P. H. Flynn
P. H. Flynn, president and general manager of the Xenia Shoe Manufacturing Company, is a native of the Old Bay State, born at Spencer, in Worcester county. Massachusetts, in 1861, son of Richard and Catherine (Day) Flynn, both of whom were born in that same county, where they spent all their lives, the latter dying there in 1902, at the age of seventy-five years, her passing having been the first break by death in her immediate family for fifty-one years. The Flynns are an old family in Massachusetts, the progenitor of this branch of the family having located there upon coming to this country from the Emerald Isle in the latter part of the eighteenth century; and until the present generation the family had remained centered in Massachusetts, mainly engaged in agricultural pursuits, but is now pretty well scattered over the country.
Richard Flynn was a son of Richard and Mary Flynn, landowners, who were the parents of six children, three sons and three daughters, all of whom are now deceased. On of these sons, Capt. James Flynn, raised a company in Boston for service in the Union army during the Civil War and served at the head of that company. Another son, John Flynn, served as a private in another regiment. The junior Richard Flynn volunteered for service, but was rejected on account of a minor physical disability. He became a shoe manufacturer in his home town of Spencer and was superintendent of a big shoe factory there during the active period of his life. There he spent his last davs, his death occurring in 1904, he then being seventy-eight years of age. As noted above, his wife had preceded him to the grave about two years. She was a daughter of Edward and Catherine Day, the former of whom came to this country from Ireland following his graduation from the University of Dublin and became engaged as a school teacher in Worchester county, Massachusetts, continuing thus engaged the rest of his active life. Prof. Edward Day and wife had six children, three sons and three daughters, all of whom are now deceased save one of the daughters, Mrs. Mary Madden, a widow, now a resident of San Francisco, California. One of the sons, Edward Day, served as a lieutenant of cavalry during the Civil War.
To Richard and Catherine (Day) Flynn were born seven children, of whom P. H. Flynn was the fourth in order of birth, the others being Edward, who became a resident of Providence, Rhode Island, and who at one time was the manager of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of New York. James, who is the superintendent of the factory of the Belleville Shoe Company, at Belleville, Illinois; Thomas, who organized the Independent Packing Company at St. Louis and has been living retired since 1914; Mary, wife of Jerome Hines, of Spencer, Massachusetts; Catherine, Wife of Peter Cunningham, an officer of the Warren Steam Pump Company, at Warren, Massachusetts, and Elizabeth, who is now living at Ashbury, New Hampshire, widow of Thomas Ash, who was superintendent of a shoe factory.
Reared at Spencer, Massachusetts, P. H. Flynn received his early schooling there and supplemented the same by a course in the Poughkeepsie Business College at Poughkeepsie, New York. From the time he was twelve years of age he had been given instructions in the practical details of the manufacture of shoes, under his father's direction, and rounded out his early knowledge of the craftmanship of shoe-making in the factory of Isaac Prouty & Company, and was with that concern until he was twenty-one years of age. when, in 1882, he became employed as foreman of the cutting room in the shoe factory of the Ide & Wilson Company, wholesale dealers in and manufacturers of shoes at Columbus, Ohio. A year later that concern consolidated with the Columbus Boot and Shoe Company, which was filling its contracts with the aid of convict labor at the Ohio state penitentiary. Mr. Flynn declined to follow the company's operations into the prison, as a foreman over convicts, and the company made him its traveling sales representative, his territory covering the Southern states, and he was thus engaged for two years, or until in 1885, when he transferred his services to W. F. Thorne & Company, shoe jobbers in Cincinnati, and was given charge of the output of that concern's factory, a position he occupied for two years. It was during this latter period that Mr. Flynn became interested in a proposition which promised to land him on the high tide of wealth; but which, like many another "boom" proposition, led to disappointment. While traveling through Tennessee he had gained some confidential information regarding the great developments that at that time were being promised for the town of Decatur, Alabama, and before the ill-fated "boom" in values at that point had started he made some land investments there and thus got in "on the ground floor." Upon the organization of the Decatur Land and Improvement Company Mr. Flynn, who was the chief promoter, was elected general manager of the same and so continued to the end, at the same time having a hand in numerous other enterprises projected there, and felt confidently assured of being possessed of a good thing; everything looking exceedingly well when yellow fever broke out in the town and the "boom" bursted practically over night. At that inauspicious time Mr. Flynn was at Crab Orchard Springs, Kentucky, recovering from a severe attack of malarial fever and when he returned to Decatur after an absence of five months he found the place nearly depopulated, his former business associates practically bankrupt and the town's doom sealed. He stuck it out for another year and then returned to Cincinnati, convinced that Decatur values had vanished never to return.
