E.T. BAIL. Among the most active and useful citizens of Sullivan are a class of men who now are able to employ their energies more directly in the line of public improvements than they could in the days when they were more heavily burdened with work. These are the retired farmers who having gained wealth and insured their last days in comfort and competence, have withdrawn from active work and given themselves and their faithful companions the luxury of rest and ease in their declining days.

Mr. Bail, whose name appears at the head of this sketch left his farm in East Nelson Township in 1890. To that tract of land he had come in 1852 and thence he grew to manhood, married and began farming. He now owns three hundred and sixty acres of as fine land as is to be found in Moultrie County and it is all under cultivation. He placed upon it a fine set of farm buildings and has made it his home from that day until he retired from service.

Our subject was born in Pike County, Ohio, November 19, 1842, his father being Joseph Bail, a native of Virginia, and son of a Welshman who died in the Old Dominion. Joseph was still quite a young man when he came to Ohio and was married in Pike County to Miss Elizabeth Divens, a native of Pennsylvania of Dutch stock. She had come when a child with her parents to Ohio and there grew to womanhood. In 1852 the Bail family came to Illinois traveling by team and wagon and comping out on the road. They were some four weeks on the way, and reaching East Nelson Township took up a farm there. It was on this farm they made their home and there Joseph Bail died in November, 1864, having reached the age of seventy-one years. He was a Republican in his political views and Methodist Episcopal in his church connections. His bereaved widow who is now eighty-eight years old, is yet as efficient as many ladies at sixty and makes her home with her son, our subject. She is a great reader, very intelligent and active and an earnest and conscientious Christian, being still counted as one of the pillars in the Methodist Episcopal Church.

E.T. Bail is one of his mother's thirteen children who lived to be grown, and eight are yet living. All through hsi early and mature years he devoted himself untiringly and persistently to his labors as a farmer. He was married to Miss Elizabeth Wiley, who was born near Leroy, McLean County, Ill., July 12, 1848. She is a daughter of Thomas and Margaret (Brean) Wiley who were born of Protestant stock in the North of Ireland. They were married in their native island and came soon afterward to the United States, settling in Vermillion County, Ill., before coming to McLean County and afterward, in 1849 to Moultrie County. There they took and improved a new farm and there lived and died. Mr. Wiley passed away at the age of seventy years and his wife was taken from him when she was only forty years old. They were Protestants in their religion as are all of that sturdy class who come from the North of Ireland.

The children who have come to Mr. and Mrs. Bail are Albert S., who died when a little child; Anthony L., who is soon to be admitted to the bar and who was educated in the law school at Valparaiso, Ind. and at DePauw University, Greencastle, Ind. He is a hard student and is fitting himself liberally for success in his profession. The next is Florence, who is the wife of J.D. Goddard, a farmer in East Nelson Township, and Lulu L., who is at home. Both Mr. Bail and his son are earnest and ardent Republicans in their political views and it is their aim to stand by the party which stood by the administration during the Civil War.

Portrait and Biographical Record of Shelby and Moultrie Counties, 1891 - p. 233/234

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