John W. Overturf
John W. Overturf was born about 1827 in Tennessee, by the censuses. His memorial gives 1827 and a family account 1829. The 1850 census, which makes him twenty-one, agrees with 1829. He married Dicy Miller at Benton, Franklin County, Illinois, on 15 February 1844. He was about seventeen and she was fifteen. On 12 August 1853 he bought two tracts of government land in section 35, township 5 south, range 3 east. He farmed Ewing Township for the rest of his life, and the censuses carry the couple there from 1850 through 1900, more than half a century in the same township.
Their first child, Milton, was born about 1846, and Adam followed in 1848. The 1880 household at Ewing held Milly, Andrew J., William, Nancy and James J. Andrew Jackson, called Jack, died at Benton in 1929, and Charles Wesley died there in 1931. Nancy married a Page. George W. married in 1892, and his licence names John W. and Dicy Miller as his parents.
In 1850 John, twenty-one, and Dicy, twenty-one, born in Illinois, were farming in Franklin County with Milton, four, Adam, two, and Charles W., six months. The house next door was Adam and Rachel Overturf's, with five of their own children still at home, Benjamin, Polly, O., Eli and Levi. Ten years later, in Township 6 South, Range 3 East, the household held Adam, twelve, Charles M., ten, George W., eight, William H., six, John, three, and Rachel E., ten months. Milton is not in it, and what became of him is not known. Two doors up the 1860 page lived Andrew Miller and his wife Delila, both of Kentucky.
He died in 1900 and is buried at the Overturf Cemetery in Ewing Township, under a pointed stone on a stepped base. Dicy lies beside him under one of the same pattern.
Overturf is an American respelling of the German Oberdorf, meaning upper village, and the family is thick on the ground in Franklin County records.
No record known names his parents. They were probably Adam and Rachel Overturf. Adam was born on 16 July 1803 and Rachel on 16 January 1802, both in Tennessee by a family account, and both were in Franklin County by 1835. They were among the original members of Benton Baptist Church in 1841. Adam served in the Black Hawk War of 1832, the short war against the Sauk leader Black Hawk's people in northern Illinois. The printed muster roll of Captain James Hall's company of Illinois Mounted Volunteers lists him as "55 Adam overturf", a private. A family account on Adam's memorial names John W. as their son, and the 1840 census agrees with it. So does the 1850 census, which puts the two households side by side. Adam's household that year held one boy aged ten to fifteen, the right age for John W., and John named his own first son Adam. Adam died on 21 May 1857 and Rachel on 3 May 1882. Both are buried at the Old Mount Pleasant Cemetery near Rend City.
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Cite: Heirology, "John W. Overturf (1827-1900)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/john-w-overturf-1827-1900-192917.