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| Notes for George W. HARNESS | ||||||||||||||||
| George W. Harness was born in Hampshire County, Virginia at a date uncertain. In the 1860 federal census George is recorded as being 77 years of age and living in the household of his daughter, Sophia and her husband Thomas Palk in Ervin, Howard County, Indiana. That is the most valid information available and would place his birth date as 1783. George W. married Harriet Soward, a native of Maryland. They stayed awhile in Ohio but moved on to Indiana where both died after raising 8 children. George's middle initial "W" probably stood for "Washington", in honor of the first President, but there is no indication that he ever spelled out his middle name. He and his wife did name one of their son's George Washington, however. According to Morrow's History of Howard County, Indiana, published in 1909, George Harness came to Ohio (likely the part of Ross County that in 1810 became Fayette County) sometime around 1795. He returned home to Virginia and appears to have accompanied his father and other brothers back to Ohio about 1811. In 1815 he married Harriet Soward and they started raising a family. Here is how Morrow's History of Howard County, Indiana described George W. Harness in a biography (posted on the Internet by researcher Debby Beheler): "George W. Harness was born on the ancestral homestead contiguous to the south bank of the Potomoc river and remained in Virginia until his twenty-seventh year, when he left the parental roof to make his own way in the world. He first went to Ohio, making the entire distance of four hundred miles on foot, renting a piece of land, raised one crop, after which he returned to his native state the same way he left it..afoot and alone. Later he returned to Ohio, where he continued to reside for some years, and where, in due time, he was married to Harriett Sowers (sic), who bore him ten children. Disposing of his interests in Ohio, Mr. Harness migrated in an early day to the new and sparsely settled county of McLean, in the state of Illinois, but fearing the Indians, who at that time occupied the greater part of the county and were not always on friendly terms with their white neighbors, he left that state after a brief sojourn and moved to Boone County, Indiana, thence subsequently to Carroll County where he spent the greater part of his life. Late in life he changed his residence to Howard County, where he spent the remainder of his days, dying at the remarkable age of one hundred and eight years." NOTE: Even though the biography makes no mention of Cass County, Indiana, George W. Harness did live there 36 years. He died at his home near Poplar Grove on Friday, January 18, 1876. His home was just over the Howard County line in Cass County. A couple of other points about the information in the biography: (a) the idea that young George W. Harness walked 400 miles from Virginia to Ohio alone, and then returned home to Virginia the same way a year or so later, is a bit far fetched. (b) George's wife's surname was Sowards (not Sowers), and most research indicates the couple had eight, not ten children. Another interesting account of a part of George W. Harness' life is found in the township histories in the 1878 Boone County, Indiana Atlas. The particular account is in the Sugar Creek township section and it says that George was the first white settler in that township. According to the Atlas, the part of Indiana where George, wife Harriet and their children chose to settle after coming from Ohio was in the Thorntown area, at the center of a government land reserve. The area is located 50 miles or so northwest of modern day Indianapolis. It had once been a large Indian town and French trading post. The Indian title being extinct, the reserve had been surveyed by the government and was offered for sale at nearby Crawfordsville on November 10, 1829. The Atlas indicates that George and his family settled in well before the government sale of land "settling in a couple of (former) Indian huts that stood near a big spring." Harness and his wife, according to the story in the Atlas, plowed a field of about 20 acres around the huts and cultivated it, intending to buy the land when the govenment put it on the market. George was entirely illiterate and thus had to depend upon others to give him a correct description of the land he wanted to buy at the sale. Instead, he was mistakenly given the number of the tract of land that adjoined his land to the north. At the government sale he bought the adjoining tract, believing that he was buying his own homestead. Some time after the sale, a man named William Kenworthy informed George that he (Kenworthy) was the actual owner of the land on which George and his family lived. Kenworthy agreed to buy the land that George had mistakenly purchased and George and his family moved...first to Carroll County, and long after that to Deer Creek township in Cass County, where he died in January, 1876. | ||||||||||||||||
| Last Modified 10 Feb 2005 | Created 12 Feb 2005 by Reunion for Macintosh |