Samuel Bittinger

    Samuel Bittinger is a native of Franklin County, Penn.; was born April 28, 1838, and is one of six living children in a family of nine born to Jacob and Sally (Garnes) Bittinger. At the age of thirteen years, in company with a friend, Augustus Oler, he preceded his parents on a visit to his mother's relatives in Northern Ohio. Instead of returning to Pennsylvania, he and his friend on their arrival at La Fayette took an inventory of their resources, and found only 25 cents between them and starvation. They replenished their purses for the time by husking corn on the Wea Plains.

    For two years he was engaged in farm work, but in 1853 came to Warren County, where he taught school for two terms and farmed in Medina Township until he had acquired sufficient means to embark in the grocery trade in a small way at Poolsville, now Green Hill. He discontinued merchandising in 1859, and started West on a prospecting tour. The spring of 1865, after he had returned, he enlisted in Company I, One Hundred and Fifty-fourth Indiana Volunteer Infantry. At the close of the war, he returned to his home in Medina Township, followed farming, and served as Township Trustee and Assessor until 1874, when he was elected Treasurer of Warren County, and re-elected, serving in all four years.

    Since that time, he has been engaged in the grocery and provision traffic in Williamsport, and is now looking after that and his farming interests in this county. Mr. Bittinger began poor, and has acquired about 800 acres of land in Warren County and other valuable property through his own exertions.

    He is a member of the Masonic fraternity, in which he has ascended to the Knight Templar Degree. In politics, he is Republican. Was married in Warren County to Mary E. Fenton, to their union having been born three children - Wallace, Oscar and Jessie.

Source: Counties of Warren, Benton, Jasper and Newton, Indiana. Historical and Biographical. F.A. Battey & Co., 1883.