USA > Illinois > Macon County > History of Macon County, Illinois : with illustrations descriptive of its scenery, and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 37
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of which were manufactured and sold. The machines worked well, but their construction on a successful scale required a large amount of capital, and for this reason they were never made extensively. He returned to this State in 1859.
His next invention was a two horse corn-planter, the manufacture of which he began at Mechanicsburg, in 1860. In 1861, he manu- factured these machines at Decatur, to which place his father had removed in 1857, and then went to Springfield, where he was engaged in their manufacture till 1870, with Jolin C. Lamb as his partner. The patents which he obtained arc still used by other makers of corn-planters. While manufacturing the corn- planters, he had seen the necessity for some invention to regulate by machinery the dropping of the corn from the planter, and in 1866, began experimenting with a view of meeting this difficulty. These experiments resulted in the Haworth Check Rower, completed in 1869. This was the first Check Rower cver invented, and at once gave great satisfaction. In the fall of 1869, he formed a partnership with his father, Mahlon Haworth, and his brothers, L. L. and James W. Haworth, and began the manufacture of the check rowers. Three hundred (300) were sold during the season of 1870. The next year the sales increased to two thousand, and each succeeding year the demand has been greater. The Haworth manufacturing establishment is one of the features of Decatur, and has contributed largely to its celebrity as a manu- facturing centre. Both wire and rope Check Rowers are manufac- tured. Various improvements have been made since their first invention, and great care is taken in their construction in which only simple principles are involved. The great saving of time, labor and expense to the farmer has made their use very popular and during the last few seasons the number sold has been limited only by the capacity to manufacture them.
His first marriage occurred at Springfield, in June, 1863, to Miss Kizzie McCandless, daughter of Robert McCandless. She was born near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Her death took place in 1870.
His present wife, to whom he was married on the 27th of December, 1876, was formerly Miss Mary E. Grunendike. She was born in Monroe county, New York, near the city of Rochester. Her father, Capt. Reuben A. Grunendike, was a native of the same county, and removed to Illinois in 1861. Mrs. Haworth, previous to her marriage, was a very successful teacher in the schools of Decatur. Mr. Haworth has led the quiet life of a private citizen, and has never taken any active part in publie affairs. He is, however, known as a man of the highest personal character and as a liberal and public-spirited citizen. While his genius for invention has brought him wealth he has used it with no illiberal hand. He has done his part toward giving Decatur a reputation as a city of fine residences, and both to private charities and public enterprises he has been a generous contributor. His views on religious subjects are liberal and pro- gressive, and differ somewhat from the doctrines maintained by the orthodox denominations. From his father, who was an early anti-slavery man, and was called an "abolitionist" in the days when that term was a synonym of unpopularity, he inherited views in opposition to slavery which attached him to the Republican party from its first foundation. Amid the cares of a busy life he has found time to indulge his natural tastes for literature. While he has never sought distinction nor cared to come into public promi- nence, his name deserves mention as one of that class who have been of the greatest benefit to the West in revolutionizing agricul- ture and placing in the hands of the tiller of the soil, instead of the slow and laborious implements of fifty years ago, machinery which enables one man to do the work of ten.
138
HISTORY OF MACON COUNTY, ILLINOIS.
Anthony Thornton
JUDGE ANTHONY THORNTON was born in Bourbon county, Ken tucky, on the ninth of November, 1814. He is descended from an English family. His great-great-grandfather emigrated from Eng- Jand to Virginia. In Caroline county, of the Old Dominion, mem- bers of the family lived for two or three generations. His father, Anthony Thornton, was born in that county, was raised there, and married Mary Towles, a native of the same county, and also con- nected with an old Virginia family. In the year 1807, Judge Thornton's father and grandfather removed from Virginia to Kell- tucky. The colony, including the members of the family and the negro servants, numbered in all ninety-nine persons On their arrival in Kentucky, they settled in Bourbon county, where his parents resided till their death.
