CHRISTOPHER WASHBURN, who resides on the home farm on section 3, of Florence Township, is the son of Amos Washburn, of whom a sketch is given in this volume. He was born in Licking County, Ohio, on the 3d of June, 1839, and came to Stephenson County with his parents in 1856, and has been a resident of Stephenson County since, spending, however, in the meantime, three years in the army. In August, 1862, he enlisted in Co. D, 93d Ill. Vol. Inf., and served until the close of the war. He was with his command in nearly all the engagements in which it participated, and while on duty during the siege of Vicksburg, the Gibraltar of the South, received a wound in the knee, and on the 22d of May, during that memorable siege, he was sunstruck while on duty, from the effects of which he has never entirely recovered. At the close of the war he was mustered out of the service at Louisville, Ky., after having participated in Sherman's glorious march to the sea, which will go down the ages, in poetry and history, as the greatest military accomplishment of the century.

Mr. Washburn was married, in Freeport, Ill., on the 26th of February, 1867, to Miss Sarah Brownlee, daughter of Lorenzo and Abbie (Smull) Brownlee, natives of Pennsylvania. She was born in that State on the 4th of December, 1844. They have had four children: Jessie M., Winnie, Henry, and one child died in infancy. Winnie died in the early part of September, 1882; Jessie is the wife of Jacob Ingle, and they reside in Lancaster Township.

Mr. Washburn is a Republican, and as he expresses it, "believes in voting the way he shot." He and his wife are both members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Contributed by Carol Parrish from Portrait and Biographical Album of Stephenson County, Ill. (1888), p. 732