Fourth Generation

43. Jacob Skillman was born about 1736 in Amwell, Hunterdon, NJ. Web site for the Cemetery says he was 78 when he died, hence born circa 1743. He served in the military about 1776 in Revolutionary War. Source is Coleraine Pageant from Wrona. He immigrated after 1800 to Miami Valley, OH. "His lands were on the West Branch of Mill Creek, to the immediate south of an area called Glendale in Springfield Twp., Hamilton Co.

His son Isaac5 moved with him, but eventually settled further west in the Liberty Twp area of Union Co., IN. His brother Benj. also purchased land there in 1827.

Rich Houghton, GenForum #29, 5/13/1999. Jacob died on 16 November 1821 at the age of 85 in Glendale, Springfield, Hamilton, OH. His SOA Number is 12. He was buried at Skillman Farm Cemetery in Woodlawn, Hamilton, OH. Early pioneer in Miami(Ohio) valley. He and family settled just south of Glendale in 1806.
Colerain Pageant (Cincinnati, Ohio) , Vol. 6, No. 3, July, 1970.

From SOA:
In will, 1772, item, to my loving son, Jacob, £100, and my negro wench, Dinah." With "Thomas Skillman, of Kingstowne" (brother-in-law) appointed executor; paid taxes (1790) on 200 acres in Amwell, Hunterdon Co., N. J.; afterward "removed to some German Settlement, near Allegheny Mts. Penn;" and later appears with family among early pioneers of Ohio (Miami Valley). He and wife Massa (Mercy?) had four sons. Other children may have remained in the east.

From:Ford, Henry A., and Kate B. Ford, "History of Hamilton County, Ohio," published 1881. Online version at <http://www.ancestry.com>, accessed 3/29/1999.
"Mr. Jacob Skillman, with his family, made his first settlement in Springfield township, Indiana 1806. He was born on Long Island, but emigrated from Pennsylvania to Ohio. in the Revolutionary war he was a recruiting officer. After coming to Ohio he cleared the farm now owned by his grandson, Henry. His children were six in number: Isaac, Benjamin, Jacob, Thomas, and Abraham, all now deceased. Henry, second son of Abraham and Abigail Skillman, was born in the Skillman homestead in the year 1824. He was married in 1857, to Miss Augusta Foster, daughter of one of Hamilton county's earliest families, which came to Ohio prior to 1800. Four sons and one daughter were afterward born: Albert, George, Harry, Frank, and Emma. George and Harry have died. Both parents belong to the Presbyterian church, and have always been among the leading most reliable members."(p. 364)

From Charles William Skillman, #3141:

