My Genealogy Hound

CALVIN VANNIMMAN. The family to which the subject of this sketch belongs is one of the oldest and most highly respected in Jefferson Township, Greene County. In this township Calvin was born September 3, 1837, and there spent the days of his boyhood and youth, acquiring his education in the common schools and becoming familiar with the art of plowing, sowing and reaping. His life passed in comparatively uneventful manner until he was a man of twenty-five years. Then desirous of establishing a home of his own he was joined in wedlock with Miss Mary A. Ellis, and they commenced the journey of life together on a farm in Jefferson Township, where they labored with the mutual purpose of building up a comfortable home and accumulating a competence. In this they have succeeded admirably, having now the warrantee deed to five hundred broad acres of well tilled land which yields abundantly the richest crops of the Bucke Eye State. The farm is improved with good buildings and the whole forms one of the most attractive pictures in the landscape of that region.

In noting the antecedents of our subject we find we find that his paternal grandfather, Benjamin Vannimman, was a native of Pennsylvania and the scion of an old and eminently respectable family. He followed farming all his life, in the meantime emigrating to Illinois, where he spent his last days. To him and his estimable wife there was born a family of two sons and two daughters, one of whom, Benjamin, Jr., the father of our subject, it is believed, was born in the State of Pennsylvania and later emigrated to Clinton County, this State. He settled in the dense forest when the country was principally inhabited by Indians and wild animals. He built a log cabin and commenced felling the trees around him, grubbing out the stumps and bringing the soil to a state of cultivation. He was greatly prospered, invested his surplus capital in additional land and in time became the owner of seven hundred acres, all of which he brought to a productive condition. He erected thereon good buildings and gathered about himself and family all of the comforts and many of the luxuries of life. He then retired from active labor and departed this life at the home which he built up in 1879, at the advanced age of eighty-four years.

Benjamin Vannimman, Jr., like his father before him, was a hard-working industrious man, full of energy and usually made it a point to accomplish what he set about. He visited Illinois where his father had settled before locating in this State, but decided that Ohio was good enough for him. Not only was he successful in his own personal affairs but he was liberal and public-spirited and contributed as far as in him lay to the general advancement of the community around him. In politics he was a sound Republican, after the organization of this party and in religion he was a devoted member of the Methodist Protestant Church.

The mother of our subject was in her girlhood Miss Sophia Hussey and they were married in Jefferson Township. Mrs.Vannimman was a native of Ohio and removed to Greene County with her husband, to whom she proved an efficient help-mate in the building up of a homestead and the accumulation of the property. She died in 1844, at the birth of her thirteenth child, and when forty-four years old. She had been reared in the Quaker faith and to this she adhered all her life. She fulfilled all life’s duties as a wife, mother and friend and her name is held in tender remembrance by her children. The parental family of our subject included five sons and eight daughters, five of whom are living.

Mrs. Mary A. (Ellis) Vannimman was born January 27, 1840, in Wilson Township, Clinton County, this State, and is the daughter of Joseph and Eliza (Stilling) Ellis, who were natives of Virginia, and who emigrated to Clinton County, this State at an early day. The mother died at her home in Cedarville in 1871, when sixty-three years old. She was a lady possessing all the Christian virtues and greatly beloved by her family and her friends. Mr. Ellis is still living, being about eighty-two years old and makes his home in York, Neb. They were the parents of a large family, five of whom are living.

To Mr.and Mrs. Vannimman there have been born no children. Both are members in good standing of the Methodist Protestant Church. Mr. Vannimman cast his first Presidential vote for Lincoln and is a stanch supporter of the principles of the Republican party.