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Below is a family biography included in Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Lee County, Arkansas published by Goodspeed Publishing Company in 1890.  These biographies are valuable for genealogy research in discovering missing ancestors or filling in the details of a family tree. Family biographies often include far more information than can be found in a census record or obituary.  Details will vary with each biography but will often include the date and place of birth, parent names including mothers' maiden name, name of wife including maiden name, her parents' names, name of children (including spouses if married), former places of residence, occupation details, military service, church and social organization affiliations, and more.  There are often ancestry details included that cannot be found in any other type of genealogical record.

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V. M. Harrington enjoys enviable prominence as the faithful sheriff of Lee County. A native of Delaware, he lived there until eighteen years of age, attending the common schools of the county of his birth, but having from his childhood imbibed a love of the South and Southern people, at an early age he moved to Mississippi, locating at Jackson, where he was employed as a clerk in a store until the breaking out of the war. Then he was given a position in the Confederate service at Brookhaven, Miss., and afterward was made quartermaster-sergeant in a Confederate camp. Though devoted to the South, he was at heart a Union man, and was unwilling to fight voluntarily against his country, so, after a long tramp and when nearly exhausted by hunger and fatigue, he reached the Federal lines. The Union officers tried to induce him to give them information in regard to their enemy’s forces, location, etc., but having been employed by the Southern people and having lived among them, he refused to act the part of a spy. After the war he was again engaged as clerk. A Mr. Miller becoming intimately acquainted with him and interested in his welfare, furnished him with the necessary capital to enter into the mercantile business for himself. A wholesale house also offered to supply him with goods for carrying on a business of many thousand dollars, both of which offers he accepted, devoting his attention to commercial pursuits in Tennessee until 1871, at which time he sold out and removed Arkansas, locating at Palestine, St. Francis County. There he resumed the mercantile business, but soon moved to Marianna, where he went into the same occupation, carrying it on until 1886, the time of his election as sheriff of the county. He was reelected in 1888. Mr. Harrington’s wife was formerly Miss Georgia A. Wood, and she is now the mother of three children: Samuel, V. M. and James W. Mr. Harrington was born in Kent County, Del., in 1842, and was a son of Samuel and Sallie A. (Moore) Harrington. The collections of the county revenues made by Mr. Harrington as sheriff and collector of the county of the current year will aggregate 99 per cent. The lowest he has ever reached is 97 1/2 per cent.

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This family biography is one of 104 biographies included in Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Lee County, Arkansas published in 1890.  For the complete description, click here: Lee County, Arkansas History, Genealogy, and Maps

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