Spencer Lighthill's Memories

Spencer Lighthill, born in Beaver County, Pennsylvania on May 30, 1836, recalls moving to Paulding County as a teenager (his family had first moved to Richland County, Ohio when he was two). Settling on a farm in Section 24 of Brown Township, he later moved to Section 23 of the same township, where he remained for decades. Recollections include: earning his first half-dollar working five days for a neighbor at age seven, tracking game for pelts (once paying his taxes in raccoon skins), helping cut what became the first street of Oakwood — during which the crew found a skeleton between two logs with what appeared to be a bullet hole, “generally believed at that time that the person had been murdered” — and Civil War service in Company F, 38th O.V.I. and Company I, 100th O.V.I. from 1861-65. He notes his family’s ancestry traces to two U.S. vice presidents (Richard M. Johnson and Thomas A. Hendricks) and President James Buchanan.

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