Centennial history of Rush
County, Indiana
Edited by A. L Gary and E. B. Thomas
Rushville, Ind.
In Two Volumes
Illustrated
VOLUME II
1921
HISTORICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY
INDIANAPOLIS

THOMAS HEATON, for nearly three-quarters of a century an honored resident of Rush county, and for the greater part of this time a successful agriculturist of Noble township, is widely and favorably known to the people of this community. He was born in Noble township, December 27, 1848, a son of Joseph and Elizabeth (Armstrong) Heaton, the former a native of Pennsylvania and the latter of Rush county. Joseph Ileaton was three years old when he was brought from the Keystone stale by his parents, John Ileaton and wife, who settled in Rush county and entered land in Noble town ship, on which they spent the balance of their honorable and well-ordered lives. Joseph Heaton grew to manhood in this community, where he followed in his father's footsteps and adopted farming as his life work, a vocation which he followed throughout his career, and in which he attained marked success, accumulating 305 acres. He and his wife were the parents of six children, of whom three are living: John, Thomas and Sanford. Thomas Heaton received his education in the public schools of Noble township, after leaving which he associated himself with his father in the cultivation of the home place, and remained with the elder man until his marriage. He then struck out for himself, and for the next thirty years or more was occupied in farming as a renter. In 1900 he purchased the property on which he now resides, a tract of eighty acres, on which he carries on general farming and feeds out about fifty hogs annually. He is practical and progressive in his aims and methods, and is accounted one of the well-informed men of his locality, not alone upon the subject of farming, but along other lines. In politics Mr. Heaton is a Democrat, but has not sought political preferment or public office. He married Mary, daughter of William Willis, and they have two children: Thornton, who married Maud Benedict, and Myrtle, who married Ellis Culbertson and has two children, Helen and Bethel.