Manley H. Horton, Earlville, Illinois, was born in Savoy, Berkshire
county, Massachusetts, February 10, 1843, a son of Ansel and Hannah
(Thompson) Horton. His ancestors were among the early settlers of New
England, the Hortons being of Scotch descent and the Thompsons of English,
and both his father and mother were born, lived and died in Massachusetts.
Their family was composed of eight sons and three daughters.
His
father a carpenter and builder, Manley H. in his youth learned that trade,
working under his father. At the age of nineteen, laying down the hammer and
the saw, he enlisted, September 1, 1862, as a private in Company A,
Forty-ninth Massachusetts Infantry, for a term of nine months, and was
honorably discharged September 1, 1863, having served three months more than
his term of enlistment. Among the engagements in which he participated were
the siege of Port Hudson and the battles of Hudson Plains and
Donaldsonville.
At the close of his army service young Horton
returned to his home in Massachusetts and resumed work at his trade. In 1876
he came west to Illinois and located in Earlville, where he followed his
trade five years, at the end of that time moving to a farm in Lee county,
this state, where he was engaged in agricultural pursuits ten years, and at
the same time did some contract work in building. In 1891 he moved to
Marathon, Iowa, where he invested in land, buying a quarter section, which
he improved and subsequently sold at a good profit. He also invested in
other lands there and bought a drug store in the town of Marathon, which is
conducted by his son-in-law. Mr. Horton made his home in Marathon until
1896. March 1st of that year he returned to Earlville and has since resided
here. The pleasant and attractive home he now occupies he erected in 1898.
Recently he met with an accident which crippled his knee and he is now
unable to do active work.
Mr. Horton was married, in 1865, in
Massachusetts, to Miss Emaline Carpenter, a native of the same town in which
he was born and a representative of one of the old families of the place.
She died in 1873, leaving three children. — Edna, Herbert, and Etta. In 1874
he married Mary A. Blood, a native of Cheshire, Massachusetts, and they have
four children, — Howard, LeRoy, Imogene and Harry.
Mr. Horton is
politically a Republican and fraternally a Mason.
Extracted 18 Aug 2017 by Norma Hass from Biographical and Genealogical Record of LaSalle County, Illinois, published in 1900, volume 2, pages 507-508.
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