The early years of Judge Thornton's life were spent in his native county. He first attended the common schools. At the age of fourteen or fifteen he was sent to a high school at Gallatin, Ten- nessee, where he remained two years. He then entered Centre College at Danville, Kentucky, and subsequently became a student in Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, from which he graduated in the fall of 1834. He studied law at Paris, Kentucky, in the office of an uncle, John R. Thornton, and was licensed to practice by the Kentucky Court of Appeals before he was twenty-two. In October, 1836, he passed through Illinois, on his way to Missouri; he in- tended to make his home in the latter state. Stopping at Shelby- ville, to visit some relatives, he concluded to give up his project of settling in Missouri and establish himself in the practice of the law at Shelbyville. In November, 1836, he opened an office. He was favored with success from the very start, and during the first year had as much business as he cared to attend to in the courts of Shelby and adjoining counties. In those days all the lawyers of
any prominence traveled twice a year over the circuit. A com- pany of ten or fifteen generally made the round together, and their social habits commonly made the journey far from an unpleasant one. Law-books were scarce ; only a few text-books were in exist- ence, and the reports were meager in comparison with the great numbers which now crowd the shelves of every legal library. The young lawyer was in consequence compelled to thoroughly under- stand the principles of law and adapt his facts to them-a training which produced able and ready lawyers. Judge Thornton's pro- gress was rapid. He soon obtained a high standing at the bar, and was usually retained in all cases of importance. He practiced by himself till 1858. He resided at Shelbyville till November, 1879, when he became a resident of Decatur .. He is now a member of the law-firm of Thornton, Eldridge & Hostetler, at Decatur.
He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1848, which framed the second constitution of the State of Illinois. In 1850 he was elected a member of the Sixteenth General Assembly. At that time the questions connected with the building of railroads through the state assumed great importance, and Judge Thornton, though a whig, was sent to the legislature from a democratic dis- trict, as a warm friend of the railroads, and in favor of the state granting the lands given by the general government to build the Illinois Central Railroad to private individuals who should under- take the construction of the road, instead of the state itself. In 1862 he was elected a member of the constitutional convention which held its sessions in the winter of 1862-3. During the rebel- lion he occupied the position of a war-democrat, and in various speeches sustained the government in its efforts to break down the rebellion and preserve the Union. In the autumn of 1864 he was elected to the Thirty-ninth Congress, and took his seat in March
139
HISTORY OF MACON COUNTY, ILLINOIS.
1865, just as the war was being brought to a close. He was ap- pointed a member of the committee on claims, and performed muchi arduous labor, the committee being obliged to report on a vast number of claims presented immediately after the close of the war. He was renominated, but, though his election would have been beyond question, he declined becoming a candidate, preferring to practice his profession. He served on the supreme bench of Illinois from July, 1870, to June, 1873. During that period the supreme court liad before it an immense amount of business, which required uninterrupted and laborious attention. Litigation was then at its height. The dockets were enormously large, and the position of supreme judge involved an immense amount of continuous labor. He resigned to resume his practice.
It is scarcely necessary to speak of Judge Thornton's character- istics as a lawyer, for his name has long been familiar to the bar of this state. His great industry has made him thoroughly acquainted with the learning of the law, and his natural abilities long since gave him a commanding position in his profession. A strong liking for legal work, and especially for the trial of a case in court, has made the practice of the law, to him, a pleasant and congenial occupation. He has great strength as an advocate. While on the supreme bench, he was regarded as one of its ablest members. He was first married, in 1850, to Mildred Thornton, who died in 1856. His marriage to Kate Smith, of Shelby county, occurred in 1866. He has had four children, of whom three are living.
KILBURN H. ROBY,
ONE of the oldest members of the Macon county bar, was born at Mont Vernon, in Hillsborough county, New Hampshire, on the 2d of September, 1837. The ancestors both of his father and mother were early settlers of Massachusetts, emigrating to that colony from England. Soon after the Revolutionary war his great grand- father, Jolın Roby, removed from Chelmsford, Massachusetts, to Hillsborough county, New Hampshire, then a wild and frontier country. Members of the family have resided in that part of New Hampshire ever since. John Roby, the grandfather of the subject of this sketch, was born in New Hampshire, where he lived till his death, at the age of eighty. He was a man of some pecu- liar traits of character, and had a remarkable memory. He could repeat from memory a great portion of the Bible. Mr. Roby's father, Clinton Roby, was born in New Hampshire in 1808; in 1834 he married Miss Lois Harwood, who was born in the year 1811, in Hillsborough county, New Hampshire, and was descended from an old New England family of English origin, which had settled early in Massachusetts. A branch of the Harwood family removed to New Hampshire on the first settlement of that state.
