Cunningham, George M.

BIOGRAPHIES
1905 PAST and PRESENT OF GREENE COUNTY ILLINOIS

Chicago: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Co.


Page 612

GEORGE M. CUNNINGHAM, who is engaged in general farming in Roodhouse township, was born in Greene county, near Patterson, May 7, 1847. His paternal grandfather, Abraham Cunningham, was a native of South Carolina, and his son, Joel Cunningham, was also born in that state. He married Miss Clara C. Marsh, a daughter of Ezekiel and Lydia (Whittier) Marsh, natives of Tennessee. Joel Cunningham removed from South Carolina to Tennessee, and came from Lincoln county, in the latter state, to Illinois about 1830 or 1831. Settling in Greene county, he was one of the pioneer farmers of this part of the state and aided in reclaiming the wild land for the purposes of civilization. Throughout his entire life he followed farming, and he died in 1872, at the age of sixty-nine years.

George M. Cunningham is indebted to the public schools for the educational privileges he enjoyed, and when not busy with his school books he aided in the labors of the home farm. He has always carried on agricultural pursuits and now farms the J. W. Smith land in Roodhouse township, making his home thereon. He was married in 1874 to Miss Virginia Davidson, and they have become the parents of six children: Mary A., who was born in 1875 and is the wife of Elmer Ballard, a member of one of the oldest families of the county, by whom she has three children, Orrin, aged eleven, Virgil, aged eight, and Rubie, aged one year: Nona, who was born in 1878; Emma, who was born in 1879 and is the wife of John Coates, a resident of Barrow, by whom she has one child, Clara; Alma, born in 1883; Hubert, born July 10, 1889; and Burline, born August 12, 1895.

In his religious faith Mr. Cunningham is a member of the Baptist faith, and in his political views is a Prohibition-Democrat. He advocates temperance principles and in fact supports all measures which promote law and order, truth, justice and the right.
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