Bios: Darins: from Armstrong/Allegheny  Co, PA 

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>From "History of Henry County, Illinois", by Henry L. Kiner, Volume II,
Chicago:  The Pioneer Publishing Company, 1910.  Alice Gless


JOHN JACKSON DARIN (there are pictures of Eleanor Clarke Darin and John
Jackson Darin)

John Jackson Darin, agriculturist and stock raiser, of Phenix Township,
was born in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, February 9, 1825.  He was
the elder of son of John Jackson Darin, Sr., a native of County Tyrone,
Ireland.  Bidding adieu to the Emerald Isle amid the stormy scenes that
beset that country during the years just preceding 1800, he sailed for
America, stopping for a time at Philadelphia before finally settling in
the vicinity of Pittsburg, then known as Fort Duquesne on the very
border of the wild backwoods.  The father was endowed with rugged health
and sturdy habits accredited to Erin¹s sons, and it was well for there
was need for health and thrift, for brain and brawn in those early
days.  He paid several visits to the Darin homestead on Pink Prairie,
and at the time of his death was approaching his ninetieth birthday.

And so it was the subject of this sketch began his long and useful life
in the Keystone state.  Mr. Darin¹s boyhood was spent not unlike that of
other Pennsylvania boys of that time and region.  His education was
obtained in the public schools and in the great university of practical
experience.  He had not yet attained his majority when he was given the
position of lock tender on the Pennsylvania Canal, between Apollo and
Saltsburg, near his home.  This place he filled until promoted to a
clerkship in the canal warehouses of Leech & Company, at Pittsburg.  It
was while engaged in this work that he became acquainted with Miss
Eleanor Clarke, who had just finished a course in the public schools of
Allegheny.

Early in the Œ50s Mr. Darin became enthused with the reports coming from
the New Eldorado, in the land by the Golden Gate, and early in 1852 he
joined a party of young men who planned to make the voyage to California
by sailing vessel via Cape Horn.  When they reached New York, the
company became separated, and Mr. Darin finally went without his
companions, making the trip via the Isthmus of Panama.  From the Isthmus
to San Francisco he suffered greatly from exposure and privation.  The
vessel on which he had engaged passage proved to be old, poorly manned,
and but scantily provisioned, while the greedy captain took on board
double the number of passengers he could feed and quarter.  When Mr.
Darin bought his ticket he was assured that first class meals and a
comfortable berth would be provided throughout the voyage.  Once out at
sea, however, the only fare provided consisted of ³salt Horse,² sour
beans and hardtack, while his ³stateroom berth² was on top of the crates
and boxes on the upper deck, with the sky for a roof.  The protests of
passengers and crew finally bordered on mutiny and rebellion, and the
captain was compelled to put in at a Mexican port and take on a store of
provisions.  Upon arrival at San Francisco, Mr. Darin lost no time in
getting to the heart of the section where placer mining was yielding
good returns.  Here for two years his rugged constitution enabled him to
endure the homely fare and hard work of the mining camp without feeling
any great hardship, and in that time he collected a goodly quantity of
the precious yellow metal.

Early in the autumn of 1854 he returned to Pittsburg, where for a short
time he tarried with his father, before hurrying on to Rushville in the
Prairie state to which point the Clarke family had removed from
Allegheny.  Coming first to Henry County, he purchased a farm on Pink
Prairie, in Phenix Township, then journeyed on to Schuyler County,
where, on September 21, 1854, he was united in marriage to Miss Eleanor
Clarke, who for nearly fifty years following was spared to be his
faithful helpmeet, guide and counsellor.  Mr. Darin resided on the old
homestead up to the time of his death, thus rounding out a full half
century in the one home.  Often, when in a reminiscent mood, he would
refer to his lack of practical farming experience when he settled in
Henry County, and said he had to ask his wife and an obliging neighbor
to teach him how to harness and hitch his team.  Yet being endowed with
that valuable quality ³stickability² he steadily persevered, and by the
practice of economy and frugality, he became one of the foremost farmers
and stock raisers in Henry County, and from time to time farm after farm
was added to the original homestead.  In manner Mr. Darin was a man of
quiet reserved habits and enjoyed excellent health.  He was proud of the
fact that he had rounded out a full three-quarters of a century before
suffering an illness of sufficient severity to require the attendance of
a physician at his home.

