NELSON, James H. C. - Putnam

JAMES H. C. NELSON, farmer and stock-raiser, Monroe Township, was born in Clinton Township,this county, June 9, 1839. His father, James I. Nelson, was born in Montgomery County, Kentucky, and removed to this county in 1829, when the country was a wilderness and infested with wild animals. His first house was a log cabin with clapboard roof, puncheon floor, mud-and-stick chimney and a large fireplace. The mother of our subject, Polly [Yates] Nelson, was a daughter of Joshua Yates, who reared twelve children. James was the tenth of fourteen children, all of whom grew to maturity, twelve still living, the oldest sixty-six the youngest thirty-nine years of age. He was reared on the old homestead and educated in the early subscription school which was taught in the primitive log cabin, with slab seats, boards on wooden pins for desks, and a log left out of the walls for windows. Mr. Nelson was married October 16, 1860, to Miss Georgia A. Hymer, daughter of Jesse P. Hymer, who was a pioneer of this county, and now lives in Franklin Township, at the age of eighty-three years. Mr. and Mrs. Nelson have six children--Jesse L., Andrew J., Otto M., Corie C, Samuel G. and Minnie C. Jesse married Olive Gordon and lives in Monroe Township, their one child being Raymond L,; Andrew, who married Carrie Thomas, also resides in Monroe Township. Mr. Nelson owns 600 acres of land, having given 260 acres to his children. He is a Republican in politics, and himself and wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal church, as are also their four oldest children.