In the book's own words, not ours, with obvious scanning errors fixed. Families often supplied these stories to the publisher, so check key dates.
Born 1869
From An illustrated history of Jackson County, Minnesota (1910)
OTIS M. ASHLEY (1870), proprietor of a transfer line in Jackson, has been a resident of that village from the time when he was less than one year old. He is the son of the late Benjamin W. and Juliet (Eobbins) Ashley, pioneer settlers of.Jackson. While his mother, who had come to.Jackson county several years before, was visiting at her old home in Mainesburg, Pennsylvania, on the eighteenth day of November, 1869, Otis M. Ashley was born.
The spring following his birth he was brought to the home in Jackson county. Otis was educated in the.Jackson public schools and grew to manhood in that village. At the age of twenty years he went to Duluth and for one year worked in a meat market. Returning to Jackson, he worked one year in an elevator and then for two years drove the mail and passenger bus for his father. At the end of that time he bought the bus line and has ever since conducted it. In addition to this business he clerked in the hotel several years during the time his father was the proprietor. For a number of years he was also the proprietor of a livery stable, but sold out in 1903.
;Mr. Ashley was married February 28, 1907, to Stella May Crane, a native of Iowa, and a daughter of the late V. B. Crane, at one time publisher of the Jackson County Pilot and later postmaster of Jackson.
As printed in An illustrated history of Jackson County, Minnesota (1910). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.
The printed record stops around 1910. We trace your line from there down to you, with every source cited.