Isaiah Pillars was a teacher, lawyer and, in the years after the Civil War, a prosecuting attorney, state representative and Ohio attorney general. He could also deliver an entertaining speech, which he did in Lima on the Fourth of July in 1877.
Pillars, a Democrat who had just been elected Ohio attorney general, delivered an appropriately patriotic speech in his hometown, which when reprinted in full the following day in the Allen County Democrat covered two-thirds of the front page.
Not surprisingly, the newspaper loved it.
“Every thought is clearly expressed, every period smooth and well rounded, and the entire matter is calm and statesman-like,” the newspaper gushed. “Col. Pillars has been a calm and intelligent student of the history, government and laws of our country, and no one was better fitted to perform intelligently and profitably the duties of orator of the day than he.”
Pillars’ journey to Allen County and political prominence began more than 200 miles to the east in Jefferson County, where he was born March 17, 1833, the son of Pennsylvania natives Samuel and Charlotte Potts Pillars.
“His father, Samuel Pillars was a carpenter, never rich in this world’s goods,” according to a history of the county published in 1885. “During Isaiah’s childhood the family lived in Carroll County, Ohio, thence moved to the village of Risden (now a part of Fostoria), where the mother died when our subject was eight years old, and from that on, his life was that of a poor boy thrown among comparative strangers.”
Pillars would later write that his father, unable to care for the children, “scattered them to the four winds where they lived with strangers.”
In 1842, Pillars was sent to live in Shawnee Township with Benjamin Davison and his wife, Sidney, who was known throughout the township as “Aunt Sidney.” Benjamin Davison “was of austere disposition and one of the extreme old-time Presbyterians,” Pillars told a reunion of Shawnee Township’s pioneer families in 1891. “To have any amusement on Sunday, even to whistle or to laugh, to him was sacrilegious.”
Aunt Sidney, however, “was of a different disposition,” Pillars recalled. “She was a woman of a very emotional nature, and one of the kindest and most affectionate dispositions. She was even more than a mother to me. She had passed through much affliction and knew how to sympathize with others.”
Around the age of 15, Pillars walked back to Seneca County, where his eldest brother, James, was an attorney.
“At the age of sixteen,” according to the 1885 history, “he commenced teaching school, and by industry and application prepared himself for an academic course, beginning in the Seneca County Academy … and finishing at Heidelberg College, Tiffin, Ohio.”
Pillars then apprenticed in the law office of his brother and was admitted to the Ohio Bar when he was not quite 21 years old.
Pillars returned to Lima in 1855 to begin his law practice. He married the former Susan O. Fickel, of Lima, on Feb. 7, 1856, her 19th birthday. The couple had three sons, James, who would figure prominently in the creation of the Allen County Historical Society; Pearl, who died in infancy in 1861; and Stuart, who moved to Toledo and died in 1948.
A daughter named Theodora died of consumption (tuberculosis) at the age of 24. She was “of rare beauty” and “will be lamented, as she was loved, by everyone who knew her,” Lima’s Daily Democratic Times wrote in her February 1889 obituary.
In the late 1850s, the Pillars family settled into a one-and-a-half-story frame octagonal house, which stood on the south side of the 100 block of West Market Street on a lot that stretched to West Spring Street.
After the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Ohio Gov. David Tod appointed Pillars commandant of Camp Lima with the rank of colonel. During the late summer and fall of 1862, under Pillars’ supervision, the 81st, 99th and 118th regiments of Ohio Volunteer Infantry were organized at Camp Lima, which stood on the south bank of the Ottawa River near Kibby Street.
Following the war, in 1866, Pillars was elected prosecuting attorney of Allen County on the Democratic ticket. According to an 1880 book of biographies of prominent Ohioans, Pillars had been a member of the Republican Party until 1864 when, “for reasons satisfactory to himself, he abandoned it, and allied himself with the Democratic party, of which he has ever since been a warm and active adherent.”
In February 1870, 14 years after their wedding, Pillars’ wife Susan died at the age of 33 of “hemorrhage of the lungs.” His wife’s death, according to the county history, “was a crushing blow, from which he but slowly rallied.”
Pillars, who was 36 at the time, never remarried. He suffered another blow in 1871 when a fire at his Market Street home destroyed much of his beloved book collection along with a valuable law library.
That same year, Pillars was elected to the Ohio General Assembly. During his two-year term he “vigorously resisted a proposed measure for levying a tax for the purpose of railroad construction,” according to the county history, which added that “the wisdom of his course was afterward sustained by the supreme court that pronounced the measure unconstitutional.”
Pillars also wrote a minority report in favor of abolishing capital punishment, arguing it was “a relic of the laws of revenge and retaliation.”
Pillars did not seek re-election to the Ohio House, but he was not done with public office. In June 1877, the Cincinnati Enquirer suggested that Pillars, “whose name was presented to the Convention two years ago for nomination as Attorney General, is again suggested as a suitable candidate for that position.”
Back home, the Democrat, which reprinted the Enquirer article, hopped on board.
“This portion of Ohio has not been forward in urging her prominent Democrats for position, and while we claim nothing on the basis of locality alone, where the person suggested possesses large fitness, ability and solid qualifications, these we think make the suggestion of his name merit consideration, and a recognition of our section and its public men which has scarcely been sufficiently accorded in the past,” the Democrat wrote.
Pillars was elected, defeating Republican George K. Nash. He lost to Nash when he sought re-election in 1879 and returned to Lima and his law practice when his term ended in 1880.
In July 1889, shortly after the death of Theodora, Pillars sailed from New York aboard the steamship Pennland for a trip to Europe. He kept in touch with home through chatty letters published in the Lima Daily Times.
“The sea has been remarkably pleasant so far, but of course there has been more or less pitching of the boat, which resulted in fully three-fourths of the passengers sick the second and third days,” he reported in a letter printed Aug 12, 1889, “among whom was your correspondent. If any of the readers of this were ever thoroughly seasick, then they know what a horribly indescribable feeling it is.”
Pillars died September 13, 1895, at the age of 62.
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