In his later years, Francis Ashton Sr., “smooth-faced, quite deaf and distinctly English in his pronunciation,” was almost as much of a fixture on the northwest corner of the Public Square as the building that bore his name.
In 2010, when the Allen County Historical Society’s publication, the Reporter, took its readers for “A Walk on West Market Street,” that walk, which began on the corner the old man had haunted for so many years, also passed through a good bit of Ashton family history.
Francis Ashton Sr., who had been dead for nearly 130 years by 2010, had built the three-story Ashton block on the corner in 1858. The Ashton block, which was razed in 1925 to make room for a still-standing 12-story building, was once home to the Ashton family hardware store, offices, shops and one of the city’s first entertainment halls.
Francis Ashton Sr. came to America in 1832, moved to Lima around 1854 and died here at the age of 85 in March 1882. He outlived three wives and was survived by seven of his 10 children – William, Charles, Edwin, Christopher, Francis Jr., Eliza and John. All were born during his 53-year marriage to his second wife, Elizabeth Mackinder Ashton. The couple’s first-born, also named Christopher, died in infancy before the family left England, while the last child, Ruth Ann, died at 10 years of age in 1857.
Another son, Henry, known as Harry, was born after the family immigrated to America and died at the age of 44 in 1879. A veteran of the Civil War — “among the first in the state to volunteer in the service of his country,” according to the Lima Times-Democrat — he had worked as a jeweler and had been in the grocery business with his older brother, Francis Ashton Jr., known as Frank.
In May 1879, Henry Ashton fell ill while on the street. The Times-Democrat wrote that he “was taken home never again to pass its portals alive.” His remains were interred in the family vault in Woodlawn Cemetery, “and the concourse of friends and relatives who followed them to their last resting place was one of the largest ever held in this city,” according to the Times-Democrat.
Frank Ashton, who was born in England in 1831, and, along with his father, had moved the family’s hardware business from Kenton to Lima in 1854, opening a store on the Public Square. When the Ashton block was built in 1858, the family hardware business was moved into the first floor, where it remained until 1867 when the business was sold.
After retiring from the hardware business, Frank Ashton opened a grocery store with John Wheeler on the northeast side of the Public Square, according to a family history written in 1923 by his niece, Ruth Ann Ashton. Wheeler later sold his interest in the grocery to Henry Ashton.
“F. & H. Ashton conducted the business very successfully until 1880 (after the death of Henry Ashton), when Francis Ashton became associated with Thomas R. Dobbins and opened a lumber yard on South Main Street,” the Allen County Republican-Gazette wrote in July 1906. “Here they established a prosperous trade, which was continued until Mr. Ashton’s retirement from business in the latter part of the eighties.” Frank Ashton, 75, died on the Fourth of July in 1906.
William B. Ashton, who was born in England in 1821, was the oldest of the Ashton siblings surviving in 1882. He had worked in the family’s hardware store when it was ln Kenton and after it was moved to Lima. When the Ashton hardware store was sold to W.K. Boone, William Ashton moved to Rochester, Indiana, where he was involved in banking, before eventually returning to Lima to engage in the real estate business.
William Ashton lived in a house on the north side of West Market Street, just west of the Ashton Block. The Reporter described it as a “long, rambling, old-fashioned frame house with a porch along the entire front.” William Ashton died at the age of 69 in March 1891.
Before William Ashton lived in the house, it was occupied by his brother, Charles F. Ashton, who was born in England in 1823. Charles Ashton had worked as a teacher and farmer in Hardin County, where he became a licensed exhorter in the Methodist Church and eventually began the work of a traveling preacher. He was at one time pastor of Lima’s Trinity Methodist. Charles Ashton relocated to Guthrie Center, Iowa, around 1870. He died in August 1903 at 80 years of age.
The house he, and then his brother William, had occupied, eventually passed into the hands of W.K. Boone, who had purchased the Ashton hardware business years earlier. In 1899, Boone built a three-story building, known as the Boone Block on the site of the old Ashton house. Today, the city parking garage occupies the site.
Edwin Earl Ashton, born in England in 1826, was 6 years old when he arrived in America with his parents. He lived in a house on the northwest corner of Market and Elizabeth streets in “a large one and one-half or two-story frame house, peculiarly built because of the extremely tall gables,” according to the Reporter.
The father of family historian and business partner Ruth Ann Ashton, Edwin Ashton was a graduate of medicine and surgery from Western Reserve College in Cleveland. He owned and operated the Ashton Drug Store at 27 Public Square with his daughter, who was a registered pharmacist, for many years.
“A doctor’s life was different then from now,” Ruth Ann Ashton wrote in 1923. “No roads, no bridges and he often told that sometimes he’d get lost in the woods at night, take the saddle off of the horse, put it under a beech tree, turn the horse loose and sleep until morning, and many times did not eat a meal at home from Monday morning until Saturday night. He used to keep several horses of his own and at the same time carrying a key to Hume’s livery stable with the privilege of getting a horse there if he needed it in the night.” Edwin Ashton, 77, died in October 1903.
John Rudgard Ashton, like his brother Henry Ashton, was born after the family arrived in America. And, like his brother, he was a veteran of the Civil War.
John Ashton was proprietor of the Ashton Machine Shop at the corner of Market and Union streets. He also was, according to Ruth Ann Ashton, “a dealer in horses and was considered in his time the best judge of horses in the community. For twenty-five years he was the secretary of the Lima Driving Park Association.” John Ashton died in November 1897 at the age of 60.
Christopher Ashton, who shared a name with the first of the Ashton children, who died in infancy, was born in 1828 in England and had worked at one time in the family hardware business. He was the last surviving Ashton brother when he died in October 1912 at the age of 84. “Mr. Ashton was one of the old residents of Lima, having lived here forty-two years,” the Republican-Gazette wrote.
“Mrs. Eliza Bowles still survives, she being eight-five years of age,” the newspapers added. Eliza Ashton was born in 1833, after her family arrived in America. She married John Boals (or Bowles) in 1853 and lived in Mansfield. She died there in January 1917.
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