Kilburn H. Roby was the youngest of two children. The farm on which he was born was his home until he was twenty years of age. His education was principally obtained at the Appleton Academy in his native town of Mont Vernon, and at the Northfield Seminary, an institution under the care of the Methodist church at Northfield (now Tilton), New Hampshire. These schools were thorough and efficient, and gave educational advantages of a supe- rior character. Having determined on making his home in the West, he left New Hampshire in the spring of 1858, and came to this state. He spent the succeeding summer at Quincy, and in the fall secured a position as teacher of a school in Marion county. During the two years he lived in Marion county he was chiefly en- gaged in teaching school, though in 1859 he began the study of law, at first under the direction of John P. Reynolds, formerly an able member of the Cincinnati bar and now a resident of Chicago.
Mr. Roby was afterward in the office of Bryan & Schaeffer, at Salem, Illinois.
In September, 1860, he came to Decatur and entered the law office of Tupper & Nelson. In August, 1861, he enlisted in com- pany A, 40th Regiment Illinois Infantry. During his four months' service he was stationed at St. Louis, Cairo and Paducah, and at the latter place was discharged on account of sickness. Returning to Decatur he resumed the study of the law, and was admitted to the bar in the spring of 1862. Mr. Tupper, of the firm of Tupper & Nelson, soon afterward entered the army, and Mr. Roby went into partnership with William E. Nelson, with whom he was asso- ciated about fifteen years. The partnership was terminated by the election of Judge Nelson to the bench in 1877. He is now senior member of the firm of Roby, Outten & Vail, one of the best known and most successful of the legal copartnerships of Decatur. He began practice at Decatur with nothing on which to rely except his own energies. His thoroughi knowledge of the law and a sound and comprehensive judgment on legal questions, have given him the reputation of a safe adviser and an able counsellor.
He was married on the 1st of December, 1863, to Miss Annie Haworth, a native of Clinton county, Ohio. By this marriage there have been seven children, of whom six are now living. In his political sympathies he has favored the Republican party. His first vote for President was cast for Lincoln in 1860. Though sincere in his convictions as a Republican, he has taken little active part in politics. The only public office he ever held was that of clerk and attorney of the city of Decatur, a position which he occupied for two years.
DR. SAMUEL McBRIDE,
WHO has practiced medicine at Decatur since July, 1855, is a native of Pike county, Ohio, and was born on the 17th of December, 1822. His ancestors emigrated from Scotland to the North of Ire- land and from there to America. His father, William McBride, was born in Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, in 1777, and his mother, Letitia McBride, in Westmoreland county, in the same state, near Greensburg. Shortly after their marriage his parents moved to Ohio. From Marietta, their first stopping-place, they tra- veled through the wilderness on foot to Ross county, where they settled in what is known as the Cat Tail swamp. This was about the year 1796 or 1798. They afterward removed to the Beach Flats, near the Sun Fish mountains, in Pike county. When the war with Great Britain broke out, in 1812, Dr. McBride's father volunteered and served under Gen. McArthur in the cam- paign against the British and Indians. The country in which Mr. McBride was raised was hilly and mountainous, but was old-settled, and had good common schools, which he attended, as he did also the Salem Academy. He began the study of medicine, and in 1849 was a student at the Starling Medical College at Columbus, Ohio. According to the old custom with young physicians, he began practice before graduation, locating at Jasper, Pike county, Ohio, on the Scioto river, between Chillicothe and Portsmouth. In the winter of 1851-2 he took his last course of lectures at the Starling Medical College, from which he graduated on the 20th of Febru- ary, 1852. In 1855 he removed to Decatur and established himself in practice as a physician. He was married in September, 1867, to Miss Lida Fariss, of Mt. Pleasant, Iowa. He is a man of studi- ous habits, and throughout his life has been a great reader. He has been a democrat in his political belief, as was his father before him, who supported the democratic party from the time of Jef- ferson.
140
HISTORY OF MACON COUNTY, ILLINOIS.
