Biographies I

 Following are some biographies of families who at one time or another lived in Henry Co. Illinois. In some cases it is the parent, grandparent, sibling, spouse or child who was a Henry Co. resident so please read carefully!

CHARLES FRANCIS INGALS.

When central Illinois was largely one great unsettled prairie, covered with its native grasses, crossed and recorded by sloughs which made traveling difficult, when its streams were unbridged and along their banks grew the timber Charles Francis Ingals became 'a resident of Lee county. In later life he lived for a number of years at Kewanee and was well known in this part of the state. He was born January 18, 1817, in the town of Abington, Windham county, Connecticut. The ancestry is traced back to Edmond Ingals, who settled at Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1628. He was killed by falling through a bridge while going from Boston to Lynn, his death occurring at Andover, Massachusetts, February 8, 1718. His son James, born September 24, 1669, married Hannah Abbott, April i6, 1695, and died June 27, 1735. Their son James, born August 9, 1695, was married November 5, 1719, to Mary Stevens and they had seven children: James, born August 30, 1720; Deborah, born April 29, 1722; Ephraim, born November 26, 1725; Mary, who was born September 27, 1727, and was married December 7, 1777, to Eben Abbott; Jebediah, born November 3, 1729; a daughter born October 18, 1731; and Simeon, born January 12, 1737. The father of C. F. Ingals was Ephraim Ingals, who was born September 6, 1764, and died February 12, 1831. He married Lucy Goodell, April 26, 1801. She was the daughter of Amasa Goodell and died April 2, 1829. Their children were: Mary S., who was born May 7, 1802; Henry Laurens, born June 9, 1804; Lucy, who was born August 11, 1807, and died at Dedham, Massachusetts, January 22, 1887; Lydia, born June 20, 1809; and Deborah, born December 3, 1811; Edmond, who was born April 14, 1814, and died March 19, 1835; Charles Francis; George Addison, who was born February I, 1820, and died at Oak Park, Illinois, February 14, 1884; and Ephraim, who was born May 26, 1823, and died December 18, 1900, in Chicago.

The fall after his mother's death C. F. Ingals, then a lad of twelve years, was sent to Cavendish, Vermont, where he lived with his brother-in-law Addison Fletcher for five years, or until he came to Illinois with his brothers and sisters, Henry, Edmond, Lydia and Deborah. On the death of their father in 1831 it was decided to sell the old farm and all of the children with the exception of Mary and Lucy removed to what was then the far west. The farm comprised two hundred acres and had been in the family through four generations. It was in 1832 that Henry and George A. Ingals, just after the Black Hawk war, journeyed westward and settled on the Sangamon river bottoms in Illinois. Later with two sisters and a brother Charles F. Ingals made the journey, traveling westward after the primitive manner of the time, sometimes riding and sometimes walking in order to make their journey in the most comfortable and economical manner. They passed through Chicago when it contained less than fifteen hundred inhabitants. On reaching the home of steamboat navigation they proceeded down the Illinois river to Beardstown and on to their destination. That year C. F. Ingals was employed to bind wheat at a dollar per day. Later he rode to Springfield and entered forty acres of land. The claim was made by squatting upon it in June, 1836. It was then only surveyed into townships. He and his brothers cut considerable fencing timber from that place. During the fall months of 1834 he went north with Captain Storrs and located an excellent claim ten miles south of Kewanee in Henry county. Edmond Ingals died and C. F. Ingals felt inadequate to the ask of developing and improving his new claim so he took up teaching at Beardstown and for eleven terms had charge of the school there held in a little brick building. In the meantime he made a trip with his uncle to a point near Buffalo Rock, on the Illinois river, and soon afterward located a claim ten miles south of there, on which he lived for a half century. He located eighty acres of timber land and bought a half section of prairie and then chopped timber for a few days to show that the land was occupied. He then returned to the Sangamon bottoms, where he made arrangements and secured equipments to cultivate his land. His brother Addison joined him in this task and after two weeks they had a rough log cabin ready for occupancy. Thirteen men and boys assisted in raising it and his family occupied that primitive home for twelve years. It was fourteen by sixteen feet, one of the typical cabin homes of the time. His sister Deborah came to act as his housekeeper and with characteristic energy he devoted his attention to breaking the prairie and cultivating the fields. Among their first crops were fifty bushels of potatoes. These with a beef which they dressed and an occasional venison steak constituted their food supplies through the first winter. It seemed impossible to Mr. Ingals at that time that the country ever would be settled, so boundless seemed the prairies. In the summer of 1837 this pioneer home was visited by an old Vermont acquaintance, Dr. R. F. Adams, who claimed the hand of Deborah Ingals in marriage some time afterward.

