The sketch noted below was given to me by Wilma Davis of Paoli, Indiana, president of the Orange County Genealogical Society. It had no date or source and reads as though the last few paragraphs may be missing. William F Sears is believed to be the son of John and Mary Elizabeth "Polly" (Stanfield) Sears and the brother of John L. Sears who married into the Showers family who later achieved prominence in Monroe County. --------------------------------- For some time I have felt moved to pay the following tribute to one of our oldest and best known citizens, William F. Sears. William F. Sears, how residing on East Vincennes Street, was the fourth child in a family of eight children born to John and Mary Sears. The father died May 18, 1841, and the mother, whose maiden name was Mary Stanfield, about 1880. Both parents came to Indiana from Kentucky, and from Virginia to Kentucky. Mr. Sears also had one half brother and one half sister. The half brother died while on his was to California during the gold excitement in 1849. The parents entered the quarter section of land lying immediately south of town, before the town was laid out, and the subject of this article was born in the log cabin they built at the old well on the east side of the Paoli Road, 300 or 400 feet south of the present residence of O. W. Stephenson. The town was a small village of log huts and houses when Mr. Sears put in his appearance, there being but few frames of any kind. He assisted in the erection of many of the primitive dwellings in which some of our early settlers lived. He later saw or assisted in the removal of those buildings in order to make room for more pretentious and comfortable frame buildings. He was right here, a man grown when the yards, gardens and public square, even, were all protected by heavy rail fencing, just like the barnyards in the country used to be. He was a "scholar" in some of the first schools ever taught in the town and knows all about the big fireplaces, backless benches and the beech limbs that were always present and appeared to be so very indispensible in the prosecution of a boy's education in those early days. He never wore any, but has seen many a pair of buckskin breeches. In 1851 and 1852, Mr. Sears helped build what is now the Monon railroad. He helped lay the first "T" rail on our part of the road then rode a gravel train on the south end one summer and worked on a passenger train a year. He was on the train that made the first run from New Albany to Bedford. But he got tired of the road, quit, came home, got married and went back to the old farm, along the south side of the town. He was married to Miss Rebecca Ann Park in 1852. Five children were born to them before the mother died in 1870. In 1872, he and Miss Lizzie Stephens were married, and four children were born to them, and the wife died in 1883. Mr. Sears was next married to Mrs. Louisa Murray in 1891, and two children were born to this union. This, the third wife, died in 1900, and Mr. Sears and Mrs. H. C. Brown, his present wife, were married in 1907. After his first marriage in 1853, Mr. Sears lived at the old Sears homestead south of town till 1856 when he bought and moved to the farm where Volney Noblitt now lives, one and one-half miles southwest of town. Later he sold that farm to Thomas D. Lindsey and moved back to his father's old home that, by inheritance, his widowed mother was still holding. After a time he moved to Monroe County near Smithville and later from there to Clear Creek near Bloomington, and from there he went into the service of his country as a member of Co. F., 82nd Indiana, in August 1862. He was afterward detailed to service in the 67th Indiana and later returned to the 82nd from which he was discharged from the service on account of wounds received in the battle of Chickamauga, Sept. 20, 1863. He saw active service at Munfordville, Yazoo River, Arkansas Post, Grand Gulf, Ft. Gibson, Champion's Hill, Black River, Vicksburg and Chickamauga.