Carley, Mark

Born: 1799-08-24 Hancock, New Hampshire

Died: 1888-02-03 Champaign, Illinois

Flourished: 1854 to 1888 Champaign, Illinois

Mark Carley, farmer and grain dealer, moved to Vermont with his family at age eleven, and later apprenticed there as a carpenter and millwright. He traveled as a young man before settling in Louisiana in 1820, where he went into business building mills and cotton gins. Carley relocated to Clermont County, Ohio, in 1837 and established himself as a large-scale farmer with an Ohio River boating business on the side. In 1850, he went to California to participate in the gold rush and remained there for a year, serving as a judge of a miners’ court. Carley returned to Ohio for two years, before moving to Urbana, Illinois, in 1853. Shortly thereafter he built the first residence, first grain warehouse, and introduced the first steam engine in Champaign. In politics, Carley was first a Whig, then later joined the Republican Party. He married Abigail Weatherbee Stevens in 1830 and was survived by three children from this marriage.

George W. Smith, History of Illinois and Her People (Chicago: American Historical Society, 1927), 6:47-48; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Clermont County, OH, 406; Deer Creek Mines, Yuba County, CA, 264; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Champaign, Champaign County, IL, 369; The Champaign Daily Gazette (IL), 3 February 1888, 1:3; Gravestone, Mount Hope Cemetery and Mausoleum, Urbana, IL.