Thomas Clarkson Hirst
Thomas Clarkson Hirst, veteran of the Civil War, formerly engaged in the drug business at Yellow Springs and later and for a period of thirty years engaged as a traveling passenger agent for the Union Pacific Railroad Company, now living retired in the pleasant village of Yellow Springs, is a Virginian by birth, but has regarded Greene county as his home ever since the days of his boyhood. He was born at Lincoln, in the county of Loudoun, forty miles west of the city of Washington, August 23, 1837, son of Eli Pierpoint and Hannah (Janney) Hirst, both of whom also were natives of the Old Dominion, whose last days were spent in Yellow Springs. They were the parents of four children, two of whom, the subject of this sketch and his sister, Miss Cosmelia Hirst, of Yellow Springs, are living and two, Cornelia and John J. Hirst, deceased.
Eli Pierpoint Hirst was educated at Winchester Academy, then presided over by Prof. John Marvin, where he received thorough schooling, particularly in higher mathematics and in the natural sciences. He devoted his earlier years to teaching, in Virginia and Ohio, and was the possessor of a fine collection of scientific apparatus with which he illustrated his school lectures. At the time of the discovery of gold in California, he went to that territory to engage in business, going via New York City and the Isthmus and then by coastwise steamer up to San Francisco, the fare from New York to the latter city being then three hundred dollars in gold. Upon reaching the "diggings" Mr. Hirst located at Nevada City, where he remained for three years, engaged in the lumber business and in furnishing miners' supplies. Upon his return from California in 1855 he came to this county and located at Yellow Springs, being attracted to that place by reason of the location there of Antioch College, which then was presided over by that great educator, Horace Mann, for whom he entertained profound respect, and there he died two years later, in 1857.
Thomas C. Hirst was seventeen years of age when his parents took up their home in Yellow Springs and he straightway entered Antioch College, where he remained in attendance until after his father's death in 1857, after which he became engaged in farming and was thus engaged when the Civil War broke out. Early in 1862 Mr. Hirst enlisted in Company A, Ninety-fourth Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, with which regiment he served until constant exposure brought on what then was supposed to be a fatal illness and he was discharged on a surgeon's certificate of disability. But after remaining for some time at home he recovered his health to a great measure and determined to return to the army if possible. He re-enlisted in the One Hundred and Twenty-eighth Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and with that command served with such credit that he was recommended for promotion and was commissioned first lieutenant in Company D, One Hundred and Eightieth Ohio, and with this latter command served until disabled bv wounds near the close of the war. He was mustered out on June 16. 1865
In 1866 Thomas C. Hirst and his brother, John J. Hirst, engaged in the drug business in Yellow Springs, under the firm name of Hirst Brothers, and continued in partnership until the fall of 1881, when T. C. Hirst was offered the position of traveling passenger agent for the Union Pacific Railroad Company, with headquarters at Columbus, and had charge of the territory embraced by the states of Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia, remaining thus connected with the Union Pacific service for a period of more than thirty years. When Mr. Hirst retired at the age of seventy years his name was placed for life on the pension foils of the Union Pacific Railroad Company.
From History of Greene County Ohio, Its People, Industries and Institutions, vol. 2. M.A.Broadstone, editor. B.F.Bowen & Co., Indianapolis. 1918