348                 HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY

educational status of this section of the state, and is also identified with
its agricultural development and progress. A son of George Dallas
Armstrong, he was born in this township November 10, 1878. His
grandfather, George W. Armstrong, was a native of Ohio and a son of
George Armstrong, who was a soldier in the Revolutionary war.
    An ambitious student in the days of his youth, Joseph D. Armstrong
took advantage of every offered opportunity for advancing his early
education, attending first the district schools and afterward the Terre
Haute High School and the Indiana State Normal School of that city.
Fitted for a professional career, Mr. Armstrong began teaching in 1901,
and has taught school every year since, being a successful and popular
educator. While living at home he became well versed in the agricultural
arts and sciences, assisting his father in the management of the home
farm, and since his marriage has carried on general farming on his own
account, and is also interested to some extent in breeding and raising
stock. He has a finely improved farm, it being a part of the parental
homestead, which came to him by inheritance, and in its care he is
meeting with a due meed of success.
    Mr. Armstrong married, in 1899, Mary Fagan. She was born April
2, 1880, in Perry township, Clay county, which was, likewise, the birth-
place of her father, Robert Fagan. Her grandfather, Stephen Fagan,
was born in Hamilton county, Ohio, where his father, George Fagan, a
pioneer settler, improved a homestead, on which he and his wife, Maria
(Woodruff) Fagan, spent their last years. Stephen Fagan came from
Ohio to Indiana in 1850, locating in Perry township, where he took up
a tract of prairie land, from which he improved a homestead and on
which he was engaged in agricultural pursuits until his death. His wife,
whose maiden name was Eliza Donham, was born in Clermont county,
Ohio, a daughter of Robert and Ruth Donham. The youngest of a
family of eleven children, Robert Fagan came with his parents to In-
diana, and for many years was a highly esteemed and respected resident
of Perry township. Subsequently, on account of failing health, he started
for Texas, but died before arriving at his point of destination. He mar-
ried Nancy Staggs, who was born in Perry township, Clay county, a
daughter of Franklin and Rachel (Reece) Staggs. She survived him,
and married for her second husband Charles D. Jackson, of Perry town-
ship. The union of Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong has been blessed by the
birth of two children, Floy E. and Linda Argatha. Religiously Mrs.
Armstrong is a member of the Christian church.

    HENRY TELGEMYER.—An esteemed and highly respected resident
of Washington township, Henry Telgemyer is an honored representative
of the early pioneers of Clay county, and a true type of the brave, hardy
and industrious men who courageously dared the privations and hard-
ships of frontier life in order to here secure for themselves and their
descendants permanent homes. A son of Harman Telgemyer, he was
born September 29, 1828, in Prussia, Germany, where he lived until
about eleven years old.
    In 1839, accompanied by his wife and children, Harman Telgemyer
emigrated to this country, and for a year lived in Missouri. Coming then
to that part of Clay county bordering on Owen county, he entered land
from the government and had begun the improvement of a homestead
when, seven years later, both he and his good wife died. He married