My Genealogy Hound

S. M. Marks. Nowhere within the limits of Mississippi County, Ark., can there be found a man who takes greater interest in its agricultural and stock affairs than Mr. Marks, or who strives more continually to promote and advance these interests. Like so many native-born Kentuckians, he has been energetic and enterprising, and since 1879 has been the owner of a good farm of 160 acres in Chickasawba Township, which was at the time of his purchase heavily covered with timber. He has opened up about thirty acres, has erected substantial buildings on his place, and for some time has been interested in the propagation of stock, having in his possession a fine young horse of Highland and Cleveland Bay stock. His land yields a bale of cotton to the acre, and sixty bushels of corn. He was born in 1846, being the third in a family of seven children born to Samuel and Sarah (Keesee) Marks, who were also Kentuckians. During his infancy his parents moved to Missouri, where the father died a few years later; and from the time he was able to work until 1861 he assisted in the support, of his mother and a sister. In the fall of that year he enlisted in Company G, Sixth Illinois Cavalry, and was in the Second Brigade, Fifth Division of the Fourth Army Corps of the Department of the Cumberland, and took an active part in the engagements at Port Hudson, Nashville and Franklin, and in a number of campaigns and minor engagements. He was mustered out of service at Selma, Ala., November 5, 1865, and received his discharge at Springfield, Ill. The three following years he was engaged in farming in the vicinity of the latter city, and up to 1874 was employed in tilling rented land. At that date he came to Arkansas and made a crop on Carson’s Lake, but then returned to Illinois, and for two years was engaged in following various occupations. Since that time he has resided in Mississippi County, Ark., where he was married, in 1879, to Mrs. Amelia Ellen Lawrence, nee Bowen, a daughter of John M. C. Bowen. His wife is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and Mr. Marks is a member of Chickasawba Lodge No. 134, of the F. & A. M.