Mr. Darin filled various elective offices in his township.  In politics
he was a Democrat, but in the days when war clouds darkened our country
he was a firm believer in the doctrines advocating the abolition of
slavery.  His brother, Thomas H. Darin, was associated with him in
farming when the Rebellion broke out, and enlisted in Company I, One
Hundred and Twelfth Illinois Volunteers, and died while suffering in the
Rebel prison at Andersonville.

Mr. Darin several times journeyed back to visit his old Pennsylvania
home and in 1901, accompanied by his wife, he made a tour of the Pacific
states, to view again the scenes of his experiences in the mining camps,
and to visit relatives in California and Oregon, and this journey
furnished them many pleasant thoughts during the remainder of their
days.  Mr. Darin gave substantial support to both church and school.  He
was a kind neighbor, an honorable, upright citizen, and a notable
example of Henry County¹s self-made men‹one whose willing hands and
determined head together with good habits and clean life made it but a
natural consequence that he should succeed in his chosen field of labor.

When Mr. Darin came to Henry County, he found surrounding his new home a
broad expanse of wild, virgin prairie carpeted thick with a luxuriant
growth of wild blossoms of a pink hue nodding a welcome in the sunshine
and breeze‹a veritable ³Pink Prairie.²  During his fifty years on the
original farm he witnessed the laying off of this same expanse of
prairie into a checkerboard of farms, and hundreds of beautiful homes,
and bulging cribs and granaries and big red barns crowd the landscape
where in 1854 the straggling log cabins of the settlers in the same
region could readily be numbered on the fingers of one hand.

On the morning of October 8, 1904, Mr. Darin was called from earth to
enjoy forever the Home not made by earthly hands, whither his good wife
had preceded him, and where only the joys and noble thoughts and acts of
this life can be remembered.  Four sons and three daughters were left to
honor his memory.  But in a brief two weeks the eldest son, Clarke
James, was called to rejoin the parents gone before.

He who has lived to labor and love has not lived in vain.

ELEANOR CLARKE DARIN (A Son¹s Tribute)

When our infancy is almost forgotten and our boyhood long departed,
though it seems but as yesterday; when life settles down upon us and we
doubt whether to call ourselves young any more, then it is good to steal
away occasionally from all society and let the mind dwell upon the
blessings of our golden yesterday.  Far on the blue mountains of our dim
childhood, toward which we ever turn and look, stand the mothers who
marked out to us from thence our life;--the most blessed age must be
forgotten ere we can forget the warmest heart.  But, though we gather up
all the tender memories, all the lights and shades of the heart, all the
greetings, reunions, and home affections, yet we cannot paint a
word-picture of that loving mother who is the subject of this sketch.

The records of the Clarke ³Family Tree² trace back to the years
preceding the discovery of American by Columbus.  The Clarke annals
previous to this are lost in the mist of the unrecorded history of
Scotland.

About the year 1500 two of the Clarke brothers emigrated from Scotland
to Ireland; one settled in Dublin, the other in County Tyrone.  Doctor
Adam Clarke, the celebrated commentator, theological writer and pioneer
Wesleyan preacher, was a descendant of the former brother, and James
Clarke, who was born in County Tyrone, in 1800, and came to America in
1801, father of Eleanor Clarke Darin, was a descendant of the other
brother.

Rev. John Clarke, a pioneer Methodist preacher of Illinois, who was
licensed to preach in 1829 writes thus of his brother James:  ³My oldest
brother, James, was endowed with a strong intellect, and being of
studious habits he became early a good scholar.  He both read and wrote
a great deal.  He was very outspoken on the subject of the abolition of
slavery.  At the age of eighteen he united with the Methodist Church and
at once began to hold meetings in the vicinity of Allegheny City.  In
this line he was very popular and attracted large congregations.  He was
strongly urged by the church to enter the ministry, but he constantly
declined, although until his death he remained a devoted and liberal
member of the church, nearly always sustaining an official relation to
it.  In the latter part of his life the abolition of slavery so engaged
his sympathies and efforts that it seemed the controlling purpose of his
life to labor for its success.  It is thought that labor and exposure on
a visit to Kansas in order to bear a part in its struggle for freedom
occasioned his death, which occurred on board the steamboat at a landing
almost at his home, September 15, 1855.

At Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, April 20, 1826, James Clarke and Miss Sarah
Cooper were united in marriage, and to them, March 19, 1827, was born a
daughter, Eleanor, the subject of this sketch.

