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MICAJAH BAILEY
Was born in Prince George County, Virginia, June 7, 1807, and died in Cincinnati, November 6, 1876.
Born of Quaker parents, and being a firm believer in their faith, he left the State of his birth in early manhood, and removed to the free State of Ohio, settling in Wilmington, in 1827. He was one of the original Abolitionists, and many a fugitive slave owes to his exertions the freedom he sought in Canada.
In Wilmington, Mr. Bailey first went into the hat business, and was successful.
He added the dry goods and general merchandise branches to his large trade, and was still successful.
These were yet too limited for his broad views of mercantile operations, and he embarked in pork-packing.
For a while he was successful; but reverses came, and he left 'Wilmington for Cincinnati, with nothing but a good character and business qualifications, in the year 1844.
He embarked in business as a provision broker, which he followed, with varying successes and misfortunes. At the time of his death, although not possessed of much of this world's goods,
he was universally respected and esteemed by the merchants of Cincinnati;, and it might be said that his word was as good as his bond.
It was not alone in the line of business that Mr. Bailey was honored.
His boundless charities, his self-denying efforts to alleviate the sorrows and afflictions of his fellow-men, made him beloved wherever he was known, and that was almost everywhere. Possessed of a fair knowledge, of the science of medicine, which he had studied in his youth, he was ever on
hand at the sick-bed with his counsel and his free services as nurse.
When the cholera broke out in 1849, he was untiring in his efforts to help the destitute and needy. Day and night he was nursing and attending the wants of those too poor to pay the necessary expense of hired nurses. After the epidemic abated in this city, and broke out in Sandusky, Mr. Bailey was a volunteer to go to that city, at his own expense, to nurse the sick, and give the terrified citizens the benefit of his counsels and experience. During the cholera seasons of 1852 and 1866, Mr. Bailey pursued the same praiseworthy .course, and people now live to bless him for his heroic exertions, and mourn his. death. During the war he was a prominent and effective member of the Sanitary Commission, and was instrumental in alleviating much suffering in the field hospitals by his personal presence.
He was always a consistent member of the Orthodox Society of Friends, and regularly attended public worship at the
meeting-house corner of Eighth and Mound Streets, of which congregation he was one of the
pillars. It was said of him yesterday, that had he died twenty years ago, when his name and his fame for charitable deeds were in the mouths of everybody no one could have. died more regretted or could so little have been
spared. Having passed the meridian of life, and grown in the course of nature unable to take such active part in charities as formerly, except in the immediate locality of his own home, he goes to the grave remembered by hundreds who have been the recipients of his bounty a quarter of a century ago, and revered and beloved by those who have been intimate with him in his later years.
Mr. Bailey was twice married. His last wife survives him.. One of his sons, David H. Bailey, is American Consul-general to China; another son lives in California. One of his daughters
is the wife of Joseph Gest, of the firm of Gest & Atkinson; another the wife of C. G. Gode, Esq.; another daughter, a widow, lives in Wilmington.
Besides these, he has three younger children at home.
Source: In Memoriam
Cincinnati 1881, Cincinnati, A. E. Jones, Publisher, 1881.
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