Elisha Grenard 1827

From the Hyten family archive; subject is Elisha Grenard (1827–1883), a 3× great-grandparent of the compiler on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line. This entry covers his Kentucky birth, parentage, marriage to Margaret Ann Davis, his son Joseph Maroni Grenard, his death in Montgomery County, Indiana, and the broader era of westward migration from the Upper South into the Old Northwest during the antebellum decades.

Elisha Grenard (1827–1883) belonged to that generation of Americans whose lives spanned the great westward shift from the Upper South into the prairie counties of the Old Northwest. He was born on the twelfth day of March in 1827, in the state of Kentucky, the son of John Grenard (1799–1867) and Desire Tracy Grenard (1804–1878). His birth fell in the closing years of the early Republic, a period in which Kentucky still bore the character of a frontier state, its hills and bottomlands settled by families pressing westward from Virginia and the Carolinas in search of land and livelihood.

In the course of his life Elisha removed northward into Indiana, joining the broad current of Kentucky-born families who crossed the Ohio River to take up farms in the gentler, fertile counties of central Indiana. By the latter decades of the nineteenth century, Montgomery County had been transformed from heavily timbered wilderness into a settled agricultural district of small towns, country churches, and family farms, and it was there that Elisha would close his days.

Elisha was united in marriage to Margaret Ann Davis, and from this union came a son, Joseph Maroni Grenard (1872–1954), who would carry the Grenard name into the twentieth century and onward through the generations of the compiler's own line. The given name Maroni, bestowed upon the son, is itself a name of religious resonance in the American nineteenth century, suggestive of the broader devotional currents of the age.

Elisha Grenard departed this life on the nineteenth day of December in 1883, in Montgomery County, Indiana, having lived fifty-six years. He was preceded in death by his mother in 1878 and by his father in 1867, and was survived by his wife and son.

Elisha was the compiler's 3× great-grandfather on the paternal-grandfather (PP) line.