Lake County Ohio GenWeb

Benjamin Blish, Jr.

This biography is taken from History of Geauga and Lake counties; Williams Brothers, 1878.

Transcribed and submitted by Becky Falin, 1996.

Benjamin Blish, eldest son of Benjamin Blish, was born at Middlefield, Hamsphire county, Massachusetts, June 9, 1784.

As stated in the foregoing sketch of Benjamin Blish, Sr., he came to Ohio in July, 1805, and immediately purchased the original farm of one hundred acres in Painesville, which he cleared up and improved, and on which he lived till his decease. It was then a dense forest, no roads or improvements of any kind between his farm and Painesville village, then containing several families and but two or three frame houses. In 1813 he was married to Artemisia Perkins, of Solon, and taking with him an extra horse and side-saddle upon which his bride rode back, making their "wedding tour" through the wilderness together to their new home in Painesville. He became a member in early boyhood of the Baptist church east, and maintained his connection with that denomination until 1828. During that year the Disciple church was established in Mentor, under the ministrations of Alexander Campbell and others, and he united with it, and made one of the elders, and thereafter continued a zealous, consistent and prominent leader in that church to the close of his life.

He was especially interested and active in the local affairs of his township and neighborhood, and while he took little interest in general politics, he was chosen without regard to party and held for sixteen years the office of justice of the peace, always instrumental in preventing litigation rather than promoting it, discharging the duties of the office with singular impartiality and judgment, giving universal satisfaction.

As an agriculturalist he stood very high, and joined his brother, Judge Blish, in 1833, in the purchase and introduction into this section of the first blooded cattle ever brought here, being four head of young Durhams, from New York State, costing three hudnred and fifty dollars, a price at that date regarded as extremely unwise by many, as good common cows were then selling at fifteen to twenty dollars, and other stock in proportion. Their wisdom was very soon acknowledged by the farming community, in the early realization of larger prices for improved stock afterwards rapidly introduced into this county.

His family consisted of two sons, George Blish, who is now (1878) the only survivor, who owns and occupies the homestead farm, and James M Blish, who enlisted in the Twenty-third Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry, in the beginning of the war of the Rebellion, was made sergeant of his company, and died in Camp Ewing, West Virginia, in November, 1861.

Deacon Blish was a devoted Christian, a kind neighbor, an honored and revered citizen. He died April 11, 1864, aged eighty years.