Grundy County IL Archives Biographies.....Harford, Mrs Aaron Tyler 1825 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/il/ilfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Deb Haines ddhaines@gmail.com March 25, 2006, 4:25 pm Author: Bio/Gen Record LaSalle/Grundy 1900 Mrs. Aaron Tyler Harford Frances (Dewey) Harford, widow of the late Aaron Tyler Harford, of Verona, is a representative of one of the leading pioneer families of Grundy county, Illinois. The ancestors of both Mr. and Mrs. Harford, in both the paternal and maternal lines, were of sterling English stock. They were of a race which has been foremost in America in founding our free institutions and in settling and developing our country. The first of this family of Harfords in America was a pioneer in Westchester county, New York; and Ephraim Harford, grandfather of Aaron Tyler Harford, was a farmer there. Harry Harford, a son of Ephraim Harford and father of Aaron Tyler Harford, was born in Westchester county, New York, April 3, 1780. He was a soldier in the United States Army in the war of 1812-14, and was captured by the British and confined for a considerable time on a prison ship. His wife, Peggie Maria Tyler, whom he married in Westchester county, was born there March 3, 1798, and was a first cousin of John Tyler, president of the United States. Their children were born and named as follows: Lewis T., 1815; Loretta, March 13, 1816; Sarah McDonald, 1817; Elizabeth Cecilia, 1818 (died April 28, 1895); Chauncey, 1819; Altie, 1821; Aaron J., 1822 (died July 15, 1899); Margaret F., 1823 (died December 25, 1876); John, 1824; William H., 1827; Frederick C., 1830; Peter Fleming, 1832; Mary, 1834 (died young); Catherine, 1837; and Joseph. Harry Harford, who was a well-read and observant man, and who was in early life a school teacher, lived on his farm in Westchester county, New York, until about 1840, when he removed to Illinois. He traded his New York farm for one hundred and sixty acres of land in Kendall county, four miles east of Lisbon. With his son, Aaron Tyler; he came out from New York one year in advance of the rest of his family, and, as the land was unimproved and without a house, the two lived in their wagon during their first winter in the state. They made preparations for the family and others came the next spring, making the journey with horses from the Hudson river, in New York. Mr. Harford improved this property and lived on it until, late in life, he sold it and removed to California, where he lived, retired from business, and died on Christmas, 1874, at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Catherine M. Biter. He was a man of strong character and broad views, a member of no church, a Democrat in politics, an honest man whose rule in life was the golden rule. His wife, Peggie Maria (Tyler) Harford, died in 1882. Aaron Tyler Harford, a son of Harry and Peggie Maria (Tyler) Harford, was born at South Salem, Westchester county, New York, July 2, 1822. He divided his time in boyhood between farm work and attendance at the public school. He was really the first of the family in Illinois. Harry Harford exchanged farms with one Miller, an old Westchester county acquaintance who had come out some years before, and Aaron was sent ahead to "spy out the land" and report his impressions to his father before the deal was concluded. He came and saw and was conquered by the charms and manifest advantages of Illinois, and it was mainly through his influence that his father was induced to come west. Aaron lived with his parents on this farm some years after their settlement. He married Frances Dewey, at the homestead of her father in Vienna township, Grundy county, November 1, 1847, and settled on new land at Lisbon, Kendall county, Illinois, within the present limits of White Willow township. Frances Dewey, who became the wife and is now the widow of Aaron Tyler Harford, was born in Ketton, Rutlandshire, England, December 4, 1825, a daughter of John, Jr., and Mary (Welborn) Dewey. John Dewey, Jr., was a son of John and Sarah (Mason) Dewey. John Dewey, Sr., was a farmer, a man of good ability, who brought up his family in the faith of the Church of England. Besides John, Jr., his children were Sarah, Eliza, William and Mary. John Dewey, Jr., was born November 9, 1802, at his father's homestead, Sutton, Lincolnshire Fens, and was educated for a mercantile career; but he also acquired a knowledge of milling, and, liking the business, bought a wind-power gristmill in Rutlandshire and devoted himself with much success to its operation. There he met, wooed and won Mary Welborn, and they were married in the form prescribed by the Church of England. Mary Welborn was born at Woolsthorpe, December 30, 1802, a daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth (Jenkinson) Welborn. The Welborns had been settled in Lincolnshire for many generations. Thomas Welborn leased of the Duke of Rutland a farm for ninety-nine years and lived on it from his marriage until his death, February 12, 1839, at the age of eighty-three years. He was a substantial farmer and stock-raiser, a man of integrity and good business ability. His children were born and named as follows: Mary, December 20, 1802; Ann, November 11, 1805; Frances, February 12, 1808; Thomas, May 1, 1811; Richard, August 2, 1814. Frances and Thomas were drowned in childhood in a canal near their home. Mrs. Harford has a good recollection of the Welborns and Deweys in England, as she did not leave her native land until after her eleventh birthday, and the scenes, incidents and environments of her childhood are vividly impressed upon her mind. They were industrious, progressive, well-to-do, God-fearing and reliable men and women, and their descendants in American do them honor. John Dewey, Jr., Mrs. Harford's father, ran his mill at Ketton four years after his marriage. He then sold it, and, having good education and business ability, was for four years an assistant surveyor on a canal. Then he was for a like period a bookkeeper at Grenthan, Lincolnshire, in the office of the Grentham and Nottingham canal. While Mr. Dewey was in the last position his wife became interested in LaSalle county, Illinois, which was represented in the letters of her sister, who had married John Beeson and had settled there on a new farm, as "a land flowing with milk and honey," figuratively speaking; and the more she heard and talked about Illinois the more intense grew her desire to come here. Her husband could not venture to give up his position and trust fortune in an unknown land, but he permitted her to