USA > Indiana > Blackford County > Biographical memoirs of Blackford County, Ind. : to which is appended a comprehensive compendium of national biography embellished with portraits of many well known residents of Blackford County, Indiana > Part 72
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eral times. She has taken a very active part in all lodge work, has charge of the ritual and is unusually well informed. While her education was mainly obtained in the com- mon schools, yet by close reading and study she has become one of the best educated women of the community and is highly cult- ured and refined. Both she and her husband are well and favorably known for miles around and have hosts of friends among the best of people and their lives are a kind of benediction to all with whom they associate.
THOMAS HUGHES BARNES. .
Thomas Hughes Barnes, a prominent farmer of Jackson township, whose post- office address is Dunkirk, was born on the old Barnes homestead in Jackson township, Blackford county, Indiana, October 21, 1839. He is a son of Ozias and Hannah (Bowen) Barnes, and with his parents spent his boy- hood on the farm, performing his part of the work both outside and inside the house. On June 28, 1860, he was married to Miss Sarah Ward, a daughter of William and Tabitha (Holton) Ward, who was born in Champaign county, Ohio, July 11, 1839. In 1847, when she was eight years of age, her parents removed to Indiana, locating in Lick- ing township, six miles south of Hartford City, but later removed to a farm to the eastward from Hartford City, but still in Licking township. There Miss Ward grew to womanhood and received her edu- cation at the Barr school house, which is well known for miles around. She was married at her father's home, who died when
he was fifty-two years of age. His widow then married William Howes, who soon aft- terward died, and she later married William Everett, and afterward died near the Barr school house when she was sixty-one years of age. The family of William and Tabitha Ward consisted of eleven children, eight of whom lived to mature years, and of these eight Mrs. Barnes is the only one living in Blackford county.
After his marriage Thomas H. Barnes lived for a time in a small house on a por- tion of the old homestead, of which he op- erated a part. Soon after the death of his father, January 6, 1874, he located on his present farm, which lies not far away from the old homestead. At that time his farm, which contained one hundred and twenty acres, was for the most part in a state of nature, covered over with woods with the exception of a small clearing that had al- ready been made. The other improvements consisted of a small log house and a small log stable. Mr. Barnes took hold in earnest of the work of clearing up and improving this farm, and now has about one hundred and ten acres in cultivation, most of which he has cleared and improved himself, suffi- cient proof of his energy and industry. Though this farm was never low or wet, yet he knew that drainage would be bene- ficial and hence began to lay underdrains, at first of timber, which has all been super- seded with tile, of which he has about two thousand rods on the farm, and there is still room for more. While he has for the most part devoted his farm to the raising of grain, yet he has not sold his crop off in the raw material, but instead has fed it to stock, depending mainly on hogs, of which he has on the average turned off annually about
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forty head. Mr. Barnes has devoted his time and attention mostly to the farm, but has given some thought to the question, theoretically and practically, of public im- provements, and has favored the building of public highways and public drains, in order that the land might be drier than other- wise, and that there might be good roads on which to drive. Politically he has al- ways been a Republican, but has never been a bitter partisan, nor given much attention to public affairs.
The family of Mr. and Mrs. Barnes consists of four children, as follows: Ozias Newton, who, together with his brother, Edgar Delmont, operates the farm. Ozias N. was born on the farm May 7, 1861, and passed his life upon the farm with his father. His education was obtained at the common schools and at Ridgeville College, but he did not complete the course. Even since he became of age he has been content to re- main at home, has given his attention to the growing of grain and grass and the raising of stock. He has never married. but has traveled throughout a portion of the north- west, as Idaho and South Dakota. He is, like his father, a Republican in politics, but is not active in the work of his party ; Lillie Samantha, wife of Jacob Kesler, whose biography appears elsewhere in this work ; Eliza Tabitha, wife of Roe Roberts, of the state of Washington, and a son of James Roberts, of Hartford City. Roe Roberts is a school teacher in the far west, and was a teacher in Blackford county for several years before going west; Edgar Delmont, who is engaged with his elder brother in the man- agement of the farm. He married Minnie Alice Locker, who died one year later, leav- ing no children. ' Mrs. Barnes is a mem- ber of the Kingsley Methodist Episcopal
church and both she and her husband are re- spected everywhere throughout the com- munity in which they live, and have many true an! warm-hearted friends.
