My Genealogy Hound

Hon. George K. Biggs, farmer, was born May 31, 1812, near Paris, Ky., the second of twelve children of William and Elizabeth (McCune) Biggs, the former of Welsh descent, and born about 1787 near Portsmouth, Va., and the latter of Scotch-Irish stock, born a few years later in Bourbon County, Ky. His father was reared in his native State, and in manhood went to Bourbon County, Ky. He was married about 1809, and settled three miles west of Clarksville, Mo., in 1817, and a year later moved seven miles north of Bowling Green. He was a farmer, and a politician. After his death, in 1847, the mother continued at the old home until 1878. The father served in the war of 1812-14, and in the Legislature about twenty years; although he lost considerable in Kentucky, he afterward became quite wealthy in Missouri, and was a very prominent man. Our subject received little education after his tenth year, when he went to work in his father’s distillery at fifteen, in which he continued until his majority, although he never drank a gill of whisky in his life. He then attended school about six months at an academy near Louisiana, Mo., but soon after entered his present land which has since been his home. His estate embraces 520 acres all that is left of about 1,000 acres that he owned before the war, from which he has sold and given away. About 1834 he married Margaret Jackson, who died in 1839. Their only child is Margaret E. In 1842 he married Mrs. Nancy (Floyd) Bland, by whom he has two children: William H. and Nancy. His wife died in 1846, and in July, 1847, he married Louisa (the daughter of J. Wayland, who was Gen. Washington’s fifer, and the widow of Samuel Bartlett, also prominent in Clark County history). By this marriage his children were John and George (both deceased). Her first husband’s children are Fielden, Elizabeth, Mary, Julia and Ann. Our subject has reared eighteen children, natural and adopted, and has given them both property and education. He has been politically prominent as well as financially, having settled within the limits of Clark County previous to its organization. In 1872 the Democratic party elected him representative, and from 1874 to 1878 he served as States senator. His political principles before the war were of the Whig party, and he cast his first vote for Henry Clay. He has been a Bourbon Democrat since 1860. He served through the Black Hawk war in 1832, also the Federal Army during the last war, and was robbed of over $30,000 worth of property. He and his wife are members of the Baptist Church.