Linn County, Kansas

INDEX TO

BIOGRAPHIES

JAMES FINDLAY HARRISON

Colonel James Findlay Harrison, formerly county surveyor and an old time citizen of Mound City, born March 9, 1825, in Cincinnati, Ohio, was the son of William Henry Harrison, a native of Vincennes, Indiana. His father's father born September 26, 1802, was the son of General William Henry Harrison, the paternal grandfather of our subject being the hero of Tippecanoe and later president of the United States. The father, educated in Transsylvania University in Kentucky, was admitted to the bar in Ohio in 1823. The mother, Jane Findlay Irwin, was the daughter of Archibald Irwin, a prosperous farmer near Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. On the Harrison side the family dates back to Thomas Harrison, a major general of the Parliamentary army and once colonel of the old Ironsides Regiment of Cromwell. He was one of the judges who tried King Charles and was the one who, by orders of Cromwell, dissolved the long parliament and arrested the speaker. He was hung, drawn and quartered May 10, 1660. His son Benjamin Harrison who emigrated to America on account of political differences with his father, located in the Old Dominion, and became clerk of the council of Virginia. He died in the year 1649, and left a son Benjamin; the latter was born September 20, 1645, in Southwark Parish, Surrey county, Virginia, and died in January, 1713. His son Benjamin, born in Berkley, Virginia, and later attorney general and treasurer of the colony, was also speaker of the house of burgesses and died April 10, 1710, aged thirty-seven years.

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