The John Wise Family

A cherished memory of mine is October hickory-nutting with my grandfather, John Wise, in his own woodland, or sometimes in that of my other grandparents, the Tawneys, whose land adjoined the Wise farm. It was John Wise's grandfather, George Adam Wise, who first came to this country from Alsace-Lorraine in 1815 after having served under Napoleon. Born in 1775, George Adam Wise first visited the United States in 1803, when, according to family tradition, he served with the body-guard, or in some other capacity, attending the official agent, or agents, who transported some portion of the United States payment for the Louisiana Purchase back to France.

George Adam Wise's son, John F. Wise, was born in Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1819, married Hannah Flick and became the father of John Wise, my grandfather, and the first of the Wise family to come to Henry County. Family records do not show when John and Hannah Wise came here, but it is inferred from available dates that they probably arrived early in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. John F. Wise, Sr., died in the home of his son, John F. Wise, Jr., and is buried in Sugar Ridge Cemetery, Putnam County. The original ancestor in this country, George Adam Wise, is buried in the Benton Ridge Cemetery, Hancock County, along with his youngest son, Peter.

My grandfather, the John F. Wise, Jr., who first came to Henry County, was born in 1847, probably in Tuscarawas County, and married (1868) Martha Schwab, who was born in Hancock County. Their first home site in Henry County was the eighty-acre farm on what has been known colloquially as the Hamler Road, about one quarter- mile from the Putnam County line, with Turkey Creek flowing through the farm. The date on which this land was purchased is not recorded in family records, which also lack the date on which the adjoining Tawney land was purchased. The first house built by John Wise was small, containing four rooms with a detached spring house and a shed, later known as the machine shed. At an unrecorded date he built a second house approximately fifty feet east of the four-room house and closer to the road, which had eight rooms, a vegetable cellar, and a combination wood-shed and back entry-way with a cement floor, giving access to both kitchen and cellar. He also added a "bank" barn of substantial dimensions.

On this farm John and Martha Wise reared four children: Alice (Wise) Dibble, Ethel (Wise) Delanoy, Herbert M. Wise, and Homer Wise. Precise dates of birth and death are not available to this writer for any of these four children, except Herbert M. Wise, born 1874, died 1911. In 1896 Herbert married Alta Tawney, reared on the adjoining Tawney farm, thus also a native of Henry County. Alice (Wise) Dibble and her sister, Ethel (Wise) Delanoy, both died between 1940 and 1950; Homer died about 1965. Ethel reared two sons, Olin and Lowell, and a daughter, Hazel, all three of whom lived to adulthood and married, living in Indiana.

John Wise, my grandfather, cultivated his land, kept a well-filled barn and, for some years, also owned and operated a saw-mill on the farm along Turkey Creek. On a visit to a near-by grain elevator and grist mill, his team of horses shied at an approaching train, causing him to jump from the wagon and suffer a serious leg injury. One leg had to be amputated below the knee and he wore an artificial leg for the rest of his life, but never allowed it to handicap him in his usual activities, even to climbing trees to shake down hickory nuts, or to going hunting for big game in Canada, or the north woods of Maine.

After their four children reached adulthood and left home, John and Martha sold their land, moving later to a home on Poplar Street in Leipsic, where John died in 1924. Martha lived eight years longer and died in the home of her daughter, Alice, in Churubusco, Indiana. Both John and Martha are buried in Sugar Ridge Cemetery, Leipsic, in Putnam County. All of the children of John and Martha Wise, along with the Tawney children on the neighboring farm, attended the one- room Harshbarger School in Henry County, about two miles from the farm, over a path which took them through what was then rather wild woodland for a part of the way. The family were all members, and regular attendants, of Bethel Evangelical Church in Putnam County, now the United Methodist Church.

Ethel was always the homemaker for a farmer husband, Edward Delanoy; Alice took a similar role for her husband, William Dibble, who was a school teacher. His parents were also Henry County residents. Herbert spent most of his adult years as a carpenter until he became manager of the Robert Hixon Lumber Company at Payne, Ohio, where he died in 1911. Homer worked in a similar occupation, having married Bernice Dove, and fathered one daughter, Mural. He later moved to Indiana where Mural married Carlton Miser. After Carlton's retirement the Misers moved to Roswell, New Mexico.

The only member of the family of Henry County's John Wise to have gone on educationally was his granddaughter Leona, Herbert's daughter, also a granddaughter of Benjamin and Elizabeth Tawney of Henry County. Leona received her B.S. in education and her M.A. from Ohio State University (1933), and her Ph.D. from Northwestern University (1944). She began her teaching in Leipsic High School in 1919, married Hugh Felsted in 1920 and continued teaching until 1924. A son, Herbert Felsted, was born in 1926. She resumed teaching in 1927, and in 1951 married a second time. Her husband is Frank N. Jones, also a college administrator. Leona's professional career was continuous from 1927 to 1957. Most of that period was spent in varied combinations of counseloradministrator-faculty member in colleges in Illinois and Ohio, with one year (1951-52) on an educational project in Japan during the U.S. occupation of that country. She has published articles in professional journals (1930?1965); in Baltimore, Md., (1959-1965) she served as part of a team in psychological research engaged in a study being made by a Johns Hopkins Medical School doctor, as a volunteer in various community projects, and as an educational consultant for a service project sponsored by an engineering subsidiary of a nationally known industrial corporation. While her husband was the library administrator of Southeastern Massachusetts University, she engaged to some degree in volunteer community service in New Bedford. A detailed biographical account appeared in Who's Who in America, vols. 27-30; in Who's Who of American Women, 1st, 2nd and 3rd eds.; and in American Men of Science, 9th, 10th and 11th eds.

Known descendants of the Wise family of Henry County, now living, are Leona Wise Jones with one son, Herbert Felsted, a 1951 graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University who has two teenage daughters, Karen and Allison, and is a petroleum geologist located in Dallas, Texas; also, Mural Wise Miser whose children were adopted and not of the blood line of kinship.

Submitted by Leona Wise Jones