Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1891
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 309
WILLIAM AISTON

William AISTON has been a resident of Harrison County since the spring of 1877, having purchased his farm the fall before. He is now a resident, of section 18, Jefferson Township.

Our subject was born in Dublin, Ireland, April 8, 1825. His parents were Thomas and Mary (MEDCALF) AISTON, natives of Kent, England, both of whom came to Massachusetts in about 1849, our subject, having arrived in this country two years previous. His parents died in the old "Bay State" the father aged fifty-seven years.

Mr. AISTON, of whom we write, learned the trade of a paper maker in Dublin, Ireland, his father having charge of a paper mill in that city.

After serving seven years as an apprentice, he came to America and worked for a paper company, this giving him his financial start in life.

Mr. AISTON came to his county from Berkshire County, Mass., moving on a one hundred and twenty-acre tract, provided with a very small house and without fencing. The first season, he broke forty acres and in the spring, purchased eighty acres more and kept adding until he now possesses two hundred and sixteen acres of well-improved land. He erected a farmhouse in 1879, the dimensions are 22x28 , with a wing 16x24 feet.

About sixty acres of his farm is under plow, while the balance is meadow and pasture land. He usually keeps about seventy head of cattle, handling graded Shorthorns and Herefords. Upon coming to the county, he was no doubt inexperienced but soon learned the customs of others and has successfully followed his calling. The best years of his live, however, have been spent in the paper business forty years in all has he worked at that trade and three gold medals were awarded to him at the Centennial Exposition in 1876.

Mr. AISTON was married in Massachusetts, when thirty-five years of age, to Sophronia WILSON, of that State, who died in July, 1889. He was again married, November 12, 1890, to Elizabeth MILLIMAN, a native of England, who was born, March 20, 1824. She was the daughter of Capt. Leonard and Elizabeth (NICHOLS) PROCTOR.

Mrs. AISTON came to America in 1851, landing at New York, May 2. She was married in England, July 28, 1849, to James WHYBROW, and with him came to this country; he died in Ohio in 1852, of cholera, and she was again married December 25, 1854 to Francis MILLIMAN. He died in Logan May 10, 1873.

Mr. AISTON has been a very successful farmer since coming to Harrison County, and his beautiful farm known as "Lake View Stock Farm," owing to several small lakes upon the tract from which it derives its name, is one of great attractions. Everything our subject possesses has been made by the royal route of hard, honest labor, as he had but $5 upon arriving in New York. With capital with which to start in life the road to success is necessarily strewn with more flowers then is that traversed by one having no means, save that of his two arms and determination to win.

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