In 1890 Mr. Flynn became connected with the Xenia Shoe Manufacturing Company as that concern's sales representative in Southern territory and a year later bought a considerable block of stock in the company and was elected president and general manager of the company, a position he ever since has occupied. Mr. Flynn has not confined himself wholly to his extensive manufacturing interests since taking up his residence in Xenia in 1890. It was he who organized the Xenia Gas and Electric Company and for five years he operated the same, as president of the company. He then sold the plant to the Dayton Power and Light Company, which has since been operating it. In 1907 Mr. Flynn began to pay considerable attention to agricultural pursuits and since then he has built up an extensive dairy on his farm of four hundred and fifty acres at Trebeins, in Beavercreek township, a few miles northwest of Xenia, During the summers Mr. Flynn and his family reside there, occupying their city residence at the corner of Church and North Detroit streets in Xenia during the winters. Mr. Flynn's eldest son, Frederick T. Flynn, who is completing a course in scientific agriculture at the University of Wisconsin, is now managing the dairy farm. Mr. Flynn is a Republican and for four years served as a member of the Xenia school board. He helped to organize and was the first president of the Xenia Business Men's Club. He is a Royal Arch Mason. He and his family are members of the Reformed church at Xenia.
On June 20, 1894, about four years after taking up his residence at Xenia, P. H. Flynn was united in marriage to Elizabeth T. Trebein, who was born at Trebeins Station, this county, daughter of Frederick C. and Joan (Ankeney) Trebein, both of whom were born in this state, the former at Dayton and the latter in this county, a daughter of Samuel Ankeney and wife, members of old families hereabout and fitting reference to whom is made elsewhere in this volume.
Frederick Christian Trebein, father of Mrs. Flynn, was born at Dayton, this state, October 24, 1833, last-born of the two children bom to his parents, William and Christina Trebein, who had not long before that date come to this country from Germany and settled in Dayton, their other child having been a daughter, Mary, born in Germany, Frederick C. Trebein grew to manhood in Dayton, rising from chore-boy in a store to a partnership in the business, and later owned and conducted a dry-goods store on Third street in Dayton. Failing health determined him to leave the store and in 1868 he disposed of his interests in Dayton and came over into Greene county and engaged in the milling business at the point later and ever since known as Trebeins, or Trebeins Station, where he spent the rest of his life, his death occurring there on June 4, 1900. In addition to his milling business Mr. Trebein also possessed considerable property in Xenia and was identified with several of that city's industries. It was a year or more after his location in this county that Frederick C. Trebein was united in marriage to Joan Ankeney, the marriage taking place on November 16, 1869, and to that union were born two daughters, Mrs. Flynn having a sister. Bertha E., who continued to make her home with her mother after her father's death, the two moving to Xenia and establishing their home at 125 Detroit street. Elizabeth T. Trebein completed the course in the Beavercreek grade schools and then took a course of preparatory work at Cooper Institute, Dayton, and then spent two years at Bartholomew's private Female Seminary, thence to Antioch College, after which she entered Wellesley College, in Boston, from which institution she was graduated in 1893, the year before her marriage to Mr. Flynn. In her senior year at Wellesley Mrs. Flynn was president of the Eta Alpha Society, one of the highest distinctions that can come to a member of the student body of that institution.
To P. H. and Elizabeth T. (Trebein) Flynn have been born six children, namely: Frederick T., mentioned above, bom in 1896 and who is now managing his father's dairy farm; Marjorie E., who was graduated from the Xenia high school and is now in her second year in Wellesley College; Doris, who is now attending preparatory school at Science Hill, Shelbyville, Kentucky, with a view to entering Wellesley; Henry, born in 1903, who is now a student in the Xenia high school; Edward, 1909, and Elizabeth, 1913.
From History of Greene County Ohio, Its People, Industries and Institutions, vol. 2. M.A.Broadstone, editor. B.F.Bowen & Co., Indianapolis. 1918