Person:Thomas Howard (137)

From PLBQ: "Thomas J. Howard, son of Eratus Howard and Catharine Demorest, left home, at the age of fifteen years, to serve his apprenticeship as a harness maker in Wellington, where he remained five years, and in the fall of 1850 started in business for himself in Frankford. The following spring he married Miss Harriet Huyck. After five years in the harness business, owing to failing health, he sold out. On recovering his health Mr. Howard opened a dry goods store in Frankford; and in 1870 removed his business to Wellington, where he still trades and prospers having been in business for fifty-four years without experiencing "either fire or failure." In 1858 Mr. Howard was appointed a Justice of the Peace for the County of Hastings. The years following were marked by much litigation consequent on the enforcement of the Dunkin Act ; Mr. Howard made it an unvarying rule to listen to no complaints from drunken men, and always counselled settlement of trifling disputes without recourse to the courts. At the age of 17 years, Mr. Howard became a member of the Methodist Church was chosen class leader in 1851 and has been a member of the Quarterly Board almost continuously for the last half century. In 1903 at the meeting of the Quarterly Board in November, when he spoke of retiring on account of infirmities, he was by a unanimous vote elected a life member of the Board."