My Genealogy Hound

A. C. Francis, now living in Kent, was for many years identified with the agricultural interests of the state and has contributed substantially to the development of the farming interests of Union county. He has opened up and improved three different farms and still keeps busy with the work of his home place in the village, for indolence and idleness are utterly foreign to his nature. He owns a farm three miles from Kent in Platte township an improved and valuable tract of about three hundred and twenty acres. Forty years have come and gone since he arrived in Union county and he is therefore numbered among the honored pioneers, being not only a witness of the wonderful development of this part of the state but also a participant in that work which has wrought such a marvelous transformation here in the last third of a century.

Mr. Francis was born in Oneida county, New York, May 12, 1833, a son of Alfred P. Francis, also a native of Oneida county, where he was reared and married, the lady of his choice being Miss Mary Crittenden, who was likewise born in Oneida county. For a number of years the father continued to follow farming in the Empire state and then removed westward about 1836, locating in Morrow county, Ohio, where he engaged in merchandising for several years. On the expiration of that period he bought a farm and continued the tilling of the soil for a number of years. He spent his remaining days there, passing away in 1868. His first wife died in 1833 when A. C. Francis was an infant and he afterward married again, his second wife surviving him for two years.

A. C. Francis was but three years of age at the time of the removal of the family to Morrow county, Ohio, where he was reared upon a farm, early becoming familiar with the duties and labors that fall to the lot of the agriculturist. He was a young man of twenty-one years when he sought a home in Iowa, settling in Marshall county in 1854. This state was then largely undeveloped. He entered one hundred and twenty acres of land from the government, the patent thereto being signed by James Buchanan, then president of the United States. The claim was situated near Illinois Grove and with characteristic energy he began to cultivate and improve this, turning the first furrows in the fields and planting the first crops. After carrying on farming there for a number of years he returned to Ohio in 1860. In September of the same year he was married in Morrow county to Miss Georgina Davidson, a native of Washington county, Pennsylvania, who when a maiden of seven years became a resident of Ohio. She was reared in Morrow county but returned to the Keystone state to complete her education and for several years she successfully engaged in teaching school in Ohio and Illinois.

After living for some time in Marshall county, Iowa, Mr. Francis sold his farm there and in 1864 removed to Boone county, settling near Boonesboro, now a suburb of Booneville. There were only two houses there at the time and the work of settlement and improvement largely lay in the future. Mr. Francis bought a farm with but slight improvements, continuing its development and further cultivation until 1868, when he sold that property and came to Union county, being one of the first settlers of the county. There were but four houses between his place and Cromwell. He invested in one hundred and twenty acres of land that gave few indications of former ownership, for only slight improvements had been made. There was a log house on the place, while twenty acres had been broken and forty acres fenced. In Marshall county he had lived in an old photograph car for a time and during the earlier years of his residence in Iowa he experienced many of the hardships and privations of pioneer life. From time to time he bought more land until he became the owner of three hundred and twenty acres and upon his farm he now has a neat residence, three substantial barns, corn cribs, a granary and windpump. The place is well fenced and Mr. Francis continued farming there until 1902, when he removed to Kent and purchased his present home. He has here four acres which he cultivates and finds little leisure time. A man so inclined can always keep busy and Mr. Francis is pre-eminently an active business man. There have been few leisure hours in his life and his well directed labor constitutes the basis of his very gratifying success.

Unto Mr. and Mrs. Francis have been born ten children, of whom nine are living, five sons and four daughters, namely: Charles, who is married and lives upon a farm of his own in Grant township; James, who is married and is editor of a paper at Gravity, Iowa; Alfred and George, twins, the former a resident farmer of Adams county, Iowa, and the latter now with an engineering party in Alaska; Frank, who is upon the home farm; Mary, the wife of William Tripp, of Adams county; Laura, the wife of A. R. Hay, a resident farmer of Union county; Bessie, who has been a teacher in the public schools of Lincoln, Nebraska, for six or seven years; and Anna, the wife of Dr. Smith, who is engaged in the practice of medicine at Columbia, Marion county. They lost their second child, Tranie, who died at the age of twelve years.

The family are well known in the county and are much esteemed as people of genuine personal worth. Mr. Francis cast his first presidential ballot for John C. Fremont in 1856 and with one exception has voted for the nominees at the head of the republican ticket since that time. He has served for several terms as township trustee and has been officially identified with the schools. His wife is a member of the Presbyterian church and both are greatly esteemed in the community.

It seems hardly possible that it is within the memory of a living man when Iowa was largely an uncultivated, wild and windswept prairie with only a few settlers on the eastern border. Mr. Francis, however, coming to the state fifty-four years ago, found it largely an unclaimed and unimproved district and has watched its transformation from a wilderness and swamp into one of the great states of the commonwealth, leading all others in the production of corn and with almost equal prominence in other lines. It is preeminently an agricultural state, its products being sent all over the country and to foreign lands, and Mr. Francis has aided in its development along this line, having improved and made three farms and broken hundreds of acres of the virgin soil with ox teams. Today the farmer rides across his fields on a fine plow but when Mr. Francis came to Iowa he followed the old hand plow, laboriously making his way in the newly turned furrow, driving his horse before him. Other farm machinery was equally primitive and the methods of living bore little resemblance to the habits and customs of the present day. yet there were pleasures to be enjoyed unknown in these opening years of the twentieth century. Almost every home was noted for its hospitality, a cordial welcome being extended to the stranger as well as to the friend. Gradually the fireplace was superseded by the cook stove and the heating stove. Candles were replaced by kerosene lamps and in not a few country homes today are found gas and electric light. The telephone is an adjunct to many a household and nearly all farming communities enjoy the privilege of free mail delivery. As the settlers prospered the little log cabins and miniature frame dwellings were replaced by the commodious and substantial farm house of the present day. Mr. Francis has witnessed all this change, has kept pace with the general progress and is today comfortably situated in an attractive home in Kent, his labor in former years having brought to him the capital that now enables him largely to live retired.