My Genealogy Hound

WILLIAM JOHNSON, farmer and stock-raiser; P. O. Bloomington; was one of fourteen children, and was born in West Virginia in 1829, on a farm, and remained there, engaged in farming and going to school, until 20 years old. In 1846, he came to Illinois, with a number of hands, to manage farming 1,260 acres, which his father bought; they came to Illinois by team, stopping over Sunday and enjoying, perhaps, the company of some lone wanderer who had staked his tent along some beautiful brook. Mr. Johnson was on farm in Twin Grove three years before marriage, managing and improving this raw prairie. In 1851, he was married to Amanda Harris, daughter of A. C. Harris, of Kentucky, born in 1808; he was a minister in his younger days, and his father a minister all his life, and was the father of seventeen children twelve boys and five girls; six boys were ministers. Mr. and Mrs. Harris had five children; one is professor in Lincoln (Ill.) schools; immediately after marriage, they settled the present farm, then 160 acres, given him by his father, which he has increased to 300 acres; he has, in all, 830 acres, and is a stock-holder in McLean County Agricultural Society; he has held school offices twelve years; hired a substitute for civil war at $900. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson are active members of the M. E. Church at Twin Grove; they have taken quite an active part in moving and preparing this house of worship; they have seven children, viz., Belle, Emma, Ida, Ellen,, Willie, Amos and an infant; they are taking quite an interest in schooling their children; Emma and Belle are attending the Wesleyan University at Bloomington. Mr. Johnson makes a specialty in feeding stock and trading in same. The war whoops of the murdering Indians had scarcely ceased when Mr. Johnson settled this lonely prairie, and at his settlement yet remained many deer and wolves, which had narrowly escaped the flint-rock spears of these savage red men. Mr. Johnson, father of Wm. Johnson, was born in Virginia in 1794; died in 1877; his mother was born in Virginia in 1800, and died in 1861. Mr. Johnson’s grandfather was a Captain in the Mexican war, and was a great hunter and associate of Daniel Boone, of Kentucky. Thus ends the sketch of lives which have been active every moment of their short career, and many of them have realized the full amount and even more of their allotted three score and ten.