and extending originally from Springfield Pike one mile, being from section line to section line, is a patrimony of which the present inheritor maybe justly be proud, This is a remarkable estate in a land characterized by mutations of title, in a land of subdivisions, mortgages, and leaseholds. From the United States, through Symmes, to Jacob Skillman in 1805, then by decent to Abraham, and upon his death to Henry M. Skillman, to Frank Foster Skillman the last Skillman owner, is a brief abstract of the title to this noted estate by freehold.
Frank sold the land to one of the Richardson family that owned the Richardson Paper Company in Lockland. Eventually it left the Richardson family ownership and became an industrial park. In fact I worked on this land for Levy Division of City Service Company to Borden Chemical and then I retired. Frank Foster Skillman supposedly sold the land because as a lawyer told me who handled his estate that his son Frank Jr. was a wimpy guy and couldn't or wouldn't work the farm. Frank Sr. worked for P & G as a superintendent and I was told that doing both was too much for him. Frank Sr. died about 1927 and his estate was about $350,000 and this was Depression years so its impossible for me to relate to that kind of money in those days.
Glendale Milford Road had been called Skillman Road before WWII. I don't know exactly when it became Glendale Milford Road. This farm was originally 275 acres but looking at an old map I have it must have been increased in size. The farm went from Springfield Pike to Oak Street in Glendale to Chester Road and back to Skillman Road or Glendale Milford Road. These people were distant relatives of mine but I often wonder if they knew my family of Lockland. I surmise that they did and probably had to because old history in this area says there was Cincinnati, Lockland and Hamilton. I assume that many people of this area had to come to Lockland to buy food etc.that was available because much was hauled into the Lockland stores probably via the canal.
The Skillman farm was in a highly improved condition, rich in soil, beautiful as to contour, with all the out buildings, machinery, etc., necessary to its cultivation, and not an acre of waste land upon it. When Jacob came and located this ground, it was a magnificent Woodlawn realm, consisting of oak, walnut, ash, and sugar trees. For centuries some of them had waited for the coming of that hardy race from the denuded hills and valleys of the old Jersey state. The first house built was that still standing upon the hill side, old and decayed, but in its day called the "White House," so attractive was it and so well finished. It was built in 1806, of hewed logs at first, and subsequently weather boarded. The next house constructed was that in which Mr. Skillman lives, about a year or so after the first. It was the eastern portion of the house, and to which Mr. S. has made large additions. Here he was born in 1824. This Mr Skillman must have been Henry Skillman a grandson of Jacob. There was a time in the history of this farm when a man could walk upon fallen timber from the east to the west line. A large sugar camp stood next to the site of Glendale in which maple sugar and molasses have been made in great quantities. The farm has risen out of the past as if touched by the magical wand of Prospero.
Mr S. walks about it as if every spot were endeared by associations, every acre telling a pathetic story of hardships endured by his forefathers in clearing, tilling, and enriching, partly for their self-support, and partly for those who should come after them. And this farm belongs to the domain of general history. Forty feet to the west of the spot where the homestead stood, passed General Anthony Wayne's army, the trace of which, as it felled the trees and forced its way through the farm, had been distinctly seen years ago. Mr Skillman married a daughter of Judge Luke Foster, and they were married on Foster's hill. Since which time they had journeyed together in peace and prosperity until wealth is enjoyed without a display of it, while they are surrounded by many friends of early and later years. There is a graveyard upon the Skillman farm, a family burying ground, in which the ancestors of Mr Henry M. Skillman sleep.
Mr. Henry M. Skillman recalled the old stage passengers walking up the hill through his grandfather's farm, and seeing thousands of hogs driven over the same road. A number of old references to this farm said they were from Glendale but this land was never in Glendale and Jacob and Abraham and maybe Henry Skillman owned this land before Glendale came into existence. I was told by my father Charles Wm Skillman of the Skillman cemetery years before he passed so when I started doing family genealogy in 1977 I then went up the hill from where I worked and found the cemetery but there were few graves in existence. I came back some months later when all the overgrowth had died off and I had a tire iron and was poking around in the earth and I hit a stone or several stones buried in the cemetery. I came home and brought a shovel back to dig up what I was hitting buried in the ground. It turned out to be 3 pieces of Jacob Skillman's sandstone tombstone. It showed he died in 1821 and as that area was developed and businesses were on the land I called a Glendale Skillman descendant Bill Cook and told him that I had found Jacob's tombstone. Because his tombstone was the type of stone that had it not been buried for years the name and date would not have been legible. Sometime later Bill Cook called me back and asked me to meet him at the cemetery to help him load the stones in his car and he was going to take them home and try to put the tombstone back together. A couple of weeks later he called me and asked me to again meet him at the cemetery and I helped him put Jacob's tombstone back standing up and wired together by Bill. The only stone was an obelisk tombstone abour 8 feet tall was their and standing for years and I suppose both stones are still there.
Henry and Frank Foster Skillman are both buried in Spring Grove Cemetery. The Skillman cemetery according to a map I got from the Hamilton Country Courthouse shows the cemetery was about 60 feet by 40 feet. I have have in print somewhere supposedly the names of other Skillman family members buried in the Skillman Cemetery. I have been told by Bill Cook now deceased that when Frank Foster Skillman was trying to sell the farm that he offered land to the village of Glendale as a buffer zone or green belt and they rejected his offer. Later on maybe when Richardson's owned the farm they sold to Glendale a greenbelt on Oak Street in Glendale. I have attempted to find a picture of the old farm but I have had no luck even though several have told me they know there are pictures of the farm probably when the Richardsons owned the farm. I also mention that some of the land is called the Abraham Skillman subdivision. It should have had his father Jacob's name but it doesn't. There is even a Skillman small road going into a couple of businesses and it runs off Chester Road.The whole farm is now businesses except for the greenbelt that separates Glendale from Woodlawn. In the early days this land was called Springfield Township, Hamilton County, Ohio.

Jacob Skillman and Massa "Mercy" Foster were married. Massa "Mercy" Foster was born in 1752 in New Jersey. Mormon Archive Record has b.c. 1740 in NJ. She died on 11 May 1839 at the age of 87 in Springfield Twp., Mount Healthy, Hamilton, OH. She was buried at Skillman Farm Cemetery in Woodlawn, Hamilton, OH.

Jacob Skillman-913 and Massa "Mercy" Foster-1046 had the following children: