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| Notes for Isaac (Ike) HARNESS | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Isaac (Ike) Harness was a banker, a farmer, a stock breeder and a merchant at various times of his life in Illinois, Ohio and Missouri, according to Ernest Bracken in the La Porte County, Indiana Scrapbook from which most of the information in this file about Isaac is based. When his father took over grandfather Peter's farm in Fayette County, Ohio in 1825, following his grandfather's death, Ike helped his father clear the farm. In 1830, the 20 year old went to work on a neighboring farm where he was paid $8 a month. In the colder months of the year he split rails for 25 cents per hundred. In 1832 Ike married Elizabeth (Betsy) Wiley and in 1833 their son, William, was born. Ike's uncles, Lewis and George Sowards and George W. Harness, had made land claims in Money Creek, McLean County, Illinois about 1825 or 1826, and the young couple and their new son moved to that part of Illinois where Ike purchased a land claim for $150. That apparently did not work out, so the couple moved to Indiana and lived for several years in Wolcott Prairie. But they soon came back to Illinois, about 1834 , this time with Ike's father and mother, Jacob and Christina and their 3 daughters. They all settled in McLean County, Illinois on the Vermillion river near Pontiac. But the land was poor for farming so they moved to Lexington township where Ike purchased a 160 acre claim for $300. It was located a mile south of Lexington on the Mackinaw river in what later became known as Harness Grove. There weren't many white settlers around at the time, but there was a Kickapoo Indian village nearby. By 1838 all of the Indians were gone. 1836 was the year of the big rush of settlers to Illinois. Pamphlets had been widely distributed extolling all of the great resources available, so settlers flooded in. Among them were Betsy's brother, her father and her aunt. The city of Lexington had been laid out and surveyed in 1836 and as the town begain to grow, so did Ike's business success. He started breeding cattle stock on a very small scale, but soon he was marketing about 1600 head of cattle every fall. The cattle were driven on hoof to Chicago for sale. it was a 2 day trip on horseback. There were few roads, mostly just Indian trails. Members of Ike's family settled on farm's adjoining his and Betsy's. The 1850 census shows his widowed mother Christina and his married sister Debbie Chance on one farm, John and Sarah Edwards and their 8 children on another, and Ike and Betsy and their 8 children on another adjoining farm. Henry and Mahalia Busick and their 4 children lived in nearby Money Creek township. By 1850 Ike had developed a partnership with a man named Joseph Greenbaum and they had opened clothing stores in Lexington and Pontiac. The railroad did not come through Lexington yet, so Ike would put $10,000 in a carpet bag and go to Cincinnati, Ohio to buy clothing stock for the two stores. In July, 1851, three of Ike and Betsy's children died, probably from cholera. From 1856 to 1868 Ike remained in commercial business, most of that time in partnership with his son-in-law, William Kennedy, in a general merchandise store. Newspaper ads for Harness and Kennedy proclaimed: "Our goods are going off like hot cakes before a starving multitude and at living prices." As Ike and Betsy's family married and moved out of their house, some friction developed between the couple. But Ike's business success continued. During theCivil War, he loaned money to the federal government and received bonds in return. He used the money in 1867 to help organize the Bank of Lexington, under the firm name of Harness, VanDobah and Co. Ike was the president of the bank. In 1869, after an argument with Betsy, he left her. He and Sallie Tucker as his housekeeper moved to Newton County, Missouri, and then to Barton County, Missouri. But he continued to travel back and forth between his homes in Missouri and Illinois. In January, 1884, while in Missouri, he received a telegram that his 78 year old wife Betsy was near death. He and son Bill rushed by train back to Illinois but Betsy had died shortly before they arrived. From 1870 to 1894, Ike gradually acquired 660 acres of land in Barton County, Missouri and 110 acres in Newton County. He and Sallie eventually moved off the farm in Barton County and moved to a house in LaMar, Missouri. Sallie and Ike remained together until May, 1894 when Ike became gravely ill and returned to Illinois to put his business affairs in order. In August, 1894, he conveyed by deed to Sarah Harness land in Missouri worth about $66,000. After an illness of about 8 months, Ike died on Feb. 21, 1895 at the age of 84. At the time of his death, he had accumulated an estate valued at $200,000 and each of his surviving children received $6,500 in cash alone. The majority of his estate remained undivided until almost 50 years after his death. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Last Modified 27 May 2002 | Created 12 Feb 2005 by Reunion for Macintosh |