Person:Anthony Halberstadt (3)

From the book ""Portrait and Biographical Album of Champaign County, Illinois," Chapman Brothers, Chicago, 1887"

"JOHN HALBERSTADT. Among the prominent and successful farmers of the township of Philo, is the subject of this personal notice, who is located on a good homestead of 160 acres on section 26. He came into possession of this in the fall of 1866, and since that time has been industriously engaged in improving and beautifying what he determined from the first should be his permanent home. A small portion of the sod had been broken when he located here, but the whole is now under a good state of cultivation, and admirably adapted to the raising in abundance of the various rich crops of the Prairie State. Besides the homestead Mr. H. is the owner of 400 acres in Ottawa County, Kan., which is also under the plow, and being intelligently operated by his children.

Mr. Halberstadt is a native of Franklin County, Ind., born Oct. 13, 1820. His father, John HALBERSTADT, Sr. was born and reared in Philadelphia, where he served an apprenticeship of seven years at shoemaking. When twenty-two years of age he removed with his father to Indiana. The latter, Anthony HALBERSTADT, was born in Russia, and came to the United States during the Revolutionary War as a Hessian soldier. He fought in the British army for some time, but his sympathies wre finally turned toward the American people, and deserting the ranks of the English, he went over to the Colonists and became a driver for one of the Genrals in the Continental army. This gentleman was the original progenitor of the family in the United States. After the independence of the Colonies has been established he retired to civil life, married an English lady, and became the father of four children.

Anthony Halberstadt finally emigrated to Indiana and settled in what was afterward Franklin County, before the advent of any white people in that locality. Indians and wild game were plentiful, but the grandfather of our subject was a man of great courage and endurance and took up his residence there to stay. He established a comfortable home for those days, in the wilderness, where he passed the remainder of his life, and was buried upon the farm where he had lived for fifty years or more. His wife had previously returned to Kentucky with her son-in-law, and there died at an advanced age. Italic textTheir son John, the father of our subject, assisted his father in the clearing of the timber from their claim in Franklin County, Ind. The Queen City of Ohio was at that time but a hamlet and for years was their nearest trading-post. John HALBERSTADT afterward removed to Sullivan County, Ind., where he died when over eighty-five years old. The mother of our subject, who before her marriage was Miss Mary TRUSLEY, of West Virginia, removed with her parents to Indiana also during the first settlement of the territory. She survived her husband some years, and passed her last days with her children in Philo Township, this county."