John Heaton Biography

John C. Breckenridge HEATON, the second child and first son of James W. Heaton, Sr., was born in Henry County, Ky., in 1854. He was reared until ten years old in Graves County, that State, and was then brought by his parents to Johnson County, where he was educated in the common schools until he was twenty-one years old, when he went to Ewing College, Franklin County, a Baptist institution of learning. He was married October 15,1876, to Miss Alice F. Mathis, daughter of Richmond and Matilda (Morris) Mathis, natives of Tennessee, but who re moved from Kentucky to Illinois in early life, and settled on their farm near Vienna. This daughter is one of five living children, two sons and three daughters, whose father died on his farm in middle life but his widow still survives at the age of sixty-nine, and lives on the old homestead.

Mr. and Mrs. Heaton have lived at their present farm home of eighty acres ever since their marriage, with the exception of a residence of less than one year in Arkansas. They have buried two infant daughters, and have living two sons: Roy L., a promising youth of thirteen and a sludent in school, and Calvin F., ten years old. Mr. Heaton, though a young man, is one of the advance guard in the line of farm gardening, and was one of the first to import fertilizers. He believes in intensive, rather than extensive, farming, and is a successful fruit-grower, having one of the finest young orchards of four years in the county. This orchard contains trees of the following kinds: apples, peaches, pears, quinces and plums, and contains in all thirty-five acres. He and his brother, J. W., Jr., are together engaged in horticulture and in the nursery business, having one of the best nurseries in their section. They also grow small fruits, mostly blackberries, for market, together with apricots, grapes and strawberries. In politics our subject is a pronounced Prohibitionist, which ticket he has always voted, and
himself and wife are members of the Baptist Church of this place.