PEYTON HARDING, farmer of township 17, range 9, section 19, Philadelphia postoffice, was born in Barren county, Kentucky, December 17, 1817. His parents were Martin and Isabella (Beard) Harding. The father came from Virginia born in 1792, and the mother from Tennessee, born in 1794. They were married in Barren county, Kentucky, where their eldest children were born: Peyton, Paschal, William, Sarah and Andrew; and after coming to Illinois, Winnie, Isabella and Martin were born. Paschal lives with Peyton; Andrew is a farmer in this precinct; Martin lives in Virginia, Illinois; and Isabella, now Mrs. Foster, resides in Lucas county, Iowa. The parents removed from Kentucky to Illinois in 1826, and located on the farm where Andrew now lives. The father entered a large tract of land here on which he died in 1854, and the mother died in 1867. At the time the Harding family located here the country was entirely new. There was no improved land, except two small improved tracts in this neighborhood. The forest was overrun with wild game and Indians. Mr. Harding has lived to witness the development of this wilderness into one of the most fertile and valuable sections in the United States. He has also witnessed the growth of inventions, the extent of which is wonderful, railroads, plows, reapers, mowers, binders, separating threshers, telephones, electric lights and thousands of other inventions, more than in the past 200 years previously. Mr. Harding taught school here in 1840, but preferred the less confining occupation of farming. He has been a farmer and stock raiser all his life. He is comfortably situated and will spent his old age in ease. He owns 280 acres of good land. He has never married, but his brother, Paschal, resides with him with his four children. He is a Democrat in politics and cast his first vote for Martin Van Buren. His father was a soldier in the war of 1812 and the Black Hawk war, also in the Mormon troubles, but none of the family took part in the late Civil War.