My Genealogy Hound

JOHN BISHOP. When a man who has lived a long and useful life engaged in the peaceful and retired pursuit of agriculture, asking no favors of anybody, and living in an open-handed and free-hearted way, comes at last to spend the few remaining hours of his career on earth in comfort and quiet, and in the enjoyment of what he has worked so hard to gather, he is surely an object lesson to the young men who are taking up the work of life that has fallen from his weary hands. Certainly the young men of Waterloo will do well to study the life of John Bishop, that has been read by his generation like the pages of an open book. In it they can read that honesty is the only policy for a truly successful life, that kindness pays, and that character is a bank that never fails or breaks.

Mr. Bishop was born in the town of Cambridge, Washington County, N. Y., March 15, 1806, of good old Massachusetts stock, his father, John Bishop, having been born in Plymouth in 1773. When quite young he removed to New York and was married to Miss Eunice, daughter of Fortunatus Sherman, of Dartmouth, Mass. The grandfather of our subject was a native of Massachusetts, and was over one hundred years of age when he died.

John Bishop, the subject of this sketch, attended the common schools in Washington County until he was nine years old, and then, his parents removing to Seneca County, his boyhood days were passed in the town of Junius, where he attended school until he was twenty years of age. Feeling that it was time for him to be at the hard work of the world, he began farming on his own account. He brought his farm of one hundred and fifty acres up to a high state of cultivation, and fitted it with good buildings. He not only grew all kinds of grain in the best of ways, but engaged in the raising of high-grade horses with marked ability.

In 1868 Mr. Bishop removed from the farm to Waterloo, where he has since resided, his son Henry coming into possession of this valuable tract of land by purchase. Mr. Bishop, however, has not wholly ceased his agricultural activities, as he has another farm, highly improved, near Waterloo, consisting of seventy-five acres, which is enough to keep him from rusting.

In 1852 our subject married Miss Jemima Pierce, of Seneca County. She died some thirty years ago, and he afterward married his present wife, formerly Miss Mary Richards, a daughter of C. F. Richards, of Putnam County. In politics he has been a pronounced Democrat, casting his first vote for Andrew Jackson, and his last for Grover Cleveland. His own town has elected him Assessor for twenty years, and he has also been School Commissioner. Of his three children, the eldest, Eliza, is now Mrs. Fellows, of Monroe. Emily married William Turbush, and resides in Waterloo. Henry, the only son, is a farmer, and is well established in Seneca County.

Mr. Bishop is now almost ninety years of age, and is a hale and hearty man, in full possession of all his faculties, and many there are to rise up and call him blessed.