264                 HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY

    On the 12th day of March, 1833, he married Emily McCorkle. To
them were born five children—one son and four daughters. The son,
Milton A. Osborn, practiced law at Bowling Green and at Greencastle,
and was at one time district prosecutor. He died at Greencastle, January
24, 1874, aged 38 years. The eldest daughter, Caroline B. Osborn, mar-
ried Enos Miles, in the month of August, 1851, and died at the family
residence, Denver, Colorado, February 6, 1909, aged 74 years. Gibbeah
Osborn, the second daughter, married David Laughlin, at some time in
the year 1856, and died in 1887, aged 50 years. Anna Osborn, the third
daughter, married George Dole, in the year 1864, and died in 1907, aged
67 years. Mary Osborn, the fourth daughter, who was born in 1846, and
married Virgil Peck in 1866, survives and lives near Greencastle.
    Mrs. Emily Osborn died October 9, 1884, aged 73 years, survived by
her husband, John Osborn, who died June 11, 1887, aged 78 years.

    Esau Presnell, native of North Carolina, born July 15, 1812, where
he lived with his parents until the years of his majority, when, with a
party of emigrants, he came to Indiana, reaching Clay county July 10,
1833, when the country here was mainly a wilderness. On arriving here
he had $25 in silver, then regarded a considerable sum, which he loaned
to his uncle, John Sturdevant, who had settled on the Poland road, east
of the Birch Creek graveyard, just opposite the later Thompson Booth
Zenor residence, Jackson township. Soon after his coming to Clay
county he found employment at shoveling dirt on the construction of the
National road in the locality of Williamstown, at 62 1/2 cents a day, invest-
ing his earnings in land, first buying the north half of the eighty acres
entered by his uncle, then an adjoining tract, from the government. On
the 19th day of March, 1835, he married Nancy Green, the ceremony
having been performed by Esquire Pierce Jones. The improvement of
his lands and the making of a farm then engaged his attention and ener-
gies. As the locality about him settled up, there being then no stores
nearer than Bowling Green and Williamstown, he put up a small log
building in his yard and engaged in merchandising at some time in the
40s. which he continued for several years. In 1850, in the building of
the Terre Haute & Indianapolis Railroad, he sub-contracted, under George
G. McKinley, one mile of grading, between the points known as Har-
mony and Knightsville, accepting forty per cent of the contract price in
stocks in the road, when there were issued to him $800 of the original
bonds of the corporation, which be continued to hold up to the time of
the transfer of the road to the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton, meanwhile
acquiring additional bonds until he held a considerable interest in the
road, said to have been as much as $25,000.
    About the year  he sold his farm to Henry Dial, father of
Joseph and Eli Dial, well-known residents of Jackson township fifty years
ago, and in April, 1856, embarked in merchandising at Center Point,
which began its history as a town in that year, where he continued in
business up to the time of his permanent retirement, in 1871, excepting
the interval of one year, from the spring of 1862 to the spring of 1863,
during which he lived on his farm in Jackson township, one mile north of
Center Point.
    Previous to the burning of the court-house, under the old constitu-
tion, he served a term, perhaps two terms, as county commissioner. In
1861 he was again elected commissioner, serving one term, as president