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Below is a family biography included in the book, The History of Knox County, Missouri published by Goodspeed Publishing Company in 1887.  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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Col. John M. Glover. Col. John Glover and Fanny (Taylor) Glover were the parents of our subject. Both father and mother were descendants of Virginian families, the father being born in that State, June 27, 1778. The mother was born in Kentucky, December 28, 1787. The paternal grandfather was a soldier in the Revolutionary war, and the maternal grandfather represented Kentucky as a part of the Territory of Virginia in her Legislature, riding all the way from Kentucky, about 600 or 700 miles, to Richmond, on horseback, to take his seat in that body. Col. John Glover immigrated to Kentucky in 1791. During the war of 1812 he served under Gen. Harrison in two campaigns in the Northwest, and participated in the battle of the Thames, in Canada, as well as other battles. He removed part of his family from Kentucky to Missouri in 1835, bringing the remainder in 1836, and resided in Lewis County for two years, until he had improved his own home in what is now Knox County. He was a volunteer soldier in the Black Hawk war, before leaving Kentucky, but peace was declared before the Kentucky troops left the State. He was elected a member of the Missouri State Senate in 1840, representing the counties of Lewis, Marion and Clark, and the territory which is now embraced in the counties of Knox and Scotland, which were organized during his service in the Senate. At the time of his death, January 17, 1857, he was the owner of about 1,500 or 2,000 acres of land, and other property, including thirty-five slaves. His widow survived until December 28, 1865. Col. John M. Glover was born in Mercer County, Ky., September 4, 1824, and came to Missouri with his parents in the fall of 1836. He was educated at Marion and Masonic Colleges, in Marion County, Mo., and in 1848-49 studied law with his brother, Samuel T. Glover. In 1850 he went to California, where he practiced his profession, and engaged in other pursuits. In 1855 he returned to Knox County, Mo., to take charge of his father’s affairs, as he was then quite aged, and at the death of his father became the sole executor of his will. While in the midst of this duty, and upon the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 to the presidency, the secession movement was inaugurated to dissolve the Union. Our subject firmly adhered to the Union cause, sustaining the proclamation of her State convention “that Missouri had no cause to dissolve her relations with the Federal Government.” Col. Glover took an active part in the discussion of this grave question, and with all his power and great earnestness undertook to show the folly and madness of such a measure as secession, and prophetically depicted the ruin and misery that would attend a civil war. He argued that Missouri, in no event, from her position, could ever constitute a part of a Southern Confederacy. He always repudiated the idea that the civil war was a sectional one, and held that the war was strictly between the Federal Government, supported by the people of all the States, who desired to perpetuate the existence of the Union, and that portion of the Southern people who desired to dissolve the Union, and set up another government. When the decisive moment came our subject took side, not with the North, but with the Government to perpetuate the Union, and for this end, raised at his own expense the Third Missouri Cavalry of United States Volunteers, of which he was commissioned colonel, and entered active service September 4, 1861. He commanded various military districts in the State of Missouri during the years 1862-63, among them being that of the district of Northeast Missouri, headquarters at Palmyra; that of South Central Missouri, headquarters at Rolla, and that of Southeast Missouri, headquarters at Pilot Knob. In the spring of 1863 he commanded a cavalry brigade in the division commanded by Gen. Vandever, and assisted in expelling Gen. John S. Marmaduke’s Confederate Cavalry Division from Southeast Missouri, participating in quite a number of engagements. When the military authorities had determined upon an expedition, in 1803, for the capture of Little Rock, Ark., Maj.-Gen. John M. Schofield, commander of the Missouri department, organized the First Cavalry Division of the department, under Gen. Davidson, to co-operate with Gen. Steel on said expedition. Col. Glover was assigned the command of the Second Brigade of said organization. His own regiment, the Third Missouri Cavalry, always composing part of his brigade. The cavalry division left Arcadia, Mo., June 24, 1863, and formed a junction with the army corps under Gen. Steel early in September, at Brownsville, Ark. There was a great amount of fighting around Little Rock in which the Second Brigade, commanded by Col. Glover, took a prominent part, the city falling into the hands of the Federal Army September 10, 1863. The following March Col. Glover was obliged, on account of ill health caused by exposure on this expedition, to resign his command, and upon his return home to civil life found that a revolution was taking place in Missouri, which ended for a time in destroying by force and legislative tyranny the civil liberty of a large percent of his fellow citizens. He actively opposed this policy as utterly subversive of republican and democratic forms of government. Having been a champion of the civil rights of the people, and having to the best of his ability assisted in the overthrow of a despotic government from 1873 to 1879, for three terms, he was elected to a seat in Congress, where he vigorously opposed all legislative oppression and usurpation against the common rights of the people, and sought to give simple, just and economical laws for the government of the whole country, free from sectional animosities. Col. Glover married, February 20, 1862, Miss Mary J. Condell, daughter of Thomas Condell, banker of Springfield, Ill., and they have three living children—two daughters and a son. Mrs. Glover’s mother was a native of Kentucky, and her father a native of Ireland. Mr. and Mrs. Glover, after residing in Quincy, Ill., for three years, have again returned to Missouri, and are now living in Knox County upon their farm of 879 acres.

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This family biography is one of 204 biographies included in the Knox County, Missouri portion of the book,  The History of Lewis, Clark, Knox and Scotland Counties, Missouri published in 1887.  For the complete description, click here: Knox County, Missouri History, Genealogy, and Maps

View additional Knox County, Missouri family biographies here: Knox County, Missouri Biographies

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