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Below is a family biography included in Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Chautauqua County, New York published by John M. Gresham & Co. in 1891.  These biographies are valuable for genealogy research in discovering missing ancestors or filling in the details of a family tree. Family biographies often include far more information than can be found in a census record or obituary.  Details will vary with each biography but will often include the date and place of birth, parent names including mothers' maiden name, name of wife including maiden name, her parents' names, name of children (including spouses if married), former places of residence, occupation details, military service, church and social organization affiliations, and more.  There are often ancestry details included that cannot be found in any other type of genealogical record.

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WILSON S. ANDRUS is of English ancestry and he and his father have been well-known and highly respected citizens of this immediate section for three-quarters of a century. He is the son of Sylvester and Rachel (Harris) Andrus, and was born in the town of Portland, Chautauqua county, New York, September 20, 1819. His father was a native of Connecticut and married Rachel Harris of Rensselaer county, New York, by whom he had eight children. While a young man he came to this county and located near Brocton, 1814, where he engaged in farming until 1828, with the exception of one year (1815) which he spent in Connecticut on account of a severe attack of nostalgia. In 1828, he came to the town of Hanover, where he followed farming the remainder of his life and was a very prosperous farmer, he was an old-line whig until the agitation of the slavery question, when he became a stanch democrat. He was poor-master for several years. In religion he was a Baptist, being a member and deacon of the first church of that denomination organized in Portland. He died in 1865, aged seventy-four years. His wife (mother of W. S.) was also a consistent member of the Baptist church and died in 1883, aged eighty-eight years.

Wilson S. Andrus was brought up on the farm and received a common school education. He has been engaged in agricultural pursuits all his life and, in connection therewith, has also handled thousands of feet of lumber, having for five years been in that business in Buffalo. He now owns a farm of one hundred and twelve acres near the village of Silver Creek, and has for sixty-three years lived in what is now the village corporation. He has been very successful and has accumulated a snug fortune. He owns the first mill-stone made in this town. It was made from a boulder taken from the hillside about one hundred rods from where the first grist-mill was erected in 1804, by Abel Cleveland and David Dickinson. It was afterwards used in a mill built by Thomas Kidder and Nehemiah Heaton in 1806, on Walnut creek, near where the famous great black walnut tree stood, and also on the spot where his saw-mill now stands in the south part of the village. The stone is still in an excellent state of preservation. Mr. Andrus also owns a cane, which was made from this black walnut tree, from which the creek takes its name, and which stood on his farm. The tree was blown down April 22, 1824. It was twenty-seven feet in circumference, nine feet in diameter and the lowest limb was seventy feet from the ground. Being hollow at the butt, about twelve feet was cut off from the lower end and the inside worked down and smoothed out, leaving a shell four inches thick. A man on horseback rode through it. It was raised on end and used for a grocery and on one occasion, for a ladies’ tea-party. It was sold for two hundred dollars to two men named Roberts and Stearns, who lost money by exhibiting it along the Erie canal. It was bought by New York city parties in 1826, fitted and splendidly furnished as a drawing-room and proved fairly successful as an exhibit. Some idea can be formed of its inside measurement when it is stated that thirty-nine persons standing and fourteen sitting have been in its interior at one time. It was sold to London parties for three thousand dollars in 1828, and placed in a museum, where it was afterward destroyed by fire. The London Literary Gazette said that three thousand volumes could be placed in its interior on shelves projecting not more than six inches. Mr. Andrus is a straight democrat and has been urged several times to accept office, but has declined. He is the oldest member of the Masonic Lodge in Silver Creek. Firm in his convictions, withal he is a kindly man and generally esteemed.

Wilson S. Andrus has been married three times. In 1844 he espoused Azubah Trask, of Silver Creek, She died, leaving one child, a son, the Hon. Leroy Andrus of Buffalo, this State. For his second wife, he chose Percy E. Tucker, of Silver Creek. His third wife, was Mrs. Almena (O’Donaghey) Smith, a daughter of William S. O’Donaghey, who came from Batavia, Genesee county, this State, to this county and was a farmer in the town of Stockton. He died in Silver Creek in 1878, in his eighty-seventh year. He was in his latter years a democrat. The present Mrs. Andrus has also been married three times. Her first husband was Tracy Walker of Hartfield, this county. And her second Porter B. Smith, of Hanover.

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This family biography is one of 658 biographies included in Biographical and Portrait Cyclopedia of Chautauqua County, New York published in 1891. 

View additional Chautauqua County, New York family biographies here: Chautauqua County, New York Biographies

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