My Genealogy Hound

Thomas Jefferson Mansfield, of the Wright County Mercantile Co., at Mansfield, Mo., was born in Madison County, Mo., in 1858. His father, Robert Mansfield, was born in Tennessee in 1808, and there grew to manhood and was married. He moved to Wright County, Mo., in 1848, thence to Madison County, of the same State, but returned to Wright County in 1868, and about a year before his death moved to Laclede County, where he died in 1887. He was a farmer throughout life, and by his wife, Nancy Spears, had a family of twelve children, seven of whom are living at the present time. Thomas J. Mansfield, whose name heads this sketch, is the seventh of their children, and was reared to manhood in his native State, receiving his education in a common school in Illinois. Having learned the printer’s trade, he returned to Wright County, Mo., where he was engaged in this work until about eight years since, when he entered the mercantile business at Hartville, and has been a member of the present firm for over a year. Their stock is valued at $10,000, and their annual sales amount to about $30,000. He was married in Hartville to Miss Susie Lee Perry, who was born in Missouri in 1861, and is a daughter of Rev. John W. Perry, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. They have one child, Marion Pearl. Mr. Mansfield is a Democrat, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and belongs to the I. O. O. F., Fourth Degree, 992, Mountain Grove Lodge. His paternal grandfather, an Englishman, came to America prior to the Revolutionary War, and assisted the colonists in their struggle against the mother country. He was in the battle of Yorktown.