I have relatives that left Iowa to take up Nebraska homesteads.
One my great aunts
wrote about coming to Nebraska by covered wagon
to visit her sister and her
husband in their 'soddy' .
My other great aunt married Charles Hill and
came to Nebraska.
My
great uncle Jacob Franklin left Iowa for a homestead in Nebraska, and
stayed.
My
grand father George went and took my dad but lost his first two crops of
wheat and had to return to Iowa, my dad was a few months old when they
left
Iowa.
Mel
Echelberger
Dedicated
To All The Descendants of
J.
D. and Keziah Echelberger
It
has required considerable time and effort upon the part of Ina
Echelberger Williams to fulfill the requests of several relatives
to write this history of the Echelberger Family.
It
has been a pleasant task and the details herein are written
from the inexhaustible well-spring of her childhood memories.
Very
little is known about the Echelbergers prior to George and Jane,
however we do know that his father Jacob and brother Samuel
came to Pennsylvania from Germany some 200 years ago.
The
other members of the family remained in Germany. We may assume
that these brothers, migrated to this country so long ago helped
play a part in the early development of our country.
We
do know that the author's father, Jacob Daniel Echelberger,
fought for his country in the Civil War spending a year in combat,1
enduring hardships and privations known only to those who served.
Her
mother kept the family of nine children together until his discharge.
They were hard working, God-fearing, well respected people
of whom we all may be justly proud.
The
Echelbergers
My
Paternal grandparents were George Echelberger and Jane Echelberger
(nee Mowrey).
Grandpa
George Echelberger was 6 feet tall and weighed 175 pounds, but Grandma
was rather short and
weighted 335 (three hundred thirty-five) pounds. I have a piece
of the cap and shroud in which she was
buried, in 1860. He was German and she was Irish
with red hair.
They
had twelve children: Theodore
Godfrey
Samuel
Jacob
Daniel
(my father)
George
Roseann
Mary
Elizabeth
William
Benjamin
Kate
Frank
Grandma
and Grandpa both died at the age of 57 years.
My
maternal grandparents were Henry and Margaret Slagel. He
was born in 1763 and she in
1773. They were Pennsylvania Dutch,
and the parents of five children: John
Samuel
Mary
Polly
Keziah,
my mother
Grandma
Slagel died in childbirth when she was 45 years old. She
and the baby were buried in the
same
casket.
Grandfather
Slagel lived to be 97 years old. He died in 1860. (Mansfield,Ohio).
My
mother Keziah Slagel was born near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on August
25, 1823. She was only 5 years
old
when her mother died. When she was ten grandfather married
a widow with seven children and they
moved to Mansfield, Ohio. Mother had to work out and earn
a living. She went to school but very
little. She could read but could not write. Schooling
in those days consisted mainly of learning to read the Testament
and the spelling book. School's duration would be only
three or four months per year. To pay tuition the parents
were obligated to take turns boarding the schoolma'am or school
master. Because of the step mother situation my mother didn't
even get the meager schooling of the time
but she became a very religious and intelligent woman nevertheless.
My
father, Jacob Daniel was born in Mansfield, Ohio, October
6, 1829. He was a soldier in the Civil War and was wounded
in battle--one finger was shot off.
Father
and mother were married in Mansfield, February 2, 1848. They
lived there until 1862 when they moved west to Clinton County,
Iowa.
A
group of New York financiers and crooked politicians had formed
The Des Monies River & Navigation Company. They made
a contract with the State of Iowa to make the Des Monies River
navigable
for steamships and barges. In return for this they were
to receive every other section of land six miles back from the
river on both sides--and from Keokuk to Humbolt, at that!
About
the only actual work they ever did on the project was two dams--one
at Keosauqua and the other
at Eddyville. As proof that their contract had been fulfilled
they took advantage of extremely high water
and managed to run a steamboat up the river as far as Fort Dodge.
For this crooked scheme they received thousands and thousands
of acres of rich Iowa land. They cashed in by selling
it all to the Litchfields
of Brooklyn, New York for $1.25 (one dollar twenty-five cents)
per acre.
The
Litchfields then formed The Riverland Company.2
The
government opened for settlement other lands along the Des Monies
river, so after the Civil War was over my parents decided to
take up a river claim in Webster County, Iowa.
They
waited until the fall of 1867 when I was five months old and
moved by covered wagon to a claim three miles south of Homer,
Iowa. They lived there until all the children were
grown up and then moved into Lehigh where
"Pap" could follow the line of work he loved--carpentering
and blacksmithing.
He also made all the burial caskets
used in our surrounding territory. He made them from
black walnut wood. Then he would polish and varnish them
and my sister "Vinnie" and I would line
them with white muslin. The most famous casket "Pap"
ever made was for the remains of Alfred Daniels
of Lehigh, a 500 pound former circus fat man. That casket was
so big it barely fit into a wagon box.
