farmer, was born in Switzerland County, Indiana, in the year 1822, and is the fifth of the nine children of Benjamin and Lydia (Stewart) Heady. In the year of 1848 our subject married, in Switzerland Co., Miss Margaret, daughter of Joseph and Girtzell Dow, natives of Scotland, who located and died in Indiana. Mr. Heady, after his marriage, rented his father's farm for three years, after which he purchases 160 acres of land and moved thereon in 1852, where he has since that time resided, continued to improve the farm, and is now surrounorton captain of a company of artillery mounting three pieces. This connection was the immediate cause of his losing heavily. His large warehouse and store-rooms, supposed to contain Government supplies (but containing only private property), were burned to the ground by Confederates or Confederate sympathizers, involving a loss to him of about $14,000. He was a Democrat all through life, but a strong Union man, never a bitter partisan, or an aspirant for political honors. April 24, 1828, Capt. Grisard married Miss Zella C. Simon, a native of Ligniere, of Neuchatel, Switzerland, a lady of rare accomplishments; she was born December 7, 1807. By this union seven children were born: Lucilla, born December 7, 1828, now Mrs. Jagers, resides with her mother; Perret J., born December 8, 1830, died March 22, 1839; Rudolph F., born October 18, 1832, lost his life March 7, 1878, while saving a girl from a runaway horse; Louise Zelie, born May 26, 1835, now Mrs. F.L. Dibach of Hanibal, Mo.; Zella C., born August 17, 1837, now Mrs. A.P. Dufour, Vevay, Ind.; Fred L., born February 26, 1840; James S., born June 28, 1842. Mrs. Grisard survives after a happy married life of more than half a century. Her father was a college professor, and left Switzerland to join the Swiss colony on the Red River, South, but by an unfortunate mistake, the party were taken to the Red River, North, and landed near Hudson Bay, at Lord Selkirk's settlement, thousands of miles from their destination. During the long and tedious voyage they were several times ice-bound, spending weeks at a time fastened to icebergs, occasionally visited by Polar bears and the native Esquimaux. The trials and vicissitudes of the long journey from that region to southern Indiana will never be forgotten by the family of Mrs. Grisard. She and her mother were the first white women who ever traversed the wild waste of country between the British settlements and the United States, and they had many hair-breadth escapes and numerous adventures among the Indians. They were obliged to subsist for weeks together upon what the hunters of the party provided for them. They arrived in Switzerland County in August, 1823. Mrs. Grisard joined the Presbyterian Church in 1847. She has been an active worker in all the societies of the church, and was one of the ladies who took an active part in building the present church. She was an only child, and was taken with her father, and owes her success in life to him. After his death she supported herself and mother. Capt. Grisard was a self-made, self-educated man. No one in Switzerland County sustained a better reputation for sterling worth, and no one was more faithful and energetic in business. His religion was to do good unto others. He belonged to Indiana Lodge No. 126, I.O.O.F.
Source: History of Switzerland County, Indiana 1885. Chicago, Illinois: Weakley, Harraman & Co., 1885
Transcribed by: Sheila Kell