Biography - Elisha Webb
ELISHA WEBB, who resides on a farm of one hundred and eighty acres on section 20, in Tunnel Hill Township, was born in Morgan County, Tenn. He is a son of Mitchell Webb, who was born in North Carolina in 1793, to Culbreith Webb, of North Carolina, who moved to Tennessee about 1809, where he was a farmer and reared a family of three sons and one daughter. He and his wife both died in Tennessee at an advanced age. Mitchell Webb married for his first wife Rhoda Cardwell, of Tennessee, who bore him four sons and two daughters, and died in the prime of life. His second wife was Sarah Elmore, of Tennessee, who bore him five sons and two daughters, of whom Elisha is the second child and first son in order of birth. Four of these children are now living, two sons and two daughters. They are: Rhoda, wife of Leander H. Kelly, a farmer of Tunnel Hill Township; Elisha; Daniel, a farmer of the same township; and Elizabeth, wife of M. R. Kelly, a farmer nearby. The parents came to southern Illinois in the spring of 1840, settling in Jefferson County, where the mother died in 1842, aged about forty years. Mr. Webb then married again, and died in 1869 at the age of seventy-six years, leaving but a small estate.
Elisha Webb had but little education in his youth, not more than three months in all, which he received in Illinois, for he never saw a schoolhouse in Tennessee. He has recently made a trip to that State, and finds it but little better there now. He worked on the home farm until he was twenty-two years old when he was married, in July, 1849, to Nancy C. Kelly, daughter of Christopher C. Kelly, of Tennessee. The mother of Mrs. Webb was Miss K. J. Butler. Her parents came to Illinois in 1833, when she was an infant, and died in this county on their farm, he in 1843. and she in 1854, leaving five children, two sons and three daughters. Mrs. Webb was their second child and first daughter, and all are still living. Mr. and Mrs. Webb were married July 5, 1849, and the next September they began housekeeping in their log cabin on the farm where they have lived ever since, never moving except from their pioneer log cabin to their present abode, a double hewed-log house, one and a-half stories high, with a fireplace and large stone chimney. This house was built in 1868, and the large barn for hay and stock, 60x56 feet in size, with 22 1/2-foot posts, was erected in 1887. They have one hundred and eighty acres in this farm, most of which is tillable, and they have on section 16 forty-five acres. Five children, two sons and three daughters, are dead, three of whom died when quite young, and one, Sarah Jane, passed away at the age of seventeen, dying August 2, 1870. Mary E., wife of William C. Choat, died March 19, 1888, aged twenty-five. The living children are Rhoda A., wife of William Sutton, who has three sons and five daughters; Martha C, wife of George W. Chism, who has three sons and two daughters; L. C., a farmer on an adjoining farm, who has a wife and three daughters; M. M., wife of D. Casey, who has two sons and two daughters; Arra K., wife of F. L. Parks, who has one son and one daughter; J. C., a farmer on an adjoining farm, who has a wife and one daughter; Tabitha S., wife of John Boner, who has one son and one daughter; William M., a young man of twenty-one, at home on the farm; and Isaac T., a youth of thirteen years. All of these children have had good common-school educations, and Columbus has taught two terms.
Mr. Webb has been Constable and Justice of the Peace fourteen years, and twice a member of the County Board, and has always been a Democrat. He and his wife are members of a church of Latter Day Saints, which consists of about eighty members. Mr. Webb carries on mixed farming, raising all kinds of grain, hay and vegetables, especially sweet potatoes, for which he has a new and improved house in which to store them during the winter. He keeps a good flock of sheep of the Southdown and Cotswold breeds, and raises a few colts, cattle and hogs, besides keeping from twelve to fifteen horses.
Extracted 21 Sep 2016 by Norma Hass from 1893 Biographical Review of Johnson, Massac, Pope, and Hardin Counties, Illinois, pages 279-280
