John Parker Reynolds
John Parker Reynolds, an esteemed citizen of this township, was born in the town of Nine Partners (now Amenia), Dutchess County, New York, September 21, 1782. His paternal ancestors came from Devonshire, England, about 1650. They were stout defenders of liberty of conscience and some of them Friends, or, as we now say, Quakers. His father, the Rev. Parker Reynolds, a Baptist clergyman, settled at Saratoga, New York, about 1790, in time for the subject of this notice to see and recollect the placing of a potash kettle to separate the water of the celebrated Congress Spring from non-medicinal water flowing into it. He was a sturdy boy, fair complexion, large, dark grey eyes, auburn hair, and a temperament of delicate sensibility. Thrown upon his own resources at an early age, though not until he had aquired a fair education, he entered the printing office of Southwick, Bostwich & Co., of Albany, New York, in which he found a fellow worker and life long friend in the late John C. Wright, of Cincinnati. While becoming a skilled practical printer, he studied the higher mathematics, some of the languages, law, and music.
In 1805 he became the proprietor of what in that day was a large printing and publishing house, with bookstore attached, in Salem, Washington County, in that State, and started a newspaper styled the Washington Register, continuing it until 1817--the work all being done upon the old-time Ramage press. A Jeffersonian Democrat in politics, he adhered to princiole, ultimately becoming a Whig. When leaving for the West, the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons conferred upon him as a parting compliment the degree of Knight Templar, Chancellor Livingston being then the order of the State of New York.
In 1818 he came with his wife to Lebanon, Warren County, Ohio, and in 1820 to Middletown, in this county, there entering into the hotel and soon afterward into the first forwarding and commission business in the place. As a man and a citizen he was distinguished for his uncompromising integrity, practical common sense, intelligence, philantropy, conscientious discharge of every moral obligation, and most thorough contempt for any thing mean or questionalbe; and no public enterprise was undertaken without his participation and assistance. He retired from business in 1839, removing to Cincinnati in 1845, remaining there until 1849, after which he made his home in Hamilton until his death, March 21, 1858. His life was a useful one of precept and example; his cast of mind judical, reflective, and philosophical. With, doubtless, the frailities of human nature, in all matters of conscience he was emphatically the "stuff of which martyrs are made," never hesitating at any sacrifice when duty called. He was a thorough believer in the doctrine of personal individual responsibility, both here and hereafter, a strong religious feeling manifesting itself, not in ritual, but by deep reverence of God and most practical philantropy.
From A History and Biographical Cyclopædia of Butler County Ohio, With Illustrations and Sketches of its Representative Men and Pioneers, Western Biographical Publishing Company, Cincinnati Ohio, 1882.