JOHN DUER, the owner of farming land in Shelby County, Ohio, and 145 acres of well improved land in Brown Township, Miami County, on which he resides, is a substantial and representative man of this section. He was born December 1, 1845, in Clark County , Ohio, and is a son of Joshua A. and Sarah (Fryback) Duer. John Duer can claim Revolutionary ancestry, his great-grandfather, William Anderson, serving under General Washington, with the rank of colonel. The paternal grandfather, William Duer, was born in Pennsylvania and died there, but his widow accompanied her son to Ohio and died in Fletcher, Miami County, when aged eighty-six years.

Joshua A. Duer was born in Bucks County, Penna., and came to Warren County, Ohio, in 1830, one year later moving to Fletcher, Miami County, later to South Charleston, Ohio, after which he returned to Fletcher, and in 1837 bought the farm now owned by his son, John Duer. He was a blacksmith and followed this trade for some twenty- five years, and he was also a farmer and the remainder of his life was passed either on the farm or in Fletcher. He died on the farm at the age of eighty years and three months. He married Sarah Fryback, who lived to be eighty-four years old. They had ten children born to them, as follows: Samuel, who died at the age of thirteen years; George W., deceased; William A., who lives in Indiana; Susannah and Charlotte, both deceased; John; E. F., who lives in Cleveland; James T., who lives in Miami County; Frank, and an infant, the former of whom died when aged nineteen years and the latter at birth.

John Duer was four weeks old when his parents moved from Clark County to Fletcher, Miami County, and he was educated in the Brown Township schools and at New Hope, up to the age of seventeen years, and then attended the Piqua High School for three months during the winters of 1863-4 and 1865. During the winters of 1865-6 and 1867 he taught school, but after that he devoted about all of his attention to agricultural pursuits, beginning on the old home farm, from which he moved later just across the road, and two and one half years afterward, to his farm in Shelby County, on which he resided for thirty-three years. On December 13, 1906, he came back to the homestead. He had improved his Shelby County property with excellent buildings and in 1906 erected a comfortable residence on his Brown Township place and is making preparations to do more building. A part of Mr. Duer's farm possesses great historic interest. It was formerly owned by Colonel Munsel and county annals tell of the notable gathering of men, around the old spring, on this farm, to discuss the acquisition of the Northwest Territory, the final decision of which brought about such momentous results. The old spring still bubbles up its clear, sweet, cold water, never, in all these years, having failed.

On June 18, 1868, Mr. Duer was married to Miss Mary E. Worthington, a daughter of George M. Worthington, and they have two children: Walter and Clyde. The former resides at Troy, married Helen Cook, of Piqua, and they have two children: Elsie and John C. Clyde resides on his father's farm of eighty acres in Shelby County. He married Sarah Wilgus, daughter of E. J.Wilgus, and they have one daughter, Dorothy. Mr. and Mrs. Duer are members of the Christian Church, of which he has been clerk for twenty-three years. Politically he is a Prohibitionist, and while living in Greene Township, Shelby County, served six years as clerk and one year as trustee.