JOHN STEWART FISHBACK.
John Stewart Fishback, whose farm lies two and a half miles northwest of Dunkirk, his postoffice address, was born in Fayette county, Ohio, September 22, 1848. He is a son of William M. and Matilda (Stewart) Fishback, the former of whom was born in Madison county, Virginia, March 26, 1814, and died at Dunkirk December 15. 1892. He was a son of John Fishback, who was of Dutch ancestry and by trade a wheelwright. When he was twenty-four years of age he left his native state and re- moved to Ohio, where he was married, his wife being a native of Ohio, and he located in 1841, at New Martinsburg, Ohio. In 1856 he removed to Indiana, settling in Delaware county, four miles from Dunkirk, where he lived until the Death of his wife, in 1878. Afterward he lived in Dunkirk with a daughter until his death, which oc- curred when he was seventy-nine years of age. Like his father before him, he was a wheelwright by trade and after coming to Indiana he worked at his trade in connection with his farm labor. Politically he was a Democrat, but was not an office holder, and while he was not a member of any church, yet he held to the Old School Baptist views of religion. His character was above re- proach, and he was looked upon as a quiet, peaceable, honest and mild-mannered man, a harsh word being seldom heard to fall from his lips. He and his wife had three children that grew to mature years, viz:
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Elizabeth Peachy, wife of James W. Racer, of Dunkirk; John S., the subject of this sketch, and William Wallace, of Dunkirk.
The boyhood of John S. Fishback was spent with his father on the farm where he received his education and where he learned the use of carpenter's tools, follow- ing the trade of carpenter for fifteen years, principally in Blackford county. As a con- tractor he built several houses in this county which are still standing and which bear evi- dence of his handiwork. For five years he managed his father's farm and in 1888 he purchased and moved upon his present farm, purchasing fifty-two acres for twenty-three hundred and fifty dollars and going into debt to the amount of seventeen hundred and fifty dollars. There was on the farm at that time a log house and a log stable and the farm was nearly in a fair state of cultivation. Mr. Fishback has always been an industrious and progressive man, as his farm plainly in- dicates, and that he has prospered is indi- cated by the fact that since purchasing the original fifty-two acres he has added there- . to forty acres more, for which he paid thirty dollars per acre. His entire farm is now under cultivation and thoroughly drained. The Lick creek ditch, which drains his farm, cost about five hundred dollars and is a most valuable improvement. At the present time he has about fifteen hundred rods of tile drains and all his farm is in a fair condition for raising grain, which he feeds exclusively to stock upon his farm, among this stock there being from thirty-five to forty hogs every year. He has a fine maple grove of two hundred and seventy-five trees on his farm, which yield him each year from one hundred to one hundred and fifty gallons of syrup. He has himself erected a fine house and barn at a cost in the aggregate of twenty-
five hundred dollars and he has also erected a tenant's house, in which lives his son-in- law, who operates a portion of the farm.
Mr. Fishback still does considerable work at his trade, having erected several houses and barns in his own neighborhood. His farm lies in the famous Indiana gas belt, and has upon it one well. While he has not given special attention to the growing of fruit, yet he raises enough for his own family consumption.
On January 5, 1871, Mr. Fishback was married to Miss Clarinda J. Fulkerson, of Blackford county, a daughter of William and Eliza Jane ( Maffett) Fulkerson, she having been born in Jackson township, No- vember 8, 1853. Her parents settled in Blackford county, in 1848, locating in the section in which Mr. Fishback now lives and upon this farm Mrs. Fishback was born. William Fulkerson was born near Winches- ter, Virginia, February 14, 1813, and when he was eighteen months old his parents sailed down the Ohio river in a flatboat, landing at Cincinnati, and thence they went by wagon to Butler county, Ohio, finally set- tling on a farm in Greene county, Ohio. Here William Fulkerson, on November 30, 1837, married Eliza Jane Maffett, and in 1847 removed to Blackford county, Indiana. He died January 11, 1900, at the great age of eighty-six years, ten months and twenty- eight days. Eliza Jane Maffett was born January 18, 1818, and died in February, 1867, having borne to her husband nine chil- dren, six of whom were living at the time of the death of their father, in January, 1900. Of these six Mrs. Fishback is the only one living in Blackford county. Mr. Fulkerson was by trade a cooper and worked at his trade in connection with the management of his farm.
