RUSH-Abner - Fountain County INGenWeb Project

Abner RUSH, (deceased), settled in what is now Van Buren township in 1824 two years after the first settlers, came. He was born in New York in 1797, and is the son of James and Sarah Rush, both natives of Maryland. Abner Rush, was married in 1819 to Sarah Harman, by whom he had two children; Milton (deceased), and Cyrus. Her father Thomas Harman, emigrated from Germany prior to the revolution, and was seized by the British and pressed into the service where he remained two years. Escaping he joined the Continental army, in which he served the remaining five years of the war. His mother was a native of Maryland, and a member of the Presbyterian church. Mr. Abner Rush and wife’s parents both emigrated to Ohio when they were children, and at a very early time in the settlement of Ohio. For several years after they came to Fountain county schools were few and terms were short. That they might give their two boys a fair education they taught them at home, imposing upon each a lesson to be learned daily, this task to take precedence over all others. The result cam be imagined. Abner Rush taught the first school in his neighborhood where he settled in 1825. In 1843 he went to Iowa where he died in March, 1880. His wife died in 1876, aged seventy-six years, retaining her mind till the last. Cyrus lives on the old homestead on Sec. 12. He was born in Ohio in 1822/ Was married in 1857 to Prescilla Riley, daughter of Benjamin and Hannah Riley, natives of New Jersey, and settled in Fountain county in 1826, where they both departed this life the former in June 1880, aged eighty-one, the latter 1860, aged sixty years. BY this union he has three children; Hortense, Eugene, and Hardy. Cyrus Rush served ten months as a soldier in the late war, in the 116th Ind. Vols. and was in several skirmishes. He was visiting fiends in the army at the time of the battle of Shiloh. Though not a soldier he engaged in the battle for the Union, and was wounded being shot in the ankle. He has several times visited California. He owns an interest in the silver mine in Colorado, land in Missouri, and Illinois, and a fine farm of 800 acres where he resides in Fountain county. Mr. Rush is one of the first business men in this section. In politics he is a radical republican.