Biographies

Nancy P. Seckman Biography

 NancyP. Seckman  NANCY P. SECKMAN was bornin Harrison county, Kentucky, August 18, 1814. Her father, James Taylor,and her mother, Katie Bishop, were both born in Maryland, near Snow Hill.They went to Kentucky, when young, were married there, and were well-to-dofarmers. They moved to Illinois in the fall of 1832, when this daughterwas nineteen years old. They brought ten children with them in a prairieschooner, being twenty-one days on the route. They hired a man to bringthem with his five-horse team, and they brought three horses and saddlesof their own. They had a most delightful time, a continual picnic of twenty-onedays, … Read more

Jackson Higgins – Biography

  JacksonHiggins   JACKSONHIGGINS, of Brooklyn, Illinois, was born in Morgan county, Ohio, in 1832.His father, Daniel, was born in Green county, Pennsylvania, January 20,1807, and his father, Joseph, was born near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, andwas engaged in farming. He was born in 1777, and died in 1840, marryingPolly Henderson, and raising a family of twelve children. He was draftedinto the war of 1812, but sent a substitute. Daniel was married February28, 1828, in Green county, Pennsylvania, to Sarah Brewer. They moved fromthere to Morgan county, Ohio, about 1830. In the fall of 1838, they cameto Illinois with a small horse … Read more

William A. Broker – Biography

WILLIAM A. BROKER was born in Lippe-Detmold, Germany, March 19, 1837. He was a boy of eleven years of age when his parents, Samuel and Sophia (Haupfer) Broker, crossed the Atlantic in the spring of 1849 to New Orleans, and thence up the Mississippi River to St. Louis. This was during the year of the great cholera epidemic in that city, and within a few days the father and three of the children died, the mother and William having it severely but recovering. When they were able to leave, the mother and her four small children moved to a farm … Read more