My Genealogy Hound

SAMUEL B. LaFORCE, one of the oldest pioneers of Jasper county, Missouri, whose ancestry dates back to the colonial times of the country. His great-grandfather was from France, and his descendants were participants in the Revolutionary War, His grandfather moved from Virginia to Tennessee, and died in 1834. His son, Rane, was the father of the subject of this sketch and was born in Virginia, in 1782, and was a farmer by occupation, His wife, Martha McGee, was a native of Kentucky, who was born in 1783, and died in Pike county, Missouri, in 1841. Mr. S. B. LaForce was reared and educated in Pike county, Missouri, and was married April 13, 1837, to Miss Lucy Brown, who was born in Green county, Illinois, in June, 1822. They have but one child, Martha V., now living, five having died. Mr. LaForce came to Jasper county, Missouri, in October, 1843, settling three miles northeast of Carthage, and is therefore one of the oldest settlers. At that time Booneville was the nearest trading point and was reached by ox teams. He entered and bought about 680 acres of land, and was very prosperous in all his ventures. He remembers well the first three houses built in Carthage; viz., the residences of Geo. Hornbach and Elijah Pennington Sr., and the county court-house. He was an active participant in the Federal cause, and acted as guide for Colonel Sigel at the battle of Carthage, July 5, 1861, and later joined the Hundred and Fifty-Second Illinois Infantry; he also had two sons enlisted in the Federal service. In 1865 he returned to Jasper county, Missouri, and engaged again in farming, and in 1867 he removed to the town of Carthage, where he has since resided. He has been an active public character, having little respect for any law not based on the national rights of man. In 1846 and 1848 he was elected sheriff of Jasper county for two terms, and in 1850 was sent to the Sixteenth General Assembly, and in 1866 elected to fill the office of clerk of the circuit and county courts. He has long since retired from active life, and can now look back in retrospect to the early struggles of frontier life, and the stirring scenes of war, and feel that he has lived a loyal, useful, and eventful life.