VIRGIN, JOHN W. - One of the most interesting characters connected with the development of Cass County, Ill., during its later growth, is John W. Virgin, whose history is unique in the number and variety of enterprises in which he has been concerned, in the extent of his acquaintance with men prominent in the earlier course of the history of this section, and in the zest of his experiences of travel in different localities of the western country, and in his identification with modern farm life and management of a superior order in the vicinity of his home.

John W. Virgin is a native of Menard county, Ill., where he was born on a farm one mile south of the old country town of Sweetwater, January 31, 1854, his parents being George and Eliza (Enslow) Virgin, the father a native of Fayette County, Pa., and the mother of Wheelersburg, Scioto County, Ohio. They were married at Pekin, Ill., in 1852. They located on an 80 acre Menard County farm (bought at $20 and now worth $200 per acre) where they lived until 1859, when they moved to Morgan County and bought a larger farm of Jacob Strawn, the then "land and cattle king" of Illinois. Five years later they sold this to Z. W. Flinn, and purchased three other farms six miles southeast of Virginia from James Hill, Newton Runyan and Oswald Runyan, where they lived until 1904. From about 1848 until 1904, George Virgin was actively engaged in the cattle business. Before the advent of railroads, he, with his brother, Eli, bought and drove beef cattle from Illinois to New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore markets; later, they with John T. Alexander, Sr., followed buying, feeding and shipping cattle to New York. In 1904 ill health compelled the retirement of George Virgin from active business and he and his wife removed to Virginia, leaving "the boys" to run the 800 acre farm. His death occurred in September, 1908, at the age of eighty years, his widow passing away at the same age in January, 1914, thus ending one of the best known and most hospitable homes of central Illinois. The children of George and Eliza (Enslow) Virgin were as follows: John W.; Ida (Mrs. George Aldridge), of Virginia, Ill.; Eli T., of Junction City, Ore.; George M., of Fresno, Cal.; Orland deceased, and Frank and Fred well known Cass County farmers and stockmen.

At the age of seventeen years, John W. Virgin began work as a bookkeeper in Petefish, Skiles & Co.'s bank (of which firm his father was then a member) in Virginia, and three years later, became assistant cashier of the Farmers National bank of Virginia (of which his father was president for twenty-seven years), when impaired health and "the call of the wild" lured him to the Rocky Mountains. In 1879, he with some of his friends, Lou L. Savage, C. W. Crews, J. L. Cosner, J. M. Downing, Will Shuff and Alex Walker organized a prospecting expedition and with six mules, two wagons, six months' supply of groceries, and with their camping outfit loaded into a box car, they departed for Leadville, Colo., then at its wildest, and 120 miles beyond the nearest railroad. All sooner or later returned to Illinois, except C. W. Crews, who is managing director of the Crews-Beggs Dry Goods Company at Pueblo, and J. M. Downing, who is a well known lawyer and politician of Aspen, Colo.

Mr. Virgin spent five years prospecting and mining in Colorado, where he made some money, but spent about $4,000 more than he made trying to "get rich". In 1883 he went to New Mexico and engaged with others in cattle ranching, being a stockholder and manager of the Illinois Cattle Company, of which his brother, George was also a stockholder and secretary. San Marcial, Socorro County, a division point on the Santa Fe Railroad, 120 miles north of the Old Mexico line, was their headquarters. Socorro County is about the size, in square miles, of the state of Delaware. The cattle industry fast assumed a leading position among property interests, and the cattle men soon felt the need of a representative on the county taxing board. J. W. Virgin was selected as their candidate for county commissioner, to which office he was elected by the largest majority on the county ticket. The other two commissioners were Mexicans, who regarded the innovation of an American with suspicion, but Mr. Virgin soon gained their entire confidence and secured needed reforms in county affairs, a more equitable distribution of taxes, reduced a floating county debt of $56,000 to less than $3,000, raised the tax valuation of over 400,000 acres of old Spanish land grants from 10� to 75� per acre, thus equalizing the burdens of the taxpayers, and straightened out a somewhat entangled county contract for the building of a courthouse, jail and a bridge across the Rio Grande. Socorro County has a handsome courthouse, built without even the suspicion of graft, and so gratified were the hold over commissioners with their relief from a troublesome contract that they insisted on adding the name of J. W. Virgin to the stone tablet in the front of the building, and it so stands today as a creditable monument to his memory. Having secured the needed reforms and placed county affairs on a modern business basis, Mr. Virgin was not a candidate for re-election, but during his residence in New Mexico, the commissioners each year insisted upon his auditing the county books, and he had no mor loyal friends in the county than those old Mexican Dons. In 1898 the cattle company sold out all their holdings range conditions having become such that the business was unprofitable.

