Amos Winters was born around 1793 in Vermont. He served in the War of 1812. He eventually moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, and he taught school in the nearby countryside. He married Mary Ann Pine, and they had at least eight children: Hiram, born around 1822; Francis, born around 1826; Amos, born around 1829; Benjamin, born around 1831; Lucretia, born around 1835; Mary, born around 1837; Erastus, born on August 8, 1843; and Phoebe, born around 1846. They lived in Millcreek, Ohio, and Winters worked as a farmer. By 1860, he owned $30 of personal property.

 

His son Erastus later recalled that he was “a warm friend of the colored race, and considered slavery a great evil.” He was a staunch Republian, and he voted for Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and 1864. His son Erastus later recalled that he was “a warm friend of the colored race, and considered slavery a great evil.” His wife died in the 1860s, and by 1870, he was living in his son Francis’s household in Florence, Kentucky. A decade later, he was living in his daughter Mary’s household in Burlington, Kentucky. As his son recalled, he “worked hard all his life on the farm, [but] he never succeeded in laying up anything for a rainy day, so he was still a poor man in his old age.” He died sometime after June 1880.

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