My Genealogy Hound

Capt. H. W. Sebree. Prominent among the farmers of Crittenden County, is Capt. Sebree, who was born in Kentucky, in 1817, being the son of Reuben and Jane (Watts) Sebree, natives of Virginia. Their parents were also Virginians by birth, the father of Reuben Sebree, Richard Sebree, being a very prominent and wealthy planter, who lived to be over ninety years of age, and died while our subject was a small boy. Reuben reached his majority in the Old Dominion, where he was married, and one child had been born to himself and wife, when he moved to Kentucky, and settled in Boone County. There he engaged in farming till his death. He was a well-to-do man and took an active part in the War of 1812. Some of his comrades were captains in the war, but owing to his age, he could not be admitted as a soldier. He was an old time Whig, and died in his seventy-third year, having been an upright, moral man, and well-liked, commanding the respect of all who knew him. His wife died several years afterward, being seventy-seven years of age. To this union were born six children, five sons and one daughter. All but one lived to be grown: Oner, one of the sons, fell in a well and was drowned at the age of four years. Only two of the children, Norman (an engineer living in Cincinnati) and Capt. H. W. (the fourth child) survive. At the age of twenty years, the latter went on the Hartford City, a towboat running between Pittsburg and New Orleans, of which he soon afterward became pilot, then captain, and the principal owner. He owned the Star, Argus, Rockford and several other boats, and was on the river from 1859 to 1876, holding positions on various boats, and had three boats destroyed during the Civil War, the Queen of Memphis, Hartford and Star. Purchasing a fruit farm in Crittenden County, he lived at Mound City for a short time, when he moved to his farm on which he has since made his home. Here he has 350 acres of good land under cultivation, though only seventy-five were improved when he bought the place; he owns other lands that are unimproved. While living in Kentucky, he took an active part in political matters, and represented Boone County in the legislature, in 1856, also holding the office of sheriff, magistrate and several minor offices. He was a Whig till the war, and then a Democrat, but now gives his whole attention to his farms. Capt. Sebree was married to Elizabeth Wingate, a native of Kentucky, and a daughter of William Wingate, a wealthy planter of Boone County, who lived to be very old. Mrs. Sebree died November 4, 1888, in her sixty-ninth year. She was a good Christian lady, and one of the best women that the world has ever produced. She was the mother of eight children, the following two of whom are still living: Sarah J. (the wife of Moses Corey, living in Pennsylvania) and Katy Cole (wife of J. W. Cole, who lives on the home place with her parents; they have one son, Howard W.). Mr. Sebree has been a very active, and is yet one of the most energetic men in the county. He is wide awake and pushing, and has done much toward the advancement of the locality in which he lives.