My Genealogy Hound

Rev. Hamilton W. Berry, farmer and stock raiser, was born in East Virginia in Montgomery County, January 9, 1885, and is a son of Rev. Joseph H. and Rebecca (Dierly) Berry, natives of Virginia also. The family moved to Missouri in the fall of 1840, and settled in what is now Putnam County, and near where H. W. now lives. Here the father entered and improved farm land, and lived until his death in August, 1867. He served as justice of the peace for about twelve years, and devoted a good deal of time to the ministry for about thirty-five years, being a local preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church, to which faith he had united before becoming of age. Hamilton W. Berry accompanied his father to Missouri in 1840, and during his youth received a common-school education in Putnam County, which he afterward improved by study. When twenty-two years old he began to teach, devoting the winters of a number of years to that vocation. April 29, 1858, he married Rebecca Cassada, daughter of William and Sarah Ann (Surrey) Cassada, formerly of New Jersey and Ohio, respectively. Mrs. Berry was born in Brown County, Ohio, and was brought to Missouri when fourteen years old, by her parents. Mr. Berry located near Graysville after his marriage, where he farmed until 1862, aid then moved upon his present place. The improvements of this place are mostly due to his labor and management, and his farm consists of 180 acres, sixty of which are finely improved and cultivated. When twenty-two years of age Mr. Berry was licensed to preach in the Methodist Episcopal Church South, but in 1876 joined the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, in which he was ordained a minister. For about five years while in the Methodist Episcopal Church he was a circuit preacher. Since that time he has had charge of two churches, his work being mostly of an evangelical character. He is an active and earnest Christian, and still continues to preach nearly every Sabbath in the different neighborhoods of the vicinity in he lives. The union of Mr. and Mrs. Berry has been blessed with ten children: Elizabeth, Sarah E. (wife of W. S. Pixler), Joseph H., Regina, Ettie, Dessie Belle and William C. Thomas J. died in 1881, aged twenty; Montana died in1 1883, aged seventeen, and Genevra who died in infancy in 1865. Of a family of seven children born to Hamilton W. Berry, Sr., four are living: Hon. P. C. Berry, of Schuyler County, Mo.; W. M. R. Berry, of Southern Kansas, and Charles T. C. Berry, of Custer County, Neb., and our subject. There were six brothers, in all, who were well educated, partly by their own extertions, and four of whom were teachers.