ILLINOIS RELATIVES know little of the family history of Harvey Gilmer Collard, sixth of the eleven children of
John J. and Mary Elizabeth (Barton) Collard. He was born in Pittsfield July 30, 1853, when his father was serving
his second term as county clerk of Pike county. His father had been the second time elected clerk on the Democratic
ticket in the election of November 2, 1852, defeating his Whig opponent, Austin Barber, by 61 votes. Barber later,
in the election of November 8, 1853, reciprocated when he defeated Collard for re-election by 31 votes. Whig and
Democrat ran neck and neck in the county in those days.
Harvey Gilmer Collard got his name from a long and intimate association that began between the families of Gilmer
and Collard in Kentucky and which continued here in the county seat of Pike county, Illinois. Harvey Gilmer was
named by his father for that distinguished Pittsfield attorney, soldier and friend of Abraham Lincoln, Colonel
Daniel Harvey (Dick) Gilmer, who was an intimate friend of John J. Collard and who held public office at the same
time as did Collard in the old Pike county court house. Daniel Harvey Gilmer was state's attorney of Pike county
at the time Harvey Gilmer Collard was born.
Dick Gilmer and John J. Collard were nearly of the same age and both were born in the same place in Kentucky. Gilmer
was born September 10, 1814, three years before Collard. He came to Pike county in an early day and became a partner
of Milton Hay (uncle of John Hay, the great American diplomat) in the practice of law in Pittsfield. He and Collard
both served in the Civil War, one in an Illinois, the other in a Missouri regiment. Gilmer raised a regiment at
Lincoln's request and became its colonel. He was killed at the Battle of Chickamauga, September 10, 1863. He is
buried in Oakwood (South) cemetery at Pittsfield. In 1844 he had married Miss Louisa M. Quinby of Pittsfield. Six
years after the gallant Colonel's death she was appointed postmistress of the city of Pittsfield, continuing to
exercise the duties of that office until her death, when she was succeeded by her daughter, Miss Lizzie Gilmer.
Dick Gilmer, Whig, was elected state's attorney of Pike county in the election of November 2, 1852, the same election
in which his friend, John J. Collard, Democrat, was elected county clerk the second time. Gilmer in that election
defeated the opposing Democrat, John S. Bailey, by 948 votes.
Harvey Gilmer Collard ran away from home when he was 16 and went to the state of Texas, accompanying Al and Christopher
C. (Matt) Ligon, who went to the Lone Star State on a prospecting trip. Al Ligon later married Harvey Gilmer's
elder sister, Lucretia Collard. The two Ligons later returned home, but young Collard never returned. He became
a permanent settler in Tom Green county in Western Texas. He married there, raised a family of several children,
died and is buried there, on the Concho river.
Harvey Gilmer Collard was for many years in charge of old Fort Concho, reminder of the thrilling days of the Lone
Star State's early history. Fort Choncho was near the present Texas city of San Angelo, where Collard later established
himself with his family and engaged in the mattress manufacturing business. His nephew, Alvin T. Brant, and wife
of Pittsfield visited him and his family in San Angelo some 25 or 30 years ago.
Harvey Gilmer's latter years were spent in blindness. He was blind when the Brants visited him, several years before
his death. Blind though he was, he still conducted his mattress business. He was one of the best-known and best-liked
men in that part of Texas. He had a horse that took him about the city of San Angelo in his blind old age, and
he never had an accident. His mother never saw him again after he ran away from here at the age of 16.
Next in order of birth in County Clerk John J. Collard's family was John Ray Collard, born in Pittsfield June 7,
1855. He became a Pike county school teacher, teaching at Bayville and Sideview and at other places in Pike and
Calhoun counties. He also served as postmaster at Pleasant Hill and as supervisor from Pleasant Hill township,
serving in the latter capacity in 1897 and 1898, succeeding M. F. Godwin and preceding I. D. Webster.
John Ray Collard married Missouri Belle Pearson in Pike county, February 15, 1883, with W. R. Moore of Pleasant
Hill officiating. She was a native of Paynesville, Pike county, Missouri, and a daughter of Albert and Elizabeth
Pearson. She was born at Paynesville November 18, 1857. She is still living in the town of Pleasant Hill, and still
does her own housework. She will be 82 years old on November 18, 1939.
