RANSOM, LUTHER N., was born about 1800, at Chazy, Clinton county, N. Y. He was there married to Zerviah Ransom. They had two children in New York, and moved to Sangamon county, Ill., with a colony, arriving in Sept., 1833, at Farmington, in what is now Gardner township. In 1835 Mr. R. sold out at that place, and entered two thousand one hundred acres of land eight or ten miles south of Springfield, and laid out the town of Chatham. In 1840 he moved to Springfield, where Mrs. R. died. Previous to this time Mr. R. had been a member of and an officer in the Presbyterian church; and was the principal means of establishing the church in Chatham. After the death of his wife he adopted communist principles as expounded by Fourier, went to Economy, Ohio, and united with the Fourierite community there, believing it would be a good place to bring up his children. He was married while there to a widow lady, by whom he had one child. At a time of excessive high water in the Ohio river, late in 1847, a very large brick building, owned and occupied by the Fourierites, was surrounded by water, weakening the foundations, and it fell, burying in its ruins a large number of persons. The two eldest children and the wife of Mr. Ransom were among the lost. She had just handed her babe out of a window, by which it was saved. Mr. Ransom was not at the place when the calamity came, but he soon after took his babe, left the Fourierites, and joined the Shakers at Lebanon, Ohio. This was in 1848. He remained with the Shakers until August, 1859, when he took his son, ALBERT, and went to Lawrence, Kansas, where he resided until July, 1872, when he died, a spiritualist, and an open disbeliever of the Bible. He was an original abolitionist, an uncompromising temperance man, scrupulously honest in his dealings, and it was believed by those who knew him well, that he was honest and conscientious in all he did. His erratic course was regarded more as the manifestations of an unsettled mind than of a depraved disposition.