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Mr. and Mrs. Fishback have a family of four children, as follows : James William, who married Sarah Lentz and has no chil- dren; he has a small farm adjoining that of his father: Frank Forest, who operates a portion of the homestead farm ; his wife was Dora R. Ledbetter; Anna Corline, wife of Doris Wilson Mettler, who lives on and op- erates a portion of the home farm; they have one child : and Richard Alonzo, a boy of sev- enteen, living at home with his parents.
In politics Mr. Fishback is a Democrat and has served one term as township as- sessor. He is often a delegate to his party conventions. Mr. and Mrs. Fishback are members of the Methodist Episcopal church at Kingsley and are both excellent mem- bers not only of their church, but also of general society. Mr. Fishback takes great pleasure in hunting and fishing, but only as pastime, being both industrious and enter- prising, not in any way neglecting business for pleasure.
WILLIAM M. SHRACK.
Ever since the days of Vergil it has been well known to the intelligent that ag- riculture is capable of being placed on a high plane, not only as regards business methods, but also as to art, and even to those not versed in its history it has always been known as the most independent of callings. That it has not been developed to its full capacity and made more attractive to the young has been in part because some follow it merely for a living and look upon them- selves as an inferior class, thus laboring on from day to day without proper ambition to make all possible out of their profession in every direction, not only as to profit, but
also as to respectability. This, however, is not the case with all, for there are many farmers in every state who realize that theirs is in reality a noble calling, and that it pre- sents to them opportunities for the exercise of the soundest judgment and the highest intelligence. One of this class of farmers is the subject of this sketch-William M: Shrack, who has one of the best farms in Blackford county, located three and a half miles northwest of Dunkirk, his postoffice ad- dress. This farm is in most excellent condi- tion, and is unusually well improved in ail respects as to cultivation, drainage and buildings. It is a source of pride, not only to its owner, but also to the entire com- munity. It attracts the attention of the traveler and excites the highest admiration. Its owner is shown, by the condition of his farm, buildings and stock to be a care- ful, wide-awake, up-to-date man, and he is known everywhere as a man of good sense, sound judgment and of firm but unobtrusive character and disposition.
William M. Shrack was born in Jay county, Indiana, on the farm now included within the limits of the city of. Dunkirk. March 7, 1844. He is a son of William and Margaret (Rice) Shrack, the former of whom came from Pennsylvania, and the lat- ter from Virginia. They were married in .Ohio. William Shrack was a son of John Shrack, who was of Dutch descent. Mar- garet Rice was also of Dutch descent and un- til she was nine years of age used only the language of that race of people. In 1837, when William and Margaret Shrack had al- ready five children, they settled on the above mentioned farm, his brother, John, then liv- ing on a farm five miles away in Delaware county. William walked the entire distance to Fort Wayne, following an Indian trail,
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to enter the land, and to his brother's home he had to cut a road through the woods. His first house was constructed of bark, but he soon built a log house in which his fam- ily lived during their first winter on the farm. This house had no door, only a quilt hung up to keep out the cold, but he succeeded in clearing up his land and in making a good farm and home for himself and family. The next year his brother-in-law, Isaac Sutton, came into this new country and laid out the village of Dunkirk at the time of the building of the railway, which passed through the Shrack farm. William Shrack passed his life on his farm, but dicd early, when he was but sixty-one years of age, from a slight cut on the knee. His wife survived him but two years, dying when she was sixty-four.
The family of William and Margaret Shrack consisted of twelve children, one of whom died in infancy, the other eleven grow- ing to mature years. One son, John T., in 1851, went to California, saying when he started for that new and distant country that he should not return until he had made his pile of ten thousand dollars. For some years he was not heard from, but at length he wrote that he was about to return home, but just about that time the bank in which he had deposited his money failed and he lost it all. He then went to Australia, but later returned to California, where he is now living if still alive. Although seven of the family are still living, William M. is the only one in Blackford county.
