Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1891
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 552
WILLIAM ARTHUR

William ARTHUR, one of the representative farmers of Jackson Township, residing on section 27, first came to Harrison County in the autumn of 1857. He bought a sawmill near Magnolia, and operated it six months, and then removed the same to Hoosier Township (now St. John's), where he continued to operate for four years, after which he moved it to Pottawattamie county and sold it, and bought the place he now occupies, consisting of two hundred and twenty-six acres of land, upon which there had been made but little improvements. He commenced housekeeping in a log house 18x26 feet, and lied in the same for nearly thirteen years, and then built a two-story house 30x42 feet, and also a barn 30x40 feet, provided sheds for stock, dug wells, put up a windmill and set out an orchard of one hundred and twenty-five trees. He ornamented and made more valuable his premises by the planting out of a large number of shade trees. His present farm consists of three hundred and twenty acres, seventy acres under the plow, and the balance in pasture and meadow. About forty acres of his farm is timber.  It was our subject's ill fortune to live in the county during the grasshopper years, and lost four crops by grasshoppers and chinch bugs.

Our subject was born in Washington County, Pa., February 14, 1828. He is the son of William and Jane ARTHUR. The father was a native of Scotland, while the mother was born in Pennsylvania. They were the parents of three children--William, Isabel D. and Thomas (deceased). Our subject remained in the old Keystone State until he grew to manhood. At the age of sixteen his father died, after which he went to live with a man named SCOTT, and learned the tanners' trade, continuing in the business until he was twenty-one years old. He then went to Ashland, Ohio, where he engaged in setting up and running machinery for the Newark Machine Works. He remained with them a year and one-half, and the next year worked for the Ft. Wayne Machine Company, after which he drifted to Iowa.

Our subject was unite din marriage February 16, 1859, to Ellen MCWILLIAMS, the daughter of William and Polly A. (MARSH) MCWILLIAMS, natives of Ohio, who were the parents of eight children--John W., Ellen, Thomas B., Leonidas, Mary I., David B. (deceased), William T. (deceased), and Kate K. (deceased).

Our subject and his wife are the parents of eight children, all of whom are living. They were born in the following order: Thomas, July 12, 1860; William T., April 24, 1862; Anna J., December 6, 1863; Fred, July 11, 1866; Mary D., June 22, 1868; Eugene L., January 2, 1872; Edwin C., February 3, 1875; and Leonteen, June 6, 1880.

Our subject is a member of the Masonic fraternity, and is a member of Little Sioux Lodge, No. 382. Politically he is in sympathy with the Republican party, and has assessed his township several times, and also took the census enumeration in 1880.   His wife is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and no family in the township is more highly respected than they.

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