Hiram Bingham
Hiram Bingham, retired minister, P. O. Windham, was born in Vermont, May 30, 1815, son of Jeremiah and Rhoda (Fenn) Bingham. At the age of seventeen our subject began clerking, but at the end of two years entered college at Middlebury, Vt., graduating in 1839; thence he matriculated at the Andover Theological Seminary. In 1841 he came west, graduating the following year at Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio. While there he accepted a call from Red Oak Church, in Brown County, Ohio, where he remained for two years. The succeeding two years were spent at Portsmouth, Ohio, and the four years following as Professor of college at Marietta, Ohio. He was married, September, 1842, to Abigail Bushnell, born in Vermont October 14, 1815, daughter of Rev. J. Bushnell, who for thirty-three years was pastor of a church in Cornwall, Vt. In the spring of 1850 Mr. Bingham came to Windham Township on a visit to an old teacher, and eventually became pastor of the Presbyterian Church here, but after five years he went South on account of ill health, and supplied the pulpit of the First Presbyterian Church at Augusta, Ga., during the winter of 1855-56. In the spring following he received a unanimous invitation from the session to stand as a candidate for the pastorship of the church, but deeming the charge too great for his state of health he declined. Mr. Bingham found the climate South favorable to his health, and was, therefore, strongly inclined to remain there, but judging from what he saw and heard among the people that a political revolution was imminent, he returned North, and for the last twenty-nine years has resided at his former home, supplying vacant and feeble churches in the vicinity as he has had the opportunity. In the meantime he has taken much out-door exercise on his farm, which he has found not only highly conducive to his general health but also to a comfortable support. From the beginning of Ihe Republican party he has been known as a stanch Republican, unfil of late having lost confidence in that party as a reform party, he has joined the Prohibition party, and is now known as a pronounced Prohibitionist.
From History of Portage County, Ohio, Warner, Beers & Co., Chicago, 1885