HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY  253

and Dr. Frank H. Jett, of Terre Haute, who was deputy coroner of Vigo
county from 1906 to 1908.

    George Stearley, native of Germany, born at Wittenberg, January
27, 1848, coming with the family to this country in 1851. George was
brought up to hard work on the farm, in Jackson township, with but
meager educational advantages. At twenty-two years of age he appren-
ticed himself to the blacksmith trade, at Bowling Green, and later located
at Asherville, where he carried on smithing up to 1880, when he sold
his shop and business to a younger brother and engaged in saw-milling
and the lumber trade. October 20, 1869, be married Miss Elizabeth
Dutell, from whom he afterward acquired a fair education. In 1876 he
was elected trustee of Jackson township and re-elected in 1878, serving
four years in this capacity. In 1880, in the county convention held in
June, at Bowling Green, he was nominated by the Democratic party for
sheriff, but defeated at the general election. In 1882 he was again nomi—
nated for the same place and elected, then re-nominated and re-elected in
1884. At the expiration of his official service he retired to the farm,
where he afterwards founded the town of Stearleyville, on the line of the
Center Point division of the Vandalia Railroad, where he continued to
reside until the year 1900, when he sold all his property interests there
and moved to Oklahoma, where he purchased lands for the members of
his family and himself and engaged, also, in the real estate business for
a time at Oklahoma City, where he now resides. Fraternally, he is a
member of the Masonic Order, the Knights of Honor and the Knights of
Labor.

    Henry Bolick, native of North Carolina, born March 3, 1825, came
to Clay county with the family in his youth, locating in Harrison town-
ship, his parents dying, he was bound to Ambrose Phipps, with whom
he made his home for more than thirty years, meanwhile acquiring land
and opening a farm of his own. In the spring of 1864 he was elected
trustee of Harrison township, and re-elected at each succeeding April
election up to and including the year 1868, serving continuously in this
position for five years. when he declined any further acceptance of the
trust. On the 7th of January, 1875, he married Miss Martha C. Reed, a
native of Missouri, just two months and twenty-four days before his
fiftieth anniversary. He died February 8, 1885, aged 59 years, 10 months
and 7 days, survived by his wife, who returned to Missouri.

    William Y. Stewart, native of New England, born February 13,
1817, in Hampshire county, Massachusetts. When he was but eleven
years of age the family moved westward into the state of New York,
and several years later to the state of Ohio, coming to Clay county, Indi-
ana, in 1838, when the subject of this sketch was twenty-one years old.
He acquired a fair education in the public schools of the several states
in which he spent his boyhood, having taught several terms in New York
and Ohio. He is credited with having taught one of the first terms of
school at Brazil, with having suggested the name of the place, with having
been instrumental, at least in part, in procuring the postoffice at Brazil,
and with having performed a part, officially, in perfecting the organiza-
tion of Dick Johnson township. He learned the carpenter trade and