My Genealogy Hound

JOHN HUTCHISON, the subject of this biographical memoir, is a prosperous farmer on Center creek and one of the earliest settlers of Franklin county. He was born in Casey county, Ky., August 11, 1820, and is one of a family of nine children born to Thomas and Polly Hutchison, both of whom were natives of Virginia, the former having been born February 26, 1800, is still living, and the latter born in the year 1798, died at the age of eighty-six.

Our subject spent his boyhood days attending school and laboring on the farm in Casey county, Ky. At the age of twenty-one he moved to Livingston county, Mo., where he engaged in farming until the war broke out. In October, 1862, he enlisted in the Confederate army, entering Company H, Third Missouri volunteers, but soon after entering the field he was taken prisoner and sent to St. Louis, where he was held in custody for a short time and then exchanged. He rejoined his regiment at the siege of Vicksburg and for forty-eight days and nights participated in the battle, being captured by the Union forces in May. He was held in Reading camp until the following fall and then exchanged. He rejoined the regiment while on the Georgia raid and participated in all the skirmishes from Atlanta to Mobile, Ala. At the fall of Fort Blakesly, he was again taken prisoner and sent to Ship Island, where he, with others, was guarded for eleven days by negroes, when he was sent to Vicksburg, and a little later, while being taken to Jackson, Miss., he heard of Lee’s surrender and sixteen days after he was paroled.

The war being over, he footed it to Chattanooga and from there home. He remained in Livingston county but a few days and then moved to Glenwood, Iowa, and a short time later to Rock Bluff, Cass county, Nebr., where he lived on a rented place for five years. He came to Franklin county in October, 1870, and in April of the following spring moved his family. He filed homestead papers on his present land in section 26, township 2, range 15 west, being one hundred and sixty acres, October 11, 1870. At that early day there were no houses between his place and Red Cloud, and only two shanties where that thriving city now stands. The country was one vast prairie, and buffalo, elk, deer and antelope roamed about in herds. He used to be fond of hunting, and remembers distinctly of having as high as three buffalo, five elk and eighteen turkeys lying in his yard at one time. His first house was a dug-out, fourteen by eighteen feet, in which he lived the first four years. At that time the nearest trading point was Beatrice, from which place he hauled his provisions, it requiring one week to make the trip. There being no bridges, he was often compelled to swim the streams. The first year he was well remunerated for his toil by a good crop of corn, but for several years thereafter raised but little, on account of the drought and grasshoppers. Although having seen some of the hardest and most discouraging days of pioneer life, he stuck close to his claim and withstood the storms of adversity until, at the present, he has one of the finest and best improved farms in Franklin county. He was married March 26, 1861, to Miss Mary Davis, a native of Missouri. Mr. and Mrs. Hutchison are both active members of the Christian church in Franklin. In politics Mr. Hutchison is a democrat, and held the office of county commissioner in 1872-3. He was also treasurer of the county agricultural society from the date of its organization to a few years ago. He is a zealous member of the Masonic fraternity, belonging to Joppa Lodge, No. 76, at Franklin.