come over, with their children, while he worked on, with the understanding that she would return or he would join them in America, as she might advise later. That was more than sixty years ago, in the days of sailing vessels, stage coaches and canals, and in England Illinois was popularly supposed to be as yet in the domain of the wild Indian and the wild beast, and such an undertaking as Mrs. Dewey proposed was regarded as a difficult and dangerous one even for a man. But she was a woman of intelligence and of the stock from which the best pioneers have come, and she would not be dissuaded from her purpose. She made great preparation for the journey, and prayers were offered in the church for her safe guidance and delivery from all perils at her journey's end. She set down in an English almanac of that year the dates of the principal events of her journey, and from them we learn that she left Woolsthorpe, the home of her father, April 12, 1837, and traveled by canal to Nottingham, and thence by way of the rivers Trent and Mersey to Liverpool, whence she sailed, April 18, in the ship Garrick, an old fashioned sailing vessel, but new and stanch and on her first voyage. It was not until five weeks later that she landed in New York. The voyage had much of the time been a tempestuous one, and she and her two children, with the other passengers, had more than been tied to their berths to prevent their being thrown about by the pitching vessel and injured by violent contact with objects near. After remaining a week in New York they set out for Illinois, going up the Hudson to Albany by the steamer Swift Shore, from Albany to Buffalo by way of the Erie canal, by lake steamer from Buffalo to Detroit, and there waited five days for a "connecting" steamer to Chicago, which was commanded by Captain Cotton. From Chicago to Ottawa they made the journey by stage. A Methodist camp-meeting was in session at Ottawa, and, being a Methodist, Mrs. Dewey found friends at once, who took her and her children to Deer Park township, where her sister lived. On the way they stopped over night, June 26, 1837, at Brown's tavern, the first log house they had slept in to that date. The next morning they arrived at Beeson's, and were entertained by Mrs. Dewey's sister. Mrs. Dewey wrote her husband with such glowing accounts of Illinois that he came over in 1838. In 1839 and 1840 he rented land of Jesse Newport, the pioneer of Mazon township, Grundy county. After that he rented land three years of Jonah Newport, brother of Jesse. At the expiration of that time he had saved money enough to buy eighty acres where his daughter, Mrs. Harford lives, of the United States Government, at a dollar and a quarter an acre. On this land was beautiful grove named Paver's Grove, in honor of a pioneer settler in that vicinity, and otherwise it promised to be an attractive and desirable homestead. He improved it and added to it until the place contained one hundred and sixty acres of fine farming land. He built upon it a dwelling substantial and costly for the time and locality, which is now a part of a more modern residence. He prospered and became a well-to-do farmer and stockman, with cattle ranging for miles in either direction over the prairies. He was a good business man, a good neighbor, and a good Democrat, industrious, frugal, upright and generous, who died January 15, 1882, aged about seventy-eight years. His children were Frances, born December 4, 1825, at Ketton, England; and Thomas Welborn, born Mary 31, 1827, at Woolsthorpe. Mr. and Mrs. Aaron Tyler Harford lived only during the first winter of their married life on the plan Mr. Harford took up at Lisbon (now in White Willow township, Kendall county, Illinois), on which he had built a house before his marriage. Thereafter they lived at the Dewey homestead for two years, until Mr. Harford bought eighty acres of government land adjoining the Dewey homestead on the south, which he improved by building a log house and otherwise, and occupied it for four years. Then, Mrs. Harford's mother having died, Mrs. Harford inherited a portion of the Dewey homestead and Mr. Harford purchased another portion, and they moved there; and there Mr. Harford lived out the remainder of his days and there his widow still lives. Mr. Harford was a man of broad mind and independent views, and tolerant of the views of others, however much they might have differed from his own. He took great interest in liberal religion, and was one of the founders of the Universalist church at Verona, and for many years one of its deacons, and from its organization to his death one of its most liberal supporters. He was a great reader and possessed a remarkable memory, and his stock historical, scientific, technical and general information was extraordinary. He was an original abolitionist, a Republican and later a Greenbacker. His business ability was of a high order, and, assisted by his wife, who inherited from her mother as well as from her father a vigorous and practical character, he accumulated a handsome property, including four hundred and eighty acres of farm land in Illinois, besides fifteen thousand acres of valuable land in Alabama, which he owned in company with his son Frederick. His widow's present fine residence was built in 1879, and her home place is one of the finest farming properties in Grundy county. Situated near a beautiful grove and surrounded by charming woodland scenery, this model home is one of the "show places" in this part of Illinois. Mr. Harford died July 15, 1899. Following are the names and dates of birth of his children: Cornelia D., August 9, 1848; Mary, February 4, 1850 (died June 4, 1851); Fannie May, November 24, 1852; Frederick, September 27, 1854; Addison, march 14, 1857 (died May 25, 1875); Olive, July 7, 1861 (died June 7, 1870); and Ellen, April 12, 1864. Their hospitable homes contains many evidences of her culture and good taste. Mrs. Harford is of uncommon business ability for a woman. Her brother, Thomas Welborn Dewey, in 1850, went by way of the isthmus to California, and died there at the age of twenty-three, as the result of exposure at Acapulco, Mexico, where he was landed with other passengers, the captain putting them ashore without their consent, that he might carry out other plans. Additional Comments: Source: Biographical and Genealogical Record of La Salle and Grundy Counties Illinois, Volume 11, Chicago, 1900, pages 401-405 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/il/grundy/bios/harford595nbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/ilfiles/ File size: 13.5 Kb