Sedgwick County KSGenWeb
Portrait And Biographical Album of Sedgwick County, Kan.
Chapman Brothers 1888
Pages 434 - 435
SYLVESTER L. RUSSELL, an honorable and well-to-do farmer of Waco Township, is a native of Geauga County, Ohio, and made his appearance upon the stage of life Oct. 7, 1825. He is the fifth child of his parents, Ebenezer and Sarah (Livermore) Russell, who had a family of some nine children, as follows: Ebenezer Justin, Gideon Alvord, Pamelia, Amanda, Sylvester L., Alpheus P., Hannah, an infant son deceased, and Oren Seward. Ebenezer was a gunsmith with Poweshiek's tribe of Indians in Iowa, and was accidentally killed by an Irishman pointing a gun at him, thinking it was not loaded; Gideon A., born Dec. 8, 1818, who married Sarah Halsie, and was operating the Triumph Planing Mill, in South Chicago, at the time of his death, May 19, 1886; Pamelia is the wife of Edward Joy, who is a real-estate and lumber dealer in St. Louis, Mo.; Amanda, Mrs. Benjamin Harrington, was the mother of two children, but is now numbered with the dead; Alpheus, who married Almira Cowen, and was the parent of two children, died on a farm in Henderson County., Ill., in 1879; Hannah is the deceased wife of William Robinson, who was a farmer in Iowa; Oren S. married Mary Hart, a native of London, England, and is a farmer near Manhattan, Kan.
The subject of our sketch, Sylvester, passed his early life in the county of his birth, but in 1835 the family removed to Illinois and settled in Henderson County, on the banks of the Mississippi River. In this place he was reared, acquiring the rudiments of his education in the pioneer log school-houses of the day, and grew to manhood beneath the parental roof. When he had reached the age of nineteen years he went to the pineries of Wisconsin, where he was engaged in chopping and hauling timber for about a year. He crossed the boundary line into Minnesota at the close of the season, but in the succeeding year returned to the pine woods at the head of the Chippewa River, where he remained through the winter. A year was then spent by him cutting cord wood in the State of Iowa, after which he made a trip down the Mississippi, as far as Cypress Bend, Ark. Returning to Wisconsin after a winter's work in that locality, he went back to his boyhood home in Illinois. While there he was united in marriage with Mrs. Cordelia Alexander, Nov. 24, 1868. The bride was a native of Huntingdon County, Pa., born June 29, 1838, and is the daughter of William and Eliza (Maize) Musser. She was the widow of John Alexander, and the mother of two children: Thedore Bush, born July 15, 1864, and Mary E., Oct. 13, 1866.
Mrs. Russell's parents had a family of eleven children, as follows: Elias, Mary Ann, Sarah, Ellen, Elizabeth, Samuel, Cordelia, Nancy Jane, Mahala, James Hall and John Bush. Elias married Kate Stein, and is a miller in the State of Pennsylvania; Mary Ann married Boyd Updyke, and had one child, but all three are deceased; Sarah married Isaac Spangler, by whom she had two children; after the death of her husband she married George Porter, and was the mother of three more children, but died in 1863; her husband's decease took place in 1872. Ellen, Mrs. Johnson Patterson, was the mother of three children, but died in 1876; Elizabeth, Mrs. A. Winchester, died in Illinois, Dec. 20, 1886; Samuel married Amanda Craton, and is a contractor and builder at Lewistown, Pa.; Nancy Jane, the wife of Rev. G. W. Dunlap, a Methodist minister, has four sons and resides in Pennsylvania; Mahala died in Pennsylvania at the age of eleven years; James H. is an attorney at Harrisburg, Pa., and married Alice Glazier; John B. was a member of the 110th Pennsylvania Infantry, and having re-enlisted at the expiration of his first term of service, in Company B of the same regiment, was killed at the battle of the Wilderness, May 6, 1864.
Mr. Russell came to Sedgwick County in the spring of 1877, with comparatively small means, but by energy and economy has become possessed of a handsome property. He has 160 acres of land in his farm on sections 27 and 34, which is improved and under a high state of cultivation. An orchard of about twenty acres is one of the features of the place. His residence and barns are neat, and everything that surrounds him evinces the thrift and care of the owner. He and his wife are the parents of one child, Sarah Ollie, who was born Feb. 11, 1883, in this county. Mrs. Russell is a sincere, Christian woman, a member of the Baptist Church, and an active worker in all religious movements.
[ Home ]
