The Hyphen Family Lineage

[Article "William L. Duckwall" from The Centennial History of Grant County, Indiana, pp985-986.]

William L. Duckwall. One of the most active and successful among the farming men and live stock dealers of Van Buren in Grant county, may be mentioned William L. Duckwall, who operates a fine farm of one hundred and sixty acres in Section 31. He was for a number of years prior to his farming activities, successfully engaged in the mercantile business, but in 1904 sold his interests therein and has since devoted himself exclusively to a rural existence, which he finds more attractive and quite as absorbing.

Born on August 28, 1863 on a Van Buren township farm, William L. Duckwall is the son of Joseph F. Duckwall, who was born in 1834, and who still resides on his farm with his son, L. C. Duckwall. He was born in Highland county, Ohio, and is the son of John Duckwall, a native Virginian, who came to Grant county in 1838, when Joseph Duckwall was four years old. Here the elder Duckwall was reared from childhood, and here he has passed his life and reared his own family, consisting of three sons and a daughter—William L., of this review; John L., a farmer and stockman; L. C. Duckwall, a farmer; and Mary the wife of John W. Cloud of Van Buren.

When John Duckwall, the paternal grandfather of the subject, came to Indiana and to Van Buren township, it was a wilderness, pure and simple. Here he entered one hundred and sixty acres of land, and after clearing up a small place, sufficient to build a cabin upon, the family moved on the new place and there continued to reside.
Joseph Duckwall has passed his days on the farm his father settled, and many are the changes that he has seen in the face of the landscape of the long years of development.

William L. Duckwall attended No. 2 District School and divided his time between his studies and the care of the farm at home, in which his father gave him expert training. In 1877, when he was twenty-four years old, he came to Van Buren and here he engaged in the mercantile business with James E. Riley until 1904. They together erected a fine brick building and opera house, into a part of which they moved in March, 1902, and there carried on a thriving mercantile business. The building is one of the fine ones of the place, said to be the most substantial and metropolitan in aspect in the community. In 1904 Mr. Duckwall sold his interest in the business to his partner, since which time he has been engaged in buying and shipping live stock and in farming, to a certain extent. Hogs, cattle and sheep in large numbers are handled annually by Mr. Duckwall and he is said to be one of the heaviest shippers in the community.

In 1885 Mr. Duckwall was married to Miss Clara Smith, a daughter of Henry Smith, of Van Buren township, and they have one child,— Guy, born in 1889, and who is now married to Miss Cecilia Gift, of Jonesboro. One child was born to Guy Duckwall and his wife, whom they have named Mary Jane.