Jackson Calkins

JACKSON CALKINS, one of the honored pioneers of Amherst Township, Portage County, was horn in Massachusetts September 27, 1826, son of Judah and Sarah (Edison) Calkins, both natives of Massachusetts. The father of Sarah Edison was a youth of seventeen when the Revolutionary struggle began, and lived with his father near Boston. Both took up arms for their country’s freedom, and served throughout the memorable struggle. Some years after their marriage Judah and Sarah Calkins moved from Massachusetts to Oneida county, N. Y., where he engaged in lumbering until his death. The widow and her family soon after moved to Salem, Kenosha Co., Wis., where they settled on a farm of 160 acres. The parents had twelve children, of whom Smith, Benjamin, Emily, Mary A., Minerva, Jackson and Sarah lived to mature age. Jackson and Sarah, now Mrs. George Chase, of Fond du Lac, are the only survivors.

Jackson was reared a farmer’s boy, with the slight educational advantages country life, afforded, and at Salem, Wis., he was married May 2, 1847, to Miss Diadamia Sabin, whose parents, natives of New York, were early settlers in Wisconsin. In 1848 Mr. Calkins settled on a farm of eighty acres in Fond du Lac County. Disposing of this seven years later, he in 1855 moved to his present farm of 120 acres in Amherst, where he has ever since resided. He endured the privations incident to pioneer life, and like most of the early settlers was intimately associated with the lumbering interests. For many years he worked in the lumber camps, drawing lumber much of the time with his double team of horses. To Mr. and Mrs. Calkins five children have been born, as follows: Josephine, born April 8, 1848, still lives at home; Frank married Miss Hattie St. John, and has five children - Ethel, Eugene, Maud, Fannie and LaFayette (the mother of these died in 1887); Charles S., who is now an engineer on the Canadian Pacific railroad, is married and has three children; Mary is now the wife of C. S. Wells, a telegraph operator of Victoria, Texas; LaFayette A., who married Miss Bertha Burns, and who at the age of twenty-three years was elected district attorney of Portage County, afterward was for four years municipal judge at Ashland, Wis., and is now city attorney at Fort Howard.

Mr. Calkins is now justice of the peace, and has held that office some ten years. In politics he is a Republican, and in religious belief he is a Protestant. In character he is broad-minded and fair; but his convictions are strong and do credit both to his acumen of mind and soundness of principle.