FLETCHER, NATHAN, retired farmer, section sixteen, post office, Auburn, was born in Simpson county, Kentucky, on the 8th day of March, 1816; son of James and Jane (McElvain) Fletcher; father of English descent and mother of Scotch and Irish. They were married in Virginia, where one child was born, when they emigrated in Kentucky in 1801, and located in Simpson county, where he carried on a farm in connection with the wheel-wright business. Their family consisted of sixteen children, ten of whom lived to be men and women, viz: Job L., Margaret, James W., Mary, Nathan, Elizabeth, Rebecca, John, Martha and Nancy, who were born in Sangamon county, three of whom are living at the present writing. IN 1828, his father left his home in Kentucky with an ox-team and wagon, with one horse in front, with his large family for the far West, or the wilds of Illinois; traveling slow, camping out and cooking their own meals, taking some three weeks to make the journey, and locating where Mr. Organ now resides, moving into a log cabin sixteen by sixteen feet, with puncheon floors, and a hole between the logs for light, without glass. Their bedsteads were of the Jackson style. They remained in the cabin about eighteen months, when they moved to a larger and more commodious house of hewn logs, where his father died in 1830. Nathan remained at home until he was twenty-eight years old, when he married Margaret Baxter, she was born in Adair county, Kentucky, November 27, 1827. By this union there were six children, all of whom are living, James B., born December 5, 1849; Thomas A., born October 23, 1851; Martha, born February 11, 1853; henry M., and Lucretia, born April 22, 1856. Mr. Fletcher commenced on a forty acre tract thirty-six years ago, without means, and by hard work and good judgment has accumulated a fine property, and is the owner of four hundred and thirty-six acres of land, which he has divided up among his children. The family are members of the Presbyterian Church. Mr. F. is a Republican in politics, and has held several local offices of trust. In an early day their trading post was at Springfield, twenty miles away, and he has known his mother to take a pail of butter on horseback, go to Springfield, do her trading and return the same day. He also remembers after his father died that they had a field of five or six acres of wheat, which his mother and himself put up, cutting it with a reap hook or what is called a sickle; his mother being about fifty years old at the time.