• b. Nov. 11, 1791, at Mendham, N.J.; on Mar. 39, 1812, while wanting several months of his majority, he married Miss Nancy Sanders, daughter of Capt. Ephraim Sanders (b. Dec. 23, 1792; d. Dec. 4,1881). They set up housekeeping on a farm near her father's home. He worked in a saw mill in which he was part owner with his father. On Oct. 11, 1816, he loaded his effects into a covered wagon and with his father-in-law, his wife, and two children started for the west, a 600-mile journey. He settled near Columbus, Ohio. In April, 1817, he moved to the village; after about three years he bought a farm of 80 acres in Jersey township, Licking Co. Upon the death of his father, he was compelled to return to Mendham, a part of the way on foot. He moved his family the following June. Aroused by the temperance lectures of Rev. Albert Barnes in 1827, he banished the decanter from his cupboard and the jug from the harvest field, notwithstanding the jeers and ridicule of his neighbors, and remained firm to the day of his death. He wrote and circulated the first temperance pledge signed in his community. In the spring of 1841 he moved his family, consisting of wife and nine children, to Clinton township, Macomb Co., Mich. He purchased a farm of 160 acres, built a log house, and started again clearing up a farm. On June 21, 1855, he died and was buried in the new cemetery west of Mt. Clemens. His wife and ten of his fourteen children survived him. He was a Major commanding the 2nd Bat. 1st Rgt., N.J. Militia, while in Morris Co. He was a great reader, a great lover of wit and humor, a Presbyterian of the strict type, a Whig as long as the party existed, and a Republican until his death.2472

• Samuel B. Axtell was the fourth child in a family of twelve children who lived to be men and women - six boys and six girls. His mother is still living, now in her 89th year. His parents emigrated from Morris Co., N. J. to Franklin Co., Ohio, where he was born Oct. 14, 1819.2446, p 997

• 14 children.2471