My Genealogy Hound

J. R. Nelon owes his nativity to Rutherford County, N. C., and is a son of J. R. Nelon and Nancy (Cockran) Nelon, his birth occurring September 30, 1841. The former was a soldier in the Mexican War, and is still a resident of North Carolina, where he is engaged in farming. The subject of this sketch enlisted in 1862, at the age of nineteen, in the Sixteenth North Carolina Infantry, and was afterward transferred to the Fifty-sixth, in which he served throughout the war. He was captured and taken prisoner toward the close of the war and then taken to Maryland, where he was paroled in 1865. He took part in the battles of seven days’ fight at Richmond, Petersburg, Dinwiddie Court House, and a number of others. After serving his country faithfully he returned to North Carolina, and in November, 1866, came to Arkansas and located in what is now Lonoke County. Mr. Nelon bought the farm on which he now resides in 1872, which was a tract of land wild and uncultivated. He commenced with nothing and with debt on his hands, but is now free from encumbrance, and has a fine farm of 480 acres, with over 100 cleared, and good buildings thereon, put up by himself. Mr. Nelon was married first in 1867, to Annie Cantrell, of this State, and a daughter of W. H. H. Cantrell, of Little Rock, who died in 1869. He was married to his second wife in 1871, a Miss Anna Ford, of Tennessee, and a daughter of Robert Ford. They are the parents of five children, three of whom are living: Robert W., George W. and Thomas J. Mr. Nelon with his wife is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and the Masonic fraternity claims him as one of its honored members.