Tri-Counties Genealogy & History by Joyce M. Tice Families of the Tri-Counties

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Bradford County PA Chemung County NY Tioga County PA

Justus Lyon ROOT Biography Liberty Township Tioga County PA

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The following is a biography of William Root(s) and Martha Lyons’ son Justus L. (Lyons) Root, published in the Kalamazoo County (Michigan) Portrait and Biographical Record (Page 1141): This was submitted by Sherlene Belden of Michigan in honor of her Liberty Township ancestry. December 1997.

 JUSTUS L. ROOT. A pleasantly located farm in Oshtemo Township, Kalamazoo County, is the home of this well-known farmer, who is engaged in raising such crops as are adapted to the soil and climate and meet the demands of the market. He is the son of William Root, who was born in New York near Long Island, which was also the birthplace of the mother. The elder Mr. Root was a farmer by occupation, and in 1827, removed from the Empire State to Pennsylvania, where he purchased land in Liberty Township, Tioga County. He was a soldier in the War of 1812, in which conflict his brother, Harvey Root, also did valuable service. William Root made his home in Pennsylvania until within three years of his death, when he accompanied our subject to Michigan and died in his eighty-third year.

He of whom we write was born in Chemung County, NY, February 25, 1818 and. in 1840, came West to Barry County, where he made his home for a short time and then located on a quarter section of land in Oshtemo Township, Kalamazoo County. Mr. Root is now the only old settler living on the Pottsville Road and has done his fair share in bringing this county to its present state of development. Fair dealing and hard work have brought him success and today he ranks among the well-to-do citizens, while his reputation is that of an honest and industrious man.

 The parental family of our subject included seven sons and two daughters, the latter of whom are still living in Pennsylvania and our subject is the only survivor of the sons. He was married when twenty-six years of age to Miss D. B. (Dexcy Betsy) Hardy, the ceremony being performed in 1843 in Pennsylvania. When taking up his abode in Barry County, Mr. Root lived between three tribes of Indians with who he has gone on many a hunting expedition. Deer were very plentiful in that early day, and on one occasion while going after the cows he killed nine of these animals.

 To Mr. and Mrs. Root have been born ten children, only three of whom are living, namely; Mrs. Amy Brewster who makes her home in Otsego; Henry Delbert residing in Kansas, and Henrietta A., who lives at home. Their son, Amos, enlisted in the Union Army is 1863, when nineteen years of age, as a member of Company A, Thirteenth Michigan Infantry, which formed a part of the Fourteenth Corps, First Division and Second Brigade, under Sherman, and participated in the battles of Florence, (Ala)., Perryville, (N. C.)., and Savannah, in which latter battle he was taken sick and carried off the field by his comrade, Henry Eastman. He died on a government transport, May 7, 1865, and was buried in the National Cemetery at Philadelphia, Pa.

 Mrs. Root departed this life in 1858 and the lady to whom our subject was then married was Mrs. Henrietta (Hardy) Brewster, a sister of his first wife. He is the possessor of a large property, owning eighty acres on section 3, forty acres on section 10, Oshtemo Township; one hundred acres in Adams Township and one hundred and sixty acres in Wexford County, this State. Our subject in order to gain an education walked to school barefooted during the winter months, his parents being too poor to provide him with shoes. He has been the subject of two serious mishaps in his life, at one time falling from a scaffolding, when he was picked up for dead, and in the summer of 1890 he was run over by a self-binding machine. He had three brothers who participated in the War of the Rebellion, who bore the respective names of David H. (Harrison), (Nathaniel) Truman and Lanson.