Will County IL Archives Biographies.....Niver, Morris 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Deb Haines ddhaines@gmail.com November 10, 2007, 11:57 am

Author: Genealogical and Biographical Record of Will County

MORRIS NIVER, a retired farmer living at Lockport,was born at Ulster County, 
N.Y., January 23, 1S18, a son of James and Sarah (Terwilliger) Niver. His 
father was a farmer, shoemaker and local Methodist preacher. In 1853 he came 
to Illinois. After three years he moved to Clinton County, Iowa, where he 
engaged in farming for some years, and then retired, removing to Clinton, 
where he died at ninety-three years of age. His grandfather, Godfrey, was a 
German, and emigrated to America long before the Revolutionary war, settling 
in Ulster County, N.Y. The subject of this sketch was the oldest of nine 
children, eight of whom grew to maturity and six are still living. He remained 
at home until he was seventeen, when he began to work on a farm and in a 
sawmill at $10 and $12 a month. Afterward, until he was twenty-one, he paid 
his father $100 per year for his time. In 1839 his employer, Martin Rich, sent 
him to Michigan with a threshing-machine, but he worked there only three 
weeks, when he came to Will County, Ill., and secured a job of threshing on 
Hickory Creek. A week later he went to Plainfield, where he was employed in 
threshing, using the first horse-power threshing-machine brought into the 
county. During the season he followed threshing for seven years. He then 
rented a farm one mile south of Plainfield,where he lived for four years. 
Meantime he bought wild land three and one-half miles southeast of Plainfield, 
paying $100 for eighty acres. Thirty-seven years later he sold the property 
for $100 an acre. On locating in Lockport he bought seven lots, three of which 
he sold for residence lots. In 1843 Mr. Niver married Mrs. Lucina Stowe, who 
was born in Lewis County, N. Y., September 9, 1820, and came to this county 
with her parents in 1840. Her father, a native of Connecticut, settled in 
Lewis County in boyhood and there learned the carpenter's trade. On coming to 
Illinois he settled near Plainfield. A few years later he moved near Ottawa, 
Ill., thence went to Wheatland, Iowa, where his wife died at fifty-two years 
of age. Afterward he made his home with his daughter until his death, when 
eighty-one years of age. 

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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