Biography - Jefferson W. Carr
JEFFERSON W. CARR. The name that heads this sketch is that of a
gentleman who resides on his farm on section 19, of Prairie Township. He was
born in Holland Township, Shelby County, March 17, 1839. He is a son of
Elias and Nancy Carr, a history of whom may be found in that of W. O. Carr.
Our subject's early training was such as would fit him for agricultural
life, having been born and reared on a farm, and naturally being thoroughly
well acquainted with such duties. Mr. Carr now owns two hundred and sixty
acres of land which it is now hard to believe, was not so many years ago in
a crude, uncultivated state.
When a lad of but nine years, the parents of our subject were taken away and
he thereafter made his home with an uncle, and with other guardians. The
thought of the lad without a mother's tender care and a father's counsel,
involuntarily arouses our sympathies. In 1861, when the heavens were
overcast with the clouds of war, our subject enlisted in Company H, of the
Forty-first Illinois Infantry. He was mustered in at Decatur, Ill., and
first met fire at Ft. Donelson. After that time he took part in the most
desperate and celebrated battles of the late war. He saw men mowed down
before the fire of the cannon like swaths of wheat, at Shiloh, Corinth, and
that battle whose name is asynonym for the greatest military tragedy, the
battle of Vicksburg. After Vicksburg, the regiment in which our subject was
re-enlisted and became one with the consolidated Fifty-third Illinois
Infantry. Thus they served until the close of the war, engaged in many
skirmishes and being participants in much hard fighting. Mr. Carr was
mustered out at Paducah, Ky. He was a private, being proud of the fact that
he fought, not for fame, or position, but because of loyalty to his country.
He went with the regiment under Sherman in his celebrated march from Atlanta
to the sea, thence proceeded to Washington and participated in the Grand
Review. Our subject had the rare good fortune for one who took part in so
many serious engagements, never to have received a wound, to be taken
prisoner, or sent to the hospital.
After the war. he of whom we write purchased a farm in Prairie Township,
where he settled and it is his present home. In 1867, he was married to
Matilda Williams, a daughter of John Williams, who settled as a pioneer in
Shelby County, at an early day. There, Mrs. Carr was born April 18, 1849.
Mr. and Mrs. Carr have the good fortune to be the parents of six intelligent
and manly sons. Their names are Sherman, Walter, Erven, John, Mahlon and Roy
V.
The farm of which Mr. Carr is proprietor, as has been before said, was at
the time of his settlement here, new prairie land. It is now in a perfect
state of cultivation, and the well tilled fields yield bountiful crops.
Several good buildings have been erected on the place. They have a home that
is comfortable and commodious, not too good for the use and benefit of the
sons that are growing up around their parents, but being of such a character
as to cultivate refined, yet strong ideas of life.
Politically, our subject is a Republican. His religious preferences are in
the direction of the Methodist Episcopal Church in which body he has been a
Class-Leader for a number of years. Socially he is a member of John Huffer
Post, No. 633, G. A. R.
Extracted 16 Feb 2019 by Norma Hass from 1891 Portrait and Biographical Record of Shelby and Moultrie Counties Illinois, pages 598-599.
