Probably Huntington’s most famous son is Myron T. Herrick. He was born here in 1854 and lived in the township until he was 12 years old. His home and birthplace was a log house built by his grandfather who came from New York State to Huntington in those early years. It stood on the “old Tim Herrick farm” one mile north and two miles east of Huntington center.
Myron T. Herrick was a lawyer banker and Governor of Ohio from 1904 to 1906. Twice he was appointed Ambassador to France; first in 1912 serving three years and second in 1921 until his death in 1929. He was a national hero to the French people, who had grown to love him. In his biography is an interesting account of his visit to the little town where he was born and spent his early boyhood. As Ambassador, Herrick was serving in France at the time of Charles Lindburgh’s famous solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
"He was very fond of explaining what a hard time a rich man's son has in trying to accomplish something real in life: everything is made too easy for him, he would say, even including his education. It may well be that without the vicissitudes of his early manhood, without the discipline of his struggle for a livelihood, the natural sweetness of Mr. Herrick's nature, his love for mankind, his intense dislike of hurting any human being, might have diverted him from the rocky path of high accomplishment. He would always have been loved and lovable; but without the rough spur of adversity, he might have been halted in his climb to those heights from which the rays of his exquisite kindliness have reached to so vast a company of his fellow beings."
~ T. Bentley Mott
Myron Herrick Friend of France, An Autobiographical Biography by Col. T. Bentley Mott
