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ZACHARY T. MCGINNIS. - The biography of Mr. McGinnis is identified with that of some of the earliest settlers of this portion of Sangamon county, and we refer to a few of them.

Mr. David McGinnis, grandfather of Z. T., was born in Mercer county, Kentucky, in 1798. December 24, 1820, he married Eliza Gibson, a native of Boone county, Kentucky.

Mr. McG. Visited Sangamon county in 1826, to select a home. He returned to Kentucky, and in the fall of the next year he, with his family, his brother G. D. and wife, set out for their new home.

On November 27, 1827, they arrived at what is now Island Grove township. David McGinnis stall fed sixty head of cattle in 1838, the first effort of the kind in Sangamon county. He drove the herd to St. Louis, and sold them at $18 per head. The pay was received mostly in silver. This he placed in an old business secretary at home, without lock. Neither had his house a lock upon it. His own laborers and other men, knowing of it, were passing to and fro, but never was a penny disturbed. This speaks well for the honesty of early settlers. David died July 2, 1867, from the effects of being thrown from a carriage. Of their children born in Kentucky, William, born in Boor county, July 7, 1823, married, July 19, 1845, Lorinda Darnielle, a daughter of John Darnielle, who located in Sangamon county from Kentucky in the spring of 1820. William lived in the western part of Chatham township until November, 18, 1879, when he went to Kansas.

David and William invented a device for guiding the prairie plow, by wheels and levers. It was used in 1829, and generally adopted by the farmers. They might have realized quite a fortune from it, had they secured a patent on it. Of his children, Zachary t. was born September 24, 1849. He received an academic course of study, and in 1867, began his mercantile life in Loami township. Afterward, he was with E. B. Smith, at Chatham, where he as most thoroughly instructed in everything relative to mercantile pursuits.

In 1877 Hon. B. F. Caldwell, knowing his positive fitness for business, assigned to him the entire supervision of his mercantile interests in Chatham, a position of trust he occupies at present writing (1881).

Mr. McGinnis married, November 24, 1871, Miss Fannie, an accomplished lady, the daughter of Dr. N. right, who has been the leading practitioner of medicine and surgery in Chatham for many years.