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Hon. Lewis W. Ross.— Lewis W. Ross was born at Seneca Falls, I Seneca county, New York, December 8,1812, and with his father, O.
M. Ross, removed to Illinois in 1820, and to the county of Pike (now i Fulton) in 1821; represented the county of Fulton in the state legislature in 1840-1 and 1844-5; in the convention to amend the state con- '• stitution in 1862, and again In 1870-1; was elected to congress in 1862 j from the ninth district, and represented it for six years; was defeated j as presidential elector on the democratic ticket in 1848, as a candidate j for congress in 1852, and for lieutenant governor in 1860. He is a lawyer by profession, and has taken an active part in county and state politics for over thirty years.
Mr. Ross has been the most important and active man of this section of country. Fifty years of his life have been spent in Fulton county, j during which time he has seen the Indian pushed westward more than a thousand miles, and nearly extinct; the forest around his father’s j house turtied into beautifully cultivated farms, and a town built upon it and named Lewistown, after himself; the state increase in population from a few hundred souls to two and a half millions, bis county ! from half a dozen or less to nearly forty thousand; bis father’s garden ' converted into a beautiful town of two thousand, and the county seat j of his county. He has had the honor of being called upon by his fellow citizens to fill some of their most important offices, which he did to their entire satisfaction. While in the halls of congress few men ; showed a better record. As a politician he is true; as a citizen, kind, | pleasant, and active; as a business man, attentive and reliable.
Gen. Leonard F. Ross, the subject of this sketch, was born July 18th, 1828, at Lewistown, Fulton county, Illinois. Ho is the son of Ossian M. Ross, who was one of the early settlers of this county. The General received most of his early education at Canton; he also attended, for a short time, the college at Jacksonville. On arriving at the age of twenty-one he commenced reading law with the firm of Davidson & Kellog, at Canton. After receiving his license, and before entering on the practice of his profession, war was declared between the United States and Mexico. On the 18th of November. 1845, at the age of twenty-two, he married Miss Catherine, daughter of the late R. C. Simms; and in 1846, about six months after his marriage,he laid aside his law books and enlisted as a private soldier in the fourth regiment Illinois volunteers, commanded by the late General Baker. After serving three months he was promoted1 to a first lieutenantcy, and during the year of service he commanded the company about four or five months. The only general engagements his regiment was in were at the capture of Vera Cruz and the battle of Cerro Gordo.
Before his return home he was proposed by his friends, and on his return was nominated and elected by the democratic party to the office of probate justice for Fulton county, in which position he gave universal satisfaction. He subsequently served four years as county clerk. Up to the breaking out of the late war he was principally engaged in merchandising and ihrming, when not otherwise employed in attending to his public duties.
In May, 1861, he volunteered, and was elected colonel of the seventeenth Illinois volunteers, and in March of 1862 he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. He continued in the service until after the surrender of Vicksburg, when he left the army for the purpose of attending to his own private and family matters. His wife died in March of 1862, while he was in the army. He was again married in January of 1865, to Mary IS. Warner, of Monroeville, Ohio. In the spring of 1866 he moved to bis farm, near Avon, where he now resides, surrounded by a happy and intelligent, family. The General, by his virtuous and honorable life, lias made many true and warm friends; and at his pleasant home lie is always happy in entertaining his friends.	.	.'	.	,
When the time came for him, as a democrat, to take sides in the great civil war, he did not hesitate, but bravely drew from its scabbard the sword that defended our glorious flag in the Mexican war, and wielded it with patriotic bravery on the side of the Union Mr. Koss is ostensibly a self-made man. Since returning from the army lie served a term of two years as internal revenue collector for the ninth Illinois' district. In 1868 he was a candidate for congress on the republican ticket, and of course was beaten in this the ninth (democratic) district. He is now largely engaged in agricultural pnrsuitsand stock
Harvey L. Ross, the subject of this narrative, was born October
11th 1817, in Seneca county. New York. He was the second son of Ossian M. Ross, Who came to what is now known ns Fulton county in
1821 (it at that time being a part of Pike county), and settled on a quarter section of land, half a mile nortli of where Lewistown now stands, j He was the second white person that settled in the boundary of Ful- I ton county (John Eveling being the first, who settled on Spoon river, six miles from its mouth).
