William Edgar Houser
William Edgar Houser, a Zenia township farmer, was born at Point of Rocks, in Loudoun county, Virginia. January 20, 1855, son of Samuel and Caroline (McCray) Houser, both of whom were born in that same county. Samuel Houser, who was the owner of a small farm, had a store at Point of Rocks and was also the postmaster and toll-gate keeper at that place. He was a Lutheran and his wife was a Baptist. Both died in 1869. They were the parents of three children, the subject of this sketch, the first-born; Samuel, who died at the age of six years, and Ella, who is living at Xenia, widow of J. J. Snyder.
Having been but fourteen years of age when his parents died, William E. Houser early commenced working for himself and was thus engaged in his home county until he was twenty years of age, when, in 1875, he came to Ohio and began working on a farm in this county. In 1887 he married and in the following year bought a farm in Cedarville township, where he made his home and where he continued engaged in farming until 1904. when he sold that place and bought his present farm of seventy-six and a half acres in the southern part of Xenia township, where he since has made his home and where he is engaged in general farming and stock raising, making a specialty of Jersey cattle and Chester White hogs.
In 1887 William E. Houser was united in marriage to Rosie Swank, who also was born in Loudoun county, Virginia, daughter of Aaron and Alfinda Swank, of that county, and who died in 1898, since which time Mr. Houser's niece, Miss Lillie Belle Baker, also of Loudoun county, Virginia, who has for years made her home with him, has been the housekeeper in his home. Mr. Houser is "independent" in his political views and is a member of the First Methodist Episcopal church at Xenia.
From History of Greene County Ohio, Its People, Industries and Institutions, vol. 2. M.A.Broadstone, editor. B.F.Bowen & Co., Indianapolis. 1918