McGINNIS, DAVID, was born in 1798, in Mercer county, Ky. He was married Dec. 24, 1820, in Boone county, to Eliza Gibson, a native of that county. They had three children in Boone county, and Mr. McGinnis visited Sangamon county, in the fall of 1826, selected a location for a home, returned to Kentucky, and brought his family, accompanied by his brother, G. Dawson, arriving Nov. 18, 1827, in what is now Island Grove township, where six children were born. Of all his children--

MARY J., born Oct. 9, 1821, in Kentucky, married in Sangamon county to Bernard A. Vanderen. See his name. She died, Aug. 5, 1842. Her only living child, JOHN D., is married, and reside in Labette county, Kansas.

WILLIAM, born July 7, 1823, in Boone county, Ky., married in Sangamon county, June 19, 1845, to Lorinda Darneille. They had three living children--ZACHARAY T. married, Nov., 1871, to Fannie Wright, daughter of Dr. N.Wright, have two children, JENNIE B. and a babe, and live in Chatham, Ill. EMMA was married, Dec. 24, 1874, to Jacob Staley. CHARLES lives with his parents, five miles southwest of Chatham, Sangamon county, Illinois.

MARTHA A., born Sept. 1, 1827, in Kentucky, married in Sangamon county to Thomas J. Darneille. See his name. She died, Dec. 2, 1853.

ELIZABETH, born Oct. 25, 1829, in Sangamon county, married James A. Hall. See his name.

JOHN J., born Feb. 8, 1832, in Sangamon county, married, July 16, 1855, to Elizabeth Green, who was born Feb. 5, 1838, in Owen county, Ky. They had two living children, DAVID R. and WILLIAM, who reside with their mother. John J. McGinnis died Feb. 15, 1866. His widow and child reside where his father settled in 1827, in a brick house he built in 1836. It is four miles southwest of Curran, Sangamon county.

AMERICA died, at ten years of age.

MARGARET married R. R. Roberts, had one child, and mother and child died, at the family homestead.

DAVID S., born Dec. 15, 1838, died in 1860.

ELIZABETH J., born March 29, 1840, married April 2, 1867, to John J. Green, who was born Oct., 1842, in Owen county, Ky. They had two children, DAVID M. and JOHN M., and she died, Feb. 3, 1873. Mr. Green and the children live at the David McGinnis homestead.

Mrs. Elizabeth McGinnis died, Nov., 1844, and David McGinnis was married, in 1851, in Warsaw, Ky., to Mrs. Sally M. King, whose maiden name was Spencer. David McGinnis died, July 2, 1867, from the effects of being thrown from a buggy by a runaway horse. His widow resides at her old homestead, three miles southwest of Curran.

David McGinnis stall fed about sixty head of cattle, in 1838, which was the first thing of the kind done in the county, so far as my informant knows. He drove them to St. Louis, and sold them for $18 per head. They averaged 1600 pounds each, so that they brought a little more than one dollar per hundred pounds. The money was brought home in silver, kept for months in an old business secretary, without locks on that or the house. The doors of the desk were often open so the money could be seen, and several hired men were about, and there never was a dollar stolen. The brick house built by David McGinnis, in 1836, in what is now Island Grove township, is in a good state of preservation. It was about the first, if not the first, brick house built in Sangamon county outside of Springfield.

William McGinnis remembers that his father, two hired men and himself, each put a sack of corn on a horse and rode to a water mill on Spring creek, eight miles distant. This required the labor of four men and four horses a whole day to get about ten bushels of grain ground. That was the prevailing custom. It was thought to be an almost unpardonable innovation when a Yankee came in and would put more grain in his wagon, and with two horses and one man accomplish more easily what had required four men and four horses.

David and William McGinnis were the inventors of a device for guiding prairie plows by wheels and a lever. They put it in operation in the summer of 1829. It was adopted throughout the prairie country, and might have made them a large amount of money, but it was never patented.