The Cobbs have maintained for themselves a high reputation for honesty, fair dealing, and courtesy in business, and in this way have secured prosperity. The trade that, when they first took it, amounted to about $25,000 a year, had grown, in 1868, to over $200,000. The qualities that gained for the head of the firm so many valuable business friends, was shared in by his brothers, and these again impressed them on the young men brought up under their control. The result is seen in the large number of customers frequenting the store daily, and in the extensive wholesale trade done. A. G. Colwell. Mr. Colwell is a native of Madison county, New York, and came to Cleveland in 1852, soon after the opening of the different railroads had given the city an important start in the road to prosperity. Mr. Colwell immediately engaged in the hardware trade, on Ontario street, where he has continued to the present day. As the city grew in size, and its area of commerce extended, the business of Mr. Colwell steadily increased. The retail trade gradually developed into wholesale, and this grew into important proportions, pushing its ramifications through northern Ohio, Michigan, and north-western Pennsylvania. Mr. Colwell has attended closely to his business, taking no other interest in public affairs than is the duty of every good citizen. But whilst carefully conducting his business he has found time for the gratification of a cultivated taste in literature, and has taken pleasure in participating in every movement designed to foster a similar taste in others. In a recent tour in Europe, undertaken for the benefit of his health, he visited the principal points of literary and artistic interest, and brought back with him many rare and curious souvenirs of travel. William Bingham. Whilst few men, if there are any, in the city of Cleveland are more highly respected than William Bingham, there are none less desirous of notoriety in any form. To do his duty to himself, his family, and his fellow men, and to do it quietly and unobtrusively, is the extent of Mr. Bingham's ambition, so far as can be judged by the whole tenor of his life. Did the matter rest with him, no notice of him would have appeared in this work, but to omit him would be a manifest injustice, and would at the same time render the volume imperfect.