Jesse L. Moffitt

Jesse L. Moffitt, son of Josiah and Jane (Stuart) Moffitt, was born in this county in 1844. Josiah Moffitt was born in Ross county, O., in 1808 where his parents, John and Lydia (Cox) Moffitt, natives of North Carolina, had settled. Up to his twenty-first year Josiah Moffitt's educational advantages were very limited. In 1829 he married Miss Jane, a daughter of John and Ann (Carney) Stuart, who was born in Derry county, Ireland, in 1813. She came with her parents to New York in 1817, and in 1820 moved with them to Ross county, O., where her mother died shortly after. Her father moved to Stark county, purchased a farm and resided here until his death in 1865. Josiah Moffitt and wife were engaged on their Ohio farm until 1836, when they took up 160 acres in Essex and made their home in the west—the log cabin being without doors and windows, Indians prowling around, and in the absence of the disagreeable but then innocuous savage, wolves presented themselves. The nearest market was Peoria. Here the young wife was often left to protect her four children. Josiah died in 1885, but this pioneer Lady still lives with her son (Jesse), now in her seventy-third year. At one time she, with her sister, were lost on the prairies, and did not find a landmark until the following day. Jesse Moffitt remained on the homestead which he aided in improving. In 1879 he married Miss Sarah Arganbright, born in Ohio in 1860, where her father still resides. Their children are Fred, Ada B. and Harley M. In society matters Mr. Moffitt is an Odd Fellow, in politics democratic, and in all public enterprises enterprising and liberal.