My Genealogy Hound

J. H. Canon is a Gibson County Tennessean, born August 14, 1852, only son of Capt. Abraham W. and Mary E. (Huggins) Canon, natives of Tennessee and of Scotch-Irish descent. The father married at the age of twenty-three, and moved from Rutherford County, Tenn., to Gibson County in 1848, and taught school from that time until the beginning of the war. He removed to Humboldt in the spring of 1860, and took charge of the Humboldt College as principal. He was elected captain of a company of soldiers organized at Humboldt in the spring of 1861. The company was known as Company K, Twelfth Regiment Infantry, under Col. Russell. He was taken prisoner during the winter of 1863, and carried to Camp Douglas, where he was confined several months. While there he had two severe hemorrhages of the lungs, and was then induced to take the oath of allegiance. After returning home and recovering from his sickness, he resumed teaching, but was soon taken with another spell of hemorrhage and died February 26, 1866. He was a member of the Presbyterian Church and a Free Mason. He has one son and two daughters living: Bettie E. (Mrs. J. M. Hannah) and Mollie Y. (Mrs. J. A. Word), and our subject, who was reared on a farm and attended the public schools and the Peabody High School at Trenton. He began depending on his own judgment at the age of fourteen, as his father died at this time, and has been fairly successful through life. He has been on the farm with his mother nearly all the time since his father’s death. He voted the straight Democratic ticket up to 1884, when he voted for St. John, and he says the latter vote is the only one of which he is actually proud.