S.S. Laks.
EDITOR and proprietor of the Decatur Review, is of Scotch-Irish descent. He was born in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, October seventeenth, 1836. His ancestors settled in North Caro- lina at a period previous to the Revolutionary war. John Jack, one of the early members of the family in this country, was presi- dent of the celebrated Mecklenburg Convention which met in North Carolina in 1775, and declared that the colonies ought to be independent of Great Britain. Mr. Jack's grandfather, John Jack, was an early resident of the Cumberland valley in Pennsyl- vania. He moved further west in 1768, settling in Westmoreland county, then the extreme frontier of that state. The same year he received a patent for a piece of land situated forty miles from Pittsburg. This tract of land remained in the family one hundred years, and during that time was in the ownership of only two persons, Mr. Jack's father and grandfather. John Jack was a soldier in the war of the Revolution, and was wounded in a skirmish near Philadelphia. Joseph Jack, father of the subject of this sketch, was born in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, and was one of thirteen children, of whom all grew to maturity and with one exception, married and had families. Joseph Jack mar- ried Sarah Nealay Słoan, who was born in Adams county, Pennsyl- vania, on a farm which subsequently formed part of the battle- field of Gettysburg. He served in the war of the rebellion as colonel of the 168th Pennsylvania regiment.
Samuel Sloan Jack was raised in Westmoreland county, Penn- sylvania. He attended Elder's Ridge Academy, in Indiana county, and Sewickley Academy in Westmoreland county, and also for a time was a student in Jefferson College. At the age of twenty he took charge of one of the common-schools in his native county, and subsequently was employed as a teacher in the Sewickley, Academy. When twenty-three years old he was elected superin- tendent of schools of Westmoreland county, and at the time of his election was the youngest person in the state who occupied that
position. He had charge of about three hundred schools, and filled the office for six years. During the years 1867 and 1868 he was employed in doing county institute work under the direction of the state school department. In 1868 he was elected professor of the English language and literature, in the Keystone Normal School in Berks county, Pennsylvania. Rejecting an offer of the princi- palship of the California Normal School in Washington county, Pennsylvania, he came West in 1869, and in 1870 became principal of the Decatur high-school, which was under his care for a year.
For the last ten years he has performed considerable journalistic work for newspapers in Decatur. In 1876 he purchased the material used in the publication of the Magnet and Tribune, and established the Decatur Times, a daily and weekly journal. In July, 1880, he became the proprietor of the Decatur Review, the only Democratic paper published in Macon county, which he has conducted in a vigorous and popular manner. His marriage oc- curred in March, 1868, to Josephine McKce, of Fayette county, Pennsylvania. He has four children, all boys.
In his politics he has always been a democrat. He has been unwavering and constant in his advocacy of the principles of democracy, and has been of no little service to the democratic organization in Macon county. In 1874 he was elected as a demo- crat on a Fusion ticket, to the Twenty-ninth General Assembly, where he discharged his duties as representative, in so satisfactory a manner that in 1876 he was re-elected. The position he occu- pied in the Thirtieth General Assembly was peculiarly important. He exercised much influence in securing the election of David Davis to the United States Senate, to succeed John A. Logan. He was one of the original six who favored the election of Davis at the commencement of the contest, and had the great satisfaction of witnessing the final selection of his candidate. He was an effi- cient member of several important committees while serving in the legislature, and was the author of several important bills.
141
HISTORY OF MACON COUNTY, ILLINOIS.
HM.SNYDER
Fra Mr. Barnes.
OF Decatur, Illinois, was born at Claremont, New Hampshire, on the 19th of December, 1829. His father, Ira Norton Barnes, was a representative New England farmer, and being industrious and closely attentive to his business, he managed to draw from among the rocks of his native state a comfortable support for his large family. The mother of Dr. Barnes, Harriet Eastman Barnes, was a member of the old Eastman family, from which sprung Daniel Webster and other distinguished characters. When Dr. Barnes was only three months of age his father received a severe scald while boiling maple-syrup, which resulted in his death after a few days. The early years in the life of Dr. Barnes were spent at Claremont. After obtaining a good education at the academies of his native town and of Springfield, Vermont, he began the study of medicine and pharmacy with W. M. Ladd, M.D., of Claremont. In July, 1849, he was commissioned by Governor Dinsmoor as assistant surgeon of the 15th regiment of New Hampshire militia. He re- mained in the drug store of Dr. Ladd several years, and then he determined upon a collegiate course of study. After two years spent in preparation at Kimball Union Academy, he entered Dartmouth College in 1851, and graduated therefrom in 1855, with the degree of A.B. The following year was spent in the drug business with his brother, Dr. W. A. Barnes, at Decatur, Illinois. He then removed to Jackson, Mississippi, where he taught a select school and read medicine with Dr. S. C. Farrar.
