Person:William Schenk (1)

    SCHENK, WILLIAM HENRY, M. D., Thornville, born 1824, in Fauquier

county, Virginia; is a son of John D., and his mother's maiden name was Miss Gillian Lloyd. His grandfather, Michael, was also a native of Virginia, but his great ancestor, the father of Michael Schenk, was a native of Germany. The grandfather of Doctor Schenk, on his mother's side, was George Emory Lloyd, who came with his son-in-law, John D. Schenk, the father of the doctor, to Ohio in 1834. Grandfather Lloyd made his home in the Schenk family, near Etna, Licking county, until his death, at the age of ninety-five. He was a Revolutionary soldier, and Doctor Schenk has often heard him relate the experience and trials of those times. The "bare foot" story, he said, was no fiction. He had often taken the place of ill clad soldier on sentinel, to keep him from suffering. He kept a diary and was tempted to print it, but was as often tempted to abandon it. A work on arithmetic was nearly ready for the press, but this, too, was allowed to go by default. He made his own almanacs, and often amused himself with women who did not like their age to be known, by asking them to tell him the day of the week, and the day of what month they were born. Having thus entraped them, he would laugh and say, "now I know your age exactly," and they would, with equal merriment, chide his supposed presumption, until he felt himself forced to vindicate the science of numbers and tell them their age with such accuracy as to astonish them beyond description. This veteran soldier and arithmetician was a Virginian of modern fortune, and while living there, owned a few slaves, and after coming to Ohio, persisted in his pro-slavery views. He voted for Washington and for every President down to Zachariah Taylor, in 1848. John D., the father of Doctor Schenk, lived to his eighty-seventh year, and remained a spry old man to that time. The brothers of Doctor Schenk are George Emry, post office Fairfield, Illinois; Michael A., post office Outville, Ohio; Theodrick L., Newburg, Arkansas. His sisters are Valeria, wife of Howland White, post office 543 Cardington, Ohio; Frances G., wife of Myron Bates, Outville, Ohio. Doctor W. H. Schenk read medicine and graduated at Cleveland in 1852, in which year he located in Thornville, where he has now been in practice for thirty years. In 1854 he married Miss Melinda, daughter of the late venerable Adam Bogenwright, of Thorn, who lived to the remarkable age of one hundred years. Doctor Schenk's children were six in all, but one died in infancy. The survivors are Valeria K., wife of Charles Wilson, Thornville; Miss Francis G., Miss Lilian L. and George Emry Schenk, a dry goods clerk, and Charles E. at home.