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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