IAGenWeb Project - Clayton co.


Guy Kinsley
Giard Twp.


Guy Kinsley, one of the enterprising farmers of Giard Township, was born in Franklin County, Vt., on the 12th day of February, 1825, son of Benjamin A., who was born in Cambridge, Vt., Jan. 11, 1796, and Catherine (Montague) Kinsley, born in Waybridge, Vt., Feb. 13, 1798. They were married in Fletcher, Vt., Feb. 24, 1824. By this union there was a family of seven sons and one daughter. Mr. Kinsley was a soldier in the war of 1812, and during the battle of Plattsburg was in hearing of the guns but not near enough to participate. In 1859 he came to Monona, and built for Horace Emory the only brick dwelling the town can boast of. Previous to coming to Clayton County, in 1849, Mrs. Catherine Kinsley died, and Mr. Kinsley married Mrs. Lucy Blair. Mr. Kinsley died in Lowell, Vt., in December, 1864, and Mrs. Kinsley in York State, in 1881. The subject of this memoir was reared on a farm, and received a limited education. His parent being poor, he was forced into the world to struggle for himself at the age of thirteen, and he began working on a farm for $5 per month; he remembers of receiving $10 per month for his last nine months, which was considered large wages at that time in Vermont. When twenty-one years of age he went to North Brookfield, Mass., where he was employed on a farm for the Hon. Amasa Walker, remaining there until 1853, when he returned to Vermont; was married there to Lucinda Elsworth, who was one of a family of twenty-one children, eighteen of whom lived to raise families of their own. She was born in Fletcher, Vt., in August, 1831. Mr. and Mrs. Kinsley are the parents of eleven children, seven sons and four daughters-- Lucy, Frank, Amanda, Fannie, Ben A., Cora, Alice, Prudie, Maggie, Rufus and Jason. Mr. Kinsley came to the county in 1853, locating in Giard Township. Though beginning at the lower round of the ladder, he has by judicious management accumulated a comfortable home and property, owning 140 acres of land, valued at $35 per acre. He has held several local offices of trust in the gift of the people. He had five brothers in the last war, who served in an aggregate seventeen years.

source: History of Clayton County, Iowa, 1882, p. 820-821

 

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