JOHN W. PRIEST , furniture merchant, north side of the square, is one of a family of twelve children of Frank and Mary (Wood) Priest, of whom five of each sex lived to adult age. He was born in Vermont, October 18, 1809; moved with parents to St. Lawrence county, New York, in 1816, where he grew to manhood; and in August, 1835, married Olive Wakefield; starting soon after, in a wagon, for Montgomery, Alabama, consuming forty days in the trip. Mr. Priest engaged in the manufacture and sale of tinware in that place about fourteen months, then sold out and carried on the same business in Columbus, Mississippi, over three years; leaving there, he spent a summer in St. Louis, Missouri. In the spring of 1840, he and wife returned to New York for the latter's health, where she died soon after, leaving a son, who also died at three years of age. Mr. Priest came to Springfield in June, 1840, and for thirteen years carried on brick manufacturing, and also conducted the stove and tinware business about four years during the time. He has been extensively engaged in farming many years; owns a six hundred acre farm in Christian County, which he cultivates, and one of five hundred acres in Sangamon county, that he rents out. About six years ago he re-embarked in the furniture and house-furnishing business in his present store, and carries a large stock of furniture, stoves, tin, and wooden-ware, crockery, cutlery, etc., and has an annual trade of $35,000 to $40,000. Mr. Priest cast his first Presidential vote for Andrew Jackson, and has always been a Democrat. He has served his Ward - the Fourth - as Alderman, eight years; has been Mayor of the city four terms, three consecutively; and is now a member of the County Board of Supervisors. He married Lucinda M. Stafford, of Rochester, Sangamon county, March 30, 1845; she died September 10, 1851, having been the mother of four children; two of whom, Olive Lucinda, born February 24, 1846, and Mary Eliza, born November 2, 1848, are living. Mr. Priest married his third wife, Catharine Wright, in St. Lawrence county, New York, in September, 1853; she died childless in July, 1875. September 5, 1878, he united in marriage with Phebe T. Eggleston, of Rochester, Sangamon county; she is the twelfth daughter and seventeenth child of Seth and Emma Samson, of Ohio. Mr. Priest has four grandchildren: Olive, Mary M., and John Priest Latham, and Mary Lucinda Currier, all born in Springfield, Illinois.