A growing family demanding better educational and social advantages than the range country afforded, Mr. Virgin returned to Illinois with his family, locating on a 160 acre farm eight miles southwest of Virginia, a family inheritance from the I. M. Stribling estate. In 1910 he bought eighty-two acres on the west line of the city of Virginia (part of the old Angier homestead) at $185 per acre, the present family residence from which Mr. Virgin operates both farms. In February, 1912, the house was totally destroyed by fire, and was replaced by the present colonial residence, an elegant modern home, beautifully located, half a mile west of town, and equipped with electric lights, furnace, hot and cold water and all modern conveniences.

In March, 1881, Mr. Virgin was married to Lou M. Stribling, who was born at the old Stribling home, near Virginia, February 18, 1856, the youngest daughter of the late I. M. and Margaret (Beggs) Stribling, natives respectively of Kentucky and Illinois. The Stribling family came from Kentucky to Illinois in 1832 (formerly from the state of Virginia) the grandfather of Mrs. Virgin, Benjamin Stribling, being among the first settlers of Cass County, on the well known Stribling farm a mile northwest of Virginia. The Beggs family are of Scotch-Irish extraction. Capt. Charles Beggs, grandfather of Mrs. Virgin, was a member of the first constitutional convention of Indiana and served as captain under General Harrison at the famous battle of Tippecanoe in western Indiana. He was one of the early settlers of Morgan County, Ill.

The Virgin family for several generations, have been of Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, some of the New England states and Kentucky, and came originally from England about A.D. 1700. English records of heraldry give the family coat of arms and family motto in Latin, which, translated, reads" Now or Never". They had their part, however, with the colonial patriots in Revolutionary days, and while they have been mostly of the great agricultural classes, some of them have taken to literary and professional lines, notably, among more recent generations, Hon. William Wirt Virgin, one of the supreme judges of Maine, the Rev. Edward Warren Virgin of Boston, and Rev. Samuel H. virgin of New York City. Politically, all the western Virgins have been Democrats while some of their eastern cousins have been Whigs and Republicans.

The children of Mr. and Mrs. J. W. Virgin, four in number, were all born in New Mexico, and are: Dorothy E. and Norma Lucile, the former a literary and the latter an art graduate of Illinois Woman's College, Jacksonville (where their mother's education was finished); Eli Horace, a student of Illinois State University, Champaign; and Emma Louise, at present a student at the Illinois Woman's College, Jacksonville.

Mr. Virgin took the regular district school course, studied two terms at a country seminary in Menard County and at the Virginia High School in its earliest days, and while he never had a college education, he has been a lifelong reader and student, having, by his own efforts, acquired a wider range of knowledge than is comprised in most college courses. He is a lifelong Democrat, and while taking an active and intelligent interest in political affairs, has never sought any political preferment, never has been a candidate for political place or office. Never having been of an aggressive or self-seeking disposition, it has been his lot rather to be ready for and equal to emergencies as they arose. As a young man he took an active part in the rehabilitation of the Farmer's National Bank directorate and business. In Colorado he took an active part in the election of the first Democratic governor the state ever had. He organized and conducted a relief expedition, struggling for thirty or more hours through a mountain blizzard and three to five feet of snow, rescuing alive Jack Wilson, a snow slide covered comrade, entombed alive for forty-eight hours and who is alive and well today. In New Mexico, in addition to attending to the somewhat strenuous duties of a ranchman, he took time to give considerable study to archaeological and pre-historic research, contributing articles to the American Archaeologist, besides taking an active part in reconstructing county affairs and ridding the territory of its last organized band of "rustlers" or cattle thieves. His activity has been almost always toward the general welfare rather than his personal aggrandizement, and while not always able to do just as he would have chosen financially, he has never found it necessary to resort to questionable practices or subterfuge. Of a somewhat literary, studious and artistic turn of mind, he is yet a plain, practical, progressive farmer and stock raiser of the better class. He has a bright and interesting family, all still at home, a home that is such in the best sense, where, while the necessary, practical, every day affairs of life are not neglected, the lighter, brighter, social, literary and artistic interests are all indulged. Mrs. Virgin is the constant, sympathetic companion of her children in all their affairs, and the sterner head of the family indulges all their desires, and thoroughly hating all forms of sham or subterfuge, goes peacefully on believing fully in the religion of his father expressed in the proverb, "An honest man is the nobles work of God."