Samuel Moorhead
Samuel Moorhead is a native of Holmes County, Ohio, a son of James and Mary (Ogden) Moorhead, natives of Westmoreland County, Penn., former born in 1799, and latter in 1801. His grandfather, Samuel Moorhead, in his day one of the wealthiest men of Westmoreland County, was a tanner by trade, and also carried on farming. He was married three times and had a family of eight children: Samuel, John, James, Joseph, Jane, Sallie, Rebecca and Nancy, all by the first wife, except one.
James Moorhead learned the tanner's trade of his father, and worked at it as long as he was at home. In the fall of 1820 he and his wife came to Ohio, and bought 160 acres in what was then Coshocton County, now Ripley Township, Holmes County. He worked at his trade and also followed farming, and in 1858 built a steam saw-and grist-mill on Paint Creek. In 1866 he removed to Millersburgh, where he lived until the marriage of his daughter Sarah, when with his wife he moved to Prairie Township, where he lived with his daughter Rebecca, and afterward with Mr. and Mrs. Todd, where he died in 1887, aged eighty-eight years. He was married twice. His family consisted of twelve children by his first wife and one by his second: Samuel, Susanna, Nancy, Rebecca, Joseph, Mary, James, Jane, John, William, Andrew, Sarah and Josiah. Samuel, Joseph, Rebecca, Mary and Sarah are the only ones now living.
Samuel Moorhead remained at home until his marriage, when he located on eighty acres of land given to him by his father, on which he lived until 1866, when he sold his farm and bought the old homestead of 160 acres, on which he has since resided, with the exception of five years--from the age of eighteen to twenty-three years--when he was engaged in teaching and working at the tanner's trade. Mr. Samuel Moorhead has devoted his attention to agricultural pursuits, and has never lived outside of Ripley Townsip. He has been a prominent member of the Methodist Church since 1842. His uprightness of character has gained for him many friends, who have trusted him in a way few men are trusted. He and his brother had charge of the settling up of his father's estate, and he has been appointed executor of five other estates, also the guardian of orphan children. Mr. Moorhead was married when twenty-three years old to Harriet, daughter of Nathan and Miranda (Weatherly) Drake, and they have had three children: Mary, Nathan and Miranda. Mr. Moorhead is a Republican.
From Commemorative Biographical Record of the Counties of Wayne and Holmes, Ohio, J. H. Beers & Co., Chicago, 1889