Biographical Memoirs of Wells County, Indiana, 1903, pp. 418-419.

MARION GARTON

This young agriculturist and stock raiser and one of the most enterprising residents of Lancaster township, Wells County, Indiana, was born November 22, 1860, on the farm his grandfather, Jonathan GARTON, had entered many years ago in this township and which is now owned by the widow Bowman.

Marion GARTON is a son of Henry J. and Anna Maria GARTON. He was reared on the farm alluded to above until sixteen years of age, when he began clerking in a general store in Pugney, Indiana, where he passed some time, gaining a fair insight into mercantile affairs. He there married, December 11, 1878, Miss Nancy M. Wilkin, a daughter of William and Mary (Trenary) Wilkin, and a native of Lancaster township, born September 19, 1860. After marriage, Marion GARTON and his bride went to live with his father, for whom they kept house and assisted in farming the place for about five years, after which he engaged in the manufacture of tile for about ten years. Later he for three years employed himself in farming in conjunction with tilemaking, having in the meanwhile, in 1883, taken possession of the farm on which he now makes his home. The farm comprises eighty acres, sixty acres of which he has cleared and well ditched and on which he has erected a substantial barn and other necessary outbuildings for the accommodation of his stock and other purposes. Mr. Garton devotes the greater part of his attention to the breeding of thoroughbred shorthorn cattle, Shropshire sheep and Chester White hogs, and is ready at all times to furnish buyers with thoroughbred breeding stock. To keep his graded animals well up to the mark, Mr. Garton purchased in 1902, a cow and calf for two hundred and twenty-five dollars, and with these it is his hope to keep his graded animals in good supply and fully up to the mark.

To Mr. and Mrs. Marion GARTON have been born five children, in the following order: Chloe M., May 2, 1880; Emma D., January 26, 1882; Hiram F., July 19, 1884; Hazel A., April 25, 1891, and Anna Fay, August 8, 1894.

Fraternally Mr. Garton is a member of the Knights of Pythias lodge at Tocsin, Indiana, and politically he is a Democrat of the most stalwart kind. He has served as delegate from his district to various conventions of his party and in 1899 was his party's candidate for sheriff of Wells County, but with the rest of the ticket was defeated by a small majority. He has also served as a grand juryman.

Mr. Garton, it will have been perceived from the foregoing, has always been an active man of business, ready to turn his hand to anything that promised to bring him satisfactory returns, and as a rule he has been very successful in all his undertakings. If he has not altogether made all he possesses, he has at least made good use of everything that has come into his hands and increased it in value. He has led a strictly upright life and has won the esteem of all who know him. He is honored not only for his industry and practical business methods, but for his many personal merits and in this general esteem his wife and children have a full share. In the social circles of Lancaster township the GARTON family stand deservedly high, the name is duly respected wherever known, and no men of Mr. Garton's years can claim a higher standing among their fellow citizens.