Part of the Indiana Biographies Project
Samuel C. Whitesell
For nearly thirty years Samuel C. Whitesell has been engaged in the practice of law in Wayne county. He is able and well posted in his profession, clear and convincing as a speaker before judge and jury, painstaking and accurate in the preparation of his cases, and conscientiously adheres to the spirit as well as to the letter of the law, scorning to lower the high standard of right and justice.
The paternal ancestors of our subject were of German origin, the name having been spelled Weitzel in the mother tongue. The grandfather of S. C. Whitesell, George Whitesell, was a native of Virginia, and was a soldier in the war of 1812. After hostilites had ceased between this nation and England, he removed to Preble county, Ohio, and took up his abode on a farm twelve miles east of Richmond. There he spent the remainder of his life, his death occurring when he was in his seventy-fifth year. In his early manhood he learned and followed the cooper's trade, but his chief attention was given to agriculture. His wife, also of German extraction, was a Miss Fouts in her girlhood and to their marriage four sons and four daughters were born.
The parents of our subject were George F. and Esther (McCollough) Whitesell. The father was born in Preble county, Ohio, and passed his entire life in that county, his death taking place when he was seventy-four years of age, in 1898. Following the example of his father, he was engaged in farming and in the cooperage business. The wife and mother was summoned to her reward in 1893, at the age of sixty-eight years. Her father, Samuel McCollough, was a native of Ireland, who, coming to the United States, settled first in Pennsylvania, and later, in 1817, in the vicinity of Hagerstown, Wayne county. In religious faith he was a Baptist, an earnest and conscientious member of the church. He was influential in the organization of the Salem church, which was one of the first of the denomination in the state. In 1845, during the cholera epidemic, he was stricken with the dread disease, and though he recovered he was thenceforth blind. He died in 1864, at the ripe age of seventy years.
Samuel C. Whitesell, who was born in Preble county, Ohio, February 25, 1847, is the eldest of six children, the others being as follows: John, a farmer of Greenville, Ohio; David, who for many years was a teacher, and is now carrying on a lumber business in New Madison, Ohio; Mrs. Nancy Shaver and R. B., both residing in Eaton, Ohio, the later having been a successful teacher for some eighteen years; and Frank M., a carpenter and builder of Richmond.
In his boyhood Samuel C. Whitesell received a good common-school education in Preble and Wayne counties. At the age of eighteen years he commenced teaching school in Preble county, and while thus occupied he borrowed law books from the late Judge Banta, of Eaton, Ohio, and spent his leisure time in study. Later he was under the tutorship of Judge Fox, of Centerville, then the county-seat of this county, and in 1870 was admitted to the bar. He began practice in Centerville, remaining there until Richmond became the county-seat, when he removed to Cambridge City, Indiana. There he built up a large and profitable business, and was admitted to the bar of the supreme court of the state, and to practice in the United States and circuit courts. In 18S6 he established an office in Richmond, and has since enjoyed a substantial and growing practice here.
On the 11th of August, 1868, Mr. Whitesell married Miss Elmira J. Strickler, daughter of Amos and Elizabeth Strickler, then living in the neighborhood of Hagerstown, Wayne county. Mr. and Mrs. Whitesell having but one child living, Frank M., a talented young man, who is now studying law in his father's office.
Source:
Biographical and Genealogical History of Wayne, Fayette, Union and Franklin Counties, Indiana, Volume 1, The Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, 1899