Jacob Puls
Jacob Puls, one of the pioneer farmers of Jackson township, Montgomery county, Ohio, was born in Lebanon county, Pa., November 15, 1816. His father, Jacob Puls, Sr., also a native of the Keystone state, descended from a colonial family of German extraction, was a carpenter by trade, and married, in Lancaster county, Pa., Polly Knouse, to which union were born Solomon, George, Polly, Jacob, Daniel, Samuel and Catherine. In 1821 Mr. Puls brought his family to Ohio and settled on the Germantown and Farmersville pike, in Jackson Township, Montgomery County, where he passed the remainder of his life on his farm, dying at the age of seventy-two years, a member of the German Reformed church.
Jacob Puls, the subject of this biography, grew to manhood in Jackson Township, and learned the carpenter's trade, at which he worked for twenty-five years. He married, in Jackson township, in April, 1841, Miss Elizabeth Basore, who was born in Lebanon county, Pa., about 1816, a daughter of Adam and Mary (Creiter) Basore, who had settled in Montgomery county and were the parents of Philip (who died in Pennsylvania), David, Elizabeth, Joseph and Daniel. Mr. Basore died here at the age of sixty years. Mr. Puls, after his marriage, lived one year in Farmersville, and then bought eighty acres in this township, on which he lived for thirty years and which he greatly improved; about 1870 he settled on his present farm, which is one of the best in the neighborhood, and contains 160 acres.
The children born to Jacob and Elizabeth (Basore) Puls were named Mary A., Rachel L. (who died at sixteen years of age), Eliza (who died at the age of nineteen), William, Joseph and Allen. Of these Mary A. is married to Elijah Oldfelter, a farmer of Indiana, and has six children; Eliza was married to Jacob Stiner, but died two years afterward, leaving one child; William, a farmer in Germantown, married Althea Rodeheffer, and is the father of seven children; Joseph and Allen live on the home farm. Mr. Puls has now fourteen grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren. The mother of the above family died August 12, 1880, a devout member of the Lutheran church and a woman of many virtues. Mr. Puls has been a member of this church since he was twenty years of age and has been an elder for thirty-five years and for many years a trustee. He has been liberal in his contributions toward its support and aided materially toward the erection of the Lutheran church edifice south of Farmington. In politics he is a democrat.
Mr. Puls has led a long and useful life, has always been industrious and thrifty, but nevertheless generous, and has always maintained the integrity of an upright character.
From Centennial Portrait and Biographical Record of the City of Dayton and of Montgomery County, Ohio, A. W. Bowen & Co., 1897