JOSEPH H. NORRIS                    GRAVESTONE PHOTO                      

South Kansas Tribune, Wednesday, May 29, 1913, Pg. 4:

 

            Joseph H. Norris, born in Grant county, Wis., Oct. 19, 1841, died at his home in Independence, May 26, 1913.  His mother died when he was 10 years old and in 1854 his father with the motherless children moved to Boone county, Ind., where Joseph grew to manhood.  He was left a cripple for life from the effect of while swelling in the hip.  When the civil war came he could not enlist, but he did go out first with the Tenth and later with the Eighty-sixth Indiana Volunteers as a cook and was with the boys at Perryville.  He was a student in Asbury, now DuPaw University and later taught school in Indiana and Kansas, and in the days of spelling matches he was the last on the floor with Superintendent Nees.  In 1876 he moved to Kansas and bought a farm in Drum Creek, close to his only sister, the late Mrs. P. S. Moore, who had been a mother to him as later to his motherless childhood.  In the Alliance days he was elected to the legislature and later district clerk.  In 1906 he moved here to be near his sister, who then lived in this city.  He was well known over the country as a straight forward, upright citizen.  He is survived by his daughters Sarah, who lives at home, Mrs. Kate Hiatt, and son Joe of this city.  He was taken ill Thursday night at the Grand Army campfire with a severe hemorrhage and others followed resulting in his death.  Funeral Thursday at the home, 216 South First, at 2 p.m., at which Rev. C. H. Jones will officiate.  Interment in Mount Hope cemetery.

Contributed by Mrs. Maryann Johnson a Civil war researcher and a volunteer in the Kansas Room of the Independence Public Library, Independence, Kansas.