JAMES GILBERT COVERT.
It is a pleasure to investigate the career of a successful, self-made man. Peculiar honor attaches to that individual who beginning the great struggle of life alone and unaided, gradually overcomes unfavorable environment, removes one by one the obstacles from the pathway of success and by the master strokes of his own force and vitality succeeds in forging his way to the front and winning for himself a competency and a position of esteem and influence among his fellowmen. Such is the record of the popular citizen of Franklin township to a brief synopsis of whose life and character the following pages are devoted.
James Gilbert Covert, who operates a splendid farm of one hundred and eighty-two acres in Franklin township, Johnson county, was born on February 24, 1870, in Hopewell neighborhood, this county, and is a son of A. N. and Susan (Magill) Covert. The father, who was born in this state in 1841, and who now resides near the Hopewell church, was a son of John Covert, a native of Mercer county, Kentucky, and one of the first pioneer settlers in the Hopewell neighborhood, having been one of the first three families there. His wife, who was also born in this state in 1842, was the daughter of Samuel Magill, who first settled as a pioneer in Sullivan county, Indiana, and later came to Johnson county. To A. N. and Susan Covert were born six children, namely: Rev. William Chalmer. who is now pastor of the Forty-first Presbyterian church of Chicago, with a congregation of fifteen hundred persons, is married and has three children, Catherine, Hudson and William Seward; Etta Covert married a Mr. Lockwood, lives near Southport, this state, and they have three children, Helen, Marion and Lenore; James Gilbert, the immediate subject of this sketch; Lena, the wife of Mr. McCaslin, lives on the Hopewell road; Emma, Mrs. Henderson, who lives in the Hopewell neighborhood; Omar, who is a singer of note, with a clear lyric tenor voice, is engaged in concert work, his home being in Valparaiso, Indiana. He is married, but has no children.
The subject of this sketch received his education in the Hopewell high school, where he graduated at the age of twenty-one years with three scholarships. He was reared to the life of a farmer and has never forsaken that vocation. Upon taking up the active affairs of life on his own account he first lived on the old home place, two miles west of the Hopewell church, but in 1896 he came to his present splendid farm in Franklin township, to the cultivation and improvement of which he has since devoted his attention. The farm is splendidly improved and is devoted to the raising of a general line of products, practically all the grain raised on the farm being fed to live stock. Mr. Covert raises on an average of about sixty hogs annually, and also runs a dairy herd of twenty Jersey cows, the product of which he sells to the Whiteland creamery.
Politically, Mr. Covert is a stanch advocate of the policies of the Republican party, to which he has given his lifelong support. Religiously, he was first a member of the Hopewell Presbyterian church, but is now a member of the First Presbyterian church at Franklin, to which he gives his earnest support and has been elder of the same for a period of nine years. His fraternal membership is with the Free and Accepted Masons.
On February 12, 1895, Mr. Covert married Anna Moore Ellis, the daughter of Capt. W. B. Ellis, a veteran of the Civil war, and a member of Company I, Seventy-ninth Regiment Indiana Volunteers. They have one child, Josephine, born December 10, 1896. Because of of the active part Mr. Covert has taken in the upbuilding and progress of the community, he has merited the high esteem in which he is held among his fellow citizens. He has given his support to all movements which have had a tendency to advance the moral, educational or social interests of the people, and among those who know him best he is considered one of the men this section of the county.