John Lindsey
John, sen., and Nancy Lindsey came from Virginia to Ohio, in 1809, and located first in Ross, and subsequently in Pickaway County, where they died. They were the parents of the following children: John, Jacob, Thomas, Abram, James, Doratha, and Sarah and Phoebe (twins).
In 1802, Abram, father of our subject, was married, in Virginia, to Abigail Stewart, and came to Ohio with his parents, and died in Pickaway Connty. He was a soldier in the war of 1812. To him were born the following children: Sally, Thomas, Mary, John, Nancy, Samnel, and Abraham.
John spent the years of his minority in Pickaway Connty. He was sparingly edncated in the common schools of the early times. He was married, November 9, 1839, to Sarah, daughter of John and Barbara (Hedrick) Bouse, of Virginia. The Bouses came to Ohio in 1821; they were of Dutch descent. Mrs. Lindsey was born February 17, 1819.
To this union nine children were born: Abraham, born September 11, 1840; Thomas F., born January 6, 1843; Phoebe, born November 28, 1845, died July 22, 1863; John Clinton, born July 25, 1848, died Angust 13, 1848; James, born September 9, 1849; Mary J.; born September 17, 1852; Sarah Missouri, born August 12, 1856; Abbie, born September 2, 1859; Charles, born March 17, 1862. Thomas married Marietta Dyer, January 31. 1860; Abraham married Catharine Glaze, November 29,1864; James married Elizabeth Taylor, January 18, 1872; Missouri married J. W. Long, January 23, 1875; Mary J. married Amos Van Pelt, August 23, 1879.
Our subject has seen much of the rough side of life. In 1840, he bought twenty acres of land in this county, and began housekeeping with a very scanty outfit of household goods. He had no chairs, no table, and scarcely anything but muscle and determination. Little by little, he triumphed over the difficulties by which he was confronted, and the rule of his life has been, "No surrender." He delights in recounting the trials and triumphs of his busy life. He tells that he was nineteen years old when he wore his first pair of boots; that he has assisted to thresh wheat with a flail, and then to clean the grain by tossing it into the air, while two persons fanned the cha f from the wheat by means of a sheet. The first fanning-mill he ever saw, was made by Joseph Britton, near New Holland. At one time he owned five hundred and thirty-one acres of fine land, on Paint Creek. This was all swallowed up, to pay another's debts. He began life again, with three horses and one cow and now owns a fine farm of three hundred and thirty-one acres. He deals largely in hogs and sheep. His wife takes pride in the fact that she has shared, the sunshine and shadow of her husband's eventful life. She tells of hoeing corn, when a girl of fourteen, for twelve and one-half cents a day, and thereby obtaining the cash to buy her first calico dress, of six yards. Sbe has gone to mill many a time, carrying the family grist on horseback. She has in her possession a dinner-pot, in which the venison was prepared for the antecedents of the Lindseys, a century ago.
From R. S. Dills' History of Fayette County