Posted on: Randolph Co. Indiana Biographies
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Surname: Sample, Sumwalt, Anderson, Kleinfelder, McBride, Stevenson, Taylor
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Combination Atlas Map of Tippecanoe County, Indiana, pg. 31
Kingman Brothers, 1878
HENRY T. SAMPLE
Few men have the good fortune to win the affectionate regard and kindly
sympathy of the community in which they live, that HENRY T. SAMPLE has
gained among the people of Tippecanoe County. The benignant countenance
and stalwart form are familiar alike to old and young. His powerful frame
bending under the weight of years, his frank, open, generous face, fringed
with hoary locks; his dignified and courteous bearing; his kindly and even-tempered
disposition, unruffled by the cares and anxieties of a lifetime of business
activityall conspire to excite patriarchal reverence. Nearly three-quarters
of a century have left him a hale, hearty and well-preserved old man; a
quick, elastic step; busy, active and energetic in business; still in possession
of his old-time habits of unflagging industry, with eye undimmed and mind
unimpaired. Such is the imperfect personal sketch of HENRY T. SAMPLE.
He was born near Middletown, Butler Co., Ohio, on the 20th day of September,
1805. His father built a grist mill and saw mill near Middletown, which
he managed successfully two years. He afterward moved to Coldrain on the
Big Miami River, in the south part of the county, and there built what
were known as the Coldrain Mills. Here he remained until the year 1818,
when he moved to Randolph Co., Ind., settling on White River, and there
built a mill and improved a farm.
Young HENRY received his first lessons in commercial enterprise in slipping
down the river and selling the products of mill and farm to the settlers
in the new purchase from the Indians, which includes the territory in which
Indianapolis is now situated, his fathers mill being in what was known
as the twelve mile purchase on the Indian Reserve line. After that trade
was sup0lied, they hauled their products in wagons eight miles north to
the Mississinewa River, where they tradedwith the Miami Indians on that
river and on the Wabash, as far down as Lafayette. His first trip to Lafayette
was in 1825, which had been surveyed and laid out just one week before
his arrival.
In 1822, he had begun an apprenticeship at the tanning and currying business
in Randolph County. In 1826, he married MISS SARAH SUMWALT, and immediately
moved to Lafayette to engage in the tanning business, which he carried
on until 1854. In 1833 he began to butcher hogs in connection with his
tannery, and in 1842, he associate himself with the late JOSEPH S. HANNA
in the business of packing pork and beef. While engaged in this business,
he made several trips to New Orleans in flat-boats with cargoes of pork
and lard, generally realizing a good return for his capital and labor.
He purchased a farm on the grand prairie in Benton County in 1858, and
began the management of a large stock farm. In this latter business he
found more pleasure and enjoyment than in any other branch of trade in
which he had ever engaged, while at the same time yielding ample returns
for the capital invested. In long years of active business enterprise and
continuous industry, he had amassed an ample fortune. With unerring judgment
and unfailing foresight, he had made every business venture a success.
He enjoyed a uniform and unvarying prosperity for many years. He was a
shrewd trader and careful businessman. In a lifetime of business activity
and commercial enterprise he had been uniformly successful, and had in
the aggregate mad a competency satisfactory to himself.
But in an evil moment he was persuaded to digress from the business in
which he was engaged, and embark in other branches of trade. The venture
proved unwise and unprofitable, and the results of fifty years of hard
work were swept away. In a few short years his ample estate melted away,
and left him in his old age with comparatively a pittance. His advice to
young men is to keep close to shore.
MR. SAMPLE was a Whig during the days of that party, and naturally drifted
into the Republican party. He was one of the early Councilmen of Lafayette,
but has never been a politician or office seeker. While taking an active
interest in the county and State politics, the material and business interests
of the county have received the larger share of his attention. The agricultural
interests to the county have always held a high place in his esteem, and
their promotion and improvement has been the chief ambition and solicitude
of his later years.
In 1867, some of the leading farmers of the county solicited him to accept
the Presidency of a little county fair. For several years he had been trying
to inaugurate an enterprise of this kind, and he gladly accepted the responsibility.
He remained President of this society about three years, when their meeting
were discontinued, but from this little germ grew the Tippecanoe County
Agricultural Association of today, the largest and most successful county
association of the kind in the State of Indiana, if not in the West. Its
widely extended celebrity as a county fair, and successful management,
is in a very large measure due to the watchful care, clear foresight and
anxious devotion to its interests of HENRY T. SAMPLE. In the incipiency
of the new organization, he offered to find suitable grounds for holding
their meetings if they would raise $10,000. The money was raised and the
present grounds were purchased by the County Commissioners. This site was
selected by MR. SAMPLE, and no grounds better adapted to these purposes
could be found. He is now and has been from its organization, the President
of the Association, and under his efficient administration it has achieved
a wide reputation as a stock show and agricultural fair. Under his management
and by his efforts, it has done more than any one thing to promote the
interest of the farming community and stimulate and encourage the improvement
of the stock of this and adjoining counties. His ability as a manager of
agricultural societies has been fitly recognized in his selection as a
member of the State Board of Agriculture for the last six years.
MR. SAMPLE has passed the three score and ten years allotted to man, and
now enjoys the society of an unbroken family circle. His children have
reached the middle age and in lives of usefulness are enjoying merited
prosperity. For more than fifty years, he and the companion of his early
manhood and old age and the sharerer of his joys and sorrows, have lived
and toiled and struggled together. In 1876, they celebrated their golden
wedding, that anniversary so rare in the annals of married life. Both have
long been members of the same church, and often have united in deeds of
charity and the relief of the distressed. In the fullness of a ripe old
age they look back on long years of mutual assistance and the comfort of
their common sympathy and the enjoyment of each others society. The lingering
sunset of life casts its shadows over long lives fruitful of good and usefulness.
From "The Balthasar Zumwalt (Sumwalt) - Shearer Lineage and Some
Related
Families, 1727-1978" by Robert Brucker Shearer, page 34
Sarah Sumwalt Sample was the daughter of Gottfried and Barbara Kleinfelder
Sumwalt. She was born August 30, 1802, in Baltimore, Maryland. Henry Taylor
Sample died February 19, 1881, and Sarah Sumwalt Sample died February 25,
1886, both in Lafayette, Tippecanoe Co., Ind.
Children of Henry Taylor Sample and Sarah Sumwalt were:
1. John Godfrey Sample, b. Nov. 28, 1828, Randolph Co., IN., d. Sept. 19,
1890, in Lafayette, Ind. He married Drucilla Bartholomew, Nov. 15, 1853.
2. Isabelle D. Sample, b. Dec. 26, 1831, Lafayette, Ind., d. Nov. 26, 1918,
in Lafayette, Ind. She married Henry Taylor, 1852, Lafayette, Ind.
3. Robert W. Sample, b. Sept. 2, 1833, d. Nov. 16, 1924, at age 90 years.
He married Elizabeth Anderson Oct. 31, 1855.
4. Boyes Taylor Sample, b. ca. 1836, d. Nov. 29, 1886. He married Fanny
Stevenson.
5. Sallie Sample, b. ca. 1845, d. Dec. 23, 1923, in Los Angeles, Ca. She
married David McBride.
Link: Portrait of Henry Taylor Sample
URL: <
http://www.rootsweb.com/~intippec/HTSample.JPG>