My Genealogy Hound

DEXTER ALFORD is a well-known and highly respected farmer and real estate dealer of Ripley, who comes from old New England stock that gave full proof of their loyalty and patriotism by service in the Revolutionary, 1812 and Black Hawk wars, in which their country has been involved. Dexter Alford is a son of Martin and Sarah (Adams) Alford, and was born in Waterford, Erie county, Pennsylvania, June 1, 1831. Oliver Alford, the paternal grandfather, was a native of Vermont, who emigrated to Crawford county, Pa., in 1814, where he sojourned until 1841, and then followed the setting sun as far as Painesville, Ohio. While he owned a farm, and was nominally a farmer, he was a minister of prominence in the Baptist church. He was a democrat of Jeffersonian simplicity and Jacksonian intensity, and was ever ready to defend the tenets of that party. During the war of 1812 his farm, which lay on Otter creek, Vermont, a few miles from its mouth, was used as the site of a fortification thrown up for the protection of Vergennes, which lay farther up the creek. Oliver Alford married Lavina Porter, and they reared a family of six sons and four daughters. Oliver, Jr., Ira and Hiram served in the war of 1812. The maternal grandfather was William Adams, who was a native of the old Bay State, and came from that family of Adams who furnished two presidents of the United States, and who were renowned as scholars and statesmen. William Adams came from Massachusetts to Chautauqua county in 1815, and settled in Westfield. From there he went to French Creek and died. He was a soldier in the struggle for Independence, and to his death bore two scars of ugly wounds received in battle. He married Annie Atwater, who became the mother of six sons and two daughters. Martin Alford (father) was born in the Green Mountain State in 1804, and died, in 1884, in the town of Ripley. In 1832 he went to Michigan, then a territory, and served as a private in the Black Hawk war, thus keeping up the chain of military service which his father had begun. In 1835 he came to French Creek, where he lived for eighteen years, and, in 1853, he moved to a farm near the village of Ripley, where the subject now lives. Martin Alford was a farmer and owned a place of one hundred and forty acres. He affiliated with the whigs, but later became a republican, and was elected to several of the town offices. Mr. Alford was a conscientious and Christian man who early associated himself with the Baptist church. Sarah Adams was born in March, 1808, and is still living. She married Martin Alford in 1824, and bore him eleven children, all except one living. Frank Alford, a brother of Dexter, served three years in suppressing the Rebellion, and at the close of his enlistment re-enlisted as a veteran, and served to the end of the war.

Dexter Alford was reared a farmer and taught to work. He was educated in the common schools of his district, and then walked out to battle with the world, commencing as a farm laborer. He worked by the month at this occupation for two years, and taught school in the winters.

On September 6, 1859, he married Lucy A. Fisher, a daughter of Samuel Fisher, who came from Randolph, Mass., about 1860, and made his home in the town of French Creek, where he purchased a home with the accumulated savings of his two years of toil in field and school-room. Later he sold this farm and went down to Erie county, Pa., where he followed carpentering for about eight years. In 1870 he bought the old homestead from his father and now lives upon it, but since purchasing it he bought a property of one hundred and six acres in Erie county, and lived upon it for one year; spent a season in French Creek.

Dexter Alford is a farmer, but does large transactions in real estate. He owns, besides the properties mentioned, a tract of one hundred and thirty acres in Amity township, Erie county, Pa. He is known as a leading republican of Ripley, and has been a notary public during the past three years. The Knights of Honor claim him as a valued member, and the Baptist church recognizes him as a generous and upright supporter. Such men as Dexter Alford make a progressive and wide-awake community.