Brundage-Rule Families Pioneers in Seneca County
One of the earliest settlers of Seneca County was the Rule family who settled on the Twp. Line road dividing Pleasant Township from Adams Township just off Route 101. It is a pleasant spot on a hill with Sugar Creek running through it. In l842, the first home on this spot was built by Gilbert Gittenger as a two story log cabin, with two rooms up and two rooms down plus a separate kitchen. Before the Civil War this house was bought by Daniel C. Rule, who was born in 1816. Since that time there have been six generations of Rules or Brundages farming that land.
Daniel C. Rule was a strong supporter of Heidelberg College when it opened in l850. In return for his donation, he was given a certificate that stated that he and all his descendants could go to Heidelberg tuition free. His name is on the roster for a course when the college first opened. We don’t know how many descendants were able to use the certificate.
He had two sons, Byron and Isaac. It was possible in those days to pay another person to go to the army in a son’s place, so Daniel Rule paid for Byron. Isaac decided to join the 101st Ohio Volunteer Infantry and was killed at the Battle of Chicamaunga. His remains were brought back home and are buried in Pleasant Ridge Cemetery.
Byron Rule married a widow, Matilda Dodge York, whose first husband had died of illness while homesteading in Kansas. She was a teacher at Pleasant Ridge School during the Civil War. One of Matilda’s students used to bring a newspaper to school each day from Watson’s Station so that they could read news of the Civil War After she married Byron Rule, she managed the household and they had a daughter, Jennie. The farm prospered and they sold many cattle to the government to feed the Confederate prisoners at Johnson Island Prison. In later years they benefited from the Lake Erie and Mad River Railroad, which ran from Sandusky to the Mad River where a canal took the cattle to the Ohio River.
The daughter, Jennie, married Eugene Brundage from Melmore. Byron died around l900 and Matilda married a third time to Amos Keller who had a mill up at St. John’s Bridge.
Robert Rule Brundage, the son of Eugene and Jennie, was the father of the present generation of Brundages, John , who lives on the home place and also, Robert, who lives on a farm joining it in Adams Township. This farm, too, was bought by Daniel Rule. Their sister, Jane Brundage Wickham, lives in Tiffin. Their youngest sister, Mary, died when she was an adult, leaving three children. Altogether, 16 of their grandfathers are buried in Pleasant Ridge Cemetery.
Their father, Robert Rule Brundage, went to Officer’s Training School at Heidelberg during World War I . He was able to catch a train from the college and ride it to Watson’s Station, then walk two miles to his home off Route 101. The war was over before he could be commissioned. In December, l927, he married Gretta Sherman who was raised a mile away.
They drove a Model T Ford all the way to Florida on their honeymoon trip. In those days the mountains in Kentucky seemed tall, and the roads were rutted. They were glad of the high carriage of their car and the fact that others with lower chassis had smoothed out the ridge in the middle. Robert Rule Brundage took his father, Eugene and drove to Florida two other times.
The Brundage children walked about a mile to a one room school between Paul and Steve Buskirk’s house on Route 101. Jane completed the second grade there and went to Clinton School the rest of her elementary years.
The land near Sugar Creek was called Gypsy Hollow because in the twenties gypsies used to camp there with their painted wagons and horses. They were quarantined once because of diphtheria. The Brundages sold them eggs and hay for their horses.
Some of the neighbors traded horses with the gypsies. One neighbor felt that he had really bested the gypsy man he bought a pony from only to find that it refused to cross a bridge under any circumstances.
When the Brundage children were small, their grandfather still used horses to work the fields. They are proud that their father, Robert Rule Brundage, had the first combine in Seneca County. The farm was mechanized in other ways. Rule Brundage stripped down a truck to its wheels and driver’s seat and fixed a buck rake to it. After the hay was in windrows, he could back up to it, lift a load and then drive forward and carry it to the barn.
Because of the long association of the family with Heidelberg College, Jane Brundage bought a mantle clock that had belonged to President Williard who was president of Heidelberg from l866 to l890. Rule Brundage thought it should be returned to the college and he gave it to Terry Wickham, president of the college in the fifties and sixties. The clock stayed in the president’s office where it had to be wound every day through President Fishel’s term to President Cassel’s term. President Cassell decided that it should be returned to Professor Bill Wickham, Terry’s son, and it stayed in Bill’s office until it was given to him at his retirement. It has a very nice quick chime and it sits on the mantle in the Wickham home.
– Percy and Mary