Only a few years ago it was my privilege to accompany my mother on a
visit to Allegheny City, where we sought out the old home, and there I
visited the very room where was wrought that blessed miracle that give
the world the beautiful character‹the noble woman whose memory I now
revere above all else in this world.  Memory now throws a golden halo
over the hills and vales where, through laughing childhood and more
serious school days, grew to womanhood the best ³sweetheart² I can ever
know.

Early in September, 1854, there came to Rushville, in our Prairie state,
wither Eleanor had removed in the early Œ50s with her parents, a bronzed
and bearded young man fresh from the wilds of the mining camps of the
new Golden state.  This young man was young John Jackson Darin, the lad
she had known as a bashful sweetheart in the Pennsylvania school days.
He had returned from California to Pittsburg‹and thence he hurried on to
Illinois to claim his own.  There, September 21, 1854, these two lives
were united, and then they set bravely out for a little vale in Henry
County, which some nature lover had designated Pink Prairie, where for
the next half century they were to grow old with the prairies, loving
and laboring for their children.  Seven times the Angel of Life visited
this prairie home‹seven times was the miracle of birth wrought, and this
sainted soul tarried to bless the four daughters and three sons until
they, too, had passed from youth to Grown-up Land.  And of these seven
the writer is the least worthy to tell of the three-quarters of a
century this good woman trod life¹s pathway.  Her strongest religion was
the creed of kindness and helpfulness, though she was ever faithful in
the faith of her forefathers.  Ever ambitious for the advancement and
education of her children in morality and mentality, she never failed in
helping to support both school and church.  She was a lovable woman,
this mother who gave her full measure of love and help to her family and
community through full fifty years in Henry County, and few now remain
who knew her in the days when Life and Love and Pink Prairie were young.

In the early evening shadows of March 11, 1902, I said a last good night
to this dear one, and she fell asleep to this earth.  But in going she
builded a bridge for me, and some night I¹ll tread this bridge with
willing feet from this grey old earth to the Green Hills Far Away, and
there bid her good morning‹for She was my mother.

George Little Darin
Sacramento, California, November 1909

EDWARD E. DARIN

Edward E. Darin, an enterprising and prosperous agriculturist and
stockman of Phenix Township, makes his home on a well improved farm of
one hundred and sixty-six acres on Section 26 and is likewise the owner
of another tract of one hundred and twenty-one acres on the same
section.  It was on the latter farm that his birth occurred, his natal
day being September 4, 1861.  His parents were John Jackson and Eleanor
(Clarke) Darin.

Edward E. Darin was reared to manhood on the old homestead farm and
attended the common schools in pursuit of an education that would equip
him for the practical and responsible duties of life.  His father
allowed him to keep the money which he earned in his youthful days and
when twenty years of age gave him the use of a field and told him he
might have the proceeds of the crop.  In this way he accumulated capital
sufficient to enable him to purchase a farm of his own and 1882 he came
into possession of his present place of one hundred and sixty-six acres
on Section 2, Phenix Township, paying about fifty-four dollars per acre
for the land.  He has erected thereon a modern and substantial
residence, as well as good barns and outbuildings for the shelter of
grain and stock, and altogether has a highly improved and well-developed
farm, the fields annually yielding bounteous harvests of golden grain.
In addition to the cultivation of cereals he is also engaged in the
raising, feeding and shipping of stock and in both branches of his
business has won a gratifying and well-merited degree of success.  He
also owns the old homestead place of one hundred and twenty-one acres on
which he was reared, having purchased the property in 1905 for one
hundred and fifty-two dollars an acre.  This was the first farm in Henry
County that sold for as high a price as one hundred and fifty dollars an
acre.

On the 8th of March 1893, in Geneseo Township, Mr. Darin was united in
marriage to Miss Nettie M. Ward, who was born near Geneseo.  Her parents
Thomas and Mary (Nuttycombe) Ward are still residents of Phenix
Township.  Mr. And Mrs. Darin now have three children, namely:  Harold
Avery, born July 27, 1894; Mary Eleanor, whose birth occurred May 17,
1897; and John Ward, who first opened his eyes to the light of day on
the 16th of June, 1903.

Politically Mr. Darin is a stanch advocate of the principles of the
Republican Party.  He has served as collector for two terms but has not
been an office seeker, preferring to concentrate his energies upon his
business affairs.  Fraternally he is identified with Modern Woodmen
Camp, No. 40, also Mystic Workers of the World.  Both he and his wife
and well known and highly esteemed throughout the county in which they
have spent their entire lives and the number of their friends has
steadily increased as the circle of their acquaintances has widened.