Jacob 'Jake' Woodson Trent

Jacob Woodson Trent

Find A Grave Memorial ID # 110114437

Trent was a farmer and stock raiser. When the California gold excitement broke out in 1849, Mr. Trent was only a youth sixteen years of age, but he had the courage and enterprise of a much older head and determined to face the dangers and hardships of a journey across the trackless plains, and over the weird mountain heights to the Pacific coast, toward which the only fingerboards to guide him were the bleaching bones of those who bad perished on the way.

Accordingly, getting ready as soon as he could, in the early part of the following year, May 1, 1850, he started on the trip, and after six months of weary and perilous travel, arrived safely in the land of the adventurous Argonauts.

June 18, 1853, he returned to his old home in Chariton county, not without some success as the reward for his trials and labors in the far West. From digging for gold, he then turned his attention to plowing, and tending to his flocks and herds, with far more comfort and satisfaction, and with scarcely less success.

Three years afterwards, on December 16, 1856, he was married to Miss Ellen Wood, daughter of Judge Benjamin Wood of Grundy County, but formerly one of the pioneer settlers of Chariton County. He continued farming without interruption, until about the last year of the late war, when the condition of affairs became such that to take one side or the other was a necessity and accordingly, he joined Captain Williams company of Colonel D. Williams ' regiment, under General Shelby, and served until the final surrender at Shreveport, Louisiana.

Resuming farming after the close of the war, he has since continued in that pursuit, and now owns 240 acres of good land, and has 160 acres in his home place, — an excellent farm. He is making a specialty of raising fine short born, high grade Durham cattle, and at the head of his herd has one of the finest male representatives of the imported Durham breed in this section of the State. Mrs. Ellen Trent died June 1, 1872.

They had a family of seven children, but three have been taken by death. Those who have crossed the silent river to its unknown and echoless shore, are: Emma, William T., and Walter. Robert, Hattie, Early and Ella, remain to brighten the home of their father. Mr. Trent is a member of the New Hope Baptist church. His father, Alexander Trent, born August 3, 1797, in Virginia, was married in Buckingham county, that State, August 3, 1819, to Miss Polly Hix, who was born April 3, 1803.

On October 15, 1819, they came to Chariton County, Missouri. They had a family of nine children, but only reared four, three sons and a daughter, of whom Jacob Woodson was born October 15, 1834.

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Married Eleanor "Ellen" Wood in 1856

Jacob W. Trent # 110114437.... only the 1st. two children of Alexander L. & Mary "Polly" (Hix) Trent were born in Virginia.... by the time their 3rd. child was born, they had some time between 1819 and his birth in 1823, the young family had moved West to Missouri......so that Chariton County, Missouri was the home birth county of the rest of their children