ROBERT Y. PARK. This highly respected old citizen of township 16, range 11, is nearly sixty-one years of age, and has been a resident of this county since a small boy. He is a life-long farmer, and has a snug homestead of seventy-five acres on section 35. His industry and perseverance, have resulted in the accumulation of a competence sufficient for his declining years, while his life has been that of an honest and upright man who enjoys the esteem and confidence of his neighbors in a marked degree.
Our subject first opened his eyes to the light in Todd County, Ky., Sept 20, 1828, and is the scion of an excellent family, his parents being Thomas and Jane (Maben) Park, who were both natives of South Caroline, and both born of Irish parents who traced their ancestry to Scotland. The Park family was first represented in this country prior to the Revolutionary War. The Mabens were from the same part of Ireland, and Henry Maben, the maternal grandfather of our subject, served as a private during the Revolutionary War. After his marriage in South Carolina he removed to Todd County, Ky., where he died a very old man, and left a family of seven children.
John Park, the paternal grandfather of our subject, sojourned a few years in Kentucky, then came to Sangamon County, Ill., where he was a pioneer settler. He took up a tract of land from which he made a comfortable homestead, and died at the advanced age of eighty-five years, leaving a family of eight children. His son, Thomas, the father of our subject, was reared and educated in his native county, where also he was married and where he lived until after the birth of seven children. Then disposing of his interests in the Blue Grass State, he came with his family in 1828 to Illinois, and they lived for three years in Sangamon County. In 1829 they came to this county and entered a tract of land on township 16, range 11, where Thomas Park and his estimable wife lived and labored together and died when quite well advanced in years. Mr. Peak departed this life in March, 1850, when sixty-two years old. The wife and mother survived her husband until December, 1871, and was then eighty-three years old. Both were members of the United Presbyterian Church, in which Mr. Park had been an Elder for many years. In politics he was an Old Line Whig.
The subject of this sketch was the youngest son in a family of six sons and two daughters. One daughter died in childhood before the removal from Kentucky. Henry M., died May 17, 1889, aged seventy-two; the survivors are John J. aged seventy-four years; James A., aged seventy; Elijah H., sixty-eight; William R., sixty-four; Robert Y., our subject, sixty-one, and Sarah G., fifty-nine. With one exception they are all married, have families of their own, and are in comfortable circumstances. Robert Y. like his brothers and sisters, was trained to habits of industry and thus was laid the foundation of a character which has made of him a reliable man and a good citizen.
After becoming of age, Robert Y. Park was married in the township where he now lives, to Miss Malinda A. Scott, a native of his own county in Kentucky, and born Nov. 27, 1832. The parents of Mrs. Park were David and Elizabeth (Bean) Scott, the former born in what is now West Virginia, and the latter, it is thought, a native of Todd County, Ky., where their marriage took place. They began their wedded life together on a farm there, where they lived until after the birth of two sons and three daughters, the latter of whom are yet living. The sons - William H., and Isaac N., died at the ages of seventeen and nine. Of the daughters, two are married - Malinda, the wife of our subject, and Catherine E., Mrs. Tandy. The unmarried daughter, Mary A., is living with our subject. The mother died in Kentucky at the age of thirty-six years. Later the father and children came to this county and located in township 16, range 11. Mr. Scott was subsequently married to Miss Elizabeth Millen, and both are now deceased; he being sixty-eight years old at the time of his death, and his wife sixty-six.
Mrs. Park was quite young when she came with her father to Illinois and she has since been a resident of this county. Of her union with our subject there has been born one child only, a son, Frank P., who is now twenty-three years of age. Mr. and Mrs. Park are members of good standing of the United Presbyterian Church at Clayton, Ill., and in politics, Mr. Park is undeniably a Republican.