ASHTABULA COUNTY OHIO 
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Transcribed by Cherre Loftus Flynn.

THE HISTORY OF ASHTABULA COUNTY, OHIO
        WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES
           OF ITS PIONEERS AND MOST PROMINENT MEN
           Published in Philadelphia by Williams Brothers in 1878

  "GILES HOOKER COWLES, son of Dr. E. W. and Almira M. Cowles, and
  grandson of Rev. Dr. Giles H. Cowles, was born in the year 1819 in Brownhelm,
  Ohio.  His boyhood days were spent in Mantua, where his parents lived for several
  years, and with his grandfather in Austinburg.  In 1832 he moved with his parents
  to Cleveland, and in 1833 he finished his education with the Rev. Samuel Bissel,
  preceptor of the Twinsburg Academy.  In 1834 he first went into business by
  serving as a clerk in the drugstore of the late Dr. B.S. Lyman, in Cleveland;
  afterwards he went into the employ of Mr. Orlando Cutter, an auction and
  commission merchant of that city.  Young as he was he gave evidence of
  extraordinary business ability, and at the age of eighteen Mr. Cutter took him in as
  a partner.  In 1839, owing to having a hemorrhage of the lungs, young Cowles was
  obliged to dissove his conection with Mr. Cutter and travel to Texas for his health.
   In 1840 he returned to his home in Cleveland, apparently in improved health, but
  the insidious disease he was afflicted with, consumption, soon undermined it, and
  in spite of the best medical skill and the tireless nursing of the most affectionate of
  mothers, he passed away, April 2, 1842, aged twenty-three years.  As his soul left
  its early tenement, his loving aunt, Miss Cornelia R. Cowles, sat by his side, while
  she sang to him in her angelic tones that beautiful hym commencing with these
  lines:
  "What's this that steals, that steals o'er my frame?  Is it death, is it death?"

  Of all the children of Dr. E.W. Cowles, Giles was endowed with the most natural
  talent, and was considered the flower of that group.  With a fine conversational
  power for one so young, he had a business talent that was regarded by all who
  knew him as being very extraordinary.  Said the later Mr. Cutter, "Giles Cowles
  was the smartest young man that I ever came in contact with, a young man of
  honor and integrity, and had he only lived and enjoyed good health, he would have
  been one of the wealthiest men of the country."

  Young as he was, he proved himself to be worthy of the name he bore, that of his
  estimable grandfather."