William Mead

It was William Mead who laid out the original plat for the village of Grelton on August 14, 1880. About four years earlier he had come from near Englishville, in Kent County, Michigan, in their farm wagon, with his wife Juliette beside him, holding their infant son (James) Eddy. She had grown up in nearby Shunk, her parents having moved to near Goshen, Indiana. These Meads bought a farm on the north edge of Grelton, parts of it in two townships, a creek forming the north boundary of the Jackson property. Additions to and subtractions from the house, outbuildings, plantings, fences, as well as the acreage have come about over a century, but there remains the cozy atmosphere at the modest cottage the Meads made their home.

William Mead (1824-1909) was one of ten children of Ephraim Mead (1791-1885) and Jane Davenport (d 1874) who came from Tomkins County, New York, first to a place near Springfield, Ohio, then to Englishville, Michigan. One of William's sisters, Samantha, married George Ball who had a farm farther north of Grelton. Clark, son of brother Frank, lived in Grand Rapids, Ohio. William's wives, Jane Haire and Jane Hoose had both died in Michigan. Alice, daughter of Jane Haire, married Grant Davore, a Detroit physician. In a letter to her father and stepmother in Grelton she inquires if the hired girl works well. She says she lives back of the Medical College on Woodward Avenue, and that their house has water in it, plumbing, she means. Alice died of tuberculosis at her father's home and is buried in the Hoy Cemetery, formerly called Shunk, beside her half sisters, Juliette's girls, Myrtle Irene (1875- 1882) and Jessie Vera (1879-1882) who died of diphtheria within hours of each other. Eddy (1875-1940), the only one of Juliette's children not born in Grelton, grew up there, homesteaded in Mississippi, then in Idaho where he could not keep his land and worked on a railroad. He died in Phoenix, Arizona, and his ashes are buried on the family lot at Grelton.

William Mead, about 1874. Mr. Mead laid out the original plats for Grelton, Ohio, 15 lots on the S.E. corner of Section 36 in Harrison Twp., and caused it to be recorded on August 14, 1880.

William's second son (Arthur) Raymond (1880-1971) began a distinguished career in the field of education as teacher in the McClure schools. At the time of his retirement from the presidency of the Florida State Teachers' Association in 1970, the "Educator," a publication of the College of Education at Gainesville made this summary of his major accomplishments: "tireless worker for retired teachers around the state - instrumental in the defeat of the bill that would have reduced retirement payments - one of the founders and the first director of the P. K. Yonge Laboratory School." As early as 1911 he urged federal support to assist in upgrading underdeveloped Negro school systems. Mead is credited with establishing and developing the department of education at Ohio Wesleyan University. Also he helped rebuild and revitalize the total program at Athens College at Athens, Alabama, from financial ruin to accreditation. "He is the author of the first book on student teaching entitled Supervised Student Teaching; Basic Principles Applied and Organization and Administration, published in 1930. A prolific writer, his publications number nearly 200.- A short time after this a library on the University of Florida was named "Mead Library" in his honor.

Dr. Raymond Mead's wife was Grace Johnson, a Napoleon teacher. She is now 90 years old, living with her daughter and son-in-law Lydia and Robert Batey of Gainesville. Robert works with an engineering firm; Lydia is an art school graduate. Their daughter Mae works as an artist in the firm where her father is employed. Son Robert, a student in graduate school, is married. Raymond's daughter Jessie is a retired school teacher, living with her retired carpenter husband in Melbourne, Florida. Jessie's daughter by a previous marriage, Millie, is an artist and social worker, married to a potter and teacher. They live near Eugene, Oregon. Daughter Sallie is married, has two children, and lives in California.

William and Juliette's daughter Irma Leone (1886-1918) married John Barhite and one daughter, Mona, was born while they lived at a farm near Whitehouse, Ohio. After two husbands died, Mona married Mr. Cowell, and they live in Sylvania, Ohio. There

are several children by the first marriage, all grown and a younger son, Christopher, at home.

Clyde Laverne Mead, (1886-1965) farmed the family place after his father's death and until he moved with his family to Napoleon in 1923. His wife was Catherine Jane March, daughter of Charles and Mary Frederick March who lived for some years northeast of Grelton. Kate, or Kathryn, worked before her marriage at Fred Smith's home. She did limited work as a seamstress in her home throughout her married life.

Clyde's oldest daughter, Thelma Geraldine, (b 1907) taught in one room schools in Henry County for five years before her marriage to Elden Beck of Archbold, Ohio. They recently celebrated their forty-fifth wedding anniversary in Lansing, Michigan, where they have lived, all six of their children being present. All are married and have children. Families of Lyndon Beck, Julia Beck Boyd, and Phyllis Beck Miller all live in Lansing. Thera Beck Huff is in Battle Creek, Michigan. Alice and Keith Jordan are in Escondido, California, and Elwood and Vashtie Beck live in Jacksonville, Florida.

