G. RILEY HUFFMAN. Although not a native of Illinois, this prominent
merchant and influential and progressive citizen of Carbondale has been a
resident of Jackson county ever since he reached the age of nineteen, a
period of twenty-six years. He is therefore well acquainted and closely in
touch with its people, and fully in sympathy with their public spirit and
all their industrial, mercantile and commercial aspirations, as well as with
the highest and best expression of their social life.
Mr. Huffman is
a native of Virginia, having been born in Wythe county, in the Old Dominion,
on July 25, 1866. He is a son of Joseph D. and Sophia (Brown) Huffman,
extensive planters in that county before the Civil war, and still engaged in
tilling the soil there and giving an agreeable example of the rural life of
that portion of the country. They were great sufferers from the waste and
prostration of all business occasioned by the war, and during the boyhood
and early youth of their son Riley its wounds, material and commercial as
well as in the persons of its soldiers during the conflict, were still
painfully visible.
He worked with his father on the old plantation
until he was nineteen years of age and in the meantime attended the public
school in the neighborhood of his home when he could be spared from labor.
At the age mentioned he became dissatisfied with the prospects before him in
a state so cruelly desolated by sectional strife, and determined to seek
more favorable conditions in one of the newer and more progressive
commonwealths of the great and growing West, where the noise of enterprise
was loud and every stroke of human energy brought immediate and gratifying
returns.
Accordingly he bade farewell to the scenes and associations
of his boyhood, and came courageously to Jackson county, Illinois,
expatriating himself from home and friends to make his bed with strangers
and work out his destiny among them. He hired himself to a farmer in the
county, and for a year or two worked as a farm hand during the busy seasons
and attended school during the winter months. His pay was meager and his
progress toward independence and consequence among men, the goal of his
ambition, was slow. But he was frugal and prudent, and in time accumulated
enough money to pay his way through a course at Dixon College in Dixon, Lee
county, this state, which prepared him for usefulness more in accordance
with his tastes and ardent aspirations.
After leaving college he
taught school four years in Jackson county, then clerked in a grocery store
in Murphysboro for a time. He became enamored of the business and bought the
store and good will of his employer, and this he conducted successfully and
profitably for twelve years. At the end of that period he came to Carbondale
and bought a grocery store, having disposed of the one he had in
Murphysboro. In 1904 he purchased a furniture and undertaking establishment
and formed the Huffman Furniture Company, of which he is the president and
general manager, and has been from the organization of the company. This
company carries on an extensive and active trade in furniture and does
funeral directing in the most scientific and artistic manner. It has a high
reputation for the excellence of its output in the mercantile line, and is
universally commended for the elevated character of its work in burying the
dead. Mr. Huffman gives^ every detail of the business his vigilant personal
supervision, and leaves nothing undone to secure the best results in every
department and feature of it. He also owns farms in the county and
supervises the cultivation of them.
He was married on December 26,
1895, to Miss Maggie Will, of this county, a daughter of George and Arab
(Bouscher) Will, who live on and cultivate one of the county's well improved
and highly developed farms, which they have made it since they became its
owners and took charge of its management. Mr. and Mrs. Huffman have six
children, Bernice, Nyle, Otis, Ana, and their twin son and daughter, Paul
and Pauline. All of them are living and members of the parental family
circle. The parents are devoted and serviceable members of the Christian
church, and the father is one of the deacons of his congregation.
Mr. Huffman has taken a decided and fruitful interest in the fraternal life
of his community, working zealously for the good of his several lodges, and
giving them the full benefit of his intelligence and enterprise. He is a
Knight of Pythias, with the rank of past chancellor; an Odd Fellow, with the
rank of past grand; a trustee of the local lodge of the Order of Elks, and a
Modern Woodman of America. He has served as a member of the school board
eight years, and was a member of the city council when the new form of
municipal government was put in operation.
Extracted 15 Jan 2018 by Norma Hass from 1912 A History of Southern Illinois, volume 2, pages 721-722.