My Genealogy Hound

JOHN W. FORREST, farmer of Gibbon township, Buffalo county, was born in Delaware county, N. Y., and is a son of William and Jennette (Miller) Forrest. His parents were both natives of Scotland and came to America when children, aged three and five respectively. They were reared in Delaware county, N. Y., where their parents settled. There they were married and thence moved to Ashtabula county, Ohio, where the father died in April, 1886, at the age of sixty-nine, and the mother in 1860, at the age of forty-four. They were the parents of eight children, as follows — William, Grace, John W., Robert, Walter, Jane, Andrew and Thomas. The eldest of these died in the Union army from the effects of exposure, being a member of the Seventh Kansas cavalry.

The third, John W., the subject of this notice, was born in January, 1843. He was reared in his native county and in Ashtabula county, Ohio, whither his parents moved when he was young. He enlisted in the Union army in August, 1862, entering as a member of Company A, Fiftieth Ohio volunteer infantry, and served with the armies of the Ohio and the Cumberland. During the first six months of his service he was on post duty in and around Louisville. His regiment during the summer of 1863 guarded the L. & N. R. R. bridges and built the forts at Big Run trestle. Crossing the Cumberland mountains in the winter of 1863-64, his regiment was sent to Knoxville, Tenn., where it built Fort Strickland, named after the colonel of the regiment. His command then entered the Georgia campaign and was in all the engagements from Resaca down to Atlanta. Returning with Thomas on his campaign into Tennessee, Mr. Forrest was in the battles of Franklin and Nashville, followed Hood to the Tennessee river, where his regiment was put aboard a boat and shipped to Washington, N. C., and thence to Wilmington, N. C., and over land to Goldsboro, where it joined Sherman’s army. He was mustered out June 25, 1865, but not paid off and discharged till July 17th, following. He served as a private, but was never captured nor ever wounded. Returning to Ohio, he married, in November, 1868, Sylvia, daughter of Albro Woodruff, of Ashtabula county, settled down to farming and lived there till 1871, when he came to Nebraska as a member of the Old Soldiers’ Homestead Colony. He settled in Gibbon township, Buffalo county, in May of that year, and there made a homestead filing on the south half of the northeast quarter and the north half of the southeast quarter of section 4, township 9, range 14 west, where he now lives. One hundred acres of this he has in cultivation and otherwise well improved. He also owns eighty acres across the township line in Valley township. He raises considerable live stock and is an enterprising, successful farmer. He has voted the straight republican ticket since the formation of the party. He is an intelligent gentleman, a kind, good neighbor and a worthy citizen.