Samuel Hickle Hashberger Family

Samuel was born 23 August, 1815, and married Anna Rader, daughter of Henry Rader on the 28th August, 1834, in Hancock County Ohio. He was the first white settler in Marion Township, Henry County, Ohio, and located in the midst of the Black Swamp, and his cabin home for some time was three miles from the nearest neighbor in an adjoining township. This was in 1841. Indians still roamed through that section of the country, and in order to reach his place he had to blaze a trail through the woods and across the swamps. On his first tract of forty acres he had a log cabin with a puncheon floor, clapboard roofs weighted down with poles, and a wooden door swinging on a wooden hinge. The little family lived a life of many hardships for several years. The nearest trading place was twenty miles away at Defiance, which was then only a hamlet and a number of times the little household was on short rations because of delay in getting to the mills or grocery stores. Meat was, of course, plentiful, since the woods and swamps were filled with wild game. Samuel Hickle Hashberger took up his life in that pioneer community with characteristic vigor, improved his land, and died there in 3-15-1849, when in the prime of his life. On coming to Ohio he made his first pioneer home in Hancock County, where he met and married Anna Rader, who was of Pennsylvania parentage. Her father was Henry Rader, who interred a tract of wild land in Hancock County and was a well-to-do citizen, living to be past eighty years of age. Samuel and wife had three sons and a daughter born in Hancock County and they then moved with their little family to the wilds of Henry County and settled in Marion Township. After his death in 1849, his widow looked after her family alone for six years and was then married in Hancock Co. to Enoch G. Stevenson and with him returned to the old homestead in Marion Township, where both lived out their lives. The Raders were members of the Baptist faith, while the Hashbargers were Methodists, as was Mr. Stevenson. The Raders were all Democrats while the Hashbargers were all Republicans. Samuel H. Hashberger and wife had five sons and one daughter. Four of the sons were soldiers in the Civil War, all of them in different Ohio Regiments.

Samuel died and was buried on his own farm due to bad weather, and today a large cemetery will be found there with his grave well marked. (Marion Township Cemetery)