Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1891
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 289
JOHN SHAW

John SHAW, a resident of St. John's Township, came to Harrison County in October, 1875, and purchased land on section 35, of Calhoun Township. He bought eighty-seven acres of partly improved land, upon which he lived eight years, then sold and removed to La Grange Township, and settled on section 14, where he purchased one hundred and ninety-five acres of improved land. On this he remained until November, 1889, when he exchanged it for his present farm, on sections 1 and 2, being eighty acres in St. John's Township. Fifty acres of this is under the plow, three acres of timber, and the balance in pasture land.

Mr. SHAW was born in Columbiana County, Ohio, May 30, 1836. He is a son of Hamilton and Abigail (TURNER) SHAW, both natives of the Buckeye State. The mother died in Ohio, October 20, 1885. The father is now living in Hardin County, Ohio. Our subject was the third of a family of three sons and two daughters. He remained at home until twenty years of age, receiving a common school education.

January 10, 1855, he was united in marriage to Eliza HEDGES, the daughter of William and Harriett (FRANKLIN) HEDGES, and was the eldest of a family of six children. Immediately after their marriage they removed to Allen County, Ohio, rented land one year, and then moved to Hancock County, of the same State, where he purchased a farm of eighty acres in the timber. He commenced clearing this tract of land up, built a hewed log house, 16x28 feet, in which their oldest child, Clara Bell, was born. He succeeded in clearing away the timber on fourteen acres of this tract, and after three years sold the place and returned to Allen County, where he bought fifty-eight acres of timber land, on which he erected a hewed log house, which was the birthplace of two of their children. Here he remained until coming to Harrison County. Of the seventy-six acres of his last Ohio farm, he cleared up sixty acres, and sold the tract for forty-three dollars per acre.

Our subject and his wife are the parents of four children, born as follows: Clara Bell, May 17, 1857; Hiram F., January 14, 1859; Alpheus E., January 27, 1862; William H., March 9, 1865.

William H. is married and living in Arkansas County, Arkansas, while the other three children are residents of Harrison County.

Coming to Western Ohio at quite an early day, our subject saw that country as it had been left by the hand of nature, with slight traces of pioneer life found throughout the great forests, with a trail blazed here, and a rude cabin erected there, the whole section being known as the "Far West." Jonathan SHAW, grandfather of our subject, was a native of Pennsylvania, and married Sarah WOOLAM, and reared a family of eight children. He died in Hancock County, Ohio, in May, 1865, aged eighty years. His wife, the grandmother of our subject ceased from the labors of this life in the same county in February of the same year, at the age of seventy-six years.

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