Ancestors

Newton Furr

Newton Furr was born in 1797. His gravestone, which gives his age at death to the day, puts his birth on 20 April 1797. He farmed in Loudoun County, Virginia, in the hill country west of Washington, and later owned land on Timber Ridge in Frederick County, near Winchester. In January 1819 Pleasant Matthews, a Loudoun girl his own age, bore a daughter at the house of Richard Matthews, and the county record named Newton as the father. He married Pleasant, and they had at least eleven children who lived to grow up: Richard E., Elizabeth, Isaac Newton, Squire M., Enoch Chapman, Margaret, Pleasant, Mary Ann, Stephanus W., Sylvanus B. and the youngest, Martha Virginia, born in 1843.

He was a son of Enoch Furr, a Revolutionary lieutenant of the Loudoun County militia, and grew up in western Loudoun. When Enoch's will was offered for probate after his death in 1845, Newton was one of the heirs at law summoned by the Loudoun County court. On 19 April 1850 he appeared with his sister Charity Wills and others and demanded a jury trial on whether the paper was truly their father's will. His father's will of 1831 did not name him, though he would have shared in what was left over. The jury found against the will, and by 1853 the court treated Enoch as having died without one. Years earlier his parents had conveyed 78 acres to Edward B. Grady for Newton's benefit.

In the 1850s the family went west to LaSalle County, Illinois, on the Illinois River. In August 1857 Newton and Pleasant, both of LaSalle County, sold their Frederick County land to their son Squire M. Furr. It lay on Timber Ridge, adjoining the heirs of E. R. Muse and Joseph Johnson, about 212 acres, and the deed described it as including the place where William Scrivener had lived in 1829. Pleasant was examined "privily and apart from her husband" by a notary at Ottawa on 15 August 1857 and declared that she had signed willingly, the step that released her dower right. Squire then sold the same tract to Martha Chamberlin of Frederick County for $2,500.

Newton and Pleasant lived in the town of Manlius in LaSalle County, and in the late 1860s he and Loren Lord of Manlius sold two town lots there to Henry Warder. Their daughter Martha married Samuel O'Brien of Kendall County in January 1861.

Newton died on 19 December 1870, aged 73 years, 7 months and 29 days, and was buried in the Manlius Methodist Episcopal cemetery under a stone carved with an open book. His son Squire administered the estate. On 6 February 1872 the LaSalle County court approved the distribution: Pleasant, as widow, took one third of $2,500, and each of the eleven children took about $152. His real estate was sold later through the circuit court, and in 1883 his daughter Martha, by then in Kansas, was still collecting her share of it.

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Cite: Heirology, "Newton Furr (1797-1870)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/newton-furr-1797-1870-1a3fb4.