JACKSON SISSON was born in Culpepper county, Virginia, Oct. 17th, 1817, and has lived in Macoupin county since 1837. His father's name was Abner Sisson. The family were among the early settlers of Virginia, and lived there before the Revolutionary war. His father and grandfather were large farmers, and men of substantial means. His grandfather embarked largely in speculation and lost a portion of his wealth. The finances of the country were in a disordered condition after the Revolutionary war, and fortunes were easily lost. Mr. Sisson has heard his uncle say that after the Revolution was ended, he paid as much as sixty thousand dollars in the depreciated currency of the times to buy a bushel of salt. When the subject of this biography was about four years old his father moved with the family to Jefferson county, Kentucky, and settled on Pennsylvania run, a few miles from Louisville. His father died about a year after going to Kentucky. Mr. Sisson was principally raised in Kentucky. In those days children attended school about three months, in the winter, and then forgot all they knew the next summer. In 1837 the family came to Illinois, arriving in Macoupin county November 1st, and settling on a farm, on which has since been built the principal part of the town of Gillespie. They bought 640 acres of unimproved land at two dollars and a half an acre. Mr. Sisson was then twenty years old. He and his brother, John Sisson, was living in Jersey county, and went to work to improve this land. He was married February 1st, 1849, to Mrs. Nannie C. Dorsey, widow of Basil H. Dorsey. Her maiden name was Nannie C. Payne; she was born in Fayette county, Kentucky, two miles from Ashland, the birth-place of Henry Clay, July 28th, 1824, and was the daughter of Sandford K. Payne. She first came to Illinois in 1844, when nineteen years old. Mr. Sisson was farming in Gillespie township till the fall of 1849, and then moved on his present farm in section ten of Bunker Hill township, a mile and a half north-west of Bunker Hill. When he moved on this farm, which now consists of 150 acres, only eighteen acres were improved. He has been living there from that time to the present. He has six children now living. Their names are as follows: Edward A.; Fannie C., now the wife of William Roberts; T. Abner, Monroe G., John W. and Silas B. Mr. Sisson was first a Whig in politics, and an admirer of Henry Clay, as were most persons who lived in Kentucky. He first voted for Harrison in 1840. When the Whig organization went to pieces he became a democrat, and votes with that party. He is one of the old citizens of the southern part of Macoupin county, and a man of quiet and unassuming disposition, who is content with being a farmer, and has never aspired to fill a public office.