Wlliam M. Shrack remained at home until he was eighteen years of age, when he enlisted in Company B, Eighty-fourth In- diana Volunteers, on August 11, 1862, and served three years, being discharged June 14, 1865. His services were rendered in the
western army, under Generals Rosecrans and Thomas. He was in the Atlanta campaign. and after the fall of Atlanta aided in the pursuit of Hood and participated in the de- cisive battle of Nashville, December 15 and 16, 1864. He was also in the battle of Frank- lin, before reaching Nashville, and followed Hood in his retreat to Huntsville, Alabama. when he returned [. Strawberry Plains, east Tennessee, remaining in that vicinity during the rest of that winter, and in the spring of 1865 returned to Nashville, where he was mustered out. The most in portant battle in which Mr. Shrack was en; ed was that of Chickamauga, and he was also in that of Rocky Face Ridge, or Buzzards' Roost. Be- sides the above mentioned battles he was in several skirmishes, and was wounded in the right heel by a minie ball. He left the ranks until the healing of the wound, being in the hospital at Jeffersonville, Indiana, when he returned to his regiment in time to take part in the battle of Franklin. Four days after being struck by the minie ball gangrene set in and he came very near losing his foot. With the exception of the time spent in the hospital on account of this wound he was constantly with his company, and was pro- moted to corporal because of faithful sery- ice. He now receives a pension from a grateful government. He is a member of Benjamin Sheilds Post, No. 289, G. A. R., at Dunkirk, and has been a member since its organization. He attends all reunions of his regiment and went on a regimental excursion to the battle ground of Chickamauga in 1898, when it was occupied as a camp by the soldiers during the Cuban war, and he also attended two or three other national encamp- ments.
While home on a furlough Mr. Shrack was married, November 4, 1864, to Miss
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Anna Barnes, a daughter of Ozias and Han- nah (Bowen) Barnes, pioneers of Blackford county, they having located on a farm ad- joining the Shrack farm in the spring of 1837, and being about the first family to settle in that part of the county. Ozias Barnes and William Bowen, his brother-in- law, came here at the same time, and there was then but one other family here, that of Edward M. Crumley, who came here in 1837. Ozias died on the farm he had en- tered, when in his sixty-first year. His wife survived him until December 10, 1898, when she died in her eighty-sixth year, hav- ing during the later years of her life made her home with her daughter, Mrs. Shrack. Mr. and Mrs. Barnes were the parents of eleven children, five of whom reached ma- ture years, and four of whom were living in 1900, as follows : Solomon Barnes, of Dun- kirk, who owns part of the old homestead : Thomas, of Jackson township; Annah, who was named for her grandmother, Bowen; and Orange Lemon, living on a portion of the old homestead. One son, Jonathan, died at Dunkirk, at the age of fifty-nine.
In 1866, after the close of the war and after his marriage, Mr. Shrack settled in Delaware county, one mile and a half south of Dunkirk, and remained there until 1870, in March of which year he removed to his present farm, then containing one hundred and thirty-two acres, for which he paid twenty dollars per acre. It was all wild land, in its primitive condition, covered with large and valuable forest trees, but nearly all under water. Mr. Shrack sold large quantities of walnut timber at one dollar per hundred feet in the tree. His work for some years consisted mainly in clearing and ditching his farm. To this original farm he has added other acres until now he has one
hundred and eighty-seven acres, fifty-six acres of which are a portion of the original Barnes homestead. Nearly the entire farm is now in cultivation, most of the work hav- ing been done by himself, including the un- derdraining, which was at first laid with timber drains. These, however, have since been supplanted with tile drains which ex- tend to all parts of the farm. Besides hav- ing thus thoroughly laid underdrains every- where, he has expended about twenty-five hundred dollars in opening public ditches.
Mr. Shrack's farm is devoted to grain, to which it is best adapted, corn being the principal crop; but he has also raised good crops of wheat, over twelve hundred bushels in a season. Most of his corn he feeds to hogs, keeping annually about one hundred lead, and it is his aim always to keep high grade animals. He was one of the original stockholders in the glass factory at Mill Grove, and he is now the vice-president of the company. He is also a stockholder in the gas and oil company at Mill Grove. He has a gas well on his farm, operated by the Fort Wayne Gas & Oil Company, which is considered a fine, productive well.