Five children were born to John Ray and Belle (Pearson) Collard, namely: A daughter, born March 26, 1884, died
the same day; Bertha Ora Collard, born at Pleasant Hill, May 24, 1885; Lou Ina Collard, born at Pleasant Hill November
4, 1889; Harvey Ray Collard, born at Pleasant Hill June 9, 1892; and Mary Elizabeth Collard, born at Pleasant Hill
March 16, 1899.
Bertha Ora Collard married Herbert F. Hoover at Pleasant Hill, March 16, 1902, with the Reverend Hugh A. Archard
officiating and Ora Collard and J. H. Brant witnessing. They had five children, namely, Lucille, Hazel Gertrude,
Audrey, Margaret Helen and William Hoover.
Lucille married Reuel Autery at Pittsfield, June 14, 1924, with the Reverend H. E. Keltner officiating, and Pearl
and Martha witnessing. He was a native of Nebo who was then living in East Alton, a son of Frank and Daisy (Roberts)
Autery. They reside at East Alton and have one child, Carol Jane Autery.
Hazel Gertrude Hoover, born at Pleasant Hill June 19, 1905, married Russell Autery, a brother of Reuel. They reside
at East Alton and have two children, Shirley Ann and Jerry Franklin Autery. Russell Autery is a carpenter for the
Shell Oil Company at East Alton and Reule Autery is employed in the shops of an East Alton bus company.
Audrey Hoover, born February 8, 1907, married Truman Fowler of Nebo and they have one child, John Truman Fowler.
Mr. Fowler is a barber in Pleasant Hill. They reside on Main Street in Pleasant Hill.
Margaret Helen Hoover, born at Pleasant Hill August 6, 1913, married Fred Hawkins of Pleasant Hill January 7, 1934,
which the Reverend Homer R. Brown of Pittsfield officiating and Truman and Audrey Fowler witnessing. He was born
near Denver, Colorado, a son of Frank and Rosa Fowler. They reside on Main Street in Pleasant Hill and have one
child, Sheila Kay Hawkins, born April 23, 1938. Mr. Hawkins is employed by the Panhandle Pipe Line Company at the
booster plant on the Pleasant Hill-Atlas road.
William Hoover, latest born of the Hoover children, is attending school in Pleasant Hill and lives with his father,
Herbert F. Hoover. Herbert Hoover is a son of the late William Hoover and Mary (Wiedman) Hoover. William H. Hoover
and Mary A. Wiedman were married by the Reverend Frank H. Lewis January 6, 1881.
Three of the Hoover daughters, Lucille, Hazel and Audrey, were school teachers, maintaining the teaching tradition
established by their grandfather, John J. Collard.
Bertha Ora (Collard) Hoover died March 7, 1934 and is buried in Crescent Heights cemetery.
Lou Ina Collard, second of the children of John Ray Collard and Missouri Belle Pearson, married Charles Arthur
Hobbs at Pittsfield October 4, 1906, with County Judge Barney T. Bradburn officiating and Evans Scott and O. D.
Gicker as official witnesses.
Charles Arthur Hobbs was a son of George M. and Emma (Parks) Hobbs, who were married in Pike county by the Reverend
James F. Wells, January 4, 1883. He was a grandson of James Hector and Jane Clark Hobbs, natives of Indiana who
settled in Spring Creek township and were married in this county March 19, 1857.
These Hobbses were kinsmen of those other Hobbses of north Pike county whose story has already been related, they
including Solomon, Nicholas, David and William Hobbs, and Nancy Hobbs who married Jacob Sneed Vertrees and became
the grandmother of Miss Lillia Vertrees and former Mayor Herbert H. Vertrees of Pittsfield. Mrs. Dot Dorsey Swan,
publisher of The Pike County Republican, is descended from this same line through David Hobbs. These north Pike
Hobbses were children of Hinson Hobbs, Jr., and his wife, Sarah Shipman. This Hinson Hobbs, born in 1771, was the
founder of the first Baptist church in Louisville.
