Note: There's a lot of information on John that seems to be told by his daughter Martha Jane. It's wonderfully written and full of stories and anecdotes. Her bio. isn't included as it doesn't appear that she ever lived in Clay County.

     John Lowry Epperson, son of James Harvey and Martha Jane Osborn Epperson, was born in Lafayette, Indiana, November 6, 1834. He married Sarah Catherine Rine, daughter of Isaac and Mary Bair Rine, at the brides home, December 11, 1856. It was so cold and stormy the minister could not come; but James Harvey Epperson, the groom's father and a Justice of the Peace, performed the ceremony. Sarah Catherine had moved with her parents, Isaac and Mary Rine, from Spring Run, Franklin County, Pennsylvania, to Illinois, when she was eleven years old. Isaac's father, who could speak no English, because he used only his native tongue in Franklin County, Pennsylvania, came with them. 
    John Lowry had moved with his parents when he was six, from Indiana to Marshall, Illinois. The next year the family went to Iowa, where his mother died. Going to Wisconsin and later to Kentucky, John and his father finally returned to a farm in New Salem Township, in 1851. Six years after John's marriage he enlisted on the Second Call and served in the Unions Army in Company L, 7th Illinois Cavalry to the close of the war, when he was honorably discharged. He taught five years in Fulton County, moved to Adair, Illinois, in 1870, and to Fairfield, {Clay County} Nebraska, in February, 1880. He lived on a farm four years, and then moved to Fairfield, where he lived until his death in 1910. Sarah Catherine died three years before, on August 10, 1907. Their children were Martha Jane, Charles Harvey, and Ambrose Clarence. 
    John Lowry Epperson is a good example of what can be accomplished by a man when a thorough determination to succeed in any calling is coupled with energy, perseverance, and close application in the direction he takes. After the war he was in the employ of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy railroad until 1879 when he moved to Clay County, Nebraska. He was a Mason, and a member of the Grand Army of the Republic, a man universally esteemed, and a legal practitioner of experience and ability.

Transcribed by Darla Stimbert January 2004

Author: Edna Epperson Brinkman: The story of David Epperson & his family of Albemarle County, Virginia : with supplementary notes on the Epperson family in America
Hinsdale, Ill.: E.E. Brinkman, 1933, 320  pgs. (part of pages 185-186)