My Genealogy Hound

P. E. FOXWORTHY. An old settler of Buffalo county, although not one of the first, is P. E. Foxworthy of Gibbon township. He moved into Buffalo county, in June, 1876, and for a short time rented a place north of the town of Gibbon, but in July following settled on the east half of the west half of section 35, township 9, range 14 west, being part of the old Fort Kearney military reservation. He simply squatted on this claim, as the reservation had not then been thrown open to settlement, but as soon as it was opened he made his filing, improved his claim and got his patent to it, and has since resided there. His place lies on the lower bottomland of the Platte river and is more suitable for grazing and hay-making than for agricultural purposes. Mr. Foxworthy has not, therefore, broken out a great deal of it. Besides, hay has always been a commodity in good demand in local markets, whereas the sovereign product, corn, has not. Putting these things together as a sensible farmer would, Mr. Foxworthy has devoted his attention mainly to stock-raising and hay-making. At this he has succeeded reasonably well. Like most of the farmers who settled in Buffalo county twelve and fourteen years ago, Mr. Foxworthy began on limited means and the first few years of his residence were marked more for their hardships and privations than for the progress they witnessed in the way of making a home. What these hardships and privations were need not here be recounted. They have become part of the history of those times and it will do the subject of this sketch sufficient justice from a historical point of view to say that he passed through those times, bearing his full share, and more, of the suffering that fell to the common lot. One instance which will be decisive on this point, may here be given. Mr. Foxworthy relates that when he and his family reached the county they had just $18.00 in money and a limited amount of household goods and wearing apparel. With these they began the struggle for existence in the last and hardest year of the grasshopper season. The fact that he has succeeded as well as he has, is an admirable tribute to his pluck, energy and patient self denial, extending through long years of discouraging vicissitudes. But Mr. Foxworthy was and is the man to endure such trials. He comes of an ancestry that heroically fought similar, or, perhaps, more fiercely contested, battles on the frontier before him, and his own early training and personal experiences well fitted him for an undertaking of this character.

P. E. Foxworthy is a son of Phillip A. and Martha (Evans) Foxworthy. His father, a native of Virginia, went to Kentucky when a young man, married there, and not long afterwards moved to Indiana and settled in Morgan county in territorial days. He made that his home until his death in 1875, in the eighty-third year of his age. In his earlier years he followed the business of a carpenter — later he devoted himself to farming. He led the life of the average farmer and met with a fair degree of success.

Mr. Foxworthy’s mother, who bore, the maiden name of Martha Evans, was a daughter of Andrew Evans, who moved from Kentucky to Indiana at an early day and settled in Owen county. She died in Morgan county, in September, 1843. Her husband had been married prior to his marriage to her and married again also after her death, but it is not deemed necessary to encumber this article with the details of these two marriages. The subject of this sketch is the only off-spring of the marriage to Martha (Evans) Foxworthy, and with his history and life-work we are more especially concerned.

