COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY
Of Henry County Indiana
B.F. Bowen
1920
Page 347, 348, 349
Surnames in this biography are: Gustin, Fuller, Betts, Diltz, Cummins, Smith, Harvey, Nixon,
Brunk, Hirpp
ISAAC H. GUSTIN
Henry County, Indiana, has within its limits but few horticulturists and agriculturists as experienced in these two branches of husbandry as the gentleman whose name stands at the head of this biographical notice. He is of French extraction and remotely of ante-Revolutionary descent, was born in Warren County Ohio, August 14, 1824, a son of Samuel B.
Gustin, of Pennsylvania, whose father, Jeremiah Gustin, was born in New Jersey and was a son of Jeremiah
Gustin, the son of John Gustin, who was born on the island of Jersey, on the northeast of France, and was the founder of the family in America. John Gustin and his wife Elizabeth came from the isle of Jersey to America in 1675 and died in 1719 at Falmouth (Portland), Maine. His son Jeremiah, who was born in 1691, married Mary -, who was born in 1692. They settled in Sussex County, New Jersey, and there Mrs. Mary Gustin died in 1762, and John Gustin in 1771. Jeremiah
Gustin, son of John and Elizabeth Gustin, married Bethany Fuller, and died at Red Lion, Warren County, Ohio, in 1825 and 1829 respectively. Jeremiah
Gustin, son of Jeremiah and Bethany (Fuller) Gustin, married a Miss Betts, of Cincinnati, Ohio, and died also at Red Lion at the advanced age of ninety-two years. Samuel B.
Gustin, son of the Jeremiah last alluded to, married Elizabeth Diltz, a native of Kentucky, but reared in Ohio. Samuel B. and his wife lived on the old Gustin place at Red Lion until 1845, at which time they were the parents of six children, namely:
Lemuel, who left his home about the year 1859, lived in Illinois and Dakota several years, then at Storm Lake, Iowa and is now a resident of the state of Washington; Isaac H., the subject proper of this biography, is next in order of birth; Rebecca, the third child, was married to John Cummins, but with her husband is now deceased; Jeremiah died in middle life in southwest Indiana;. Susan, who was married to Asa Smith, died about ten years ago; Benjamin Franklin, or "Doe," as he was familiarly known, died in southwest Missouri, and Martha, who was first married to Miles Cummins, is now the widow of Frank Smith. The Gustin family came to Madison County, Indiana, and settled on the county line, where Samuel B. cleared up a farm of one hundred acres from a tract he had bought in the wild woods and on which he resided until his death March 31, 1874, at the age of seventy-six; his wife died a few years previously at the age of sixty-eight Mr. Gustin was a mechanic and had a shop in which he made guns, wheels, coffins, etc., and was also an impromptu dentist, but his work in this line was principally confined to the extracting of teeth. He also bled people occasionally and was the "handy" man of his neighborhood. He was a member of the Christian church, was in politics first a Wig and afterwards a Republican and had held the office of justice of the peace. Isaac H. Gustin assisted in clearing up the new farm and remained on the place three years after coming to Madison County, when he married, November 9, 1848, Miss Elizabeth, a daughter of James and Lucy (Harvey) Cummins, natives of Monroe County, Virginia, where Elizabeth was born April 15, 1827. In 1829 the Cummnins family came to Indiana in wagons with several other families and settled one mile east of Middletown, but two years later bought land west of the village, which land is now the property of James L. Gustin heirs. In 1832 there had seven or eight acres been cleared and the family lived in a round-log cabin, which was replaced by a hewed-log house, and here Elizabeth Cummins was married at the age of twenty-one. For one year after marriage Mr. Gustin and wife lived on his father's land and then for a year on her father's. In 1850 he entered land in the Indian Reservation in Madison County, ten miles northwest of Alexandria, erected a log cabin in the woods among the howling wolves and laid in provisions sufficient to last him a year. He cleared up eight acres of the place and set out fruit trees; then he sold the place for six hundred dollars and for six hundred and fifty bought the farm of one hundred and sixty acres on which he now lives. But this land was swampy and he was forced to drain it. He then built a hewed-log cabin (which has been replaced by his present modern dwelling on the same site), cleared up the higher ground, converted the timber into cord wood and sold it to the railroad company; this process was repeated the second year, Mr. Gustin deriving a fair income from it the meanwhile. Since 1852 this farm has been the homestead, although Mr. Gustin has sold some of the land to his sons, retaining but eighty acres for his own use. He had placed one hundred and twenty-five acres under cultivation, had laid timber-lined ditches, which were followed by mole drains which in clay soils had a lasting quality of from five to ten years and finally secured the use of the public drains, into which he ran tiling at a cost of six hundred dollars. About three-quarters of the land was under water the greater part of the year and roads were invisible, but eventually logs were rolled together and covered with earth and now good gravel roads exist where before they were more a matter of imagination than reality. Besides devoting his attention to the farm. Mr. Gustin has made some experiments in inventing agricultural machine and gates, for which he has taken out several patents. In politics Mr. Gustin was first a Whig and in 1848 voted for General Winfield Scott as the presidential nominee of the party; since 1856 he has been a Republican, although for a few years he diverged from his party and joined the Populists. Mr. Gustin has been a member of the Christian or New Light church since thirty-six years of age and Mrs. Gustin has professed the same faith for forty years. Mr. and Mrs. Isaac H. Gustin have had born to them the following family: Edwin, who lost his life in a gravel pit in 1895 at the age of forty five years; Cynthia, who was married to Lee Nixon and died in 1875 when twenty-two years old; Francis Marion, a homeopathic physician at Union City; James, who died in 1895 at the age of thirty years, wedded Mattie
Brunk, and was the father of five children: Lee, Sylvester, Morton, Ada and one deceased; Smith, a resident of Fall Creek township, wedded Sallie
Hirpp, and had children as follows: Clay, May, Ida and three deceased; Moses, an agriculturist, is married and is the father of five children as follows:
Montrew, Fredie, Ruby, Ogleve and Argness. The surviving members of the Gustin family are among the most honored of the pioneer settlers around Middletown and have, always been among the foremost in developing from the forest the fruitful farm that now adorns and enriches the country and which have tended to make the town and township what they are today. They have certainly richly earned the enviable standing, which they now enjoy.
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