My Genealogy Hound

JOHN A. RUCH, a farmer of this county, was born September 28, 1842, in Holmes County, Ohio. The parents, Jacob and Magdelene Ruch, were both natives of Switzerland, and came to America about 1835, locating in Ohio, where they remained all their lives farming. The mother died in 1870, the father in 1876. Our subject remained with his parents until the commencement of the war, and then joined the Nineteenth Ohio Infantry, with which command he remained throughout the war, participating in the battles of Shiloh, Murfreesboro, Chickamauga, Mission Ridge, Nashville and Atlanta, escaping without a wound, there being but one other who had been with the command all the time so fortunate. After the war he returned home and engaged in the saw-milling business seven years. In 1868 he married Anna Graber, a native of Ohio, to which union four children have been born. In 1872 he, with his family, moved to Franklin County, Tenn., locating on the farm where he now lives. Since 1876 he, with others of his neighborhood, began the use of bone fertilizers, which, with thorough cultivation and systematic rotation of crops, has given the Belvidere settlement fame as an agricultural district. Politically Mr. Ruch is a Republican and a firm supporter of the principles of prohibition. He and his family are members of the German Reformed Church.