Joseph Dixson Garrison
Joseph Dixson Garrison, tavern keeper and groceryman, North Bend, is great-grandson of a Swede or German named Garrison, who was among the first settlers of New Jersey. His grandfather, Abraham Garrison emigrated from Virginia to Kentucky at a very early day, and settled at or near Scott's station, removing in a few years to the Northwest Territory at Losantiville. Here his wife, Lydia Garrison did considerable doctoring among the people of the place, and here he and his son Joseph, father of the subject of this notice, were eye witnesses of the murder of Benjamin Van Cleve by the Indians. She, in a small way, introduced the manufacture of soap in Cincinnati, and he built and operated the horse-mill on Third street, where the Presbyterian colonists held some of their earliest services. Joseph Garrison is supposed to have been born at Scott's station, and remained with his father at Cincinnati until he was well grown. His son gives the following amusing account of the manner in which he became acquainted with General Harrison:
"He got acquainted with him in rather a comical way. My father had caught a cub bear by; killing the old one. He raised it as a pet, and had it under good subjection. After it had grown up to about its full size, he would watch when the army would be on parade or drilling, and would then take his bear and go up on the side-hill above the parade ground, and tie an old camp-kettle to his hind parts and scare him and turn him loose, when the bear would run for home right through the line of soldiers, and break ranks, and make a grand disturbance. So one day the general followed him home and requested his father to stop him of his sport. I have often heard the general and father laugh about their first acquaintance."
Joseph Garrison married Merab Conner, near Lawrenceburgh, in 1805, and, after some service in aid of the Government surveyors, settled at the Goose pond, in Miami township, where Joseph D. was born, in 1816. The latter in early life tended Garrison'S ferry, over the Great Miami, where the Cleves bridge now is, and made several trading trips with boats to New Orleans. He was married in 1852 to Sarah Ann, only daughter of James Smith Leonard, an early emigrant from Canada to the neighborhood of Rising Sun, Indiana. The same day they started for California with a company he had agreed to take through. He there engaged in gold mining until the middle of February, 1855, when they started on their return to the States. While residing at Diamond Springs, California, their first son, now a physician in southeastern Kansas, was born. Two more sons and two daughters are now residing with their parents. After his return Mr. Garrison pursued farming for a time, and then bought his present hotel property in North Bend.
From History of Hamilton County, Ohio, Henry & Kate Ford, L. A. Williams & Co., Publishers, 1881