NEWTON J. JOLLY, an active and enterprising farmer of Ward
township, residing on section 29, is a native of Lawrence County, Indiana, born
near the town of Bedford, September 12, 1845. His parents, Edward and Fanny
(Jones) Jolly, were natives of Pennsylvania and Mississippi respectively. They
were among the early settlers of Indiana, living there till their death. Both
died of spotted fever, in 1863. They reared fourteen children to maturity, eleven
sons and three daughters. Eight of the
sons served in the late war, four of whom returned home at the end of the war.
Two died of wounds and two of disease contracted in the army. Newton J., our
subject, enlisted in April, 1862, in Company H., Sixteenth Indiana Infantry, in
which he served till 1864, when he was discharged on account of disability. He
re-enlisted in the One Hundred and Seventeenth Indiana Infantry to serve six
months. He again enlisted in the United States Veteran Volunteers, being on
garrison duty one year after the war closed. He took part in the following
battles: Blue Springs, Knoxville, Jackson, Mississippi, battle of Nashville,
battle of the Wilderness. He received an honorable discharge in March, 1866,
when he returned to his home in Indiana.
Mr. Jolly was united in marriage in November, 1866, to Mary E. Busick,
of Lawrence County, Indiana, a daughter of Kindred Busick, and to them have
been born four children – Maggie E., a school teacher; Susie L., William W. and
Alva E. Mr. Jolly left his native State
in the spring of 1869, coming with his family to Clarke County, Iowa. He then
settled on a farm in Washington Township, five miles west of Osceola, where he
was actively engaged in agricultural pursuits until 1885. He then sold his farm
and removed to Osceola, but during the fall of the same year, settled on his
present farm on section 29, Ward Township, where he has eighty acres of
well-improved land under high cultivation, a neat and substantial residence,
and comfortable farm buildings. In connection with his general farming Mr.
Jolly devotes considerable attention to stock-raising, in which he is meeting
with success, and has at present on his farm about thirty head of cattle. Mr.
Jolly is a member of the Knights of Pythias, and is a comrade of the Grand Army
of the Republic.
SOURCE: Biographical and Historical Record of Clarke
County, Iowa, Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, Illinois, 1886 p. 412
