Daniel Putman Wilkins
one of the members of the bar of Adams County in its early history, was born at Amherst, New Hampshire, in 1797, and died at West Union, July 11, 1835, one of the victims of Asiatic cholera. He was the son of Andrew Wilkins and Lucy Lovell Blanchard, his wife. His grandfather, Rev. Daniel Wilkins, entered the ministry of the Congregational Church at Amherst, New Hampshire, in 1740, and died there at the age of eighty-five. Of him the record is preserved that "The people of Amherst paid the highest respect to his memory and erected over his remains at monument of respectable proportions commemorating his memorable acts and intrinsic merits."
Daniel P. Wilkins came from a family eminent for services as states men and soldiers. Among them are named Daniel Wilkins, Major in the Revolutionary War, who died of smallpox at Crown Point; Hon. William Wilkins, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, United States Senator and Secretary of War, 1841-1846; General John A. Dix, governor of New York and minister to France; General Thomas Wilkins, of Amherst, New Hampshire; George Wilkins Kendall, editor of the New Orleans Picayune, and Hon. James McKean Williams, lawyer and lieutenant governor of New Hampshire.
Daniel P. Wilkins was a brilliant, scholarly lawyer; keen, bright and pungent in his manner. It is said he made the following statement in court in regard to a pleading of an opponent, "May it please the Court. In the beginning the earth was without form and void, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and there was light. So, too, may it please the Court, this pleading is without form and void, but it lies in the power of no spirit to move upon its face and give it form or light."
He married Susan A. Wood, a pioneer school teacher from Massachusetts, and they had four children-Susan and Clara, who are now deceased and who were married successively to Daniel Barker, of Red Oak Junction, Iowa; Anna I., now deceased, married to John Eylar, of West Union, and Mary, married to Charles B. Rustin, now living at Omaha, Nebraska. Our subject's acquaintance with Miss Wood, whom he married, was romantic. She had studied law and appeared in some cases in the minor courts. Mr. Wilkins was called before a trial justice and there he found Miss Wood as counsel for the opposite party, and this was the first time he had met her. She conducted the trial for her client and won the case. Her management of defense so impressed young Wilkins that he courted and married her.
He located as a young lawver in West Union, Adams County, in 1820. On the fifth of October, 1822, he was appointed prosecuting attorney of Adams County and served as such until June 12, 1826, when he was succeeded by George Collings. On the fourth of July, 1825, he delivered an oration at West Union, of which an account is given in the Village Register. He was also a land agent and advertised lands sales in that paper. There was a public library in West Union in 1825, and he was librarian. In 1826, he was aid-de-camp in the militia and brigadier general of the district. The children of his daughter, Anna A. Eylar, are Joesph W. Eylar, editor of the News Democrat, of Georgetown; Oliver A. Eylar, of the Dallas Herald, of Dallas, Texas; John A. Eylar, a lawyer at Waverly; Albert A. Eylar, lawyer at El Paso, Texas, Louella B. Eylar, a school teacher at West Union. Henry Rustin, a lawyer at Omaha, Nebraska, is a son of his daughter, Mary.
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