USA > Iowa > Muscatine County > History of Muscatine County, Iowa, from the earliest settlements to the present time, Volume II > Part 31
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Hannah, the fourth child of Stephen and Ruth Mosher, was born in Morrow county, Ohio, July 5, 1835, and on the 16th of December, 1855, married James S. Barclay, a farmer and carpenter. Their children were: Kate, born March 4, 1857, married George S. Nichols, a farmer, the ceremony being celebrated on the 3d of March, 1880. Their children were: Archie, who died in infancy ; Edith, who married Jesse James, a farmer, on the 25th of September, 1907, and Edna and Harry. Marcus M., born January 28, 1861, married Lizzie Hull of Missouri, where they now live on a farm; their children are James Neil and Ella. Winfred J., born October 30, 1871, married Myrtle Propst on the 31st of January, 1906. They live on a farm and have one daughter, Blanch, born June 9, 1907. James S. Barclay died March 16, 1896, while his wife, Hannah (Mosher) Barclay, passed away December 8, 1904.
Ruth, the next in order of birth, was born in Morrow county, Ohio, De- cember 1, 1837. She was married December 9, 1858, to Matthias Wilson, a carpenter, farmer and soldier. Their children were: Harvey L., born December, 1860, who was a carpenter and farmer by occupation. He married Mary J. Tay- lor of Andes, New York, January 11, 1906, and they are now residing on a farmi near Elliott, Iowa, but are preparing to go to Idaho to make their home. Elsy, born September 3, 1862, died March 19, 1885. Lizzie, born in 1866, married Ernest Eggleston, an electrician of Salida, Colorado. They now live near Post Falls, Idaho, and their children are Anna Virginia and Clarence. John Henry, born in February, 1868, married Jennie Griswold, of Columbus Junction, Iowa. He has been a farmer, carpenter, electrician and is now engaged in the real- estate business in Colorado. Edward Grant, born in 1872, is a farmer and car- penter. He was married on the 9th of February, 1893, to Annie Van Tuyle of Nichols, Iowa, and their children are Mary Elsy, Orpha Ruth, Edith Clea, Fran- cis Marion and Adrian Matthias. Esther, born in 1879, married George Ander- son, a farmer and merchant, and their children are Everett Lee and Raymond. Carl, born in 1880, died on the 13th of December, 1894. Wilbur M., who was
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born in 1881, was married on the 28th of June, 1905. to Teresa Stewart and their daughter, Grace, was born October 15, 1907. He is a graduate of West Liberty high school, of the mechanical engineering department of the Iowa State Col- lege and also took a post-graduate course at Cornell University, New York. He is now in business in Chicago.
Mary S., the seventh in the family of Stephen and Ruth Mosher, was born in Morrow county, Ohio, on the 7th of October, 1842. She was married on the 12th of March, 1868, to Blackburn Vore, a widower, who engaged in farm- ing and blacksmithing in Fredericktown, Ohio. Their children were: Amanda E., born April 23, 1869, died June 5, 1877; Joseph B., born September 5, 1871, died June 3, 1872; Henry M., born November 23, 1873, married Anna Miles of West Branch, Iowa, and their children are: Edwin, deceased; Esther and Bertha. He followed farming, carpentering, mail-carrying and preaching, and they are now on a farm near Amistad, New Mexico. Edward L., born February 14, 1878, died on the 25th of September of that year. The father, Blackburn Vore, passed away in 1893.
Esther Ann, the eighth in order of birth, was born in Morrow county, Ohio, March 15, 1845, and on the 4th of January, 1872, was married to Wellington K. Eggleston, a widower of Boulder, Colorado. They began housekeeping in Fre- mont county, Colorado, living in a covered wagon while erecting a house of poles scarce six feet in height and roofed with poles and earth. It was in the midst of a vast mountain wilderness, with but one habitation in many miles and that one a bachelor's. There they lived the first year, clearing and fitting the land for cropping. He was away some of the time working at his profession of dentistry in the distant towns and villages, while she remained on the ranch alone save for the companionship of a three-year-old boy, the son of Wellington K. Eggleston by a former marriage. They had seven children: Elsy, born Feb- ruary 6, 1873, married Louis Freeman, a rancher of Howard, Colorado, by whom she had six children : Elmer L., Arthur W., Howard M., Pearl, Orvil and Floyd J. Wallace L., born May 11, 1874, married on the ist of August, 1906, Eleanor Briggs of Pasadena, California, and their children are Solon W. and Alwin H. They now make their home in Monrovia, California, and he is in business in Los Angeles as an architectural draftsman. Myra, born June I, 1876, married John M. Nelson of Longmont, Colorado, and they now reside in Ouray, where he is in the mercantile business. They have one child, John N. Effie, born January 31, 1878, married W. E. Gardner of Bozeman, Colorado, and their children are: a son, now deceased; Alice; and Theodore. They make their home on a large ranch near Center, Colorado, and Mr. Gardner is a member of the lower house of the state legislature. Alwin, born July 5, 1888, is now a resident of Pasadena, California.
