1820 - 1862
From "Sebewa Recollector," Bulletin of the Sebewa Center Association, Vol. 34, Apr 1999, No. 5
Henry R. Probasco was born in New Jersey in 1820 and moved with the family to Ohio when still a small boy. He grew up in Huron Co., OH, and married Mary C. Raymond, born in New York City, daughter of Alanson Raymond, an extensive manufacturer of hats, who had stores in several cities. Alanson Raymond, in company with the father of Gen William Tecumseh Sherman, went from New York to Ohio and formed a colony in Huron County called Sherman Township.Henry R. Probasco became well-to-do in Ohio as a meat packer, but during the panic of the early 1850s he lost practically all he had. He then determined to start over again in a new country and in 1856 drove a team & wagon, with his family, to Sebewa Township where his brothers had located, and later moved to Muir in Lyons Township. The family trade was cooperage, and they seem to have had a corner on the market for flour barrels, wash tubs, and water buckets in Sebewa and Lyons Townships and perhaps all of Ionia County (MI). About 1859 Henry R. opened a meat market at Muir and continued in that business until his untimely death at age 42, due to a steam-engine blow-up at a sawmill. He left seven children, of whom Jacob O. Probasco was next to the oldest son, just 18 years, and recently enlisted when his father died on November 12, 1862. Mary C. Probasco survived until August, 1874.
