John A. Church

H. W. Beckwith, History of Vermilion County (Chicago: H. H. Hill, 1879)

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John A. Church, Catlin, was born in Greenbrier County, in what is now West Virginia, on the 20th of August, 1827. In the fall of 1830 his family moved to Vermilion county, Illinois, and settled at Butler's Point. Mr. Church's father still resides on the place originally settled, and is now in the seventy-third year of his life. Mr. Church's mother, formerly Miss Ruth Caraway, died on the 14th of February, 1850, and was buried at Butler's Point. She was the mother of 10 children, seven of whom were raised, and five are now living: John A., William, Sarah, Joseph and Charles, all of Catlin township. Mary, the wife of Frank Guyman, and Ruth, both died in the same township, the former in 1862, and the latter about 1854. Mr. Church was about three years of age on his arrival in this county, and has lived all his life within a mile of the place first settled. He was married to Miss Mary Lore [Love?] on the 27th of September, 1849, at the house of the bride's parents in Catlin township. He settled down immediately to farm-life, and taught school in the winter for some three years. By strict economy, and the simplest

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mode of living, enough money was saved up the first six years to make a payment of $500 on an improved forty acres of land, on which he immediately moved, and which was paid for in due time, and now forms a part of the present fine farm of one hundred and seventy acres, lying two miles northwest of Catlin, and on which the proprietor lived till the fall of 1874, when he settled in Catlin, where he has bought a handsome little property. As the fruits of their marriage, Mr. Church and lady have been blessed with two bright, interesting daughters: Miss Edwina and Miss Clara. Alexander, Mr. Church's father, was also raised and married in Virginia, in the county already mentioned, and is now one of the old and honored pioneers of Vermilion county. Mrs. Church's ancestry, the Loves, are also an old and well-known Virginia family, and were also settlers in that state when it was a British colony. Her father, William, was born in the same state in 1803. He married a Miss Elizabeth Gish, and immediately moved to Highland county, Ohio, where they landed about 1826. They arrived in Danville, Illinois, in 1830, where they resided till 1839, when they moved to Catlin township, where they both died, he in the spring of 1868, and she in the spring of 1871.