Ossian M. Ross was the father of four sons and two daughters, j named as follows: Lewis W., Harvey L., Leonard F., and Pike C., and his daughters, Harriet and Lucinda; all of whom are now living in Fulton county, except Lucinda, now wife of Judge Wm. Kellogg, { who is living in the city Of Peoria, and was the first white female child j born in Fulton county. His two youngest sons, Leonard and Pike, were also born in Fulton county. Ossian M. Ross was born and raised j in Duchess county. New York; moved from there to Seneca county, j New York, and from there to Illinois. He was the proprietor of Lewis- . town, was the first sheriff and the first postmaster in the county, and held many important offices. He brought with him several artisans, among whom was a carpenter, a shoemaker by the name of Swelling, and a blacksmith by the name of Nimon. The latter two died many j years ago, and were buried on the east side of Lewistown, near where the old Presbyterian church stood, which was the first burying ground in the county. He laid off the town of Havana, now in Mason county, , and moved there in 1880, where he died in 1887. A few months after his death his family moved to Canton, where his widow lias lived ever j since. She is now about eighty years old,-and it*enjoying good health.
” Harvey L. Ross, at the age of twenty, returned to Havana, and took ; charge of the old homestead. He kept the Havana Hotel, which had . formerly been kept by bis father, and which, in those days, did an extensive business; kept the ferry across the Illinois river; kept a wood-yard for the accommodation of steamboats; was commission merchant, and kept three large warehouses for the storage of goods and produce; ; kept a livery stable for the accommodation of the public; had a stage route from Springfield to Lewistown, which made three trips per week; ; was postmaster at Havana under the appointment of President Van ; Buren; carried on a large farm, and was extensively engaged in stock j raising —all of which he superintended himself, besides having to go twenty-five miles every two weeks to see a young lady, whom he after- | wards made his wife. He remembers helping to carry bark to cover | the shanty that his father’s family lived in while their log house was j being built. He attended the first school that was taught in the coun- j ty, by Hugh R. Colton. The school house was built of round logs, mud chimney, with puncheons for floor, seats, and writing-desks, and oiled paper for window glass. It stood about where the county clerk’s office now stands.
He was at the first fourth of July celebration in the county, which was in 1823. It was held on the side hill, north of where the Methodist church in Lewistown now stands. John and Jacob Jewell were the drummers, and Enos Jewell played the fife. Ossian M. Ross made the speech, and all hands, both men and women, h'elped to drink the egg-nogg and hollow ‘ hooray!" A tall h ickory tree was trimmed and the bark peeled off, which answered for a liberty pole. They had no flag, but a hat of Ossian M. Ross, with two large plumes and a cockade in it that he had worn when major under General Scott in the war of 1812* was put upon the top of the liberty pole. The next fourth of July celebration, in 1828, was held in the south part of town, a little j east of where Dr. Veacli formerly lived. The evening after the celebration the Pottawattamie Indians, to the number of a hundred or upwards, held a war dance on the same ground that the celebration had I been held on.
At the age of fifteen, Harvey L. Ross carried the mail from Spring-I field to Monmouth on horse back. The post offices on the route were Springfield, Sargamontown, Athens, New Salem (where Abrahnm j Lincoln then kept the post office), Havana, Lewistown, Canton, Farmington, Knoxville, and Monmouth. There was no house and no j direct rond, at that lime, between Monmoutli and Knoxville,.a distance of twenty miles. His guide was points of timber along the route. He | still has a very vivid recollection of ills hair gently raising one cold \ night in January, as he was riding along, on, his way from Monmouth ' to Knoxville, near where Galesburg now stands, on hearing a pack of 1 wolves set up a trinundous howling a few yards from him. Heear-I ried the mail from Sprirgfleld to Lewistown a year, without missing a trip. He thinks it was from July, 1888, to July, 1884. It was during the memorable yiar of the .high water. He swam his horse over I streams as often as six times a day, with the mail bags laslicd across I his shoulders.
