John H. HOWARD was born in Monroe County, in 1849, and reared on the farm until twenty-four years of age. He then married Dicey, daughter of Boyd McMURRAY, and a native of Blount County. They have one son and four daughters. He located on his present farm of 1,200 acres in 1873, and devotes most of his attention to stock growing. His grandfather, George HOWARD, was born, reared and married in South Carolina, and about 1818 came to Blount County, and located on Nine Mile Creek, where he farmed and also operated a tan yard until his death.
Walter W., the father, was born in North Carolina in 1814, and lived with his parents until thirty-five years of age. He then married Martha HARDIN, also a native of North Carolina, and settled in Monroe County, across the Little Tennessee. After about ten or twelve years he returned to where he was reared, and after the war moved to Bradley County. In 1877 he went to Polk County, his present home. The mother died in 1866, and the father afterward married Minerva SMITH, who still lives. Of four sons and one daughter by the first marriage, three brothers survive.
Source: Goodspeed Publishing Co. History of Tennessee from the Earliest Time to the Present: Together with an Historical and a Biographical Sketch of from Twenty-Five to Thirty Counties of East Tennessee. Chicago: Goodspeed, 1887.