JACOB AND MARY (JACKSON) LE FEVRE, Oxford. These two settlers were among the earliest and most useful of the pioneer settlers of Ohio; both were born in Frederick Co., Md.; Mr. Le Fevre, Feb. 14, 1785, and Mrs. Le Fevre, Dec. 24, 1784; the father of the latter was Henry Jackson, who was born and educated in London, England; her mother, Rebecca Pope Jackson. was born in Maryland, of French parents, who, during the persecution of the Huguenots by the Roman Catholics, were driven from a happy and prosperous home in their beloved France, to the strange and wild lands of America; they chose exile, rather than disloyalty to conscience and religious belief. Jacob Le Fevre claims a similar interest in the Reformation; his mother was German and his father a Frenchman and a Huguenot; in the history of the French Reformation, the name Le Fevre is an honored one among the Protestant heroes. Our subjects were married May 1, 1804, and, in the spring of 1807, with their oldest child, Mary, aged 1 year, they emigrated to Ohio. They came in wagons to Pittsburgh, and from there to Cincinnati in a fiat-boat, which they sold in the latter town for $10, the purchaser using it for a dwelling house, as was the custom. Mr. Le Fevre was offered land at a very low price in the vicinity of Cincinnati, but he would not purchase it because it seemed so worthless for farming purposes. He came out with his family to the southern part of Warren County; he bought land adjoining that on which Socialville was afterward built, three miles south of the present town of Mason. and known as the Thompson land. He finally owned 200 acres in all, and here they lived happily and prosperously for thirty years, until Mr. Le Fevre's death, in 1837. Mr. Le Fevre and family were most earnest and active supporters of church, school and every worthy enterprise. With money and labor, they helped to build the old Presbyterian Church at Pisgah, and assisted greatly in supporting its religious services afterward. Among the ministers who preached at Pisgah at that early day were Rev. Peter Monfort, Dr. Lyman Beecher, Dr. Henry Little, Rev. Benjamin Graves, Rev. Andrew Morrison and other home missionary workers. Mr. and Mrs. Le Fevre were actively interested in the cause of education. Before the time of the free school system, they took a prominent part in organizing and supporting subscription schools. They raised ten children, four sons and six daughters, all of whom have filled useful positions in life; these children all lived to raise families of their own, but two of the sons and four of the daughters are now dead. The names of the ten children, with their husbands and wives, are as follows: Mary and James Baxter, Matilda and Josephus Dodds, Elias and Henrietta Ingersoll, Catherine and Gilbert Barton, Henry and Ellen Monfort, Rebecca and Thomas Moore, Mercy and Nimrod Duvall, Sarah and Milton Coulson, Jacob and Elizabeth Belch and Nimrod and Rebecca Tobias. Their mother, Mrs. Mary Jackson Le Fevre, is still living, and is now (1881) in her 97th year. She enjoys good health and the use of all her faculties, except that of hearing. She remembers quite distinctly the events of her pioneer life; among her early neighbors in Deerfield Township were John Wylie, David Slayback, Nimrod Duvall, Abraham Probasco, Roland Kendall, Zebulon Eynons, Nicholas Dawson, Ezekiel Blue, Jacob Hercules, Isaac Phillips, Daniel Stout, Ezra Van Fossen and others. After many years of toil and hardship as a pioneer, Mrs. Le Fevre is now taking life easily; she is making her home at present with her daughter, at Oxford, Ohio. She has fifty-one grandchildren living and a number who have died. She has about 300 descendants altogether. A great many of these took a loyal and active
Part in the civil war; some arose to places of eminence, and some sacrificed their lives in the noble work of defending our flag and nation. The offspring of such ancestors as are herein mentioned should indeed by loyal to the truth, always and everywhere, that they may honor and carry out their teachings of those ancestors who toiled and suffered so nobly for the cause of right.