My Genealogy Hound

Alexander Harris, a native-born son of Mississippi County, Ark., has become one of its most enterprising and reliable citizens, and, although young in years, he is yet old in experience, and has done much in a quiet, unassuming way to promote the advancement of its interests. His birth occurred on Crooked Lake in 1855, he being the second in a family of four children, and the son of John C. and Martha (Ford) Harris, who were Pennsylvanians by birth, and were there reared and married. After moving to Cincinnati, Ohio, Mr. Harris engaged in pattern making, and shortly after began running a trading boat on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers; and while on one of his trips down the latter river, he learned of the exceeding fertility of the soil of Arkansas, and here determined to “pitch his tent,” which he accordingly did in the year 1850, settling on a tract of wild land on the shores of Crooked Lake in Mississippi County. After living on this property long enough to clear 100 acres of land and make a pleasant home, he sold out and made a new settlement in the vicinity, on which he made valuable and extensive improvements, and resided until his death in 1870; he is still survived by his widow, who resides in the Blue Grass State. Like most of the youth of that vicinity, Alexander, as he grew up, devoted his time and attention to farming, but received very meager advantages for acquiring an education. After the death of his father, he went to Kentucky with his mother, but at the end of one year returned to Mississippi County, and in 1877 made his first crop on rented land, after which he began clerking in a store for Mr. Robinson. In 1885 he purchased a tract of land, forty acres in extent, partially improved, and now has seventeen acres under cultivation; and, besides this, only a short time ago he purchased eighty acres more. Since 1885 he has been clerking in Blythesville, in the mercantile establishment of L. W. Grassell & Co., but still looks after his farm to some extent, devoting the most of it to stock-raising, which enterprise has received the best part of his attention for some time. In 1886, he erected a pleasant and substantial dwelling-house in the village of Blythesville, in which he and his wife, whose maiden name was Iona Lynch, and whom he married in 1885, are now living. Mrs. Harris is a daughter of Josiah Lynch, an old settler of this section, and is a consistent member of the Baptist Church. Mr. Harris is a member of Chickasawba Lodge No. 134, of the F. & A. M., and is a representative young man of his township. He is energetic and enterprising, frugal in his tastes, and is expecting to reduce many acres of his farm to cultivation in the near future, and we can safely predict for him a bright and prosperous future.