In 1858 he received the degree of A.M. from Dartmouth College, and attended his first course of medical lectures at Hanover, New Hampshire, and continued his medical studies under the tuition of Professors Dixi Crosby and E. R. Peaslee. He spent the summer of 1859 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, attending the clinics at the various hospitals, and in the autumn of the same year he matricu-
lated at the Jefferson Medical College. In 1861 he returned to Philadelphia and attended his last course of lectures, and graduated at the Jefferson School in March, 1862.
Immediately after graduation he located at Decatur, Illinois, and formed a partnership with Dr. E. W. Moore, which has continued to the present time. In March, 1853, he was appointed and com- missioned as surgeon of the 116th Regiment of Illinois Volunteers. In 1864 he was appointed surgeon-in-chief of the 2d Div. Army Corps, and in 1865 was placed in charge of the Division Hospital. He was with his regiment when, as part of the Army of the Tennes- see, it participated in the battles around Vicksburg and Jackson, Mississippi ; Chattanooga, Mission Ridge and Knoxville, Tennessee ; Resaca, Dallas, Kenesaw Mountain, Marietta, Atlanta, Fort Mc- Allister and Savannah, Georgia ; and Columbia, South Carolina. After marching with Sherman to the sea, and thence through the "Carolinas and Virginia to Washington, District of Columbia, he was mustered out with his regiment near the latter city in June, 1865. He at once returned to Decatur and resumed the practice of his profession, in which he has been very successful. The part- nership between him and Dr. Moore has existed longer than any other medical partnership in Macon county. He has been a conscientious and industrious physician, and his energies have been wholly devoted to his large practice. Dr. Barnes is a member of the Illinois State Medical Society and of the American Medical Association, and one of the physicians to the Hospital of the Sisters of St. Francis. On the 25th of September, 1861, he was married to Diantha G. Sargent, of Claremont, New Hampshire, who died May 10th, 1879. He has one child, a son, Lynn Moore Barnes, born October 3d, 1873.
142
HISTORY OF MACON COUNTY, ILLINOIS.
Enoch W, moore
DR. ENOCH W. MOORE, who has been engaged in the practice of medicine at Decatur since 1856, is a descendant of the earliest American family to settle in Illinois. His ancestors were Scotch- Irish, and, on their emigration to America, settled in Virginia. His grandfather, James Moore, was a captain in the Virginia forces during the war of the revolution. He came with his family to Illi- nois in the year 1781. He was accompanied by a family named Garrettson. These were the first American families to settle per- manently in Illinois. Kaskaskia had been founded by the French a hundred years previous, but no American or English families came to the country till the time of the revolution. James Moore first came to Kaskaskia, and soon afterward settled at Bellefontaine, near the present town of Waterloo, in Monroe county. Other fam- ilies subsequently came from Virginia and other states, and the American settlement extended to the Mississippi Bottom, which, in consequence, was called the American Bottom. James Moore was about thirty years of age when he came to Illinois. He was a man of considerable energy and force of character. He died about the year 1787. He put a fine farm under cultivation, and the year of his death had one hundred acres of wheat. Wheat at that time commanded a dollar a bushel at Kaskaskia. The French residents of that place were but little inclined toward agriculture, and scarcely raised enough grain for their own consumption.
The father of the subject of this biography (Enoch Moore) was born at Bellefontaine in February, 1783. He was the first male child born of American parents within the limits of the present State of Illinois. He died in Monroe county in the ycar 1848. He was a man highly respected in that part of the state, and held sev- cral important public positions. For many years he was clerk of the circuit court, and for about twenty years judge of the pro-
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