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F. E. Clinton, justice and farmer, was born in 1832, in Caldwell County, Ky., the sixth of nine children (three deceased) of John and Sarah (Shelby) Clinton, the former born in 1791, in South Carolina, of Irish stock, and the latter of English lineage, about 1800, in Livingston County, Ky. They were married in the latter county where the father came when a child, and lived in Caldwell and the present Crittenden Counties until their deaths in 1849 and 1855 respectively. He was a farmer. Our subject was educated in the schools at home until twenty-one, when he married Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel and Jane Neal, born in 1826 in Sumner County, Tenn. Their children are John E., living near his father, and six others deceased. He settled on his farm, in 1856 came to Ewing Township, and two years later moved to his present home in Northern Township. Our subject, although physically a feeble man, has secured for himself a farm of ninety acres, well improved and cultivated. For
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sixteen years he has been a justice of the peace. He is a Republican generally, although a freetrader and a prohibitionist in principle. He, and wife and his son and wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In his thirty years residence in southern Illinois, he notices the great progress of the country, and mentions the many personal kindnesses of the people.