from Warren County, Kentucky – Biographies

John J. Adair, son of William and Rebecca (Hearald) Adair, is the third of three boys and two girls, and was born November 25, 1817.  His parents were natives of Virginia, and in 1817 immigrated to Warren County, Kentucky, with seventeen other families, headed by John Penner, who took up 1,700 acres of land on which they all settled.  Mrs. Rebecca Adair was a daughter of John Hearald, who married a Miss Honaker, and came to Kentucky from Virginia in 1817.  When yet a children, John J. Adair’s parents died, and he with his brothers and sisters were reared by their maternal grandparents, who died when John J. was fifteen years old; he then went to live with his maternal uncle.  At eighteen he commenced flat-floating to New Orleans – made seventeen trips in all, and accomplished the fastest trip ever made in a flat boat.  In October, 1843, he married Margaret Holman, of Warren County, a daughter of Robert and Jane (Hicks) Holman, natives of Virginia and of German origin.  By this marriage five children were born – two now living:  Sarah J. Keown and Lillie E. Almond.  For seventeen years Mr. Adair had charge of the poor of the county, after which he conducted a mill three years.  In the fall of 1869 he located six miles north of Bowling Green, where he now resides on 362 acres of good land, which he has acquired and improved by his own industry.  He is a member of the Masonic fraternity, politically a Democrat, but cast his first presidential vote for Harrison.  He and wife are members of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church.