OBITUARY. DeLong - At Texas, Henry county, Ohio, December 17th, 1890, Columbus S. DeLong, aged 74 years, 6 months and 15 days. Mr. DeLong, at the time of his death, was, without doubt, the oldest of the early pioneers of the county, having resided here continuously for over seventy years. He was born in Cincinnati on the 2nd of June, 1816, and came to Henry county with his parents, at the age of four years.

His great-grandfather emigrated from France, and settled In Pennsylvania in the early youth of America; from there he removed to Canada and settled near Toronto, where his descendents remained until the outbreak of the war of 1812, when, their sympathies being with America, they came to the United States and located in Cincinnati where the father of the deceased and his brothers engaged in school teaching.

In 1830 Jacob, the father of the deceased, with his brother Joseph, came to Henry county and located at Prarie du Masque, now Damascus, when they and Samuel Vance, David Bucklin, George Chilson, Charles Gunn and John Butler constituted the majority of the white population or what now forms Henry county -- the entire population being less than a dozen families and not sufficient to organize one township.

The present generation, surrounded with all the comforts and enjoying the luxuries of life, cannot appreciate the hardships and deprivations which characterized the life of the pioneer, who was compelled to depend for subsistence on the fruit of the rifle and for covering on the product of the trap.

As we gaze over the expansive and fertile fields and see the comfortable and pleasant homes of Henry county, reflect that but a few years ago it was but a matted woods, where birds forgot to sing, and recall the labors, toils, sacrifices and dangers which made up the life or the pioneer heroes, whose graves indent our soil, and as we appreciate the triumphs won by them which have given to us the noble heritage we now enjoy, and cast ourselves in the beckoning future which these men and their labor made possible, our hearts cannot fail to fill with pride, and love and gratitude, and in the sight of country and of the world we lift up their honored names and ask posterity to emulate the pioneer. There should be monuments erected to commemorate the achievements of these brave and great men. Monuments are the links which connect names and events to fame. Let monuments be built in each township and stand as a silent but eloquent witness, not only to the devotion and daring, but as a constant witness, that we, the sons and daughters of these pioneers, hold in grateful recollection those to whom we are so largely indebted for the blessings we today enjoy.