Bethiah Elsy, another daughter of Stephen Mosher, was born in Morrow county, Ohio, August 11, 1850. She was married to A. D. Sinclair, of Musca- tine, Iowa, on the 6th of February, 1873, and their only child, Olive, born in December, 1873, died on the ist of May, 1874. The mother, Bethiah (Mosher) Sinclair, passed away in Fremont county, Colorado, June 2, 1874. The six daughters of Stephen and Ruth Mosher were all school teachers, following that occupation to the time of their marriage.
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Henry. the second son of the family of Stephen Mosher, was born in Mor- row county, Ohio. March 27. 1840. He came to Iowa with his parents in t853 and remained at home till his marriage to Henrietta D. Gibson, March 28, 1861. They began housekeeping on a part of his father's farm in Cedar county, where they remained one year. then moved to another farm farther away in Cedar county, remaining there for a time. after which they returned to his parental estate and occupied either the Cedar or Muscatine county part of the parental acres till their removal to West Liberty in 1903. He received only the common- school education of those days, which meant only about three months' attend- ance after his twelfth year. The schools were never less than two miles away and one term it was three miles that he had to walk night and morning. During the war of the rebellion he drilled with the Home Guards. Politically he has always been a republican with minor variations in late years. For some years after their marriage he and his wife held to the tenets of the church of their parents. but later they joined the Baptist church at Downey. Iowa. and still later transferred their membership to the Disciples of Christ church in West Liberty. He held several offices of trust. was for many years an active member of the school board, was township assessor for several years and held still other offices of importance. Their children are: Walter G., born January 11. 1862. in Cedar county. Iowa, married Bertha Birkett on the 19th of January, 1887. and followed farming for several years, when they came to West Liberty, where he found employment in the undertaking and furniture business and is now in the mer- cantile business but in another line. They have six children: Clark. Clayton, Elsy. Donald. Irwin and Kenneth. Charles E. was born January 26. 1856, in Cedar county, and on the 20th of December, 1888. was married to Edith Birkett. He followed farming for a time and then came to West Liberty, where he is now in the real estate and insurance business. His children are Bessie. Benja- min, Leslie, Gladys, Ruth and Burton. Henry Remington, born May 6, 1869. died February 9. 1886. Mary L., born in Muscatine county on the 23d of Janu- ary, 1874. was married on the 28th of June. 1894, to Frank Myers of Center- dale, Iowa. and they settled on a farm in Cedar county. Their children are Har- old, Glen, Kenneth. Waldo and Vernon. Of this number Kenneth is now de- ceased. Frank J. Myers died December 10. 1909. Mrs. Myers bought the Stephen Mosher farm, known as Edgewood. in October of 1910. and will occupy it in the year 1911. Frederick E. was born in Muscatine county April 14. 1876, and on the 16th of January, 1901, married Mary Holloway of West Liberty. They now live on a farm near Anthony, Kansas, and have two children. Earn- estine and Mary Henrietta. Bessie, born May 19. 1881, died in March, 1883.
The wife of Henry Mosher. Henrietta D. (Gibson) Mosher, traces her lin- eage on her father's side to early days in American annals. They were a numer- ous family as early as the first census of the American colonies which was taken in 1790. Her father, Joseph M. Gibson, went from Maryland to Ohio and later to Iowa. where he settled on a farm on the southern edge of Cedar county, but later moved over into Muscatine county. He was living in Cedar county at the time John Brown was passing back and forth across Iowa, when he was making his incursions into Kansas and Missouri and he-John Brown-stopped for a time at the home of the Gibsons. He also had the honor of taking by the hand
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General La Fayette at Fredericktown, Maryland, when the general was on his memorable visit to this country in 1824. On her maternal side Mrs. Mosher is of the sixth generation from Mary Dyer, of historic fame, who for "preaching a heresy"-she was a minister in the Quaker church-was ordered "to depart from the jurisdiction of the colony of Massachusetts on pain of death." She was a disciple of and co-worker with Anne Hutchinson and shared her exile. She obeyed the mandate of the court, but in October of the same year returned to offer up her life. a martyr to her convictions. She with some others was ar- rested and cast into prison. They were arraigned and tried under a law that banished Quakers under pain of death. With three others she was found guilty. The others were executed but she was reprieved at the earnest solicitation of her son on condition that she leave the colony within forty-eight hours. Against her will she was conveyed out of the colony but at the first opportunity returned, was again arrested, tried and convicted of the crime of "rebellious sedition and obtruding herself after banishment, under pain of death." She was executed by hanging on Boston Commons, June 1, 1660.
