Sidney A. Blessing, manager of the West Milton Telephone Company, and local minister of the Church of the Brethren at this place, was born in Huntington county, Ind., April 7, 1868, a son of John and Sarah (Miller) Blessing. John Blessing was a member of a pioneer family of Greene county, Ohio, where his father had been an agriculturist, and was residing there when the Civil war came on. He enlisted in an Ohio infantry regiment, with which he served for eleven months, and in 1866 moved to Indiana and took up his residence in Huntington county, where he passed the remainder of his life in agricultural pursuits and was one of the highly honored, esteemed land substantial men of his locality. He married Sarah Miller, of Greene county, whose father had located at Dayton as early as 1830, and they became the parents of seven children: Frank, Edwin, Charles, Glenn, Sidney A., Lilly and Linnie Elsie. After attending the primary school at Macy, Ind., Sidney A. Blessing pursued a normal course at Mount Morris and beg an his career as a school teacher in Indiana. After eleven years of educational work, he turned his attention to agricultural pursuits, in which he was engaged from 1900 to 1903 in Ohio, and in the latter year received his introduction to the telephone business, when he built the Trotwood Telephone Exchange, in Montgomery county. This proved a great success, and Mr. Blessing next established the Liberty Exchange. In 1905 he came to West Milton and took charge of the telephone company here, which, under his management, has developed into one of the best-controlled systems in the county. Mr. Blessing is a man of much ability, with wide experience in the telephone field, and his company is giving its patrons excellent service. He is minister of the Church of the Brethren at West Milton, and in this work shows zeal, fervor and an exalted conception of spiritual matters. He has always been a helpful and constructive citizen, and during the war period contributed liberally to all movements calculated as being contributory to the success of American arms. Mr. Blessing, married Anna Belle, daughter of Newton Klepinger, of Montgomery county, Ohio, and to this union there have been born three children: Earl C., a student at Purdue University, specializing in electrical engineering; Alice, who is a student in the first year of high school at West Milton; and Mary, who died in infancy.