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Biographies |
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MOGenWeb Site, Johnna Quick -- Coordinator |
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Biographies taken from A Reminiscent History of the Ozark Region, from Goodspeed Publishers. JOHN R. GAULDING As a dealer in stock and a successful tiller of the soil, Ozark County, Mo., is well represented by John R. Gaulding, who is the owner of an exceptionally fine farm of 300 acres situated on Barren Fork, it constituting one of the best-improved and most valuable farms in the county. He is a native of Davidson County, Tenn., where he was born in 1834, a son of John and Polly Gaulding, Virginians, who were reared in the State of their birth, and there also married. They eventually removed to Davidson County, Tenn., where the mother died when the subject of this sketch was an infant, and where Mr. Gaulding passed from life after the close of the Civil War. He followed the calling of an overseer throughout life, having learned this occupation while on the old plantation in Virginia, his father, John Gaulding, having been a large slave owner. The latter was the father of the following children: Philip, who died a farmer in Oregon County, Mo.; Walthall died while farming in Iron County, Mo.; Richard died in Alabama; Catherine died in Oregon County, Mo., when quite advanced in years, the wife of Andrew Work; Lucy died in Oregon County, Mo., the wife of Rufus McClelland; Nancy died in Davidson County, Tenn., the wife of Edward Wyatt; and John, the father of the subject of this sketch. John R. Gaulding was the youngest of five children born to his parents: Frances, wife of Jack Pitts, of Hickory County, Mo.; Mary Ann, the widow of Meekin Pitts; Lucy, the wife of William Campbell, of Hickory County; Sally Taylor, wife of Lemuel Bentley, of Bloomington County, Ala., and John R. The first ten years of the life of John R. Gaulding were spent under the roof of his uncle, Philip Gaulding, and with the latter he came to Douglas County, Mo., when about eighteen years old. In that county he made his home for seven or eight years with Thomas Brown, who afterward became his father-in-law. He was engaged in tilling the soil until the opening of the Civil War, after which he served for three months in the Home Guards, and then became first lieutenant of Company C, Seventy-third East Missouri Militia, with which he was in active service in Missouri for about one year. He was then appointed to the position of county and circuit clerk and ex-officio recorder of Douglas County, which position he resigned at the end of four years to engage in milling and merchandising, which occupations he continued to follow in Douglas County for about seven years, but since that time has devoted his time and attention to farming and stock dealing. In 1874 he was married, on the farm on which he now lives, to Mrs. Julia Gardner, widow of Louis Gardner, whom she married in 1862, and to whom she bore one child, Parrot Gardner, born in 1863. Louis Gardner died in 1864. Her father, Hon. Thomas Brown, came from Indiana to Missouri at an early day, and is still living here over eighty years of age, having, during the active years of his life, followed the occupations of farming and blacksmithing. He was a man of considerable prominence, and held the office of justice of the peace, and was judge of Ozark County for some years. During the Civil War he was a Federal soldier in the Forty-sixth Missouri Infantry. Mrs. Gaulding was born in Indiana, and she and her husband, John R. Gaulding, are the parents of three children: Baxter, Landon and Mary Frances. Since his marriage Mr. Gaulding has resided on his present farm, of which he has become the owner through hard and unvarying industry. He has been quite an extensive feeder and shipper of live stock for some years, in fact is enterprising and progressive in all things, and a highly honored citizen of the section in which he resides. He owes much, if not all his success, to his Grandmother Gaulding, who had charge of his bringing up for many years, and who took all pains possible to educate him at her own expense, and fit him for the hard battle of life. So far as lay within the power of any one, she supplied the place of his dead mother, and her memory will ever be treasured by him. She died in Douglas County, a true Christian in every sense of the word. Mr. Gaulding is a member of Robert Burns Lodge No. 496 of the A.F. & A.M. at Gainesville, and politically has always been a stanch supporter of the principles of the Republican party. |
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