Please use your BACK button to return to BIOGRAPHIES Page
JONAS HARMAN, SR. OF WEST VIRGINIA AND MISSOURI:
1788--1864
Biography
Jonas Harman, son of Isaac and Christina [Henkle] Harman, was born in the Harman Hill, Pendleton County, VA, now WV, in 1788.
He first married Barbara Harper in 1806 and resided for several years after his marriage in the
Harman Hills where several of his children were born, and then moved to Brazil Creek,
Washington County, MO, where he spent the rest of his life. He owned about 500 acres Ozark
land. Moses Harman, his grandson, said of him: "Jonas Harman was a man of superior
endowments, physical and mental. His mother was Christina Henkle [before marriage], a
matriarch to her people, a 'woman doctor' and one who exerted a wonderful influence over not
only her own children and near relatives, but over a wide circle of acquaintances. She lived a
long, active and very useful life, dying at eighty-three years of age, near Macksville, Pendleton
County, WV. Jonas, her eldest son, had a splendid physique--six feet tall; well formed; a fine
head and majestic cast of features; a mind far above the average of men for the time and country
in which he was born. He possessed a very fair education in both German and English; was a
land surveyor, a school teacher and served several times as justice of the peace. In religion he
was not devout, never joined a church and seemed inclined to agnostic views. He was regarded
by his neighbors and acquaintances as a very upright man in all his dealings, industrious and
frugal habits, inclined to mechanical pursuits, never accumulated more than a modest
competence, and died a poor man in 1864, aged seventy-six. He was the father of fifteen
children of whom Job, the father of Moses, was the oldest."