John Deere built a large company, but that didn't stop him from being home enough to build a heck of a large family as well. He has a whopping nine children with his first wife, Demarius Lamb.
Demarius had her hands full with that many kids to raise, sometimes literally. After John left Vermont and found a suitable home for his family in Illinois, Demarius and their first four children joined him. According to Green Magazine, she traveled by with the children, her brother-in-law, and the family's furniture for hundreds of miles in a wagon. When she arrived at the home in Grand Detour, Demarius handed her husband a new addition: his future business partner Charles, who was born while the couple was apart. Family legend has it that as she held out the baby to him, Demarius said, "Here, John. I carried him all the way from Vermont."
Of course, in a time with high infant mortality, not all of their children lived to adulthood. According to Find a Grave, of the couple's nine children, two died before they reached 2 years old. Francis, as previously mentioned, died unexpectedly at age 19 just after he joined his father's business. And a daughter, Frances, died three years later, aged just 16. However, others in the family were remarkably long-lived, like John and Demarius' eldest daughter Jeannette, who outlived all other members of her immediate family, and was in such robust health that even though she was 86 years old, her obituary said she died "suddenly."
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