A lengthy tribute to William Kneeleand Dell Townsend appeared in Volume 16 of the Firelands Pioneer.
William Kneeland Dell Townsend was the only son of Mr. and Mrs. William Townsend, pioneer residents of Sandusky. Everyone was so happy in 1840, when the Townsends finally had a son, after six daughters, that the employees at the Townsend Commission Warehouse set off guns to celebrate. Sadly, Mr. and Mrs. William Townsend died in the cholera epidemic of 1849. William K.D. Townsend served in the Civil War, and later moved to Champaign, Illinois, where he lived until his death on September 18, 1907.
Parental care the child enjoyed for only a few years. In the summer of 1849, old residents of Huron and Erie counties need not be reminded, came to Sandusky that cruel scourge, the Asiatic cholera. Among its victims were the father, mother and a sister of the lad. The event broke up the family and left to others the care and education of the boy. He grew to manhood in his home town, attending private schools and later Kenyon College, at Gambier.
Answering to the first call of President Lincoln, in April, 1861, Mr. Townsend, then a little past twenty-one years of age, volunteered into the national service and became a member of Co. “E” of the 8th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. With the strenuous service of that active organization, he became so far disabled with the three months’ service that he was unfitted for a second enlistment. He then traveled abroad, lived in New York for a period and likewise sought the invigorating climate of California. By the year 1863, he was so far recovered in health that he sought a permanent employment. He purchased and drove to Champaign county, Illinois, a drove of 3,000 sheep, but striking the state at an unfortunate time when an early frost almost entirely cut off the corn crop, the enterprise proved disastrous to him financially. Not however in the long run of the future, for, being so impressed with the excellence of the soil and climate of that country, he determined to make it his home. This he did in 1869, when having married, on July 14, of that year, Miss Mary Hamilton Zurhorst, of Sandusky, the two settled upon his new farm of 640 acres, four miles north of Champaign. The thirty-eight years of life upon the farm and of retirement, proved the wisdom of his choice of his home.
During his life spent upon the farm he brought it to a high state of cultivation, enjoying the successes of the intelligent farmer, winning the high regard of his neighbors and establishing the merits of his magnificent prairie farm. His quiet life of retirement in the city of Champaign and his interest in the general good of his community, won for him the high esteem of the business community with which he mingled and in which he bore a conspicuous part, until the end came on the eighteenth day of September, 1907, when he quietly passed away, leaving his wife, two sons, William and Edmund Dell, with their children and the children of a deceased daughter, surviving him. These sons alone bear to posterity the name of “Townsend,” once so potent and prominent upon the Firelands. The funeral of Mr. Townsend was the signal for the gathering of a large number of those to whom he was best known and the reading there by his long time friend, Capt. J. R. Trevett, of the memorial copied below best expresses the esteem for him of his large circle of friends. “Recalling the personal characteristics of our friend, we are impressed by his integrity of purpose and high moral character. Honorable in his business transactions, he possessed the confidence of all who knew him. As language is the expression of the soul, so his purity of thought was shown in his conversation with his fellowmen. No objectionable words ever fell from his lips, and his daily life was without reproach. “Always extending to his acquaintances a pleasant greeting, yet he was of a reserved disposition, and it was only to his most intimate friends, in quiet conversation, that he disclosed his fund of world-wide information. Quiet, and at times seemingly almost timid, yet he possessed a spirit of resolute bravery that led him quietly to the front at his country’s call, to face the dangers of the battle and to endure the hardships of army life. “His strength of purpose and courage was shown in his work on the Pacific coast in the early days, before civilization and railroads had reached that part of the country. Later, with his young bride, he came to this county, and together they built their home on the then bleak prairies of Illinois, enduring hardships requiring a courage unknown to the young farmers of to-day. Having acquired a competency, he retired from active labor, but his interest in business affairs never lessened and he devoted his thoughts and his capital to the cultivation of his lands, thereby adding to the wealth and productiveness of the county he loved so well and in whose future he had a patriotic confidence.” The writer, from a long knowledge of the life and standing of Mr. Townsend in his community, gladly assures those he left behind him on the Firelands, the associates of his earlier years, that the eulogy of Capt. Trevett was well deserved. J. O. CUNNINGHAM. Urbana, Illinois, October 25, 1907.
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