JOSEPH DONOVAN
Page 166

The Donovan brothers are natives of Champaign county, Ohio, and it was there the parents lived and died. An acquaintance with these five brothers gives to the stranger who reads human nature a more exalted idea of the attributes of our common humanity. Joseph, who is more especially the subject of this sketch, was born at the place above named, in 1825, came west in 1848, and located on the east side of Mason county, and engaged in farming, and the five brothers have, to the present time, operated quite largely in that most important industry, and with great financial success. Three of the brothers are married and two remain single. All have operated together in unison for these thirty years. When these brothers transferred their large interests from Champaign county, Ohio, to the more favored agricultural region of Mason county, an aged mother resided at the old home. One or more of the sons remained in the east during her lifetime, and at her death all became permanent residents of the new western home. To record here what partial friends and neighbors have said to us of these gentlemen, would partake too much of flattery for these pages, on which we propose to record only facts in the lives of the subjects of whom we write, but when the acts of men's lives flatter them, then it is history, and their own lives, and not pen pictures given by the writer; hence, by their affability and honorable, upright lives, they have placed encomiums on themselves.

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