My Genealogy Hound

John M. Plunkett, a resident of Calhoun County, Champagnolla Township, Locust Bayou post-office, was born in Perry (since Decatur) County, Tenn., on April 3, 1832, first child of H. W. and Dicey Plunkett, natives of North Carolina. They moved to Tennessee while quite young, and here the father died in 1849. The mother then moved to Union County, Ark., in January, 1851, and lived there until 1856. She then moved to Calhoun County, where she resided until her death, which occurred in 1863. Our subject was principally raised in Tennessee, where he obtained a limited education in an old log school-house among the hills of Tennessee. At the death of his father he began doing for himself and mother. July 8, 1858, he was united in marriage to Miss Mary H. Hollis, daughter of Jeremiah and Sarah Hollis, an old and respected family of Calhoun County. To this union were born eleven children: Dicey E. E., Lou M., Jerry, John H., an infant (who died before naming), William G., Charles M., Lewis, Mary A., and James N. and Harriet H. (twins). Jerry is unmarried; William G. and Harriet H. are dead; Emma married Mr. John Midlay, and Lou married James H. Neeley, and are living near their father. Mr. Plunkett enlisted in the Confederate army in 1862, in Radford County, and served about three weeks, when he was discharged. He then returned home, where he remained about twelve months, when he re-enlisted in Company H, Second Arkansas Cavalry, and continued to serve as a private until the close of the war. He was in several skirmishes; also in the famous Missouri raid under Gen. Fagan. Mr. Plunkett takes an active interest in politics, and is an Independent. He is a member of the Farmers’ Union, which he joined in 1886. He is a farmer by occupation, and owns 280 acres of land, ninety acres of which are under cultivation, and has erected a cotton-gin on his farm, and does his own ginning.