The south Pike county Hobbses, ancestors of Charles Arthur Hobbs, were descended from Joseph Hobbs who was a brother
of Hinson Hobbs II and a son of Hinson Hobbs I, who with old Jacob Van Meter, Samuel Haycraft, Sr. and Captain
John Vertrees (great great grandfather of the Pittsfield Vertreeses), settled Haycraft's Fort on or near the site
of present Elizabethtown, Kentucky, in the time of the Revolution.
Joseph Hobbs, brother of the second Hinson, married Nancy Hughes and they had a daughter, Nancy H. Hobbs, who married
William Logan, son of Irish Hugh Logan, who at 14 had difficulty with his father in Ireland and ran away to sea,
remaining at sea for three years and finally landing in America, at Philadelphia, whence he made his way to Kentucky
when Daniel Boone was settling that region. There, in the land of Boone, he married Rebecca Bryan, who had been
raised by her aunt, Rebecca Bryan Boone, wife of Daniel. Their children were William, Alexander, Hugh, Jr., Henry
(called "Boss" on the old Missouri border) and Mary A. Logan. Of these, the eldest, William, married
Nancy Hobbs and with his wife and one child behind him on horseback came to Missouri in 1820. In Missouri they
had eleven more children. He died in 1852. His widow, Nancy, lived to a great age, on Teuque Prairie, in Montgomery
county, Missouri. In her 81st year she still had the wedding dress in which she married William Logan, a dress
of homespun cloth, striped with copperas.
This branch of the Hobbs family was further related to a number of others who play a part in this history. Rachel
Hobbs, a sister of the second Hinson and of Joseph, married William Thurman and their first child was Isaac Thurman,
who married Lydia (Cannon) Collard, widow of John Collard who was killed on the Missouri border in 1818 when his
team ran away with a wagon, he being the father of John J. Collard and the great grandfather of Lou Ina Collard
who married Charles Arthur Hobbs.
William Thurman and Rachel Hobbs also had a son, Elijah Thurman, their second child, born in Mason county, Kentucky,
August 18, 1806, who became another pioneer of Missouri, to which he came in 1830, when he was 24. His brother
Isaac had come to what is now Lincoln county, Missouri, about ten years earlier. Elijah settled in Warren county,
where he followed his trade of cooper and sawyer. On March 10, 1833 he married Matilda Logan, daughter of William
Logan and Nancy Hobbs, and their children were Mary Pauline (who died in girlhood), Margie Ann, Elijah F. (who
died in Price's Army in the Civil War), Sophronia, Emeline Elmira, Geirge R., Amariah and Perry Felix Thurman.
Charles Arthur Hobbs and Lou Ina Collard had four children, namely, Kenneth Glenn, Leo Duane, Ralph Arthur and
Charles Everett Hobbs.
Kenneth Glenn Hobbs married Elizabeth Marie Moyer and they have three children, Donna Rosalie, Mary Louise and
Glenna June. The eldest, Donna Rosalie, was born February 16, 1930. Mary Louise was born April 28, 1933, and Glenna
June, October 14, 1936. The family resides on a farm in the Mississippi bottom below Pleasant Hill.
Leo Duane Hobbs, second of Arthur and Lou Ina Hobbs' children, was born April 18, 1910. He married Minnie Opal
Moyer and they have three living children, namely: Kathleen, born January 14, 1932; Donald Duane, born December
1, 1933; and Jerry Dean, born June 7, 1937. Peggy Shirlene, born May 13, 1930, is deceased. The family lives in
the north part of Pleasant Hill.
Ralph Arthur Hobbs, third of Arthur Hobbs' children, was born at Pleasant Hill April 12, 1912. He married Alice
Blackston, a native of Calhoun county and daughter of William and Martha (Tolbert) Blackston. They have two children,
Jackie Lee, born December 7, 1935, and Jimmy Dale, born August 12, 1938. The family address is Rockport, Pike county,
Illinois.
