Judge I. N. Tolle
Judge I. N. Tolle, of West Union, was born on Elk Run, in what is now Winchester Township, April 2, 1839. His parents, Denton and Nancy Waldron Tolle, were well known residents of Adams County for many years. Stephen Tolle, the grandparent, was a Virginian by birth and was a pioneer of Adams County. He was a miller by trade and built one of the first mills on Elk Run. The Tolle family is of Welsh descent, and displays down to the present generation the strong characteristics of that race.
Judge Tolle was reared in Adams County, and lived from boyhood until about his fortieth year at Bentonville. Here he attended the Public schools and later became a pupil in the select school of Prof. Miller, an Eastern educator, who made Bentonville an educational center for several years. Prof. Burns, the author of Burns' English Grammar, was a teacher in this school. Samuel McKinley, a relative of the ancestors of President McKinley, was one of the eminent tutors of our subject. So that upon attaining his majority, Judge Tolle was equipped with a good common school education supplemented with a knowledge of the sciences, that enabled him to take a position among the foremost educators of his portion of the State. He was engaged in his chosen profession from 1862 till his election as Probate Judge, in 1881, and during a good deal of that time he was a member of the Board of School Examiners of the county. On the twelfth day of June, 1862, he was united in marriage to Miss Esther A. Edgington, daughter of William L. and Mary A. Payne Edgington. Her grandparents were Virginians and came to Adams County in pioneer days. The grandfather, William Edgington, was a cousin of Asahel and John Edgington, whose biographies appear in this volume, and who were celebrated pioneers of Adams County.
While engaged in the profession of teaching, Judge Tolle read law under the guidance of Hon. Thomas J. Mullen, an eminent lawyer of Adams County for many years. But after some experience in the courts, he took an aversion to the practice of law as observed by him, and laid aside his Chitty forever.
The Judge has been a prominent factor in Adams County politics for over forty years, never having missed voting at but one election, April, 1863, when very sick, in all that time. He was elected Clerk of Sprigg Township in 1861 and re-elected in 1862. Refused the nomination in 1863, but in 1864 the Democratic party, of which he has always been an active member, took him up and elected him Clerk of the Township the two succeeding years. In 1871, he was appointed School Examiner by Judge Coryell, and he served continuously in that capacity until 1881, when he was elected on the Democratic ticket Probate Judge of Adams County. He was re-elected three times in succession to this office, so that he served in the office a term of twelve years. He was nominated for a fifth term and defeated by a plurality of twenty-nine votes. His defeat was caused mainly from the fact that being Chairman of the Democratic County Executive Committee the first year of President Cleveland's second term, the disappointed applicants for postmasterships put the blame on the Judge.while in reality Senator Brice controlled this patronage. The Judge has been a member of the West Union School Board, City Council, Trustee of Wilson Children's Home, County Board of Elections, and of the Democratic State Central Committee. He has always been feared from his safe counsel to his party, more than any Democrat of the county, by Republican politicians. He has but one child, Hallam V., who was his Deputy while Probate Judge, and who made most of the records of the office except the journal, which records are not excelled in any Probate office of the State. Hallam married Mary Robuck, a daughter of Thomas Robuck, of West Union, and is now the business associate of his father.
Judge Tolle is a member of West Union Lodge, No. 43, F. & A. M., and of Manchester Chapter, No. 129, R. A. M. Also, of West Union Lodge, No. 570, I. O. O. F., and of West Union Encampment, No. 219. He and his wife were members of the Disciples Church at Bentonville until it ceased to exist in 1880. Mrs. Tolle is now a consistent member of the Baptist Church, of West Union.
From "History of Adams County, Ohio from its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time" - by Nelson W. Evans and Emmons B. Stivers - West Union, Ohio - Published by E. B. Stivers - 1900