Biography of Truman A. Beecher, page 22.  History of Northeast Indiana; 
LaGrange, Steuben, Noble and DeKalb Counties, Vol. II, under the editorial 
supervision of Ira Ford ... [et al], The Lewis Publishing Co., Chicago and 
New York, 1920.


TRUMAN A. Beecher, one of the oldest residents and business men of Hamilton, 
Indiana, where he has lived more than sixty years, was born in Crawford 
County, Ohio, May 25, 1837, a son of Truman and Hannah (Sloane) Beecher. His 
father was born at Litchfield, Connecticut, and his mother near Steubenville, 
Ohio, and they were married in the latter state in 1824. Truman Beecher and 
a partner built the first ten locks on the Ohio Canal at Akron, Ohio. Later 
he moved to Fredericksburg in Wayne County and also lived at Wooster, tile 
county seat of that county. His business as a contractor took him to 
various localities. He also lived in Crawford County, and in 1845 brought 
his family to Franklin Township of DeKalb County, Indiana. He soon moved 
to Albion in Noble County, where his wife died in 1850. About that time he 
fitted up a company for the overland route to California, and while on the 
way west he took sick and died at Fort Laramie, Wyoming, when about sixty 
years of age. His children were John Sloane, Mary, Philemon, Henry and 
Truman A.

Mr. Beecher's maternal grandfather, John Sloane, was a distinguished 
figure in Ohio and national his-tory. He was born in Pennsylvania in 1779 
and at an early date moved to Ohio. During the War Of 1812 he was a colonel 
of militia. He was a member of the Legislature in 1804-06, serving two 
years as speaker, He was United States receiver of public monies at Canton 
from 1808 to 1816, and at Wooster from l8l6 to 1819. He represented his 
district in Congress from 1819 until 1829. He was a warm friend and admirer 
of Henry Clay, and at a time when the presidential election was decided by 
the House of Representatives in the contest between Adams, Clay and 
Crawford, he refused a high presidential appointment offered as a reward 
for his voting for Adams, and remained true to Clay. A warm friendship 
existed between him and the great Kentucky whig statesman. John Sloane was  
clerk of the Court of Common Pleas seven years, secretary of the State of 
Ohio three years and was appointed United States treasurer and starved 
from November, 1850, to April, 1853. He died at Wooster, Ohio, in May, 
1856.

Truman A. Beecher was eight years old when his parents came to DeKalb 
County, Indiana. He at-tended public schools and after the death of his 
father and mother he returned to Wooster, Ohio, and lived with his 
distinguished grandfather, John Sloane.  As a youth he learned the trade 
of tinner, and in 1858, on coming to Steuben County and locating	at 
Hamilton, he opened a tinner's shop. He was in business steadily for over 
fifty years, until he	retired in 1915. Mr. Beecher owns a good home in 
Hamilton. He has been a steadfast republican, his father having been an 
oldline whig. In religious views he is liberal On May 4, 1862, he married 
Miss Statira Brown. She was born in Erie County, Ohio, in 1840, and died 
in 1901. Mr. and Mrs. Beecher had ten children, including several pairs of 
twins: Minnie; Anna, wife of Maurice Lemmon; Harriet Stowe; Nettie and an 
infant sister: William, whose twin died in infancy; Frank C. and Fannie C., 
twins; and James Garfield, who was born the day Garfield was elected 
president.

Submitted by:
Debbie Tarantino <rowie@parrett.net>