John was born in Scott County KY (we believe) to Samuel LeFors & Margery Montgomery on 9/7/1813. When he was 18 his parents moved to Morgan County, Illinois. Two years later they and several other families moved south to Dade County, Missouri.

About 1838 John married Martha Jane Inglish whose family lived in Cedar County, Missouri. The Inglish's later moved to Hopkins County TX as one of John & Martha's sons stayed with "Grandma Inglish" a while in 1870 at Sulfur Springs.

The children of this marriage were: Campbell 1839, Letitia Ann 1843, James Madison 1844, Thomas Henry 1845, Samuel Bender 1847, Mary Ellen 1849, Hettie C. 1853, Martha Jane (Jeany) 1855, Sarah Elizabeth 1857, ? daughter 1861, John Singleton 1865.

About 1850, two or three years after his father had some of his younger brothers had left for Texas (perhaps to Hopkins County), John moved his family to Benton County where they farmed and raised some livestock, probably near Bloomfield, a town which disappeared after Gentry was established on the newly built railroad. Three or four years afterward his father died in Texas and his mother and his younger brothers joined him in Benton County, Arkansas.

Martha Jane tells of their flight back to Missouri during the Civil War after their home was raided by bushwhackers. This happened the same day she had given birth to a baby, the baby did not live. The family was divided on their support for the Union and Confederate Forces. John supported the Union as did one of his sons; two other sons were Confederates.

It appears that John spent the rest of his life in Benton County. John is buried at the Bozarth Cemetery near Gentry. When he died in 1874, his son Ben (Samuel Bender) went back to Arkansas, settled his father's estate, and took his mother to his home in Wise County, Texas, where she died in the home of a daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Hunt, in Poolville in neighboring Park County. Most of John's children had settled in Wise and Parker Counties.

Only one of John's children died in childhood. Eight of them married and raised families of their own.