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HENRY CONVERSE, retired farmer, Springfield, Illinois, was born in Lyme, Grafton county, New Hampshire, on June 7, 1806. Otis and Clarisa (Porter) Converse were his parents, and were natives of Connecticut. Henry enjoyed the district school advantages, common to the farmers' boys of that day. Previous to his seventeenth birthday, he moved with his parents to St. Lawrence, county, New York, where his father died in 1828, at the age of forty-seven years. In 1830, the subject of this article united in marriage with Nianna Priest, born in Pomfret, Vermont, November 27, 1810, and the daughter of Frank and Mary Priest, natives of Massachusetts. Three sons were born to them, two of whom still survive. Henry Franklin, the eldest, was born during their three years' residence in St. Lawrence county. In 1833, they moved to Montgomery, Alabama, consuming seven weeks in the trip, and there Mr. Converse carried on the manufacture of tinware about four years. The climate not proving agreeable to his health, they removed to Painesville, Lake county, O. At the end of seven years of farmer life there, Mr. Converse decided to seek the broader and more fertile fields of the Prairie State, and landed in Springfield, Sangamon county, in June, 1846. He brought a quantity of flax seed with him, and induced the farmers to engage in the culture of flax, of whom he bought the seed, and for three years engaged in the manufacture of linseed oil from it, which business proved fairly remunerative. In 1849, Mr. Converse purchased three hundred and twenty acres of land in what is now the north part of Springfield, and a portion of which is now occupied by the Springfield Iron Works, the watch factory and the city water-works. A part of the tract was sold for $300, and a part for $500 per acre. He and his two sons still owns one hundred and seventy acres of it, on which the homestead stands. In March, 1850, he and Mr. Mace, Capt. Saunders and others organized the first school district in Springfield township, and erected a small frame school house near the site of the present brick one, near the fair grounds. Besides other local offices, Mr. Converse has served his township - Springfield - ten years on the county board of supervisors. Mr. and Mrs. Converse celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their wedding - on the 4th of February, 1880.

During the California gold excitement, in 1850, their eldest son, Henry F., sought that Eldorado in search of a fortune. In less than a year after his arrival on the Pacific Coast he was treacherously murdered by a pretended friendly Indian, being shot with his own gun while stooping to drink from a brook. William Otis and Albert Luther, the remaining sons, are married, and both reside in Springfield township. William O. married Miss Ellen Little, of Sangamon county; they have a family of three daughters: Nina, Elsie and Ellen; he has always devoted his life to agricultural pursuits. Dr. Albert L. Converse read medicine, graduated in the same, and for a time engaged actively in the practice of his profession, but has recently turned his attention chiefly to farming; he married Henrietta Thompson, of Louisville, Kentucky; they have three children alive, and two deceased - Florence, aged sixteen, died September 27, 1881, and Olive, February 1872. All of the family are members of the Central Baptist Church, at Springfield, Illinois.