Linson Beard, deceased, late of Cascade township, Kent county, Mich., was born in Monroe, Fairfield county, Conn., December 25, 1832, a son of Linson and Anna Beard, and died in Cascade township April 30, 1891. Linson Beard, the subject of this sketch, and an elder brother, Edgar, came to Kent County, Mich., about the year 1845, and bought a farm of more than 160 acres in the wilds of Cascade township, the greater part of which was cleared by Linson, as his brother Edgar was a very popular Methodist minister and but seldom lived on the place, his ministerial duties necessitating his presence elsewhere, and his death occurring at Centerville, Mich., March 4, 1875. He had retained thirty acres of the farm, but this share was later sold to the father, who had come to Cascade after the two brothers had settled here, and opened a shoe shop in Cascade village, where his death took place November 4, 1883, at the age of eighty years, his wife having died January 24, 1877, both in the faith of the Methodist church. For years, while still a young man, Linson had clerked in Grand Rapids, and in that city first married, in 1856, Miss Mary A. Fisk, who died January 13, 1866, the mother of one child, Ella, now the wife of a Mr. Sutton, a traveling salesman of Grand Rapids. The second marriage of Mr. Beard took place November 18, 1867, at Manlius, Onondaga county, N. Y., Sarah Jane Niles, a native of that town, and this union was crowned by the birth of two children, viz: Nettie B., who died in childhood, and Gertie May, who is now the wife of Cornelius Koetsier, and the mother of one child, Linson. After marriage, Mr. Beard settled permanently on his farm and made extensive improvements, in accordance with his second wife’s views, she being a lady of rare taste and judgment, and the farm being in an almost wild state when they came to make it their home, and lived some years thereafter in the old log house. The dwelling is a comfortable structure, surrounded by an expanded lawn, adorned with many handsome evergreens, which are kept neatly trimmed, and in this delightful abode his widow makes her home. In politics Mr. Beard was a republican, and at the call to arms, at the outbreak of the war of the rebellion, he enlisted in company C. First Michigan engineers, but after a few months' service, was honorably discharged on account of disability. His health remained impaired for many years, finally culminating in  heart trouble, which was the cause of his untimely and lamented death. He was a  devout Methodist, a class leader, and for four years superintendent of the Sunday-school attached to his church in Cascade. He was well read in the Bible  and general literature, and, like his wife, was possessed of exquisite taste.  Both were charter members of the Cascade grange, and both were a unit in their  religious faith. Mrs. Beard still conducts the farm most successfully, aided by  her son-in law, and the family enjoy the unstinted esteem of all their  neighbors.