portion” passive inactivity always begets, but an 
energetic worker, whose reward is always commensurate with the efforts 
made to secure it.  He stands perfectly erect; is of medium height; 
solidly or compactly built; his movements are quick and graced with a 
business-like air that gives weight to his presence; is fluent and 
intelligible in conversation, the whole combining with an agreeability 
that makes him justly popular with all.  He has been twice married.  To 
his first wife, Hattie G., daughter of Eli B. and Fannie Smith, of 
Fredericksburgh, Ohio, he was united in marriage in 1863.  One child is 
the fruit of their union--Fannie R.  Mrs. Casebeer departed this life Jan. 
28, 1869, aged twenty-seven years, nine months and eleven days.  His 
second marriage was celebrated with Sarah E., daughter of William and 
Margaret (Carr) Nycum, of Fort Wayne, Ind., June 4, 1873, by whom he has 
had one child---Hattie E., and unusually sweet-tempered and intelligent, 
lovely little girl.

Submitted by:
Arlene Goodwin
Auburn, Indiana
Agoodwin@ctlnet.com