Hiram Merrell
Merrell, Hiram, retired, Kent, was born in what is now Wyoming County, N. Y., May 29, 1818, son of Noah and Clara (Pearsons) Merrell, who settled in Franklin Township, this county, in 1837, renting a house of Joseph Stratton, on which they lived two years, then buying a farm of ten acres in the north part of the township, where they lived and died. Noah Merrell was a native of Connecticut, his wife of Holland. They reared a family of ten children: Althea (deceased), Norman, Oral (deceased), Hiram, Louisa (Mrs. Darius Davis), Freedom, Roxy, Noah, Cass and Jane (deceased). The subject of this sketch when twenty years of age worked on a farm by the month one summer, and the following year he engaged in the manufacture of brooms, which business he followed for eight years, acquiring a farm of eighty acres, now owned by A. O. Haymaker, a part of which he cleared and improved, and where he resided ten years. In 1853 he purchased a large farm in Rootstown Township, where he resided one year, when he returned to Franklin, and since then he has owned several farms, having speculated considerably in farm property, and has accumulated a competency. Mr. Merrell was married, February 24, 1842, to Sarah, daughter of Frederick Williard, an early settler of Franklin Township, this county, by whom he has had seven children, four of whom are now living: Angeline (Mrs. Byron Fessenden), Wallace, Earl and Frederick, Our subject moved to Kent in 1868, where he has since resided, one of its representative citizens. In politics he is a Republican.
From History of Portage County, Ohio, Warner, Beers & Co., Chicago, 1885