Lemuel O. Moshier, son of Stephen and Ruth Mosher, was born in Morrow county, Ohio, April 28, 1847. At the age of six years he came with his father's family to Iowa. His youthful days were passed in the country schools and on the farm, when not roaming over the prairies and through the woods lying con- tiguous to his parents' home. He finished his scholastic career by eleven months' attendance at private and graded schools at West Branch, Iowa, under the tute- lage of those eminent educators, Joel and Hannah Bean. Leaving school, he re- turned for a few months to the home of his childhood in Ohio and then came back to Iowa, where he conducted his father's farm for a number of years. He was married to Lidorana D. White of Iron Hill, Iowa, September 29, 1870. They began housekeeping in a part of his father's house, where they resided two years, then moved over the line into Cedar county, where they remained two years, then moved to Fremont county, Colorado, where they tried true pioneer- ing. In the valley where they located there were but two families within six miles. It was eight miles to a postoffice, thirty-five miles to a trading point and forty-three miles to a railroad and telegraph. Bears, mountain lions, coyotes and deer were their commonest neighbors. For about two years they struggled with the privations of pioneering. It was a wild. free life, besought with many pri- vations and dangers but had much of compensation in the pure, invigorating atmosphere and the grandeur of the rugged mountain scenery. For nearly two years they strove to overcome the adverse conditions that environed them. In the summer of their first year there the grasshopper scourge literally rained down from the heavens upon them until the country was eaten bare of vegetation by the marauding hosts. Again the next year the scourge was repeated, when they gave up the struggle and returned to the home in Iowa they had left. There they remained for another two years, when they again took up their abode at the parental home, which they eventually purchased, and there remained until their removal to West Liberty in the autumn of 1910.
To Lemuel and Lidorana Mosher were born six children. Harold, born May 30, 1872, died the same day. Laurence H., born November 22. 1873, died June 10, 1877. Henry L., born in Fremont county, Colorado, March 21. 1875.
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married Ella M. Waters of Downey, Iowa, on the 24th of November, 1897. Their children are: Lysle C., born in Muscatine county, August 9, 1898; and Beulah, born in Cedar county October 16, 1904. Henry L. Mosher received a common-school education and has followed farming all his life. Bethiah L., born March 24, 1877, died March 31, 1880. Arthur T., born April 17, 1880, followed farming and carpentering when not in school. He graduated from the West Liberty high school and entered Iowa State College in the electrical engi- neering department, but his health failing, he went to Paonia, Colorado, where he died February 12, 1906. Martin L. was born in Muscatine county April 12, 1882. He attended the country school until he graduated, then took the high school course at West Liberty, graduating with the class of 1902. He also took a full four years' course at Iowa State College in the agronomy department, graduating in 1905 with the honors of his class. He married Elva K. Forman of Ames, Iowa, also a graduate of the Iowa State College, in the domestic science department. They were married December 29, 1908, and at once went to Mex- ico, where he was employed on the hacienda of Louis Gorozpe. On his gradua- tion he at once found employment in the college work and with the exception of about two years passed in the state of Vera Cruz, Mexico, on the hacienda of Lic Luis Gorozpe, an extensive landowner, where he was called to teach the modern American methods of agriculture, he has been in the extension depart- ment of the college, now filling the place of director of the farms crops ex- tension department. Martin L. and Elva K. Mosher have one child, Arthur Theodore, born October 4, 1910.
Lemuel O. Mosher and his wife have been members of the Methodist Protest- ant church for forty years. He was for several years superintendent of the Linn Grove Sunday school, was for twenty years a member of the school board, serving as director, treasurer and secretary. He held the office of township trus- tee for eight years and was township assessor. Politically he has voted for every republican president since attaining his majority, but farther than that has wielded a free lance, deeming at times measures of more importance than men and at other times the men more important than party measures.
