Newton Co., IN Biography

Newton County, Jefferson Township.  From A History of Warren, Benton,
Jasper & Newton Counties, 1883.

   HORACE D. KENT was born August 21, 1817, in Oneida County, New York,
and is a son of Carrol and Pheba (Dymock) Kent, both natives of 
Connecticut.  
   Horace D. worked on the farm until his thirteenth year, from which 
time until he was twenty-five he engaged in clerking, steamboating on 
the lakes, and afterward on the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, and in 
mercantile business at New Albany, Indiana.
   In April, 1849, he started from Independence, Missouri, in a crowd
called "the Louisville Legion Company" (twenty-seven wagons and sixty
persons), over the plains to Sacramento, California, where they 
safely arrived in one hundred and twenty days.  There he spent the 
first winter in mining, merely making a living.  In April, 1850, he 
joined his brother, A. J. Kent, John B. Chesebrough and W.R. Fowler in
the grocery business in Sacramento.  Their success was good, but the 
firm was broken up on account of cholera.  Mr. Kent then took a large
stock of goods to Rough and Ready (near Marysville) and opened a store.
Here he lost on account of no rain "dry diggins."
   In February, 1851, he went to Sacramento, bought fifty pack mules,
and packed his goods to Onion Valley, South Feather River, where he 
again met with loss.  In June, he closed his store, sold his mules,
and in August left for home by Nicaragua, arriving in New Albany October
1, where, in November, in company with his brothers, A.J. and Bela C.,
he went into the grocery trade until 1859, when he sold to his brothers, 
and opened a commission house in New Orleans with good success, until
1861, when he closed and removed to New Albany.
   In 1863, he went to Tennessee, employed by the Government until the 
close of the war, when he erected a manufacturing establishment, door
sash and blinds, in Nashville, Tennessee, and continued there until 
1870, when he came to Kentland.  Formerly, he was engaged buying grain
for A. J. Kent, but latterly in the wood and coal trade, and doing well.
   March 24, 1841 Mr. Kent married Miss Martha Lindley of Vevy, Indiana.
These parents have had five children, two of whom are living, viz. Angie
Dymock and Bela C., Angie married, in 1865, A. M. Van Dyke, of Cincinnati;
Bela C. married in 1876, Miss Jennie, daughter of E.L. and Mary 
Urmston, of Kentland.  Mr. Kent is a member of Jefferson Lodge, F. & 
A. M., No. 104, New Albany.  In politics, he is independent.


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Submitted By Gerald Born
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