Hayes, E. W. Bio


HISTORY OF MACOUPIN COUNTY, ILLINOIS
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS DESCRIPTIVE OF ITS SCENERY,
AND

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF SOME OF ITS PROMINENT MEN AND PIONEERS.

Published by Brink, McDonough & Co., Philadelphia 1879



Page 153:

HAYES, E. W., who has been practicing law at Bunker Hill since 1867, is a native of Franklin county, Pennsylvania, and was born January 30th 1837. His ancestors were Scotch-Irish. His great-grandfather, David Hayes, emigrated from the north of Ireland and settled in Dauphin county, Pennsylvania, and from there, about the year 1790, removed to Franklin county. He had been a soldier in the war of the Revolution. He had six sons and two daughters, and of these Wilson Hayes was the grandfather of the subject of this biography. Wilson Hayes was the father of three sons and three daughters, the oldest of whom, David Hayes (Mr. Hayes� father) was born in Franklin county, Pennsylvania, in 1811; in 1836 he married Nancy Colwell, who was a native of the adjoining county of Cumberland, and belonged to the same Scotch-Irish stock, which settled in Pennsylvania at an early period, and has contributed not a little to the development and growth of that great commonwealth. By this marriage there were eight children, six sons and two daughters; all grew to manhood and womanhood, and four are now residents of Macoupin and Madison counties, in this state. Edgar W. Hayes was the oldest of these children. His birthplace was the old house in Franklin county, to which his great-grandfather removed in 1790, and which has now been the home of the family for four generations.

After attending the ordinary common schools, he prepared for college at an academy at Shippensburg, and in the fall of 1855 entered the Sophomore class at Lafayette college, Easton, Pennsylvania. He graduated from this institution in the class of 1858. After his graduation he taught school in Franklin and Cumberland counties, Pennsylvania, and was so engaged at the time of the commencement of the war of the rebellion. In May, 1861, a few weeks after the first call for troops, he enlisted in Company A, seventh regiment, Pennsylvania volunteer reserves. He subsequently received his discharge from the service by reason of disability. His health was seriously impaired for many months. He afterward served for a short time in the state militia on the invasion of Pennsylvania by Lee. He had begun reading law soon after leaving college, and in 1863 he resumed his studies, which had been interrupted by his enlistment in the army and his subsequent ill health in the office of R. P. McClure, a leading lawyer of Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. He was admitted as a member of the Cumberland county bar in August, 1865.

He had visited Ralls county, Missouri, in 1859 and 1860, and directly after his admission to the bar, he went to that part of Missouri where he opened a law office the latter part of the year 1865. A visit to a brother in Madison county, of this state, in April 1867, as the occasion of his learning of the advantages of Bunker Hill, at that time without a lawyer, as a place for the practice of the legal profession. He settled at once in Bunker Hill, where his promptness and fidelity to the interests of his clients and the ability and energy which he has displayed in the management of his professional business, have acquired for him a large and profitable practice. In politics he is a republican, and in religion a Presbyterian. In 1869 he varied the monotony of practice in the Macoupin county courts, by a visit to California on professional business, during which he met with an exciting adventure in the way of shipwreck. He was a passenger on the steamship �Golden City,� which was wrecked on the Pacific coast, nine hundred miles south of San Francisco. On his return from California he was, on the 13th of April, 1870, married to Margaret F. Heck, of Shipppensburg, Pennsylvania, with whom he has since lived and by whom he has three children, one son and two daughters.




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