Politically Mr. Shrack is a Republican, has often been a delegate to his party con- ventions and has been township supervisor for some years. Of the Kingsley Methodist Episcopal church he is a trustee, and has been a class leader for several years, having been one of the original members of the class. Of his children five are living, viz : Desdemona, wife of Edward Armstrong, living on the farm adjoining the Shrack homestead : she has four children-William Ray, Charles Cecil, Gladys Merritt and Har- old; Hattie, wife of Charles Reasoner, liv- ing on the Shrack farm, and who has three children-Florence Geneva, Wilda Hazel
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and William Henry; Hannah L., wife of Charles W. Barr, whose biographical sketch appears elsewhere in this volume, and who has three children -- Ralph Farnly, Goldie and Marcia; Cora E., wife of William Brown, and still living with her parents; and Harvey Lee, at home and in his fifteenth year. Mr. and Mrs. Shrack have lost four children, three in infancy and one, James M., who died of pneumonia when in his twenty-first year.
MOSES W. LANNING.
Moses W. Lanning, of Mill Grove, man- ufacturer of drain tile, belongs to one of the most prominent families of Blackford coun- ty. He was born March 26, 1850, in the original log cabin elsewhere described in this biography, and remained at home on the farm of his father until he was thirty years of age, aiding in operating and managing the farm. His father, Robert Lanningi, was a native of Sussex county, Ney Jersey, being born there January 15. 1820, and was married to Lydia Fuller, also a native of that county. Both of them died in Guernsey county, Ohio, he in 1873. and she in 1884. He was a son of Robert Lan- ning, who was born in New Jersey and died in Guernsey county, Ohio, at the age of eighty-four. The father of the latter, Robert Lanning, was an English- man, but little appears to be now re- membered of his life. The Fuller fam- ily came to America previous to the Revolutionary war. The grandparents of Robert Lanning were Eli and Martha (Rundle) Fuller, the former being born in New Jersey and the latter in Connecticut,
and both of them died in New Jersey, the former at the age of fifty-eight, the latter at eighty-six. When Robert Lanning was six months old he was taken to Guernsey county, Ohio, and was there married, Jan- uary 4, 1844. to Miss Margaret A. Kennedy, who was born in 1817 near Bloomfield, Ohio. She was a daughter of Moses W. and Esther W. Kennedy, both natives of Sussex county. New Jersey, and both of whom died in Guernsey county, Ohio, he at the age of seventy-six and she at the age of eighty-six. Her grandfather was Robert Kennedy, a brother of Lord Kennedy, who on one occa- sion offered a prize for his brother Robert's head. in consequence of which Robert fled the country and settled in Sussex county, New Jersey.
In 1845 Robert Lanning, together with his wife and one child, came to Blackford county, Indiana, and settled on one hundred and sixty acres of land. a part of section 28. in Jackson township, which had been entered by his brother-in-law, David Fisher. Upon this one hundred and sixty acres there had been erected a log cabin, 18x20 feet in size, which was all in one room and which had a puncheon floor and no chimney. simply a hole in the roof for the escape of the smoke. The bedstead was constructed of poles resting on pegs and had a mattress of linn bark woven. The table was a puncheon one and was used two years; seats were merely stools. But notwithstanding all these rude and inconvenient pieces of fur- niture, as compared with modern styles, and notwithstanding the rude log cabin, which would now be indicative of poverty, there was much happiness to be had in even the primitive conditions of pioneer life. The first day Mr. Lanning spent on this new farm he killed a deer and he proved to be
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a great hunter, often shooting the deer in the eye and having them fall close to his feet. Wild hogs were also plentiful, as well as squirrels, and when Dr. Henry, of Hart- ford City, offered three cents for each squir- rel shot through the head Robert Lanning shot fifty of them in one day, receiving there- for his one dollar and fifty cents in silver. The Doctor was very fond of squirrel meat. At one time Robert killed eight young wolves which he found in a tree, for which he received the bounty offere : by the county.
Mrs. Lanning died in November, 1880, having borne to her husband the following children: Maria, who died at the age of nine years; Lydia, who married Winfield S. Mercer, of Albany, Indiana; Isaac N., of Mill Grove; Moses W., the subject of this sketch; Aaron; William J .; Stephen A. D .; Harriet E., who married Ross Peterson and died at the age of thirty-five ; and Mary, who married Thomas Stanley and died in Blackford county at the age of twenty-seven. Mr. Lanning has always been a Democrat, positive in his views, but never a politician. He has served the people in the capacity of a justice of the peace, township assessor and land appraiser, but always preferred to give his attention to his own private af- fairs rather than to those of the public.
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