The family of the Townsends is an ancient and honored one. It is very old
in England and was early established in America by James Townsend and his
two brothers, who came over together, James locating in Massachusetts, one
in New York and one in Vermont.
It was in the Vermont line of the
family that the ancestors of George Washington Townsend descended. Mr.
Townsend's grandfather was Aaron Townsend. His son, Almond Townsend, father
of George Washington Townsend, was born in Windsor county, Vermont, January
26, 1803, and was a prosperous farmer and an extensive breeder of Merino
sheep. He married Elvira Butler, also a native of Windsor county, Vermont, a
daughter of that well known man, Charles Butler, who was drowned in the
Connecticut river. Mrs. Townsend was born in 1811, and died April 15, 1880.
Mr. Townsend died April 16, 1885. Almond and Elvira (Butler) Townsend had
seven children: Charles G., born April 30, 1834 (deceased); Eugene B., born
June 13, 1836, died April 26, 1883; James A., born February 8, 1838; Henry
H., born May 5, 1841; Carrie E., born April 12, 1843 (deceased); George
Washington, and one other whose name is not at hand.
George
Washington Townsend was born in Windsor county, Vermont, at the birthplace
of his father and mother, April 10, 1847. He passed the first sixteen years
of his life in Vermont, where he was sent to the district school and later
to the Green Mountain Institute at South Woodstock. He supplemented the
education thus obtained by a commercial course at Eastman's Business
College, at Poughkeepsie, New York. In 1865 he came west to LaSalle county,
Illinois, and went from there to Grundy county and tarried a year at Morris.
He then made a short visit to his native town. On his return he stopped at
Morris for a short time and then went to Grinnell, Iowa, and thence to
Monmouth, Illinois, where he located in 1861. For a time he did a thriving
business in wooden eave-spouts. He abandoned this business to learn the
tinners' trade. He remained at Monmouth and in Stark county, Illinois, until
1877, when he removed to Ottawa and engaged in the dairy business on an
eighty-acre farm which he purchased in Ottawa township, two miles and a half
north of the city. This place, known as the Wade farm, he improved and
stocked with thirty or forty cows and sold the milk they produced to a fine
trade in Ottawa. He maintained this business on an extensive scale until
1897, and still keeps a few cows, more to have something to look after than
for the profit there may be in so small a trade.
Mr. Townsend was
married, December 19, 1892, to Miss Julia P. Judd, a native and resident of
Wayne, Stark county, Illinois. He is a stanch Republican and has held the
responsible position of treasurer of Ottawa high school for the past nine
years. He has a fine residence, heated throughout by a modern hot-water
system and provided with other up-to-date conveniences and luxuries. A
library of fine and useful books attracts the attention of the visitor, but
the presence of these is not necessary to suggest to any one who meets Mr.
Townsend that he is a man of high intelligence and a wide range of general
information.
Extracted 13 May 2019 by Norma Hass from Biographical and Genealogical Record of LaSalle County, Illinois, published in 1900, volume 2, pages 627-628.
| Lee | DeKalb | Kane |
| Bureau |
 |
Kendall |
| Putnam | Grundy | |
| Marshall | Woodford | Livingston |
