Thomas S. LYONS, a well known farmer and landowner of Pike township, living on rural mail route No. 8 out of Portland, is a native son of Jay county and has resided here all his life save for some years during the period of his young manhood when he made his home in the West. Mr. LYONS was born in a log cabin on the farm on which he is now living on October 23, 1859, and is a son of Thomas and Amanda (TEMPLEMAN) LYONS, who were pioneers in that section of the county. The elder Thomas LYONS was born in Columbiana county, Ohio, where he grew to manhood trained in the ways of farming. As a young man he came over into Indiana and entered from the Government a tract of eighty acres of land in Pike township, built a log cabin for a home and settled down to clear the tract and make a farm out of it. That log cabin is still standing and is being preserved as a valuable relic of pioneer days. On that place this pioneer spent the remainder of his life. He was a good farmer and in time increased his land holdings to 312 acres and was long recognized as one of the substantial farmers of that neighborhood. He and his wife were the parents of ten children, of whom seven are still living, the subject of this sketch having three sisters, Susan, Amanda and Sarah, and three brothers, John, Joseph and Jack LYONS. Reared on the home farm in Pike township, Thomas S. LYONS received his schooling in the schools of that neighborhood and remained at home until he was twenty years of age' when he went to Kansas and bought an eighty-acre farm, which he began to develop. He married at the age of twenty-four and established his home on that Kansas farm. For twelve years Mr. LYONS made his home in Kansas and then he moved down into the Cherokee Strip, where he began farming and where he remained for two years, at the end of which he disposed of his interests there and returned to Jay county and bought ninety-two acres of his father's place and settled down here. Since taking possession of this latter place Mr. LYONS has erected new buildings and otherwise improved the farm and he and his family are comfortably situated. It was on December 25, 1883, that Thomas S. LYONS was united in marriage to Emeline KRICHBAUM, who was born in Wabash county, Indiana, daughter of Jacob and Melvina KRICHBAUM, and to this union two children have been born. Ollie and Dennis M., both of whom are married. Ollie LYONS has been twice married and by her first husband, James H. RUPE, has two children, Chloe and Willis, who are making their home with their grandparents, Mr. and Mrs. LYONS. By her second husband, Clarence HOTMIRE, of this county, she has one child, a daughter, May. Dennis M. LYONS married Beulah COOK, of Adams county, this state. and has two children, Doris L. and Florence C