Following is one of the Biographies and Stories which where gathered by Charles Sumner McKamy in the 1950s for publication in a Crawford County History Book. Unfortunately he passed away before the book was published.
Family tradition begins the genealogy of Marley Harrison in colonial Virginia. The tradition is now too vague to give personal names to the Virginia ancestors. Enough tradition remains to specifically name his grandfather as Jacob Harrison, whose parents migrated from Virginia to Spencer County, Indiana. The grandfather, imbued with the spirit of western migration with newly wedded wife arrived at a site just one mile east of the present courthouse site in Charleston, Illinois. There their first child, a son, was born. The area was too swampy and boggy to suit his liking. To hunt drier areas, he with his family, started southward. He realized his desire in a little knoll in a wooded area one mile north and one and one half miles west of Hunt City, Illinois in Jasper County. There he built a log cabin and lived the rest of his life. There, he reared a family of six children. From the cabin door, two sons left to serve in the Union Army, one of which never returned. In the log cabin was born in 1855 a youngest son, Jacob Harrison, Junior.
This son grew to manhood and was married to Nancy McFadden. Her father and mother were born and reached maturity near Belfast, Ireland. When the condition known in history as the "Potato Famine" hit Ireland in 1845, they migrated to America, landing in New York. The "out west" spirit led them to Kentucky midway on the Tennessee border to a village named Jamestown. When the Civil War came, because he didn't support slavery, he was driven from his home to settle first near Yale, and later Brockville, Illinois.
Jacob, Junior and his wife Nancy later moved to a farm two miles east of Willow Hill. There on August 26, 1890, the subject of this sketch was born in the home "beside the railroad". There he spent his youth and grew to manhood. To this day in 1956, he still owns and operates the homestead. In December 1914, he was married to Constance Sears. To them was born a son, Shelby in July 1917. The mother was the daughter of (Connie: I don't know enough about your parents to fill in this part. You can tell it to Shelby and he can fill it in.)
The early married life of Marley and Connie was spent on the homestead, caring for his parents. As years passed, they became interested in the business world and established an electrical appliance business which is now in its twenty-seventh year of service to the public.