Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1891
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 794
JONATHAN V. WATSON

Jonathan V. WATSON, a farmer and highly respected citizen of Washington Township, whose pleasant home is situated on section 14, came to Harrison County, February 4, 1874, and settled on the site of his present home, where he purchased forty acres of wild land upon which there had been built a small shanty, surrounded by about five acres of breaking. He occupied that rude abode until August, 18800, when he built a frame house 16x24 feet, with twelve-foot posts. In June, 1885, he built a barn 20x40 feet, and has kept adding by the way of improvements until he now possesses a fine farm home, with land amounting to two hundred acres. When he came to the county the township had been but little improved, there being but two schoolhouses in the township; one on the northwest quarter of section 16 and the other at Walker's Grove. The first farm work our subject did in the county was the sowing of twenty acres of wheat on Andrew GRAYBILL'S place, at WALKER'S Grove. This was in 1874, one of the grasshopper years, and these little winged pests destroyed his crop. The same year he broke twenty acres on his own place and planted it to sod corn, but July 9, a hailstorm cut it to pieces, and he then left home and went to work by the day near Avoca, continuing through harvest and stacking. He was not a little discouraged at the outlook and had it not been for his good wife, who did not want to go he would have abandoned the place forever.

Mr. WATSON was born in Fountain County, In., May 17, 1844, and four years later removed to Henderson County, Ill., and in 1853 to Shelby County, Iowa. Here he remained until October 12, 1863, at the time when the Civil War cloud hung the lowest and looked the blackest a time when it seemed as though a permanent division of our Union of States was imminent. It was at this date that our subject enlisted in Company M, of the Ninth Iowa Cavalry. He went from Harlem to Davenport, was there a short time and was sent to St. Louis, and from there ordered on South, stopping at Memphis, Tenn., and from thence to DeVALL'S Bluff, where they were thrown out on the skirmish line. He was at Bayou Prairie, Augusta and Pine Bluffs, and was then sent to Louisburg where they remained three months; was at Little Rock at two different times and finally stationed at Camden, where they were to receive their muster papers, which they did not get, however, until they got to Davenport, where they were finally discharged, February 12, after which our subject came to Shelby County, where he remained until 1874, when he came to Harrison County.

He was married in Pottawattamie County, August 30, 1866, to Miss Mary I. ELLIS, by whom eleven children have been born�Francis E., Kittie A., Charles A., Abraham S. and Martha M., deceased; James D., Maggie E., deceased; Clara b., Emmert A., Mary E., and Freddie H., deceased.

Our subject's wife, Mary E. (ELLIS) WATSON, was born in Putnam County, State of Indiana, March 17, 1847, and came to Pottawattamie County, Iowa with her parents, in 1863; lived in Shelby County two years and then removed back to Pottawattamie County. Her father, Abraham S. ELLIS, was born in Clermont County, Ohio, in March, 1819, and was a pioneer in Shelby County, Iowa, in 1852, and lived there until 1883, but died in Pottawattamie County, April 1, 1889. His wife was Margaret E. VANCLEVE a native of Kentucky, born May 9, 1823.

To make this family sketch more complete it should here be stated that the father of our subject was born in Virginia August 27, 1817, and came to Shelby County, Iowa, in 1864. He removed to Pottawattamie County, in 1866, where he still lives. His wife, the mother of our subject, Francis COCHRAN before her marriage, was born in Kentucky, in June, 1811, her parents coming to Missouri where she was married. She died in Pottawattamie County, February 2, 1875.

Mr. WATSON and his wife are members of Methodist Episcopal Church at Persia, Iowa.

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