William M. Askins
William M. Askins was born on 3 August 1846 in Hilliar Township, Knox County, Ohio. In 1850 the only Askins household in Hilliar Township was that of Jesse and Polly Askins, both fifty and Ohio-born, with James, Martha, George and a ten-year-old William, who was too old to be this one; whether Jesse and Polly were his grandparents is not known. By 1860 he was in Illinois. The census of Township 9 North, Range 4 East in Effingham County found Wm Askins, 14, born Illinois by the enumerator's reckoning, in the house of George C. Eckles, a 58-year-old Englishman from Manchester, and Nancy Eckles, 42, born Ohio, with Lavina Askins, 12, Jonathan Askins, 10, and a two-year-old Isabell Stamer. Nancy was his mother. She was born Nancy Starner, and his father was John D. Askins, born in Knox County in 1820, who had brought the family to Effingham County in the 1840s and died in the middle 1850s. On 28 January 1856 his widowed mother married George Clark Eccles. Lavina and Jonathan were William's sister and brother: Sarah Lovina later married John L. Larimore, and Jonathan Nelson died at Hammond, Illinois, in 1934. On 10 February 1864, in Macoupin County, Illinois, he married Delitha Jane Daniel, called Litha Jane. By 1865 they were at Beecher City in Effingham County, and his first children were born there: Jonathan Wiley in 1865, James William and Nancy in 1868.
The family moved west to Kansas in the 1870s. In June 1880 the census found William in Jefferson Township, Chautauqua County, with Lythia J. and the children Jonathan, James, Nancy, Sarah, Lythia, Mary and Martha, and twins nine months old, Edda and Ida. They were Edward, born on 11 August 1879, and Ida Mae. By 1884 they were in Kingman County, where George Walter was born, and the 1885 state census lists Wm Askins there, born in Illinois. Later the family came to Cowley County. His sons Edward and George Walter both settled around Winfield, and from those two brothers come two Askins families of the town.
William died at Winfield on 28 January 1915, aged 68. His red granite stone in the Union section of Union-Graham Cemetery reads simply Wm. Askins, Aug. 3, 1846, Jan. 28, 1915, with At Rest in the scroll above. His son Jonathan, who had stayed on an Illinois farm, moved to Kansas about 1929 for his health and was buried near him in 1933.
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Cite: Heirology, "William M. Askins (1846-1915)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/william-m-askins-1846-1915-af2814.