LEVEL, JAMES M., was born Dec., 1817, in Pickaway county, Ohio. His parents died when he was a child, and he was brought to Sangamon county by Abel Powell. They arrived June 27, 1828. James M. Level was married Dec. 2, 1855, to Margaret Sawyers, who was born Nov. 3, 1830, in Fayette county, They had six children, two of whom died--

CLARISSA E. in her eighth year; and WILLIAM T. in infancy. The other four--

JOHN S., born April 5, 1858,

JAMES H., born Sept. 23, 1859,

MARY E., born July 15, 1861, and

CLARA M., born May 28, 1866, live with their parents. James M. Level resides on the farm settled by Levi Cantrall in 1820. It is adjoining Cantrall on the southwest.

James M. Level remembers that about 1838 he helped to cut wheat with the oldfashioned sickle or reap-hook, tramped it out with horses, fanned the chaff out by two men taking a linen sheet and using it for a fan, while a third one stood on some elevated place, and poured the wheat and chaff down before the fan. This fanning operation cannot be described to a person who never saw it; and, therefore ought to be enacted at some Old Settlers' meeting. He then drove a four-horse team and hauled fifty bushels of the wheat to St. Louis, one hundred miles, and sold it for twenty-five cents per bushel. It required from ten to twelve days to make the trip.