P. E. Foxworthy was born in Morgan county, Ind., in September, 1843. He had the great misfortune to lose his mother in his infancy, she dying when he was but two weeks old. His earlier years, however, were watched over by a kind father and he grew up under as good training as could be had at the hands of one parent. Mr. Foxworthy had just turned into his eighteenth year when the clouds of civil war burst over this country and he, like thousands of other patriotic young men when the call was made for volunteers to defend the Union, quit his plow and bravely marched to the front. He enlisted in August, 1861, as a private in Company H, Thirty-third Indiana volunteer infantry, commanded by Colonel Coburn, of Indianapolis, and was assigned to duty as a drummer. His regiment left Indianapolis in September, 1861, and moved across the line into Kentucky. It saw its first service at Wildcat, Kentucky, and was in a series of skirmishes about Cumberland gap, finally driving the confederate forces from their position there, and after foraging for more than three months, holding the advantages thus gained, it was forced back across the Ohio River for supplies. Returning, it was engaged during the winter of 1862-63 in chasing the wily cavalry chieftain and guerrilla, John Morgan, over the mountains of Kentucky. It then moved into Tennessee, and at Franklin, that state, was formed part of the brigade sent out to capture Van Dorn’s mounted infantry. In the affair at Thompson station, March 4 and 5, 1863, its casualties were thirteen killed, eighty-five wounded and four hundred and seven missing. Almost the entire regiment was captured; Mr. Foxworthy, however, luckily escaped. In January, 1864, the regiment veteranized, was placed in the Twentieth (Hooker’s) corps, and immediately entered on the Atlantic Campaign. Mr. Foxworthy was then carrying a musket. Beginning with the engagement at Resaca, he was in the continuous series of engagements down to Kenesaw mountain, where he was wounded June 23d, having a rib of his left side broken and an ugly hole made through him by a ball from the enemy’s guns. He was sent back to Nashville for hospital treatment, and from there, as soon as able, secured a furlough and went home. When his wounds had sufficiently healed he started back to his command, which was then under Sherman on his “March to the Sea.” But at Chattanooga, Mr. Foxworthy met Thomas on his return into Tennessee and was placed in Thomas’ army and participated in the remainder of that campaign. After the defeat of Hood at Nashville he was engaged till the following spring in chasing fragments of confederate forces around through Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama. In March, 1865, he was ordered to join his own command, which was then on the Carolina campaigns. Going around by way of Washington he reached Sherman’s army at Goldsboro, N. C., just before the surrender. He was present when the capitulation took place between Sherman and Johnson, returned home with his regiment and was mustered out at Indianapolis in June, 1865. The Thirty-third made a splendid record during its term of service, and inasmuch as Mr. Foxworthy was with it nearly all the time and helped to make that record, another fact or two of general interest in connection with the history of his regiment may be given here: At the date the Thirty-thirty veteranized it re-enlisted four hundred and sixty men, being the largest re-enlistment by more than twenty men made by any Indiana regiment. Its loss in killed and wounded was one hundred and sixteen; its loss by disease, accident and deaths in prison was one hundred and eighty-two; making a total loss of two hundred and ninety-eight. Eloquent figures, they speak volumes for the courage, endurance and heroic bearing of the “Fighting Thirty-third.”

At the close of the war Mr. Foxworthy resumed the peaceful pursuits of life with the same courage and sense of duty that distinguished him on the battle-field, and being then a young man with but little to go on he resolutely set about to make his way in the world in a manner becoming a man. He married in September, 1866, Miss Elizabeth Applegate, a daughter of Hezekiah and Margaret (Whittaker) Applegate, of Owen county, Ind. Mrs. Foxworthy is a native of Owen county, and is one of four children born to her parents, the others being John M., a farmer of Buffalo county; James, of Owen county, Ind.; and Juliet, wife of William Myers, of Colorado. Mrs. Foxworthy’s parents were both natives of Kentucky, and were among the first settlers of Owen county, Ind., where her father died in 1874 at the age of fifty-four, and where her mother yet continues to reside.

Mr. and Mrs. Foxworthy have been the parents of five children, three of whom are now living. These children in the order of their ages are as follows — John, who died in infancy; Ollie, who died July 4, 1888, at the age of eighteen; Clara, Alice and Cora.

Mr. and Mrs. Foxworthy are members of the Christian church, and, having been reared in a knowledge of the great truths of the gospel themselves, they are bringing up the little ones committed to their charge in the same knowledge, thus fitting them for the greatest usefulness and happiness here and hereafter.

It seems natural and in every way becoming that a man of Mr. Foxworthy’s history experience and family traditions should be a republican in politics. His first vote was cast for Abraham Lincoln when he was a candidate for the presidency the second time, and he has voted the straight ticket since.

All in all, it can be recorded of the subject of this sketch, without any stretch of language, that he is not only an old soldier of good record, but a citizen distinguished for his integrity, industry and benevolent christian character.