This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list.
Surnames: Stults, Smith, Best, Kennedy & Mishler
Classification: Biography
Message Board URL:
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/gh.2ADI/5236
Message Board Post:
"History of Huntington County, Indiana"1914 By Frank S. Bash pg. 477-79
Marion Best Stults. A lifelong resident of Huntington county is Marion Best Stults, for
the past thirty years a builder of individual business success and promoter of everything
for the betterment of his community. His record as county school superintendent is
remembered to his credit; as a member of the school board he has assisted in the
advancement of the Huntington schools, and belongs to the group of local citizens whose
influence and activities have done most to keep up the standards of social and civic
culture and well being in the county.
Born in Clear Creek township, Huntington county, May 13, 1855, Marion Best Stults is of
substantial and thrifty German ancestry. His great-grandfather, George Stults, came from
his native fatherland to America some time between the years 1740 and 1750, settling in
North Carolina. He was a soldier in the Revolutionary war, and died a short time after the
winning of independence.
John Harmon Stults, the grandfather, was born in North Carolina, June 10, 1779, while the
Revolutionary war was still in progress. From North Carolina he moved into Pennsylvania
where in 1806 he married Catherine Smith, who was born in Pennsylvania in 1783, a daughter
of George Smith, who was also a soldier of the Revolution, and was taken prisoner by the
British during that war. John H. Stults, in 1816, moved to Stark county, Ohio, where he
lived until 1848, in which year he moved to Whitley county, Indiana. In 1855 he became a
resident of the county of Huntington, where he died ten years later at the good old age of
eighty-six. His wife died in Huntington county in 1862.
Next in line of descent comes Jacob Stults, father of the Huntington merchant. The ninth
in a family of ten children, Jacob was born in Stark county, Ohio, February 3, 1824. His
early boyhood and youth were spent upon a farm. When he was twenty-one years of age, in
1845, he began teaching school, and was identified with that high and useful calling
twenty-one years. In the meantime, about 1850 he moved to Huntington county, Indiana, and
while teaching during the winter seasons, also operated eighty acres of land which he had
bought in Clear Creek township. That continued to be his home until 1888, when he retired
from active life, and thereafter had his home in the city of Huntington until his death,
October 10, 1897, at the age of seventy-three. On March 25, 1852, Jacob Stults married
Miss Margaret E. Best, a daughter of James C. Best of Huntington county. She was born in
Kentucky, but when a child her parents moved to Indiana, the date of their arrival in
Huntington county!
being September 15, 1839. She died in Clear Creek township in 1855, at the early age of
twenty-nine years. The only child of Jacob and Margaret Stults with Marion B. On May 18,
1856, Jacob Stults married Miss Harriet Kennedy, of Virginia, a daughter of John and Anna
(Lyle) Kennedy. Their union resulted in four children: Maggie E., Sherman P., Addie B. and
Howard B. In politics Jacob Stults first voted in behalf of the whig party, and remained a
republican from the beginning of that party until his death. He was active in the
Methodist church. His record was one of considerable prosperity from a material point of
view, and he always possessed and deserved the esteem of his community as an upright and
exemplary citizen.
Thus it is seen that the Huntington merchant first named in this article comes of a long
line of thrifty and honorably ancestors, and in his own career has lived up to the
standards of his forbears. He was two weeks old when his mother died, and he was reared
under the care of his step-mother. With a boyhood spent on a farm he learned the lessons
of industry, and had a wholesome environment that gave him a physical constitution equal
to the exigencies of business life. From the local public schools he afterwards entered
the Northern Indiana Normal School at Valparaiso, where he was a student two years, his
purpose then being to take up the profession of teaching. From the fall of 1873 until 1881
he taught in the district schools, and in 1879 was elected county superintendent of
schools of Huntington county. He held that office for one term of two years, and was
instrumental in that in introducing many important reforms in the local system of
education. He had and still has h!
igh ideals as to the place that public schools should fill in any community, and has
contributed more than an average individual share to making the Huntington county schools
the best in the state. In November, 1882, on leaving school work, Mr. Stults engaged in
the furniture and undertaking business at Huntington. Through that line of commercial
endeavor he had reached his chief business prosperity and success, and early in his career
built up the largest establishment of its kind in the county seat. His has always been a
record of business integrity and fair dealing, and his judgment, diligence and promptness
in meeting all obligations have been chief causes in his advancement.
On March 1, 1914, Mr. Stults was elected president of the Huntington Trust Company, one of
the prosperous banking concerns of Huntington. He is also a director of the Huntington
Commercial Club. At the present time he is a member of the Indiana State Board of
Embalmers, having been appointed in November, 1908, by Governor Hanley, and reappointed by
Governor Marshall, who is now vice president of the United States.
In politics Mr. Stults has long been active in the interests of the Republican party in
Huntington county. Besides his service as county school superintendent, thirty years ago,
he has served as a member of the city school board, from 1895 to 1898, and in that
connection did much important work for the welfare of school. In 1902 he was elected
representative of Huntington county, as a republican, and continued to serve by reelection
in the sessions of 1903, 1905 and 1907. He was a member of several important committees,
such as insurance and education, and was chairman of the committee on rights and
privileges of the inhabitants of the state, and also on banks. Mr. Stults has taken a
prominent part in Masonic affairs, and his affiliations are with Amity Lodge No. 483, A.
F. & A. M.; Huntington Chapter No. 27, R. A. M.; Huntington Council No. 51, R. &
S. M.; Huntington Commandery No. 35, Knights Templar, and he is also a thirty-second
degree Scottish Rite Mason and belongs to!
Mizpah Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Fort Wayne. He has affiliation with Huntington
Lodge No. 93, Knights of Pythias. Mr. Stults is also an active and prominent member of the
First Methodist Episcopal Church of Huntington, and was elected by the North Indiana
Conference as a lay delegate to the General Conference of 1912 held at Minneapolis,
Minnesota. In December, 1879, occurred his marriage with Miss Lydia Mishler, of Clear
Creek township. Her father was Jacob Mishler, a well known farmer in that section of the
county. Two children, Clarence and Mae, were born to their marriage. Both are deceased,
Clarence dying in infancy. The daughter, Mae, was married to Field A. Short.