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IRA C. WILLIAMS. 



Ira C. Williams was bora in the town of Rushville, Yates 

 Co., N. Y., May 8, 1809. His father, Joseph H. Williams, was 

 a native of Connecticut, settled in Yates County, in 1801, was 

 a blacksmith by trade, and followed farming and blacksmithing 

 while a resident of that county. He married Margaret Foster, 

 a native of Massachusetts, prior to migrating from his native 

 place. 



He died at the age of seventy-two, in 1837, at the residence 

 of his daughter, in Ohio. His wife died Sept. 15, 1831, at 

 Rushville, aged sixty-two. 



Their children were Mrs. Clark Green ; Mrs. Rodolphus 

 Morse ; Mrs. James Loomis ; Mrs. James Holden, of Rushville ; 

 Mrs. Willard Fay; Joseph H. ; Mrs. John Van Housen; 

 Colonel John F. ; Ira C, of Prattsburgh ; and Mrs. Theodore 

 Baker, of Ohio ; of whom only four survive. The youngest 

 was the first to die, but lived to be upwards of fifty years of age. 



Mr. Williams remained at home until he was nineteen years 

 of age, when he traveled through many of the western States, 

 visiting places of interest, and looking for a place to begin life, 

 for himself. After about two years he returned, and in the year 

 1833, Jan. 1st, married Anna M. Benedict, of Jerusalem, Yates 

 Co., N. Y. 



Their children of this marriage are Francis, a lawyer at 



Corning, N. Y. ; Ezra (deceased) ; Mrs. Daniel Sargent, of 

 Rochester; Forrest H., of Rochester; Mrs. Edward Yan Housen, 

 of Prattsburgh ; Theodore B., graduate of Rochester Univer- 

 sity and of Auburn Theological Seminary, now a Presbyterian 

 clergyman in Michigan ; Ira C, graduate of Long Island College 

 Hospital, a doctor in Michigan ; Helen M. (deceased) ; and 

 Charles R., a graduate of Princeton College with high honors, 

 now principal of the High School at Auburn. 



Mr. Williams settled in Prattsburgh in 1830, purchased a 

 saw-mill and cloth dressing establishment, and carried on these 

 interests for some twenty years. For a time he was a farmer 

 on West Hill, and subsequently purchased a grist-mill at Avoca, 

 and ran it for ten years, settling on the farm where he now 

 resides, near the village of Prattsburgh, in the year 1876. 



He has devoted his whole time to business operations, and 

 has never been active in politics except to cast his vote as a 

 member of the Democratic party, of which he has ever re- 

 mained a staunch supporter. He has been elected to fill several 

 offices in the town, and discharged the duties of those offices 

 with strict integrity of purpose. His wife died April 30, 1867, 

 aged fifty-four. Thanksgiving Day, Nov., 1871, he married 

 Mrs. D. C. Neill, daughter of Jacob G. Shults, of the town of 

 Wheeler. 



