Biography - Randolph Howerton
RANDOLPH HOWERTON was born in Johnson County on his father's farm in 1857. His father, John W. Howerton, was born in Tennessee in 1821. He is a son of Benjamin F. Howerton, a Virginian by birth, whose father was a Colonel in the Revolutionary army. Benjamin Howerton married a Miss Barnard. Randolph Howerton is the sixth child and the third son. He was reared at home on the old farm on which his parents still live. He received but little education in his younger days, beginning hard work and following the plow at ten years of age. At eighteen he left home and went to Kansas, where he worked on farms in different parts of the eastern part of the State. Later he traveled through Indian Territory. Returning home at the end of one year's experience in the West, he began in earnest to secure an education. He attended the district school one winter, and one summer he attended a select school at Sulphur Springs, Williamson County, Ill., where his maternal grandmother, Mrs. Randolph Casey, whose maiden name was Graves, lived about seventy-five years ago. Randolph Casey was a son of Levi Casey, who was born in Ireland. He was a brother of Gov. Zadoc Casey, who died at Mount Vernon, Ill., at a ripe old age. Randolph Casey died at the age of seventy-seven years.
Randolph Howerton engaged in teaching his first school during the winter of 1878-79, and has since then taught ten winter terms of school. He was at the State Normal School at Carbondale one term in his twenty-eighth year. He was married at twenty years, his wife being then eighteen. She was Eliza McCuan, a native of Johnson County, and a daughter of Jacob and Sallie (Boozer) McCuan, the former of whom came from Alabama, and the latter from South Carolina. They emigrated from Kentucky to Illinois during the war of the Rebellion. Her mother died when she was seven years old, but her father is still living at Tunnel Hill. He was a soldier four years during the war. Mr. and Mrs. Howerton have lived in the rural districts of Johnson County most of their married lives, but they lived in Vienna about one year, where he pursued the study of the law, and while living there he was elected police magistrate. They have lived in this township for a period of three years, and one year on their present little farm of forty-seven acres, but this is only their temporary home. They have two sons and one daughter, namely: Thaddeus Stevens, thirteen years old; Lucius Poe, born January 1, 1888; and Maude S., a young miss of nine years. They are healthy and bright children and are making satisfactory progress in their studies.
Mr. Howerton is a Master Mason and is a stanch Republican. Mrs. Howerton is a member of the Christian Church. Capt. Levi B. Casey, a brother of the mother of Mr. Howerton, was Captain of Company B, Thirty-first Illinois Infantry, Gen. John A. Logan's regiment. He was a remarkable specimen of a man and soldier, standing six feet two inches and weighing two hundred and twenty-five pounds. He was a fine looking man and a most genial comrade. He fell in battle at the siege of Vicksburg. Levi Casey, the grandfather of Capt. Casey, was one of the very earliest pioneers of this part of Illinois, settling in the wilderness where what is now Casey Spring: is located about 1800. He was a great hunter and settled there on that account. This spring is one of the finest and best in this part of the State.
Extracted 16 Dec 2016 by Norma Hass from 1893 Biographical Review of Johnson, Massac, Pope, and Hardin Counties, Illinois, pages 444-445.
