Michael C. Creamer
The true measure of individual success is determined by what one has accomplished. In enumeration of the men of the past generation in Fayette county. Ohio, who have succeeded in their special vocation we find that Michael C. Creamer occupies a very important place. The splendid success which came to him was the direct result of the salient points in his character, for with a mind capable of laying judicious plans and a will strong enough to carry them into execution, his energy, foresight and perseverance carried him forward lo a position in the front ranks of the successful men of his community. To accumulate a farm of eleven hundred acres is sufiicient evidence that he was a man of keen business ability. At the time of his death he was one of the largest farmers in the county, and one of the four men who owned more than one thousand acres of land.
The Creamer family has been identified with the historv of Fayette county for more than one hundred years. The family trace their ancestry back to Germany, where George Creamer was born in 1746. His wife, Barbara Clover, was also a native of Germany and after their marriage in I 774 they came to this country and located in Pennsylvania. Later they went to Virginia. and from that state migrated with their four sons, Michael, Joseph, David and George, to Fayette county, Ohio. This county was organized in 1810 and in the summer of that year George Creamer, the great grandfather of Michael C. Creamer, with whom this narrative deals, arrived in this county with his four sons, two of whom were already married and had families of their own. The two married sons were George and Michael, the latter being the grandfather of the present Michael C. Creamer. The whole family settled on Sugar creek, in Jefferson township, and in that township the descendants of the family have now been living for more than a century. After the surrender of General Hull at Detroit in 1812, Joseph, Michael and David joined the United States regular army and helped to drive the British out of. this country.
One of the several children of Michael Creamer was Simeon, the father of Michael C. Creamer. Simeon married Elizabeth Connor and reared a famiy of ten children, William, Michael, Rosanna, George, Polly, Jacob, Philip, Christian, Wesley and Isaac.
Michael Connor Creamer, the second of the ten children born to Simeon Creamer and wife, was born March 20. 1830. in this county and died April 19, 1911, on his homestead in Jefferson township. He was born in a rude log cabin which stood on the site where the present substantial dwelling of the Creamer familu now stands. As a youth he was very studious and, although his education was very limited, yet he was an omnivorous reader and was practically self-educated. He started to teach school in his early manhood and taught for several years, and during this time he farmed in the summer seasons. He finally left the school room and devoted all of his attention to his agricultural pursuits and with a success which was indeed remarkable.
Mr. Creamer was married October 14. 1862. to Ruhama Scott, the daughter of Charles C. and Jane (Porter) Scott, natives of Virginia and early settlers in Harding county, Ohio. To this union were born seven children: Ethel, deceased: U. G., unmarried, a farmer and stockman: C. P., who farms one hundred acres of the home place: S. C. who married Anna Mertz and has two children, Forrest and Dwight; Gertrude, who married James Coin and has two children, Tully and Lasca, deceased; Celeste, the wife of Frank Zimmerman and the mother of three children, Brenton, Fay and Ruth; Maude, the wife of Lewis B. Creamer, and Ethel. deceased.
Mr. Creamer enlisted for the one-hundred-day service in the Civil War and was mustered in as a member of Company D. One Hundred and Sixty-eighth Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry, on May 2, 1864. He was a member of the Grand Armv of the Republic post at Jeffersonville. while, religiously, he and his family were members of the Methodist Episcopal church. Although a quiet and unassuming man, with no ambition for public position or leadership, yet Mr. Creamer contributed much to the material, civic and moral advancement of his community. His admirable qualities of head and heart and the straightforward, upright course of his daily life won for him the admiration, esteem and confidence of the circles in which he moved. To him home life was a sacred trust, friendship was inviolable and nothing could swerve him from the path of rectitude and honor.
From History of Fayette County Ohio - Her People, Industries and Institutions by Frank M. Allen (1914, R. F. Bowen & Company, Inc.)