John H. Walker Biographical Review

JOHN H. WALKER, was born in Grayson county, Kentucky, October 5, 1831. His father was Felix, born in Breckenridge county, Kentucky, November 14, 1804. He was a farmer whose father, William Walker, was a farmer who lived and died in the same county. He owned a good home and raised a large family. Felix Walker came to Rushville and settled four miles north of Buena Vista township, in 1837. He rented lands for some years, but in 1844 he bought forty acres in Brooklyn township. This was wild land, on which he lived for only a short time. He had but a few hundred dollars and soon moved to the hamlet of Brooklyn, where he died November 14, 1845. He left a wife, five daughters and his only son, John. Soon after his death, his daughter Harriet died, in her sixteenth year. The mother of these children was Rachel Watts, of Hardin county, Kentucky. She died January 22, 1884, aged eighty years. She was lame many years from a dislocated hip caused by a fall, but other than that she was well and bright to the last. There are four of her children still living: Mr. Walker; Sarah Blackburn, living in Brooklyn township; Catherine Hine, also of Brooklyn; Callie Shaler, living in Adams county, Iowa. Mr. Walker grew up on the farm and remained at home until thirty-one years of age, when he enlisted, August 11, 1862, in Company A, Seventy-eighth Illinois Infantry. He served nearly three years, and was in but one general engagement, and that against Hood at Nashville, Tennessee. He was in seven skirmishes, but was confined to the hospital most of the time. He returned to Brooklyn and resumed farming the forty acres his father had left. In 1866, with his brother-in-law, Orville Blackburn, he bought eighty acres on section 29, for $1,700. They farmed this in company for three years. In 1869 he was married to Lydia McAllister, born in Shelby county, Kentucky, daughter of Enoch and Elizabeth (Smiley) McAllister, who came to Illinois in 1854. The father died in the Confederate army, at Corinth, Mississippi, in 1862, aged fifty-one. His wife is living near Huntsville, eighty-one years of age, and is still well and active. Mr. and Mrs. Walker have buried one child, but they have five living: Felix, Adolphus, George A., Maude A. and an unnamed baby. Mr. Walker has eighty acres in his home farm and 120 elsewhere. He raised horses, cattle and hogs, buying and selling them. He has been Road Commissioner many years, Supervisor five years and is also Assessor. He is a Republican, member of G.A.R., George A. Brown Post, and is a Master Mason.