BRIER-Samuel A. - Fountain County INGenWeb Project

SAMUEL A. BRIER, farmer, Rob Roy, is descended from Scotch and Irish ancestors, he being the fourth generation from those who came to this country. His Grandfather, David Brier, was a soldier under Washington, and his father Samuel was one of the forced called out in 1794 to suppress the whisky insurrection in Western Pennsylvania, and served also in the war of 1812, as a Captain under Gen. Harrison, by whom he was sent eighty-five miles west from Dayton Ohio, where he built Fort Brier, on the frontier and commanded the garrison during his term of about one year. Mr. Brier was born in Fountain County Ohio, February 11 1822, and was the youngest son of his father's family. His mother's name before marriage was Elizabeth Campbell. On September 27 1828 they arrived in Shawnee township and settled where Mr. Brier resides. Art of this land the W1/2 of NW1/4 Sec. 31 T. 21 R. 7 was bought from Wilson and Abel Claypool, and his father received the patent in his own name. His parents died here, his mother in April 1849, at the age of sixty-three, and his father in 1858, aged eighty-four. By will of the latter Mr. Brier was permitted to receive the homestead and buy out the other heirs. He has increased the estate to 300 acres, 240 of which are under cultivation. Besides this farm he owns 240 acres of land in Ross township Vermilion county Illinois, and the same quantity near Topeka Kansas. Contrasting the early times with the present Mr. Brier say that when the Wabash and Erie Canal was building he sold corn at his place for fourteen cents per bushel, and was paid in canal scrip of sixty per cent discount. At the same time he sold dressed hogs for $2.10 per hundred and received payment in the same paper. This year corn has been worth forty cents in market and he has sold live hogs the present season for $4.25 per hundred weight in gold, and at one time they commanded even a higher figure. He has known his father to pay $12.00 per barrel for Kanawha salt, a coarse black article. Good farm hands were hired for $9.00 per month, whereas now the most ordinary help obtains $20.00. Mr. Brier used to wagon produce to Chicago, usually selling flour delivered at $4.00 per barrel. At that time he turned his oxen loose on the north side of the Chicago river to graze over night on the prairie. It took two weeks to make the trip with horses and nearly twice as long with oxen. The roads were generally in wretched condition the greater part of the way and from Thorn Creek to the City, some twenty miles nearly impassable the year round. This stretch could be traversed only by making short pulls, frequent unloadings and reloadings and this not unusually in the water, and by doubling teams. Mr. Brier is raising better wheat and more of it to the acre than his father did on the same land broke up fifty-three years ago. The only fertilizing it has received has been by clovering a few times which could hardly more than restore its former tilth and repair the waste of cropping. This experience is abundantly supported throughout this region and the conclusion is obvious that prairie land now considered of little account for the production of wheat will in time become valuable for that use. Mr. Brier celebrated his marriage with Nancy Hatton, April 18 1844. She was the daughter of William Hatton who came from Ohio to Logan township in 1826, and was born February 1 1822. They have had eight children, four of whom are living; Solon, Laura wife of Joseph Gilbert, of Kansas City Missouri, Lizzie and Burgess B. The Briers are an old Pennsylvania family. His father and mother who were native Pennsylvania and his grandfather were seceders. He and his wife have been communicants thirty-four years and he has been an elder twenty-five. He has filled the position of Sabbath-school superintendent and been leader of the church choir nearly forty years. All his children, as also his son-in-law and his daughter-in-law, belong to the same church. He has been a temperate man his whole life, and a member of several organizations whose objects were to remove the temptation of strong drink from the paths of men and to reclaim the fallen. He sent a man to the army for whom he paid $1,100 though he was not drafted, and therefore not obliged to furnish a substitute/ He was raised a whig and from education and sentiment naturally found his way into the republican party when that became an organization and has since been an ardent supporter of its principles.