Henry W. Heaton Biographical Review

HENRY W. HEATON, a well know farmer of Oakland township, has been prominently identified with the agricultural interests of this section of Illinois for the past thirty-seven years. He was born in Bucks county, Pennsylvania, March 9, 1830. His father, Jeffrey Heaton, was a native of England, born in 1807, but at the age of eight years was brought across the sea to America; he was one of a family of four sons and four daughters. He learned the weaver’s trade, of which his father was a master, and followed this vocation several years; he finally abandoned it, however, to take up farming in Ohio, whither he had removed in 1836; he rented land in Jefferson county until 1849, and then went to Fulton county, Illinois, making the trip via the Ohio and Illinois rivers. In 1850 he purchased eighty acres, on which he located and there passed the remainder of his days; he died in January, 1858; he left a widow and ten children, of whom our subject is the eldest; the mother still survives, at the age of eighty-four years; she is living in Oakland township with her son, Thomas. One son, Simon, was killed in battle in the war of the Rebellion; he was twenty-nine years of age, and left a wife, one son and a daughter. Henry W. Heaton was a youth of fifteen years when his father began farming in Ohio; at the age of twenty-one he began the search for his own fortune. Four years later he was united in marriage to Miss Rebecca B. Patterson, of this county and township, a daughter of Hugh and Ellen Patterson, natives of Ohio and Pennsylvania respectively. Mr. and Mrs. Heaton lived in Astoria township, Fulton county, where they rented land until 1862; in that year they bought a farm on which they lived until 1866, when they sold the place and came to Schuyler county. They bought the old homestead, a tract of 140 acres, on which they have since lived. They buried one daughter, at the age of two years, named Ellen; they now have eight sons and three daughters; the eldest is thirty-three and the youngest is eleven years of age. Their names are as follows: William H.; Franklin H.; Sanford W.; Andrew J.; James; Lewis E.; Cornelius, Albert, Florence R., wife of Sylvester France; Sarah Ann, wife of George Beghtol; and Rosa. In politics Mr. Heaton votes for the man best suited, in his estimation, for the office in question, but favors the principles of the Democratic party. He carries on a general farming business, raising grain and livestock. He began life without capital, except that with which nature had endowed him, and by industry and wise management has accumulated a competence for coming age. The parents of Mrs. Heaton are both deceased, the father at the age of seventy, and the mother at seventy-two years of age.