John Sexton
Among the pioneer families of Greene county there were few better known or more influential than those of the Sextons and the Comptons. The old Sexton farm in the vicinity of the mill at Oldtown is still occupied by the only surviving daughter of John Sexton, who for years operated the mill there and also carried on farming, his daughter, Miss Sarah Sexton, now well along toward eighty years of age, still maintaining her home there. She superintends the operations of' the place, even as she and her sister, the late Miss Hannah Sexton, together superintended the place for forty years after they were left alone there and so continued until the death of the latter in January, 1917, since which time Miss Sarah has kept the place alone with her colored servants. She was born in Xenia township and has lived there all her life. Reared a Quaker, she has retained the sweet familiar "thee" and "thou" form of address and her gentle conversation is full of the gracious courtliness of another day.
John Sexton was born on a farm nine miles from the town of Winchester, in Frederick county, Virginia. May 25, 1795, a son of Joseph and Elizabeth (Burnett) Sexton, Virginians and of Quaker stock. The Burnetts are of Welsh origin, the first of the name in this country having been a member of William Penn's colony that settled in Pennsylvania, and the family later became established in Virginia, whence, in succeeding generations, it found outlet in various directions and now has a wide connection throughout the United States. Joseph Sexton was a man of substance and influence in Frederick county and for sixteen years served his district as a member of the Virginia General .Assembly. In his later years, some time after his son John had settled in Greene county, he came here and located on a farm in Xenia township, on the present site of the Aetna powder-mill, and there spent his last days. Joseph Sexton was twice married, his first wife, the mother of John Sexton, having died when the latter was five years of age, after which he married Dorcas Lindsay. To the first union there were born three children, John Sexton having had two sisters, and to the latter union several children were born. John Sexton grew up in Virginia, reared by his paternal grandparents, Meshach and Hannah Sexton, and there became a millwright, remaining there until he was twenty-four years of age, when, in 1819, he came to Ohio and became engaged in the milling business in Clinton county. After his marriage in the fall of 1821 he came up into Greene county and rented a mill which then stood along the creek where Clifton later sprang up, in Miami township, and a year later moved to New Burlington, down on the lower edge of the county, where he rented a mill that had some time before been established there and there he erected a log house in which to make his home. Later he moved to a mill that then was being operated along the Stillwater, in the vicinity of Dayton, but after operating that mill for two or three years returned to Greene county and took charge of the Oldtown mill, at the same time buying a home nearby the mill. Several years later he bought a farm of ninety-five acres in the vicinity of the mill, on the hill along the Xenia-Springfield pike, two and a half miles north of Xenia, where his daughter. Miss Sarah Sexton, still lives, and there he and his wife spent the remainder of their lives, he continuing to operate the mill until his death, at the age of forty-six years, June 18, 1841. His widow later married James Moorman and continued making her home on the old home place, her death occurring there on March 20, 1877, and James Moorman also spent his last days there, his death occurring on January 5, 1883.
On October 21. 1821, in Greene county, John Sexton was united in marriage to Mary Compton, who was born in Union county. South Carolina, December 21, 1798, and who was but six years of age when her parents, Amos and Rebecca Compton, came to Ohio with their family in the spring of 1805 and settled on a farm in the New Burlington neighborhood in Spring Valley township, this county. Amos Compton's father, Samuel Compton, had come out here the fall preceding his son's emigration and had bought a considerable tract of land, he and his children and their respective famillies coming in the following spring. Samuel Compton did not long live to see the outcome of his settlement plan, for he died in the very spring in which his family became settled here, in 1805. There was then no cemetery nearer than Waynesville and, besides, the river was so high at that time that there could be no thought of the funeral party getting across, so the body of Samuel Compton, the pioneer, was laid away in the orchard whose planting he had so short a time before superintended, and there that lonely grave is still cared for after a lapse of more than a hundred years. The Comptons were Quakers and became a substantial element in the population of the New Burlington neighborhood, and it was there that Mary Compton grew to womanhood and was living at the time of her marriage to John Sexton, the young miller. Mr. and Mrs. Sexton always retained their interest in the services of the Friends church and their children were reared in that simple faith. Eight children were born to them, two of whom died in infancy and three, Elizabeth, Rebecca and Ann, in youth, very near together, of scarlet fever, the survivors being Samuel, Sarah and Hannah, the two latter of whom remained unmarried and after their mother's death continued in charge of the old home place on the hill nearby the old mill which their father had operated so successfully. Miss Hannah Sexton died on January 14, 1917, and since then, as noted above. Miss Sarah Sexton has been alone with her faithful servitors on the old place. Her brother. Dr. Samuel Sexton, who had achieved an international reputation as a specialist in the treatment of diseases of the ear, died in 1896. Doctor Sexton was for a time located in the practice of his profession at Cincinnati, but later moved to New York City, where he became an authority on his specialty, his practice extending even to Europe, where he was able to introduce advanced methods in the treatment of diseases of the ear, at the time of his death he having been regarded as the greatest practitioner in his line in the country.
From History of Greene County Ohio, Its People, Industries and Institutions, vol. 2. M.A.Broadstone, editor. B.F.Bowen & Co., Indianapolis. 1918