Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 34, Number 74, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 16 May 1902 — A Seventieth Birthday. [ARTICLE]

A Seventieth Birthday.

Our townsman. Samuel O. Duvall, was 70 years old last Monday, May 12th, and he celebrated the occasion by presenting to his little grand-daughter Irene Thirza Duvall, a fine Crown piano; and bis son John W. Duvall also observed the event by a big family dinner, in his father’s honor, on that day. Mr. Duvall became a resident of Rensselaer 60 years ago next October, and has been more or less identified with the interests of this plaoe ever since. Three years after coming here his parents died in 1845, within 33 days of each other and he had to shift for himself from that time on. There were 9 children thus left orphans, two older and six younger than Samuel, and who of course were scattered. He lived with different people in Rensselaer and .vicinity, including Amariah S. Tharp, on the farm where the county asylum now is, and whose daughter afteiwards became his wife, in 1856, and who died in 1893. He lived in Monon fifteen years keeping a hotel and livery stable, and having an interest, with his brothers in Rensselaer in the system of stage lines which used to radiate from Rensselaer to Monon, Francesville, Momence and Kankakee, Remington etc, From Monon he moved to Momence, staying there 12 years, in the same business, and from there to Chicago, where he kept a livery stable until 1896, when he bought a farm west of Rensselaer, which he occupied until the spring of 1901, when he sold it and retired from active business. >