Berniece Mead (1908) was born in Elkhart, Indiana, where her father worked for about three years before returning to the farm at Grelton, after his father's death. She was a teacher and social worker before her marriage to Dr. Stewart Smith, who had his own medical practice in Bowling Green, Ohio, until his death in 1974. Berniece was given outstanding citizens award in 1967 in that city. Their daughter Sara, a former music teacher, lives with her husband R. Reid Jamieson and son in Mayfield, Ohio. Son, Dr. Jonathan Smith, is a clinical psychologist in Chicago.

(William) Wallace Mead (b 1911) served four years with the regular navy, and lives with his wife Isabel and their teenage daughter Pamela in Warren, Oregon. He plans to retire within a year from the job he has had many years at a wood processing plant. Son Robert graduated from Oregon State University and lives in California. Son Raymond is married and is studying for the ministry.

Clyde's son, Horace Clark (b 1915), served in the army in the Pacific area during WWII. He and his wife, the former Iris Elder, whom he wed in 1972, live northwest of McClure. He is now employed by the State Department of Highways; she worked at a printing establishment in Findlay before this marriage. Her first husband died; so did Horace's wives Delite Russell and Lucy Downard.

Charles Mead (b-d 1913) lived but three days as he had a congenital heart ailment.

Edith Ardell (b 1917) married Edward Spangler of Jewell and they live in Napoleon. She works at Standard Products factory; he is employed by the Henry County Highway Department. Ed served with the army in Europe during WWII at which time their daughter Sandra was a baby. Sandra, a former legal secretary, lives with her farmer husband Ronald Sweinhagen and four children near Archbold, Ohio. Jack Spangler and wife Pamela live in Liberty Center. He is a railroad clerk; she works at the Standard Products.

Fredric Lee (b 1922) attended the Cleveland School of Art, had his own decorating business in Napoleon, and was a police dispatcher there; he was employed in the advertising depart ment at the May Company's Cleveland store. He now lives in Cleveland, divorced by wife Helen who remarried and lives in Detroit. Their son is attending an art school in Columbus, we understand.

Mary Jane (b 1924) lives with her husband Roger Brown in Carlisle, Iowa. She is a part-time teacher, he an ex-marine officer and is in the state office of the Iowa Farm Bureau. Their son Michael, a teacher, is married to a teacher. Daughter Barbara married recently. Sons Brian and Alan are at home.

Clyde loved the farm, but the Mead place inherited by his mother at the time of her husband's death, was too small to support a family, and he could not always rent additional acreage. Clyde inherited the Meads' allergic tendencies which made some seasons like threshing unbearable. He was in the grocery business briefly in Holgate before moving to Napoleon. There he worked in the Spangler Grocery twelve hours and more a day, moonlighting as deputy sheriff at Anthony Wayne dance hall up the river during prohibition years. For years he was an insurance representative. He was city councilman, county commissioner for two terms, and lastly an investigator for Dunn and Bradstreet.

Fruit growing on individual farms was a common practice in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Dr. A. R. Mead tells in his memoirs of seeing large orchards when in 1890 he went by train from Grelton to Toledo to Goshen, Indiana. There was a large variety of apples on the Mead farm, in an orchard back of the house. Clyde told of a time his mother had him load bushel baskets of apples on their farm wagon and try to sell them in Grelton. He spent an entire day going about the area, but not one apple was sold; asking price was 50 cents a bushel.

One time when Raymond was a teenager and Clyde and Irma quite young, a bad storm demolished the barn which was located on the west side of the road. Raymond sold the Mead property west of the creek to Mr. Crockett, whose land joined it, and used the money to purchase lumber to build another barn south of the house on the east side of the road.

On one occasion one of the Mead boys took a load of grain away to be made into flour. He was gone several days, causing his family much worry. He had gone from mill to mill, Napoleon, Grand Rapids, and other places, and found such long lines of wagons, and people dickering for places in line, that he was most discouraged before getting his wheat ground. He had waited with his load at a mill night long.

The next generation of Meads, Clyde's children who remember Grelton, walked home from school, and like Longfellow's poem, actually looked in upon a blacksmith whose shop stood under a tree in the southwest section of town. They would go for the mail at the post office in Fred Smith's General Store. They watched lads trudge down the dusty road on a sultry summer day, going for a swin at "Mead's Hole," a bend in the creek which made the water deeper. In the spring they took their fishing poles with bent pins for hooks. There were hickory nuts, walnuts, and hazelnuts to gather, unless someone got them before. There was bittersweet by the back fence in the fall, violets, spring beauties by the rail fence on Pope's boundary in the spring, or in Jacksons' woods back of the cemetery. Mrs. Mead sewed suits for the baseball team of woolen blankets that they had dyed blue. The box of Indian relics in the shed, arrowheads, hatchets grew in size as such objects worked their way to the top of the ground. They were the people, most of all, to be remembered, neighborly and ready to help when needed. Landises who had a garage down town were especially neighborly with the Meads, for they each had five children of comparable ages at the time, drawing them together. They were especially close (?) when on several occasions all four parents and ten children, who were likely quite small, went for rides in the same automobile.

Submitted by Mrs. Stewart Smith