Henderson, William H.

Born: 1793-11-16 Gerrard County, Kentucky

Died: 1864-01-27 Iowa

At the age of nineteen, Henderson enlisted in Richard M. Johnson’s regiment of Kentucky mounted volunteers and served in the War of 1812 under General William Henry Harrison. He married Lucinda Wimberly in Tennessee on January 11, 1816, and the couple had three children. Lucinda died in 1823, and Henderson married Sarah M. Howard, with whom he had six additional children. In Tennessee, he was a sheriff and a member of the Tennessee Senate from 1835 to 1836. He moved to Illinois in 1836, settled in an area of Putnam County that later became Stark County, and purchased nearly 150 acres of land there in 1839. An ardent Whig, he won election to the Illinois House of Representatives in 1838 and 1840, representing Putnam and Bureau counties. In 1842, he lost his election bid for lieutenant governor of Illinois. By 1850, Henderson and his family had settled in Iowa, where he farmed and was a land agent. His son, Thomas J. Henderson was a Union general in the Civil War.

H. C. Bradsby, ed., History of Bureau County, Illinois (Chicago: World, 1885), 306, 544; Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Lincoln Memorial Association, 1895), 1:166; Diane Black, comp., Tennessee Senators (Nashville: Tennessee State Library and Archives, [2010]), 36; Theodore C. Pease, ed., Illinois Election Returns, 1818-1848, vol. 18 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1923), 129-31, 325, 348; Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales, Stark County, 709:72, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Sixth Census of the United States (1840), Stark County, IL, 214; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Iowa City, Johnson County, IA, 161; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Marshall County, IA, 79; Gravestone, Riverside Cemetery, Marshalltown, IA.