Biography - I Covert
I. N. Covert, one of the retired men from active business and a most worthy citizen of Newman, Illinois, was born in Butler county, Pennsylvania, Decemeter 2, 1832. Mr. Covert descended from ancestors who came from Holland in about the year 1685 and settled in eastern Pennyslvania, near Phladelphia. In about 1790 Morris Covert, his grandfather, came to western Pennsylvania and settled in Butler county. He became a large land owner, being able to give each of his twelve children a farm. John Covert, the father of the subject, of this sketch, was one of the steady, substantial farmers of that section. I. N. Covert grew to manhood on his father's farm. After attending the common schools he completed what school education he received at North Sedgwick Academy in Beaver county, Pennsylvania. In the fall of 1859 he came west and located at Newman, Illinois, and taught the Hopkins school, one mile north of Newman, three successive winters before the Civil War and one year after its close. He was married, September 2, 1860, by the Rev. Peter Wallace, of the Methodist church of this place, to Miss S. L. Webster, of Athen, Ohio, having been the first couple married in the church. Mrs. Covert, who was a very worthy woman, was a niece of Mother Stewart, who was known in Ohio as the pioneer temperance crusader. Mr. Covert, in 1862, enlisted in the Seventy-ninth Regiment of Illinois Volunteers, and served honorably in that regiment throughout the war, receiving his discharge in June, 1865. He bought and improved a farm in Edgar county, three and one-half miles south of the city, where he resided from the year 1866 to 1882, when he rented his farm and moved to Newman. In the spring of 1884, he formed a partnership with Scott Burgett and engaged in the banking business, having been the first president of the Newman Bank. Mrs. Covert died August 17, 1887, and in 1888 he found the close confinement of his business injurious to his health and sold his interest to the bank to S. M. Long, deceased, whose sketch is found on another page. Mr. Covert has recently completed one of the most beautiful cottages in Newman. He has been an elder in the Presbyterian church since its organization and is one of the church's most devoted devoted leaders; he is also a Knight Templar in the Masonic fraternity.
Extracted by Linda Lang from the Historical and Biographical Record of Douglas County, Illinois, pages 215-216.
