Person:Joseph Harris (41)

JOSEPH HARRIS was born in Knox County, Tennessee. He later moved to Indiana.

On June 6, 1818, Gabriel Crawley deeded 30 1/2 acres of land to Joseph Harris in Knox County, Tennessee.

On August 5, 1826, Joseph Harris deeded 100 acres of land to Stephen Holbart in Knox County, Tennessee.

In 1840 Joseph was living with his family in Warren Township, Putnam County, Indiana.

Joseph Harris, son of Israel Harris and Charity ?, was born in Knox County, Tennessee in 1795/1796. He married Julia Shell, daughter of Christian Shell and Sarah Heavin, of Knox County, Tennessee, on November 7, 1821. Joseph and Julia were next door neighbors.

Joseph is reported on the death certificate of his youngest son to have also been married to Ruth Bowen. No record of this marriage has been found to date, although research proves the Bowen, Shell, and Harris families all traveled together from North Carolina to Tennessee to Indiana and Iowa. Julia's sister, Susannah, was married to Reece Bowen. Julia [Shell] Harris died in 1845 in Ottumwa, Wapello County, Iowa. The 1850 Census of Wapello County, Iowa shows Joseph was married to Sophianext, a woman who had a daughter named Minnie.

Joseph and Julia moved first to Putnam County, Indiana, where they had their children. Joseph was a Hardshell or Primitive Baptist. He appears on the Iowa Hardshell [Primitive] Baptist church rolls.

In 1842, Joseph staked out a 221 acres claim just outside Ottumwa, Iowa, in Wapello County. He moved his family there in 1843. Joseph donated land for a private Harris cemetery. A log cabin called "Harris' Heights" sits fairly close to his property, which adjoins the river.

Joseph is listed in Wapello Co. History books as having grown the largest pumpkin in the County. He was a tobacco farmer. Joseph was blind the last 10 years of his life. His grandson, Dr. Herbert E. Harris, Joseph's closest companion, writes of him...

"My closest early association with Grandfather, though there were exactly 80 years difference in our ages, his death occurring when he was 93 and I was 13. For the last ten years, he did not leave the sitting room and his adjoining bedroom, sitting in a big arm chair all day long beside a great wood stove. He and I love best his reminiscences of is boyhood in Tennessee. He had been close to the Daniel Boone period and country. He had been champion runner of TN and Kentucky when young. A later exercise of that speed interested me for many retellings. It occured at the Agency Treaty Signing in Iowa. An Indian buck had run in several races there, winning all. He was leaping around, bragging and challenging everyone to another race. Grand-father was 45 then, but he could not resist. Someone dropped the hat and they sped away, Grandfather winning.

"According to another story, there was no New Testament, only an Old Testament, in his neighborhood when he was a boy. He heard of one 10 miles away. He arranged to borrow it but his only free time was on Sunday. He got up early enough to walk that distance before daylight, read it all day, and then plodded home after dark. He was raised, or became, a Hardshell Baptist, a sect that put great emphasis on strict theology. He had me read portions that affected me to believe man was an unworthy creature and God just hadn't chosen to meet out justice yet.

"In spite of his strong theology, he was the most remarkable man I have ever known. He kept all his intellectual faculties to the last. He held all the work on the farm before his mind, and gave directions and inspiration. Neighbors came in often to talk over their problems with him. He was absolutely square and highly principled. But he had a temper which flared up when crossed in what he thought was the wrong way.Once he told a joke on me - the one about my having said I would marry the twins down the road so I would have one left over when one died -and, playing on the floor beyond the stove, I piped out, childlike, "Oh,I never said that ." The hickory cane his brother had made and brought him from TN came hurtling at me. It is now my most cherished possession."

Joseph died May 13, 1889.