His father was Nathaniel Bailey. His parents were married in They had six children of whom our subject was the fourth. He resided in Delaware until the year , when his father came to Scioto county and died there in the year His mother survived until March 8, when she died at the age of seventy-three.
The first location made by Nathaniel Bailey was two miles north of Portsmouth, near the toll gate. The family traveled from Delaware in a covered wagon to Brownsville, Pa. His father was a carpenter. Mastin and Joseph Micklethwait. As Cornelius grew up, he followed farming and worked for his uncle John Beauchamp until he arrived at the age of sixteen, when he went to farming on his own account.
He attended the schools of the vicinity until he was seventeen years of age. He was the main support of his mother and her family after the death of his father.
It was after his father's death that he went to his uncle, John Beauchamp, and he resided with him for about ten years. In , he returned to Scioto county where he resided until , when he went back to Pike county, and spent the remainder of his life. February 3, , he was married to Eliza Guthrey, a granddaughter of Col. John Guthrey, who came from Pennsylvania, and located on a tract of land now partially covered by Piketon, and lying south of it, extending more than a mile, and including what is known as the Vanmeter farm.
Bailey had born to him seven children. His eldest son, John 0. Cynthia Ellen married Rev. Wilder H. Middleton, who now resides on the old Bailey homestead, in the out-skirts of Piketon.
