Major Joseph L. Finley
There is an old brown head-stone in the center of the little village cemetery at West Union, which recites—"Joseph L. Finley was born February 20, 1753. and died May 23, 1839." Most of the people of West Union and of those who have visited the cemetery or passed by have observed the stone, but do not know the story of him who reposes beneath, but we propose now to tell it so that hereafter so long as this History is preserved, the head-stone will suggest its own history.
Major Joseph L. Finley was born on the date already given, near Greensburg, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania. He was a graduate of Princeton College in the class of 1775. He entered the Revolutionary War on the first day of April, 1776, as a Second Lieutenant in Captain Moorehead's Company, of Miles' Pennsylvania Rifle Regiment, organized under a resolution of Congress on July 15, 1776. He was made a Captain on the twentieth day of October, 1777, and his regiment was designated as the 13th Pennsylvania. He was transferred to the 8th Pennsylvania, July 1, 1778, and was made a Major July 20, 1780. He served until November, 1783, more than two years after the surrender of Cornwallis, and he was seven years and seven months in service in defense of his country. He was in the battle of Long Island on the twenty-seventh of August, 1776, and that of White Plains, the September following. He was at the battle of Brandywine in September, 1777; at Germantown, in October of the same year, and he was in the battle of Monmouth on that memorable hot Sunday, June 28, 1778. After that, he was sent with Gen. Broadhead to the western part of Pennsylvania in his expedition against the Indians. He subsequently saw much hard fighting. He lost his left eye in the service and was otherwise much disabled.
He emigrated to Adams County in 1815 and settled, first on Gift Ridge, and afterwards moved to the foot of the hill west of West Union, and died there. His wife was a daughter of Rev. Samuel Blair, a noted Presbyterian minister in the early part of the history of that church in this country. She was a woman of much beauty of person and nobility of character, and their daughters were likewise well educated and hand some. She was an aunt of Francis P. Blair, the famous editor of the Globe, of Washington, D. C. She was a sprightly woman, full of energy, and while small, was considered very handsome. She had the blackest of black eyes; she wrote poetry for the newspapers, and wrote several touching tributes to the memory of deceased friends. She has been particularly described to me and if I were to choose one of her descendants who resembled her as a young woman, I would choose Mrs. Dudley B. Hutchins, of Portsmouth, Ohio, her great-granddaughter.
Major Finley and his wife were both members of the Presbyterian Church of West Union. He was a man of small stature, and in his old age his hair was silvery white. When he and his wife attended church at West Union, during the sermon he always sat on the pulpit steps, as he was somewhat deaf.
He had three daughters and two sons. His daughter, Hannah Finley, was the second wife of Col. John Lodwick, and the mother of a numerous family. Among her sons were Captain John N., Joseph, Pressley and Lyle Lodwick, and among her daughters were Mrs. Nancy McCabe, Mrs. Eli Kinney and Mrs. J. Scott Peebles. She died in 1827, twelve years before her father.
Another daughter, Mary Finley, married John Patterson, once United States Marshal of Ohio, and the father of Mrs. Benjamin F. Coates, of Portsmouth, Ohio. She was the mother of seven children. She was married in 1818 and died in 1831 . The Hon. Joseph P. Smith, late Secretary of the American Bureau of Republics, was her grandson.
Margaret Finley married John Chipps and died young. She left a son, John Chipps. who died before his manhood and is buried in the West Union cemetery.
James Finley married a Rothwell. He died young and left several children. His wife contracted a second marriage with Samuel Clark, formerly a well known farmer south of West Union on the old Manchester Road.
John Finley, another son, married down South. No further account of him is known. A daughter of Mr. James Finley, Mrs. John Kincaid, resides at Hamersville, in Brown County, and another daughter resides in Dayton, Ohio.
Major Finley is described in an edition of the "Ohio Statesmen" of May 28, 1838, as one of the truest of patriots and best of men.
From History of Adams County, Ohio from its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time - by Nelson W. Evans and Emmons B. Stivers - West Union, Ohio - Published by E. B. Stivers - 1900