History of Macon County, Illinois.  With Illustrations Descriptive Of 
Its Scenery, and Biographical Sketches of some of its Prominent Men and 
Pioneers.  Published by Brink, McDonough & Co., Phildelphia, 1880.  
Reproduced through efforts of The Decatur Genealogical Society, 1972. 
p. 186 [Harrison County].

W. L. WHITLEY, an illustration of whose farm appears in this work, was 
born in Harrison county, Kentucky, March eighth, 1844.  His father, 
James Whitley, was born in the year 1809, in Fairfax county, Virginia, 
and when a small boy moved with his father to Harrison county, Kentucky, 
where he grew up and married Phoebe Haley, who was born in Fairfax 
county, Virginia, in the year 1805.  James Whitley emigrated from 
Kentucky to Illinois in 1846, and in October of that year settled on the 
farm in section twenty-eight, Harristown township, on which he lived 
till his death, on the first of April, 1872.  He came to this state with 
little means, only owning a horse, a pair of oxen and forty dollars in 
money.  He bought eighty acres of land in section twenty-eight, and 
traded the yoke of oxen as part payment, and in a year or two managed to 
free the land from all incumbrance.  He afterwards purchased a mill on 
the Sangamon river near his residence, which he carried on for several 
years.  As he had opportunity he made investments in land, and at his 
death owned five hundred and fifty acres.  In his politics he was a 
democrat.  His widow still survives him.  He had three children:  
Richard F., who now lives in Vernon county, Missouri; Napoleon B., who 
died in the year 1859, at the age of seventeen, and W. L. Whitley, the 
youngest. 
	W. L. Whitley, who occupies the old homestead farm, was about two 
years and a-half old when he came to Macon county.  He obtained his 
education in the neighborhood of the old farm, on which he has always 
lived.  On the first of September, 1872, he married Alice J. Peats, a 
native of Mercer county, Pennsylvania, where the marriage occurred.  
Like his father he is a democrat in politics. He owns four hundred and 
twenty acres of land in Harristown township.  The farm on which he lives 
is one of the oldest in that part of the county.  The eastern part of 
the farm includes the most of the land which Abraham Lincoln cultivated 
when he resided in Macon county in 1830.

Haley Lincoln Peats Whitley
=
Fairfax-VA Harristown-Macon-IL Mercer-PA Vernon-MO

http://www.rootsweb.com/~kygenweb/kybiog/harrison/whitley.wl.txt