During the season of 1838 C. F. Ingals left the farm and returned to the east, where he won a companion and helpmate for life's journey in his marriage to Miss Sarah Hawkins. She was born March 15, 1819, in Reading, Vermont, a daughter of John Sullivan Hawkins, the fourth son of Captain William A. Hawkins, a Revolutionary soldier. John S. Hawkins was born in Milton, New Hampshire, January 30, 1785. The family afterwards removed to a farm in the town of Reading, Windsor county, Vermont. He was married in Cavendish, Vermont, June 11, 1818, to Mary, daughter of Ezekiel and Hannah (Ames) Morrison. Mrs. Hawkins was born in Peterboro, New Hampshire, and was one of eight children. For some time John S. Hawkins engaged in merchandising as a member of the firm of Farwell & Hawkins, of Reading. His daughter Mrs. Ingals was instructed in all of the duties of the household in her girlhood days and acquired a good education, largely attending select schools in different parts of New England. At length she went to Brooklyn, New York, to live with an uncle there, and remained in that city until her marriage. She returned to her father's home to prepare for the wedding, which was celebrated by the Rev. Joseph Freemen on the 6th of September, 1838. On that afternoon the young couple started on their long journey to their western home, traveling in a one-horse wagon, their baggage consisting of three trunks and a hand basket. By easy stages they proceeded to Buffalo and thence by lake to Detroit. From that point they traveled to Laport, Indiana, and after a week pleasantly passed with relatives they arrived at their home on the 12th of October. Their house was a little cabin, twelve by fifteen feet inside, the roof covered with shakes. There was also a shed kitchen used in summer. The furniture consisted of two chairs, two benches, a cook stove and a bed in the lower room, while in the loft above there were three beds, one of these being curtained off for the use of guests. The family met with all of the experiences of pioneer life, with its hardships, privations and difficulties, its pleasures and its hospitality. In 1839 Mr. and Mrs. Ingals with his sister Deborah and her prospective husband, Dr. Adams, started with Mr. Woodworth to his home in Ottawa, where the Doctor and Deborah were to be married. Mr. Woodworth was the possessor of a buggy and the others rode in a wagon. On the way Mrs. Ingals rode for a while with Mr. Woodworth and, thinking to make time, they drove on ahead of the party but became lost in a dense fog and not until daylight came could they proceed on their way to their destination. For fifty years the family lived upon the old homestead farm. Sorrow at times entered the household by the death of relatives but joy also took up her abode there and altogether the life on the old home farm for parents and children was a most happy one. The original pioneer home was replaced by a frame dwelling, nineteen by thirty feet As the years passed the country became more thickly settled and neighbors were not so widely scattered. Churches and schools were organized and the advantages of the older east were here introduced.

Mr. Ingals gave his attention in undivided manner to the work of the farm until after the discovery of gold in California. In the spring of 1850 he joined a party that proceeded by wagon train across the country, starting about the 26th of March. Supplies were purchased at St. Louis and the wagon train was four months in reaching its destination. Mr. Ingals at the time of his departure expected to be gone not more than two years. He left to his wife the care of three children: Charles, four years of age; Fletcher, two years of age; and a little daughter, Sarah, three weeks old. When he had been absent three years he wrote for his wife to meet him in New York, but, changing his mind, remained another year so That four years elapsed ere he returned to his home. Mrs. Ingals had made preparations for the trip to New York ere she heard of her husband's changed plans and concluded to make a visit in the east among relatives, which she did. When Mr. Ingals planned his return for the following year he met his wife at Laporte, Indiana, and then both went to the east and visited among relatives and friends there whom they had not seen from the time of their marriage. After their return they resumed possession of the home farm and father and mother bent their energies to the cultivation of the fields and the management of the household. In the fall of 1856 they erected an addition to their house, all this indicating that they were prospering as the years passed. About that time the Illinois Central Railroad was completed and a station located three and a half miles from their farm called Sublette.

