Person:Bazaleel Tracy (2)

1850 U. S. census shows a Bazelle Tracy in Washington Twp, Whitley Co. age 34 with wife Maria age 28

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History of Huntington County, Indiana (Brant & Fuller: Chicago) 1887. Biographies of Huntington City and Township. Page 550/51.

Bezaleel Tracy, a carpenter of Huntington, and one of her worthy and honored citizens, was born in Wayne Co., OH, March 24, 1816. He was the sixth in a family of eight children--six sons and two daughters--born to Bezalee and Mary (First) Tracy, the former a native of Maryland, of English descent, and the latter a native of Fayette Co., PA, of German descent. Our subject spent his boyhood and early youth working upon a farm in his native country. At the age of eighteen he entered upon an apprenticeship with a view to learn the trade ofa cabinet maker and carpenter. During the couse of his apprenticeship he accompanied his brother to whom he had been apprenticed, to Alligan Co., MI That was in 1834. At the end of two and one half years he had finished the trade and in the fall of 1836, he returned to Wayne Co., OH. There he worked his trade until the year 1843, when he came to this stae and located upon a tract of land that he had entered in Whitley County, in the spring of 1837. In the meantime, before leaving Ohio, he was married on the 14th day of December, 1841 to Maria Merriman, also a native of Wayne Co., Ohio, born March 25 1823. She was the sixth in a family of ten children, three sons and seven daughters, born to Micaiah and Anna (McCoy) Merriman, both natives of PA, the former of English and the latter of Scotch descent. On locating in Whitley Co., Mr. Tracy immediately set about clearing a farm out of the woods. To do this, occasioned for him a great deal of hard work. He chopped, grubbed, burned brush, rolled logs, split rails and, in fact, did all kinds of hard work which the development of a new country necessitates. The course of improvement went on, and in a few years the forest was converted into a good farm. In September, 1860, he and his wife left the scene of their labors and came to Huntington, residents of which they have been ever since. Since locating here, Mr. Tracy had devoted his attention to the carpenter's trade. He and wife are both members of the Baptist Church.