Henry Bly, born July 9, 1827, in Chenango County, New York, serves as Superintendent of the County Hospital and Poor Farm in South Dixon Township, Illinois. Of English descent, he is the son of Thomas R. Bly and Nancy Tanner. In 1845, Henry moved to Ogle County, Illinois, and later ventured to California during the Gold Rush, returning in 1851. A prominent public figure and Republican, he settled in Ashton, Illinois, in 1865, managing a grocery and meat market, and served on the Lee County Board of Supervisors for 21 years. In 1887, Henry became Superintendent of the County Hospital and Poor Farm, enhancing its reputation. He was married to Anna J. Wood, with whom he had five surviving children. Anna, a native of Canada, supported his work and was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Henry Bly, Superintendent of the County Hospital and Poor Farm, located on section 26, South Dixon Township, is an intelligent, progressive, and humane official, and a man of marked ability who has long been prominently known in public life and as a successful business man, whose record is without a blemish.
Mr. Bly is a native of Chenango County, N.Y., and was born July 9, 1827. His father, Thomas R. Bly, was a native of Rhode Island, and a son of Job Bly, who was also born in that State, and was of English descent. It is supposed that he spent his last years in Oneida County, N.Y., where he had been engaged as a farmer. He was twice married. His son, Thomas, early became a mechanic, having much natural ability in that line, and was married in his native State after he attained manhood, to Miss Nancy Tanner, a native of Connecticut, and of good New England stock. After marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Bly removed to Richmond, Va., where he followed the trade of a carpenter. They subsequently retraced their steps northward and settled in Chenango County, N.Y., where most, if not all, of their children were born and reared. The father died there when about sixty years of age, and the mother afterward came to Illinois to spend her declining years, and died in Ogle County at the age of seventy years.
Henry Bly, of this life review, was not of age when he came to this State in 1845, but attained his majority some three years later in Ogle County, where he first settled in the Township of Nashua, but he afterward made his mark as a pioneer of Northern Illinois. Five years later he went out from that township to join the great caravan that was streaming across the continent to the newly discovered gold fields of California, attaching himself to a party with whom he traveled across the plains and over the mountains to the Pacific slope, journeying over the South Pass by the Sublette cut-off route, and finally arriving at Hangtown after a trip lasting five and one-half months, from February 28 to August 17. After staying for a while at their first stopping place, our subject proceeded to the valley of the American River, and later on in the spring of 1851 went up the Sacramento River to Scott River in Oregon with others, but before reaching their destination he and his companions found gold at what is now known as Shasta. At that place, Mr. Bly mined nearly all the precious mineral that he obtained while in the Golden State during the fifteen months that he remained there. There he had full experience of the rough life of a frontier mining camp. Excitement ran high, and he witnessed the magic growth of the town from a lonely, desolate spot to a village of a thousand souls in thirty days. Well satisfied with his experiences as a miner and frontiersman, Mr. Bly resolved to return to more civilized regions, and in the fall of 1851, on the 10th day of November, he left San Francisco for an ocean voyage to New York by the way of the Isthmus of Panama, and some months later was reunited to his family in Illinois.
After returning to this part of the country, Mr. Bly continued to live in Ogle County for several years and was actively identified with its business and public interests. In the fall of 1865, he came to Lee County and took up his residence in the city of Ashton, where he soon made his influence felt as a man of affairs, far-seeing and enterprising in business, and a promoter of all plans likely to advance the growth of the city. For several years he conducted a grocery, to which he afterward added a market for the sale of meat. He was one of the leaders in the public and political life of his community, the Republican party, to which he has belonged since its organization, finding in him one of its most effective workers and steadfast champions in this section of the State.
For twenty-one years, he was a member of the Lee County Board of Supervisors and was Chairman of the Board for some time. He was elected to the position of Justice of the Peace, having had several years’ experience in that line while a resident of Ogle County. When he accepted his present position, he resigned that office and his membership on the School Board of Ashton, with which he had been connected for years.
In 1887, Mr. Bly was honored by being selected to be Superintendent of the County Hospital and Poor Farm of Lee County, as it was conceded on all sides by men of all parties that he was the man most competent to fill the onerous office, and he assumed the duties of his new position in the month of September. Mr. Bly has thrown his whole soul into the work here, devoting his time and energies to the efficient and conscientious discharge of his duties. He met with the State Board of Charities that convened in Chicago in November 1888, and has at all times made a careful study of the systems used in conducting such institutions, and has brought the one under his charge to such a high standard that it has a reputation of being one of the best-managed in the State. The hospital is a good-sized building, very well equipped, and is kept nearly filled with insane patients, there being but comparatively few sane paupers here, as the county paupers are for the most part cared for outside of the county. The farm embraces one hundred acres of tillable land, is supplied with good buildings, and improvements are constantly being made in that line and in the way of adorning the grounds with trees and shrubbery under the supervision of our subject.
Mr. Bly and Miss Anna J. Wood were united in marriage in Ogle County. She is much interested in her husband’s work, and he finds in her a wise, discreet, and able coadjutor. She is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and her daily life shows her to be a consistent Christian. Her marriage with our subject has brought them seven children, of whom two are dead, Charles W. and Almeron, who were smothered to death in a grain bin at Ashton when sixteen years old. The surviving children are Egford, an attorney at DeLand, Fla., who married Miss Samantha Sproul; Minnie, wife of P.O. Sproul, a teacher and editor at DeLand; Lela, wife of Perry Burdick (they being with her parents on the poor farm); Grant, who married Miss Emma Boerner, and is connected with the Star newspaper office at Dixon; and Ertie, at home with her parents.
Mrs. Bly was born in Prescott, Canada, March 7, 1830, the eldest of a family of eleven children, one son and ten daughters, of whom four are yet living. Her parents, Anasa and Lourietta (Nettleton) Wood, were natives of Canada and were respectively of English and Irish descent. Mrs. Bly was only eight years old when they left their Canadian home to establish another in the wilds of Ogle County, coming hither in 1838, and making the entire journey with teams. They were among the early settlers of Light House Point, where Mr. Wood secured a tract of Government land, which he began
Mrs. Bly was born in Prescott, Canada, March 7, 1830, the eldest of a family of eleven children, one son and ten daughters, of whom four are yet living. Her parents, Anasa and Lourietta (Nettleton) Wood, were natives of Canada, and were respectively of English and Irish descent. Mrs. Bly was only eight years old when they left their Canadian home to establish another in the wilds of Ogle County, coming hither in 1838, and making the entire journey with teams. They were among the early settlers of Light House Point, where Mr. Wood secured a tract of Government land, which he began to turn into a farm. He worked hard and was doing well, when death terminated his career in 1846. He was laid to rest in the Light House Cemetery, his body being the first to be buried there. He won for himself an honorable place among the pioneers of Ogle County, and was valued for his good citizenship. His wife survived him until the summer of 1885, when she died at the age of seventy-five at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Addie Tarbox, at Olive, Iowa, and she now lies sleeping her last sleep by the side of her husband in the quiet of the peaceful cemetery at Light House Point. Both were for many years connected with the Methodist Episcopal Church, and Mr. Wood served it long and honorably as Class-Leader.