My Genealogy Hound

WILLIAM COPELAND, distiller, and farmer of the Third District, and a native of Lincoln County, was born in 1829, and is one of ten children born to the union of John and Sarah (Massey) Copeland. The father was born in South Carolina in 1798, and was of Scotch-Irish descent. He was a minister of the P. B. Church; was also a soldier in the war of 1812, and was married in the same year. The latter part of his life was spent in farming in connection with his ministerial duties in Moore County, where he had a farm of 250 acres. He died in the year 1865. The mother was born in South Carolina in 1789, and died in 1857. Our subject received a good education, and when about seventeen began teaching, and taught several terms. At the age of twenty he took a trip to Arkansas, but returned home at the end of twelve months, and was elected constable. In 1852 he entered the mercantile establishment at Marble Hill in Franklin County, and clerked there for three years. November, 1854, he married Mary Ann George, and by this union became the father of eleven children, eight of whom are living: Jefferson M., William C., Mollie H. (wife of John M. Franklin), Thomas N., Emily E. (wife of H. Snow), George M., Robert L. and Ida May. In 1857 Mr. Copeland sold his property, and entered the mercantile business at Smithland, where he remained three years. He then sold out and bought a farm of 800 acres, in the Fourth District, and for two years was revenue tax collector of Lincoln County. In 1867 he engaged in the distillery business, and this he still continues. In 1881 he purchased a distillery at Flintville, since which time he has been engaged in the business at that place. His machinery has a capacity of over three barrels per day. In 1885 he moved his family to the farm where they now reside. In politics he is a Democrat. He is also a member of the Masonic fraternity. Mrs. Copeland is a member of the Baptist Church.