Charles Everett Hobbs, fourth and last of the children of Charles Arthur and Lou Ina (Collard) Hobbs, was born
at Pleasant Hill January 14, 1915, according to the birth record at the court house (December 12, 1915, according
to the family record). He married Marie Burge of Kampsville, a daughter of Frank and Mae (Reed) Burge. They were
married May 14, 1934 and have one child, George Lavon Hobbs, born at Kampsville October 31, 1937. They reside west
of the Barton & Lemmon elevator at Pleasant Hill.
Lou Ina (Collaed) Hobbs died in Missouri Baptist hospital in St. Louis in 1920 and is buried in Crescent Heights
cemetery, Pleasant Hill. Her husband, Charles Arthur Hobbs, born in 1886, is living and has twice remarried. His
second wife was Mrs. Lulu F. Lane, a daughter of Nathan and Florine (Reeves) Sutton, whom he married July 5, 1923
and by whom there was one child Lyda C. Hobbs, born May 13, 1924. Mrs. Hobbs died November 13, 1924, and he then
married Verlie Maude Thomas, by whom there are two sons, Arthur Thomas, born August 11, 1926, and Larry Terrence,
born January 4, 1936. Mr. and Mrs. Hobbs live about two and a half miles south of Pleasant Hill.
Harvey Ray Collard, third of the children of John Ray and Belle (Pearson) Collard, married Mabel Iva Snyder, June
27, 1911. They were married in Pittsfield with Squire C. W. Patterson officiating. She was a native of Kellerville,
Illinois, a daughter of John and Emma (Gray) Snyder.
Harvey Ray and Mabel (Snyder) Collard have 11 children, namely: Marie Bernice, born at Pleasant Hill, April 12,
1912, married Mitchell Newkirk of Quincy, at Quincy, December 30, 1937, resides at Quincy; John Raymond, born at
Pleasant Hill, November 16, 1913, married Ethel Roller of Davenport, Iowa, December 27, 1937, lives near Pleasant
Hill, had one son, Harvey Ray, who died July 12, 1939, and is buried in Crescent Heights, Pleasant Hill; Ruby Mae,
born May 2, 1916, married Walter Mueller May 1, 1936, resides at St. James, Missouri, has one child, Virginia Sue
Mueller; Allyne Louise, born January 7, 1919 according to the family record, February 7, 1919, according to the
birth record at the court house, employed in Pleasant Hill; Virginia Lee, born August 19, 1920; Guy cecil, born
March 28, 1922; Carl Lynn, born May 24, 1923; Harriett Louana, born May 3, 1925; Paul William, born August 25,
1926; Harvey Gene, born May 29, 1928; and James Myrl, born March 22, 1931.
The Ray Collard family lives deep in the Mississippi bottom, about five and a half miles southwest of Pleasant
Hill, in the Sny Ecarte country. The home, on the brink of a lake and about a quarter mile from the Sny, is far
from any charter road. To reach the house you drive along the edges of wheat and corn fields, along the brinks
of sloughs and bayous, through tall prairie grass and alongside picturesque woodlands and willowed slopes, crossing
on narrow dumps the inland lakes and tributaries of the Sny. The home is on the Charles Endorf land in lower Ross
township and is in Prairie Mound school district, where Fannie G. Smith is teacher. The Collard children attend
this school.
Fifth and last of the children of John Ray Collard and Missouri Belle Pearson was Mary Elizabeth Collard, who married
Byron L. Windsor of Pleasant Hill on January 31, 1917, with the Reverend A. R. Grummon officiating, and Minnie
Windsor and Belle Collard, mothers of the contracting parties, as witnesses. Byron Windsor was born near Pittsfield,
a son of John and Minnie (Ator) Windsor, who once lived on the present James McGinley farm southwest of Pittsfield,
has been for many years a blacksmith at Pleasant Hill. He has a shop on Main Street in that town and his residence
is on the same street.
Byron Windsor was a drug clerk at the time of his marriage to Mary Elizabeth Collard. He now operates a drug store
at Mackinaw, Illinois, where he and his wife have lived for nearly 20 years. They have three children, Glenn, Donald
and Patricia Ann Windsor, all in school. Another child, Johnny, died when 9 years old.
John Ray Collard died January 16, 1899. His widow, Belle Collard, as before stated, is still living in Pleasant
Hill, aged 81.