Will County ILGenWeb Biographies..... 
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File contributed for use by:
Dori Leekly & Margie Glenn

Author: History of Will County, Illinois; Chicago: Wm LeBaron Jr & Co, 186 Dearborn Street, 1878.

J. E. GIFFIN, farmer; P. O. Lockport; was born in Cumberland Co., Penn., near Carlisle, Aug. 7, 
1814; in 1833, he came to Montgomery Co., Ohio, and remained two or three years; he next stopped 
at Oxford, Ohio, a short time; he spent the winter of 1842, at the rapids of Rock River, in 
Whiteside Co., IL, engaged in feeding sheep; in the spring of 1843, he purchased a large drove 
of sheep and brought them to Oswego, and there laid a claim of eighty acres, which he afterward 
entered and improved. He was married March 11, 1847, to Cynthia C. RODGERS, a native of Ashtabula,
Ohio; she was born Feb. 2, 1828, and came West with the family in 1832. In the fall of 1850, he 
settled where he now lives, and opened up his farm. They have had six: children born to them - 
Almira E., Martha I., Elliott R., Mary H., John E. and Cynthia A.; of these John E., died March 
17, 1862. Owns eighty acres, valued at $5,600. Mrs. GIFFIN remembers the days of the small 
beginnings of Joliet, Lockport, Plainfield and other surrounding villages; she has lived to see 
the wild, unbroken prairie converted into fertile farms, and thickly studded with fine residences; 
vast areas, which, in her girlhood days, yielded naught but wild grass and countless flowers of 
sweetest perfume, now teeming with the rich golden harvest.