The wife of Lemuel O. Mosher, Lidorana D. White, is of a long line of American ancestry, as history records that William White, an Irishman, came to America with the Pilgrims in 1620. But the real founder of the family in America was a William White, who came to this country from England in 1688. He is supposed to be a nephew of the William White first mentioned. He was one of the founders of the town of Salisbury. Connecticut. This family were also tillers of the soil, just plain common people, like the immortal Lincoln designated as the "loved of the Lord or he would not have made so many of them." On her maternal side her great-grandfather, Giles Wing, served in the American army in the Revolution as a general. Her grandfather, Peter White, Sr .. lived to the age of ninety-four years. He was the father of eighteen chil- dren, all by one wife. Lidorana had five brothers, four of whom served in the army during the rebellion, entering as privates. One was discharged for dis- ability, one came home a sergeant and one a lieutenant, while the other served to the end of the war as a private.
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Of the more recent generations of this prolific family, there has been a widening of occupations, for there are now found among them mechanics, law- yers, doctors, politicians, ministers, professors, teachers and merchants in many lines of commerce. Of the descendants of Sephen Mosher, there are now living three generations, aggregating eighty-three members who are dwelling in eight states, namely: Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Cali- fornia, and Idaho. At the time of the settlement of the Mosher family in Mus- catine county the country was generally settled up along the streams and bodies of timber, but the prairies stretched away in illimitable distance to the north and west, with but few breaks in its vastness. His farm joined that of the first permanent settler on the Wapsinonoc creek and was chosen for the reason of the vast prairie adjoining it on the north, and he was sure that it would not in his time be claimed by settlers, so he would always have a free range for his stock. But he lived to enjoy many years of life, after all that vast plain became a developed agricultural region, thickly dotted over with the habitations of a prosperous people. At the time of his settlement there, game was abundant. There were dcer in large numbers and turkeys were not uncommon, while quail and prairie chickens were present in countless numbers. In their migrations ducks, geese and other water fowl filled every slough and bayou. The ducks bred here to quite an extent. Wolves were also plentiful, and one panther at least was slain in the adjacent timber. One constant menace of the farmers of those early days was the prairie fire. The luxurious grasses of hill and valley when ripened was a source of constant danger for, lighted sometimes by the lightning's flash, sometimes by the carelessness of a settler or hunter, and some- times maliciously, the fire would sweep over vast tracts and woe betide the fences, stacks of hay and grain and sometimes the buildings of the inhabitants. The nearest trading point of importance was Muscatine, twenty miles away, where could be found a market for the grain and meat of the farmer, and when reached the pay was not only very low but most often part or all in merchandise. It was a long day's haul there and back, and if loading both ways consumed the greater part of two days. But with the advent of the M. & M. Railroad in 1856, which passed in plain view and but a half mile from the Mosher home, all this was changed as it opened near markets and made it possible to reach centers of population farther away. Where the railroad passed the nearest to the Mosher farm there was a wide wet slough through which the railroad ran on an eight- foot grade. One winter the trains stopped there daily for the engine's supply of water, dipping it up from the ditch at the side of the track in buckets and passing it up the steep bank to the engine by a line made up of the train's crew. When Stephen Mosher first came to Iowa in the autumn of 1852 he traveled down the Ohio river to Cairo and up the Mississippi to Muscatine and by stage from there to his destination at West Liberty, then a village in name only as a tavern and postoffice was about all there was of it. At that time there was no railroad across Illinois, so he shipped his goods by water by way of Cairo.
