Matt Simons deserves much credit for what he has accomplished for in his youth he had no advantages, and it has been entirely through his own labor, determination and perseverance that he has acquired a cozy home and a tract of land, the cultivation of which beings to him a comfortable living. He resides in White Hall township and is a native son of Scott county, Illinois, where his birth occurred on the 6th of September, 1855. His parents were Martin and Isabella (Lawson) Simons, the former a native of Tennessee, and the Lawson family were also natives of that state. Mr. Simons died in the spring of 1888, at the age of seventy-two years, while his wife departed this life in the fall of 1888, at the age of sixty years.

Matt Simons received no educational privileges and the lessons that he learned were mastered in the hard school of experience. At an early age he started out in life to earn his own living and since that time has depended exclusively upon his own resources and unflagging industry. He now owns a small farm of six acres, through which runs a little stream and this gives him an excellent place on which to raise hogs, and he annually sells a number of fine porkers. he also raises corn and potatoes, and he rents other lands whereon he raised the crops best adapted to the soil and climate. He keeps a cow and five head of horses and altogether has a comfortable little home and moreover has the satisfaction of knowing that it has been honorably won through persistent labor and perseverance.

In 1880 Mr. Simons was united in marriage to Miss Cynthia Eubanks, and unto them have been born four children, three sons and a daughter: Charles, Fred, Otis and Pearl, aged respectively twenty-two, twenty-one, seventeen and fifteen years of age. Charles and Fred are away from home, at work for themselves, the latter being in Winchester, Illinois. Otis is trap tender and weightmaster at Market's Coal bank, near home: and Pearl is attending school. Mr. Simons is a firm believer in the cause of education and has given to his children every advantage in this direction within his means, and their father's life furnishes to them a good example of the power of industry and honesty in conquering difficulties and winning success.