Richard Edwards (1803) came from Kentucky and was an inhabitant of Buckles Grove before the 1830s. In 1831 he took out a license to retail liquor on Front Street near Main Street. He served as the fourth sheriff in McLean County (1842 – 1844). At one point he was working in Leroy, because it was noted that he took over Esek Greenman’s shop in 1844 and did business there for several years. In the 1850 census his occupation, and his son Hesekiah’s, was given as shoe or bootmaker. During the Blackhawk War, he was a second lieutenant of the third company.

 

              Richard Edwards died sometime before 1854. In 1854 his widow married William Walker. By 1860 Martha was widowed again and living with her married daughter Amelia and son in law as well as her youngest daughter Ida. In 1870 Amelia was dead and Martha was living with her son, son in law and granddaughters in Kansas. Another daughter, Juliet, married at age 15 in McLean County and was dead at age 23 in DeWitt County. Hesekiah served with the 94th Ill. Inf. during the civil war and died of gangrene in the veteran’s hospital in Danville in 1909. None of them survived in McLean County.