On reaching the Mississippi opposite Muscatine that day in May, 1853, their cavalcade, which consisted of eight teams and twenty-six people representing three families, were faced with the condition that to cross the broad river there was but one ferryboat, and that a little contrivance propelled by two blind horses Vol. II-16
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which created the motive force by endlessly trying to reach the top of a tread power, thus turning the paddle wheels of the boat. The boat would accommo- date but two or at most three teams, so it required three trips to ferry the com- pany over, and much time was consumed, but the passage was made in safety by all except one of the young men of the company. Two of the young men were ambitious to be the first to set foot on Iowa soil, so they took passage on the boat on its first trip across and as it neared the Iowa shore stood ready to leap to land as soon as the boat came near enough to the shore. One of them succeeded; but the other, miscalculating the distance, landed waist deep in the water. That night the company reached the home of Nehiimiah Chase, a Friend who had come to the state several years before. They remained there a few days, when Stephen Mosher made a deal with Clark Lewis for his farm and its growing crops. The house on this farm was a one-story building, about twenty- two by thirty feet in size, including a porch. In this house the Moshers, eleven in number including Isaac Schooley, who had driven a team for them from Ohio, took up their abode, while the Lewis family, four in number, still occupied a part of it, but the Lewises soon moved out. They then proceeded to erect a more commodious dwelling. The frame of this house was of native timber, some hewn and some sawed, and the finishing of pine hauled by team from Mus- catine. They also erected a barn the same season. It was a busy, laborious season and to add to its discomforts, several of the family were sick with the ague, a common ailment with newcomers while becoming acclimated. One day the baby of the family, a little girl of three years, was having her daily "shake" when she called to her mother, saying: "Mother, don't my tongue rattle?" The family, as was the custom with many others, manufactured much of the cloth for bedding and clothing in their home and, in the new house erected in 1853, was a spinning and weaving room where the hum of the wheel and the bang of the loom were heard on many days of the year. It was not altogether neces- sity that impelled them to these laborious tasks, but a part was their strong con- victions against the use of "slave labor," hence they discarded the use of cotton as much as possible and used flax, home grown and home dressed, in its stead. There are yet in the family treasured heirlooms of fine linen cloth spun and woven by the mother eighty years ago. The same reasons led them to the use of maple instead of cane sugar and for several years they had maple sugar shipped to them from their old neighborhood in Ohio. But with the introduction of sorghum-and by the way, it was Horace Greeley who introduced sorghum to this section, by sending small packages of its seeds to subscribers to the Tribune, and extolling its value-that it took the place of sugar as far as was practical, until with the liberation of the slaves the objection to the use of cotton and cane sugar ceased. The first attempts to obtain syrup from the sorghum cane were, to say the least, pathetic. By stripping the ripened cane of its hard outer cov- ering the juice was found to be very sweet and pleasant, but ways to express the cane were wanting. They tried cutting the canes into short pieces, then boiling the pieces and thus getting a very small per cent of the juices. Then the older son of the household tried his mechanical genius on a small hand mill, but it was too weak to crush the joints of the stalks, so they crushed them with hammers and thus secured very small quantities of the imprisoned sweets which,
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boiled to a syrup, became as nectar to their childish taste. But these ways were not practical, and eventually horse mills with huge wooden rollers turned by long sweeps were constructed. When operated they gave forth a shuddering wail that could be heard for many miles. These were followed by cast iron mills that solved the problem for the profitable manufacture of sorghum. But event- ually all these tribulations of pioneer life passed and the modern era came, and the Mosher family are now enjoying advantages handed down to them by the pioneer labors of a long line of American ancestry.
HENRY MOSHER.
Henry Mosher, a highly esteemed citizen now living retired at West Liberty in the enjoyment of a rest which he earned by many years of patient applica- tion as a farmer, was born near Mount Gilead, Morrow county, Ohio, March 27, 1840, a son of Stephen and Ruth (Smith) Mosher. The father was born in Washington county, New York, in 1806, and removed to Ohio with his parents when he was twelve years of age, continuing there until 1853, when he came to Iowa, locating in Wapsinonoc township, Muscatine county. Here he was promi- nently identified with agricultural interests for nearly forty years, departing this life in 1891. Politically he was first an adherent of the whig party, but later changed his views and became a stanch republican. In Ohio he was in charge of a station of the underground railway and assisted many slaves in escaping to Canada. Religiously he adhered to the faith of the Quakers, and as he was a man of high principle, he exerted by his example a very beneficial effect upon the community. The progenitors of the family in this country came from Eng- land in the early colonial days. A most complete record of the Mosher family appears in the sketch of T. O. Mosher, a brother of our subject. The mother was born in Dutchess county, New York, and was married to Mr. Mosher in Ohio. She passed away in 1896 and her remains are buried in the Friends ceme- tery near West Liberty. There were ten children in the family: Elizabeth, Lem- uel, Elizabeth II, Hannah and Elsie, all of whom are deceased; Ruth, now the wife of Mathias Wilson of West Liberty; Henry, the subject of this review; Mary, the widow of Blackburn Vore of Amistad, New Mexico; Esther, now Mrs. W. K. Egeleston of Howard, Colorado; and L. O., of West Liberty.
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