Craton Ervin
One of the youngest soldiers of Fayette county, Ohio, to offer his life for the service of his country at the opening of the Civil War was Craton Ervin, now a prosperous farmer of Jefferson township. He did not enter the service as some did from motives of sport or frolic, but, with a boy's enthusiasm, enlisted because he felt that his country was in danger. Although he was only sixteen years of age, yet his heart beat with all the ardor of a man many years his senior, and his three years at the front were filled with more harrowing experiences than he has ever gone through with since that time. From his earliest years he had been taught to hate slavery and to do all that he could to blot it from this country's escutcheon. Coming back from the war. he started in to farm and gradually accumulated a fine farm of two hundred acres, on which he is now living.
Craton Ervin, the son of David and Susannah (Ballard) Ervin, was born October 26, 1845, in Madison county, Ohio. The Ervin family came from Scotland to this country and located in South Carolina, where David Ervin was born. As a young man David Ervin came to Fayette county, where he married and reared a family of eight children, John, Louisa, Isabella, Mary, Craton, Abi, Cynthia and William S. Three of these children, John, Isabella and Abi, are deceased.
The father of Craton Ervin died when he was a mere lad of six years, consequently he lost that fatherly guidance which every boy has the right to expect. He was reared among strangers and for some years lived with a man in Fayette county by the name of John Bloomer. The fact that he was brought up among strangers may account for the fact that when the Civil War opened he at once volunteered his services for the defense of his country.
Mr. Ervin enlisted on December 12, 1861, in Company C, Seventy-fourth Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry, and his regiment, under the command of Colonel Moody, was attached to the Army of the Cumberland. He fought in many of the bloodiest engagements of that memorable struggle. At or near Kingston, Georgia, while driving a commissary wagon, he was run over and had his thigh broken. He was kept in hospitals in different places until he was finally discharged at Chicago, December 15, 1864. He arrived home on Christmas day of that year, after spending three years at the front and nearly sacrificing his life in defense of his nation's honor. He is a loyal member of Janes Post, Grand Army of the Republic, at Jeffersonville, and is always deeply interested in everything which pertains to the welfare of the old veterans.
After the war Mr. Ervin began to rent land and farmed in this way for several years. In 1889 he purchased one hundred and twenty acres in Jefferson township and has since added eighty acres more, giving him a fine farm of two hundred acres, three miles from Jeffersonville.
Mr. Ervin was married in 1873 to Nancy Hutchinson, the daughter of Isaac and Jane (Engle) Hutchinson, who were both born arid reared in Virginia and were early settlers in Logan county, this state, later locating in Fayette county, where they reared a family of five children, Phoebe, Jane, James P., Isaac, and Nancy, the wife of Mr. Ervin. Phoebe, the oldest child of the family, is deceased, as is Mrs. Ervin.
Mr. Ervin and wife reared a family of six children : Nettie, who is married and has one daughter, Morna; Otis, who married Ida Gray and has two children.Forrest and Eunice; Edith, single; Clarence, married and lives at St. Joe. Missouri; Ralph, who married Bessie Fultz; Addie. who is married and has one son, C. E.
Politically, Mr. Ervin has long been affiliated with the Republican party, hut has never had any aspirations along official lines. He has devoted his whole career to his agricultural pursuits and with a success which classes him among the best farmers of his county. Religiously, he is a faithful and consistent member of the Christian church, in whose welfare he is interested and to whose support he is a generous contributor. Mr. Ervin is highly respected, and his long career in this county has been markedly free from all blame or censure.
From History of Fayette County Ohio - Her People, Industries and Institutions by Frank M. Allen (1914, R. F. Bowen & Company, Inc.)