Mr. Ross lived at Havana during the summer of 1889, when he was | t he only person in the place that did not have the fever and ague. He I is now fifty-three years of age, and has never had a day’s sickness since his recollection. During his youthful years he was remarkably fond
of hunting and trading with the Indians. He has killed turkeys and small game when seven years old, and deer when twelve. He has killed as many as sixteen wolves in three months. He was on board of the steamboat Liberty, the first steamboat that ever ran up the Illinois as far as Havana. She was commanded by Captain Bailey, one of the proprietors of the town of Pekin. He has been cook on a keel-boat und clerk on a steamboat. He remembers of partaking of a piece of a fat bear killed in Fulton county by Andrew Loswell.
Mr Ross never had the advantages of an education. He was sent to Jacksonville to school, but had been there but five weeks when he received the news of the death of his father. He came home and did not return.
Mr. Ross was married on the first day of January, 1840, to Jane R. Kirkpatrick, daughter of Charles Kirkpatrick, of Canton. They have had three sons and two daughters. The oldest son, Frank, enlisted as a private in the eighty-fourth regiment Illinois volunteers, when In his sixteenth year; he served three years, was promoted to first lieutenant, and was in some of the hardest fought battles during the war. He is married, and lives on a farm near Macomb, McDonough county. The oldest daughter, Harriet, is married to Mr. Thomas Hall, and lives in Rushville. The second son, George, is attending college’ in Jacksonville. The youngest son and daughter, Joe and Mary, are living at home.
Mr. Ross moved to Vermont in 1844, and improved a farm in heavy timber, adjoining the town of Vermont on the south, there being but five acres in cultivation and a log house on the land when he moved upon it. He now has his farm well improved, with a thousand bearing trees; he has raised, some seasons, upwards of ten thousand bushels of apples; has a cider mill and press with which he can make twenty barrels of cider per day.
Mr. Ross takes great interest in the general improvement of the county, and has contributed, he thinks, about five thousand dollars for the building of railroads through the county. He takes a lively interest in the old settlers’ meetings His house is always open for the accommodation of an old settler, and nothing gives him more pleasure than to have a right good friendly chat with an old settler about nuld lang syne.
Joel Peirsol.— Petter Pcirsol was the father of Joel Peirsol, the subject of this sketch, and was born in Pennsylvania in the year 1780, and lived there until 1818, when h^moved to Ohio and settled in Holmes county, where he resided until 1836, when he moved with his family to Illinois and settled on section 21, in Lee township, Fulton county, and lived there until about 1851, when lie moved to Fairview and lived about four years, when he moved to Lewistown, and lived there until his death, which was in 1859. Mrs. Peirsol was born in 1784 and died in 1858. Petter Peirsol was the father of thirteen children— six sons and seven daughters—of whom twelve lived to maturity, one died in infancy, aud four are yet living and doing well.
. Mr. Pcirsol in his young days was a mechanic, but his principal business was farming and raising stock. He was a man that held 'many offices of trust, and died, as he had lived, in the confidence of all that knew him.
Joel Peirsol was born in Pennsylvania in 1804, and lived with his father until he was twenty-one, when he occupied Ills time at carpentering until 1828, when he married Miss Catherine Emry, and settled in Holmes county. Ohio, and lived there until 1886, when he moved to Illinois and settled on section 16, in Lee township, where he still resides.
Joel has, ever since he has lived in Illinois, been engaged in farming and raising stock. He came to Illinois in very limited circumstances, but, through liis perseverance, industry, and strict attention to business, lie became one of the heavy property .holders of Lee township, much of which he has distributed among his children, but still holds valuable property* He is the father of thirteen children — four sons and nine daughters — seven of whom are yet living, all married, and doing well. His grandfather Peirsol was killed by the Indians in the year 1780, within eleven miles of Pittsburg.
Joel is entitled to great credit for his energy and influence in improving his township. In 1852 he lost his first wife, and in 1868 he was again married, to Mrs. Elmira llnlbert, and still lives a comfortable life on the old homestead farm.
Dr. Alexander "Hull was born in Licking county, Ohio. His father, Philip Hull, was born in Harrison county, Virginia. His mother, Sarah McCracken, daughter of Alexander McCracken, was bom in Fayette county, Pennsylvania. They, with their respective