As the years passed on five children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Ingals:

In 1873 Mr. Ingals erected a fine residence upon his farm and in the ensuing years it was the delight of the parents to entertain their children and grandchildren there. At length they decided to sell the old home place and this was done in March, 1885. The two succeeding years Mr. and Mrs. Ingals largely passed in Kewanee and Chicago and spent the winter of 1887 in California. The following winter they were in Glenwood, Florida, and in the winter of 1889 went again to California. In the years 1890 and 1891 they lived in Kewanee and Chicago and in the succeeding four winters were again in Florida. They then established their home at No. 507 West Adams street, where they continued to reside until the death of Mr. Ingals, the cold winter seasons, however, being passed in the sunny south.

All through the period of his residence in central Illinois Mr. Ingals took an active and helpful part in the work of progress and improvement, lending his aid and influence at all times to the support of such measures as he deemed would prove beneficial to that part of the state. Lee county was organized about 1840 and when but twenty years of age he was elected one of the three county commissioners by whom county affairs were at that time managed. He served a three years' term in office and during that period the courthouse was erected at a cost of about ten thousand dollars and a log jail at a cost of eighteen hundred. Mr. and Mrs. Ingals lived to celebrate their sixty-third wedding anniversary on the 6th of September, 1901. They passed the winters of 1901 and 1902 happily in their Chicago home, but in April of the latter year Mr. Ingals became ill and on the 2d of July passed away. A long useful and honorable life was ended and she with whom he had so long traveled life's journey happily was left alone. The labors, the nature and characteristics of each had supplemented and rounded out the life of the other and their activity in former years brought them to a quiet and serene old age, in which the comforts of life were their's to enjoy as they spent the hours in each other's companionship. Mrs. Ingals died February 12, 1908, at the age of eighty-nine years.

SOURCE: Henry L. Kiner, History of Henry County Illinois, Volume II, Chicago: Pioneer Publishing Co, 1910

ROBERT INGLIS

Close upon the heels of other important enterprises was established that which the subject of this sketch is now successfully prosecuting,  the manufacture of buggies and spring wagons. Mr. I. came to Pawnee City in the fall of 1876, and is numbered among its most energetic business men, industrious and reliable, and worthily filling his niche in the busy hive of its various industries.

A native of Illinois, he was born near Kewanee, in Henry County, Dec. 2, 1856, and is the eldest of six children, the offspring of Peter and Ellen I. (Rutherford) Inglis, who were both natives of Scotland.  The parents of our subject emigrated to the United States early in life, and after their marriage settled in Henry County, Ill., where the father was successfully engaged as a farmer and stocktrader, and where they lived until their removal to Nebraska, in 1874.  Upon coming to this county they settled on a tract of land about ten miles southwest of Pawnee City, where the parents still reside.

Robert remained with them until twenty years of age, acquiring a practical education, and completing his studies in the academy at Kewanee, Ill. He accompanied them to this county, and lived with them upon the farm one year, then repairing to Pawnee City began an apprenticeship at blacksmithing, which trade he followed thereafter for a period of about eight years.  Mr. Inglis at an early period in his life displayed unusual mechanical genius, and at the expiration of the time mentioned he left the anvil, and began the manufacture of spring wagons and buggies, putting out from the first about fifty jobs per year, also doing a general repair business. This enterprise was successful from the first, and he now gives employment during the busy season to from six to eight men. His work is all disposed of in the home market. He has invested much of his capital in real estate, putting up what is called the Pawnee City Opera House in connection with J. M. Spates, and other structures. The opera house is an object of pride to the citizens of this place, occupying an area of 52x100 feet, being two stories in height, with a capacity of seating 750 persons. There are in connection with the stage fourteen sets of scenes and other appliances making it pleasant for the theater-goers.

Miss Margaret C. Burg, of Pawnee County, became the wife of our subject Dec. 8, 1875. She was born Dec. 8, 1856, and is the daughter of Francis Burg, who is now   deceased, having spent his last years in this county. They have two children, a son and daughter, George F. and Nellie.

Mr. Inglis has served as a member of the City Council three years, and is at present the City Treasurer. He is rather conservative in politics,  but usually votes the Republican ticket. Socially, he belongs to Lodge No. 9, I. O. O. F., and is a Knight of Pythias. In religious matters he is identified with the First Presbyterian Church.

Mr. Inglis is numbered among the self-made men of this county, who, knowing how their property has been accumulated, naturally know how to take care of it. He has sufficient to support him in his declining years, and is adding steadily to his bank account.

Source: Biographical Album of Johnson & Pawnee Counties Nebraska, Pawnee Co p. 485-486