Lake County IN Archives Biographies.....Spry, John 1846 - 
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com December 24, 2006, 11:32 pm

Author: T. H. Ball (1904)

JOHN SPRY.

    John Spry, of West Creek township, is a progressive and prosperous farmer of
this part of the county, and during the years of his residence has commended
himself to his fellow citizens by his capable industry and integrity of
character. As a tiller of the soil he is one of the solid and substantial units
from which the strength of the nation is formed, and he is the more highly
esteemed as a citizen and a man because he has gained his own success in the
world, being both a self-educated and a self-made man.

    Mr. Spry is a native of the old blue-grass state of Kentucky, and was born
August 7, 1846, being the seventh in order of birth of the nine children, four
sons and five daughters, born to John and Melvina (Kimbrell) Spry. He has two
brothers living, Enoch, a farmer at Momence, Illinois, and Green, a farmer of
old Kentucky, both these brothers being older than Mr. John Spry. The father of
the family was born in South Carolina in 1807 and died about 1856, when John was
ten years old. He was by occupation a farmer, and adhered to the Democratic
party. His wife was born in Kentucky about 1811, and died in 1865. Both were
members of the Methodist church.

    Mr. John Spry was reared in his native state, and he is one of the men yet
living who passed their school days in the now out-of-date log-cabin
schoolhouse. The one he attended was about twenty by forty feet in size, was
heated by a fireplace, and had one long window in the end. And the text-books
were Webster's speller and McGuffey's well known readers, grammar and geography.
He has also used the goosequill pen, and seen it fashioned out by the master's
hand. When he entered upon his career of independent activity at the age of
eighteen his material capital consisted of a horse, a cow and one bed, but he
had plenty of energy and determination, which are, after all, the principal
factors in acquiring success, as he has experienced it.

    On October 27, 1864, be married Miss Catharine White, and eight children
were born of this union, seven of them now living: Bessie is the wife of James
Little, a prosperous Lake county farmer whose history appears elsewhere in this
work; Sadie is the wife of Don Cadwell, a barber of Crown Point; Mollie is the
wife of Emil Larrison, a farmer of West Creek township; William C, a farmer of
Cedar Creek township, is married and has two children; Solomon is a farmer of
West Creek township and is married; Clarence, of West Creek township, is a
farmer and married: Earnie is at home with his parents. Mrs. Spry was born in
Clarke county, Kentucky, in 1847, and six of her children were born in that state.

    About the year 1879 Mr. Spry brought his family to Kankakee county,
Illinois, and followed farming there as a renter for six years, after which he
located in West Creek township, this county, and continued tenant farming for
some years. He was prosperous and a good manager of his affairs, and in 1894 he
purchased one hundred and forty-nine acres in West Creek township. At the
present writing he lives on and farms his nice estate of eighty acres, and he
has surrounded himself with many of the comforts of life, besides doing his full
duty by his children and seeing them all well started in the world. He is a
Republican and has supported the principles of his party since casting his first
vote. He and his wife are members of the Christian church, and are generous of
their means and efforts in advancing any worthy cause.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

ENCYCLOPEDIA
OF
Genealogy and Biography
OF
LAKE COUNTY, INDIANA,
WITH A COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY 
1834—1904

A Record of the Achievements of Its People in the Making of a Commonwealth and
the Founding of a Nation.

REV. T. H. BALL
OF CROWN POINT, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
ILLUSTRATED
CHICAGO   NEW YORK
THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
1904


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