Speed, William P.

Born: 1816 Louisville, Kentucky

Died: 1863-06-27 Cooper County, Missouri

A younger brother of Abraham Lincoln's close friend Joshua F. Speed, William P. Speed also grew up on the family plantation, called Farmington, outside Louisville. William married three times: with his second wife, Mary Ellen Shallcross, he had one child. She died in 1844, and he remarried to Sarah Ardell Hutchison. In 1840, he moved to Cooper County, Missouri, where in 1850, he was a farmer with $3,200 worth of real estate. By 1860, Speed had moved his family to Boonville, Missouri, where he was a druggist, owning $3,000 worth of real estate, and $12,000 worth of personal property.

Kathleen Jennings, Louisville's First Families (Louisville: Standard, 1920), 82-83, 85; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Cooper County, MO, 111; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Cooper County, MO, 16; Mary Ellen Speed Gravestone, Cave Hill Cemetery, Louisville, KY; W. F. Johnson History of Cooper County Missouri (Topeka, KS: Historical, 1919), 475.