John T. Carey
John T. Carey and Wife
Three generations of the house of Carey have left their imprint upon the life of Grant County, Indiana, and a fourth generation just coming into activity in the business of life, gives promise of equaling the excellent work of their progenitors in the community that has so long known and honored the Carey family. The first of the name to locate in Grant county were four sons of John Carey, the paternal grandfather of John T. Carey, whose name initiates this review.
John Carey, it is presumed, was born in Virginia, coming of an old and well established family, and he subsequently located in Clinton County, Ohio. He settled on a farm there and devoted himself to agricultural activities, spending the most of his life there. He came to Grant county, Indiana, to visit his sons, and his death soon afterward occurred in Liberty Township. He was then past seventy-five years of age, and his life had been one of singular usefulness in those communities, that he had called home. His good wife later died in the same township, when she had reached the age of about eighty-three, and both lie buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery. Her maiden name was Margaret Green, and, like her husband, was a Virginian, it is assumed, though accurate facts as to the early life of these fine old people are not of record and only reports by word of mouth are available. They were married in Clinton County, Ohio, where they first met, and together they continued to live there for a great many years. They were Quakers, and reared their children in that simple and fine old faith.
John Carey, their son and the father of our subject of this review, was born in Clinton County, Ohio, in 1816, and he died on July 19, 1895. He grew up in his native community, and there learned the trade of carpenter, but after coming to Grant County he followed farming. In Clinton County he met and married Eliza Moons, and she died while yet in the prime of life, leaving her widowed husband with six children. In 1849 John Carey took his motherless brood of children and came to Grant County, here to locate on new an untried land in Section 18 of Fairmount Township. He brought to his new home and his new enterprise a vast and telling energy that soon made his wilderness farm a real home and a productive bit of soil. He improved his first possession, and with the passing years gradually acquired more until he soon owned 240 acres, eighty acres lying in Fairmount Township, and 160 acres in Mill Township. He later, however, sold 120 acres, and in 1888 took up his residence in Jonesboro, where he finally died. Soon after he took up his residence in Grant County Mr. Carey married a second time. The lady of his choice was Lydia Hollingsworth, nee Jones, the widow of John Hollingsworth, who died and left his widow with one daughter, Lucinda Hollingsworth.
Mrs. Lydia Carey was born in Wayne County, Indiana. She came to Grant County when five years of age, was reared within its confines, and she died her on the 6th of February, 1911, at the fine old age of eighty-eight years, having been born on the 11th of June, 1822. She was a daughter of Richard and Hannah (Thomas) Jones, old pioneer stock of Grant County and whose names will live in the community for many years to come. Like her husband she was a Quaker, and their lives were ideal in every respect. John Carey was for many years a Quaker preacher in his home community, and is still remembered for his life of singular clearness and devotion to duty and as a whole souled Christian man. He was a citizen of commendable traits, and his loyalty and devotion to his home district was one of the fine things about him. None excelled him in his qualities of good citizenship and he combined the duties of a preacher with those of a citizen in the most pleasant manner, in a day when it was quite generally held that a minister of the Gospel might not interest himself with material things to the extent of mixing in local politics. To these parents were born eight children, of whom seven are still living. John T. Carey was the second born as well as the second son in this family of five sons and three daughters.
John T. Carey was born on his father's farm in Fairmount Township on October 15, 1851, and was reared and educated in that community. He has come to occupy a place of no little importance in his home township and has been more than ordinarily successful in his business activities. He has a fine farm of 135 acres, improved to its highest and most productive condition, and the buildings on the place are the kind that reflect genuine credit upon their owner. He owns ninety-five acres in Mill Township, where he lives, the remainder lying in Fairmount Township. Mr. Carey has inherited all the qualities of thrift and all the excellencies of character that marked his parents, and he is a man whose influence on the community is one of the highest order.
In 1875, Mr. Carey was married in Back Creek Church to Miss Ruth T. Elliott, who was born in Miami County, Indiana, on November 6, 1855, but when nine years of age she came with her parents to Grant County, where they located in Mill Township. She is a daughter of Exum and Hulda (Knight) Elliott, both natives of Grant County and successful farmers of both Grant and Miami Counties. They died in this county in advanced life. Mrs. Carey is a woman of exceptional character and qualities. Since she was eighteen years of age, she has been a minister of the Friends Church, preaching in the Back Creek Church in Grant County, in the Friends Church at Manton, Michigan, and in the Friends Church at North Grove, Indiana. She has preached at many other places on occasions, and is known as one of the ablest exhorters to be found among the ministers of the church body. He work has reflected forth many excellent qualities that are inherent within her, and few have wielded a greater influence for good than has Mrs. Carey wherever she has gone.
Four children came to brighten the home of Mr. and Mrs. Carey: Maud, the first born, died in infancy; Ida, the second, died at the age of eighteen years; Gervas Albert Carey ahs been a pastor and minister in Friends Church since twenty years of age, but is now a student and teacher in Friends' University, Wichita, Kansas. His wife was formerly Amy Gitchel. They have two daughters, Ruth and Elizabeth. The youngest child, John Stanley Carey, is engaged in operating his father's farm and has demonstrated his capacity as an agricultural man, and in no uncertain terms. He has given special attention to stock raising and his success has been praiseworthy. He married Callie Leota Thomas and they have one daughter, Pauline Louise.
It would be difficult, indeed, to estimate the genuine worth to any community of the lives of such people as these. Aside from his activities in the interests of the church Mr. Carey has for the twenty-eight years been an ardent Prohibitionist, and he has accomplished much, not alone by the power of his splendid example, but in what he has been able to do in the way of showing the need and possibility of better civic conditions in the community. None is held in higher esteem than he, and none is more deserving of the high regard of his fellows.
Centennial History of Grant County Indiana 1812-1912. The Lewis Publishing Co., 1914.