Will County IL Archives Biographies.....Baker, John C 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Deb Haines ddhaines@gmail.com November 10, 2007, 1:46 am

Author: Genealogical and Biographical Record of Will County

JOHN C. BAKER, of Manhattan Township, was born in Rensselaer County, N. Y., in 
1842, a son of Clark and Lucina (Welsh) Baker. His paternal ancestors came 
from England and settled in Rhode Island in an early day. His grandfather, 
Jirah Baker, moved from Rhode Island to New York and cleared a farm from the 
wilderness, making his home on that place until he died at ninety years of 
age. He took an active part in politics and served as a delegate to the 
constitutional convention. His father, Benjamin Baker, served in the 
Revolutionary war with two of his sons, one of whom died during his term of 
service. Clark Baker was born in Rensselaer County in 1796 and for years 
followed farming and surveying, laying out the county lines and the township 
lines in the town of Hoosick. When sixteen years of age he served in the war 
of 1812. In 1845 he settled in Will County, purchasing a tract of timber land 
in what is now Manhattan Township and engaging extensively in farming and 
stock-raising. He became the owner of about twelve hundred acres of good land. 
He made a specialty of breeding Merino sheep and also raised Shorthorn cattle. 
For about twenty years, altogether, he held the office of supervisor, and 
during the same time he was justice of the peace. Politically he was a 
Democrat. He died at his home in 1892, when ninety-six years of age. His wife, 
daughter of George Washington Welsh, was born in Albany, N. Y., and died in 
this county at eighty-five years of age. They were the parents of five 
children, two of them survive, our subject and Mary E., widow of J. B. 
Russell. Having come to this county in early childhood, our subject knows no 
other home but this. When his father retired from active cares he succeeded to 
his management of the estate. He has engaged in breeding Percheron horses, 
Shorthorn cattle (having from eighty to one hundred head of cows) and fine 
sheep, and owning a farm of more than one thousand acres. Associated with 
Jones Brothers in Manhattan, in 1893 he purchased the Thayer elevator and 
established the Manhattan bank, of which he was elected president. The company 
has built up a grain and coal trade and a general banking business. Mr. Baker 
is strong in his advocacy of good roads, and politically is a Democrat. He was 
the first master of the Manhattan Grange and is connected with the county 
Grange. His first wife, Elizabeth Hoopson, whom he married in 1871 and who 
died in 1888, left three children; while by his present wife, who was Mary 
Jones, he has two sons, Robert and Clark.

Additional Comments:
Genealogical and Biographical Record of Will County Illinois Containing 
Biographies of Well Known Citizens of the Past and Present, Biographical 
Publishing Company, Chicago, 1900

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