Wallace Creamer
To attain the age of ninety-five is an unusual thing and yet Wallace Creamer reached that remarkable age on the 16th day of April, 1914. He was a babe in arms when James Monroe was President of the United States, voted for William Henry Harrison in the fall of 1840 and had been married twenty years when the battle of Gettysburg was fought. The Creamer family was one of the first to settle in this county and its members have been prominently identified with its history for more than a hundred years.
Wallace Creamer was born on the farm where he is now living and has spent all of his life in Jefferson township. He is the son of David and Elizabeth (Smith) Creamer, natives of Berkeley county, Virginia, and early settlers of Fayette county, Ohio. David Creamer was a soldier of the War of 1812 and was living in this county at the time the war opened. David Creamer was the son of George Creamer, who was the first of the family to come from Virginia to this county. George Creamer had a family of six children, Michael, George. Joseph, David, Mrs. Rosana Christy and one who died in infancy. David Creamer and wife were the parents of eight children, Sarah, Wallace. Jaxon, Nancy, Cynthia, Caroline, Kate and Washington. David Creamer took an important part in the early history of this county and served as surveyor of the county for many years.
Wallace Creamer went to the Creamer school, a little log cabin in the woods, and learned to read, write and cipher in the manner of all the boys of that time. He is the only living person who attended this school and can relate many interesting stories of his school boy days. The home farm was largely in woods and his first labor found him swinging the axe, burning logs, splitting rails and doing all of that heavy work which was the lot of the pioneers of this county.
Mr. Creamer was married in 1843 to Elizabeth Gray and consequently has been married more than seventy-one years. He started in with a farm of one hundred acres, all of which was covered with woods, and now has a finely cultivated farm of two hundred and fifty acres acres in Jefferson township. He has lived to see farming methods completely revolutionized and as new machinery has come into use he has added it to his equipment, and to the end of his active life was fully abreast of the times along agricultural lines.
Mr. Creamer voted for the Whig candidates from 1840 until the organization of the Republican party in 1854, and has since cast his vote for the party which elected Lincoln in 1860. He has been a life-long member of the Methodist Protestant church and interested in its welfare. It is no small honor to be known as the oldest man in his county, and when to this is added the fact that his life has been one of usefulness and honor it can readily be seen why Mr. Ceamer is called "The Grand Old Man of Fayette County."
From History of Fayette County Ohio - Her People, Industries and Institutions by Frank M. Allen (1914, R. F. Bowen & Company, Inc.)