Martin, Henry W.

Born: 1817-03-07 Kentucky

Died: 1901-01-15 Mount Vernon, Illinois

Flourished: Edgar County, Illinois

Henry W. Martin was a merchant, state legislator, army officer, and Indian agent. He lived in his native state of Kentucky until the age of twenty-one, when he moved to Edgar County, Illinois, settling in Paris, where he spent the next eighteen years engaged in mercantile business as part of the firm of Booth & Martin. In 1841, Martin had a religious conversion experience and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church. In April 1843, he married Catharine M. McReynolds, daughter of a prominent Methodist preacher, with whom he would have five children. In 1856, Martin emigrated with his family to the Kansas Territory, settling at Tecumseh, near Topeka, where he became a prominent merchant. In 1858, Martin became a charter member of the Kansas Odd Fellows. In 1860, he owned real property valued at $10,000 and had a personal estate of $8,000. Martin was a member of the Kansas State Legislature in 1862. In June 1862, he received appointment as a special agent to accompany a U.S. Army military expedition into Indian Territory to ensure the loyalty of the Native Americans in the Civil War and to raise Native American units to serve in the Union Army. Martin served for several months in the First and Second Indian regiments, rising to the rank of major. In October 1862, he received appointment as agent for the Fox and Saux Indians, a position he would hold from December 1862 to 1867.

Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Edgar County, 26 April 1843, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Tecumseh, Shawnee County, KS, 65; Ida M. Ferris, "The Sauks and Foxes in Franklin and Osage Counties, Kansas," Collections of the Kansas State Historical Society, vol. 11, ed. by Geo. W. Martin (Topeka: State Printing Office, 1910), 360-61, n64.