John Henry Vannuys was born in Shelby County, Ky., August 16, 1820, being the tenth in a family of fifteen, born to Tunis [sic Teunis] and Catherine (Demaree) Vannuys, and is of Holland-Dutch extraction. His father was a native of Somerset County, New Jersey, born in 1772, and died in Johnson County, Ind. in 1847. His mother was born in Pennsylvania, and died in this county, in 1844. The family came to Johnson County in 1836. The subject of this sketch received a good common school education, having attended school in Kentucky, and afterward, the public schools and Baptist College of Franklin. In the fall of 1847, Mr. Vannuys settled on his present farm, which consists of 175 acres of valuable land. Since 1878, he has been engaged in dairy business, and now has fifty head of jersey cattle, and during the year 1887, sold to the Gault House at Louisville, 6,500 pounds of choice butter. Mr. Vannuys was married April 15, 1840 to Miss Caroline Ditmars, a native of New Jersey, born in 1821, and died in 1872. Of five children born to this union, three are yet living: John D., Charles C. and Mollie Kate. The eldest child, Samuel W., born January 22, 1841, was a soldier in the late war, enlisting in the fall of 1861, Company F, Indiana Volunteer Infantry. He was first made a captain, and at the time of his death, which occurred September 29, 1864, while making a charge at the battle before Richmond, held the rank of assistant adjutant general. He was a true and brave soldier, and a man of rare attainments. The second marriage of Mr. Vannuys occurred in 1874 to Mrs. Nannie E Voris, whose maiden name was Ritchie. Mrs. Vannuys is a native of Jefferson County, Ind., born December 25, 1832. Politically, our subject was formerly a whig, but is now a member of the republican party, and has been a justice of the peace. In 1835 he united with the Presbyterian Church in Kentucky, with which denomination he has since been a leading and consistent member, and since 1872 has been an elder in the church at Hopewell. Mrs. Vannuys is a member of the same church.