Father
was considered the best horse shoer in Webster County. He
went so far as to make his own shoes and also shod many oxen
in his day.
He
was always interested in politics and served many terms in public
offices such as Constable, Justice of The Peace, and Township
Clerk. In fact, my son Delmege who has been Township Clerk for
many years
uses the very same docket my father used. Incidentally,
Delmege's other grandfather, N. J. Williams used that same docket.
So did Delmege's father John WIlliams.
J.
D.
Echelberger was a large man and proved his prowess many times
by winning fights which usually settled the arguments in those
days. (Lehigh had kind of a tough reputation up till the 1940's).
3
I'll
never forget the occasions when father left for Webster City
to sell the hogs, we kids would yell "Don't forget to bring
us copper-toed shoes." (We got one pair of shoes
each year).
"Pap"
was a good fiddler and was much in demand at the nearby dances.
My
mother was always busy, sewing by hand all of the clothes for
her large family, first spinning then weaving the woolen yarn.
She combined the wool and flax to make what we called
"linsy-woolseys." The
men's work shirts were made of heavy blue and white striped
cloth called "hickory." Their pants were made of jeancloth
in gray or black. All underwear was made of cotton flannel.
She spun the woolen yarn and knit all of our sox, stocking,
and mittens. As a small child I recall sitting with my
mother
in the evenings helping her patch mittens by candlelight.
During
the summer months mother picked and dried wild grapes, wild
plums, apples, rhubarb and pumpkin. She made lots of crabapple
butter, using sorghum as the sweetening agent. She fermented
sorghum to make our vinegar. In the fall she put up barrels
of salt pork, pickles, sauerkraut and the like and we always
had at least one barrel of sorghum.
Father
took the wheat thirty miles to Boone to the flour mill where
it was ground. It took at least two days to "go to the
mill." Yes, we were always prepared to be well fed
during the long, cold winters.
Father
died of Bright's Disease and Diabetes February 28, 1905, aged
75. Mother died March 28, 1908, aged 84, after a stroke
of apoplexy suffered two days previously. My parents are buried
in West
Lawn cemetery at Lehigh.
In
the Jacob Daniel Echelberger family there were nine of us children
that grew to manhood and womanhood. Also one child Benjamin
who died from burns when a year old and a pair of stillborn
twins,
a boy and a girl.
The
children who reached maturity were; George the eldest,
Roseann
"Rose"
Henry
Slagel "Hence"
Jacob
Franklin "Frank"
William
Leroy "Bill"
Edwin
Lincoln "Link"
Charley
Fay
Carrie
Lovina "Vinnie"
Ina
-- I was the youngest
George
born March 20, 1849 married Julia Ann Ross. Their family
was six in number:
Benjamin
"Ben", Solomon (my father told me that his middle
name was Stephen)
Alice
(Van Valkenburg)
George
D. "By-Daddy"
Andrew
"Andy" F.
Jennie
(Crouse)
Harley
When Ben
was a baby George and Julia took him and went to Nebraska to
homestead. They drove a team of cows all the way. It
took them a month. They stayed two years, losing both
crops to the grasshoppers.
My father sent them money to come home on. Alice
was born while they lived in Nebraska.
Julia
died of cancer (buried in Homer Iowa Cemetery) of the breast and some
time later George married Mrs. Clara Hays. George suffered
many years in later life from a huge goiter but he seldom complained.
He died
of pneumonia on March 14, 1925. (buried in Homer Iowa Cemetery)
Roseann,
born July 7, 1851, married Charles Hill, an Englishman. To
them were born fifteen children. Seven of them proved to be
left-handed like their mother. (her nephew Ben S. was
also left-handed) The
children were: Ellen Ethel Keziah "Nellie" (Anthony)
Charles
Hill inherited the then magnificent sum of $1500 and so, with
their first two children, went by covered wagon to a homestead
in Nebraska. They settled near York and lived in the wagon
box six weeks
before the dugout was ready. It was a cave like structure.
One time, while they were still living in
the dugout, Rose found a rattlesnake in bed with "Bud"
the baby.
Charles
and Rose also took out a timber claim and with their inheritance
were able to live through two years of grasshopper years. The
third year they got a good crop of wheat and oats and thereafter
prospered.
It
is interesting to note that Charles Hill was born in York, England
and settled in York, Nebraska, U.S.A. Rose died January
5, 1921 of pneumonia.
Henry
Slagel, born May 13, 1853, married Lorraine Westerbrook. They
had four children:
Mabel
(Kenser)
Nellie
(Grinell)
Carl
Olive
"Ollie" (Johnson)
"Hence"
had four front teeth kicked out by a frisky colt and had them
replaced with a partial denture when he was about 19. Before
he became accustomed to them he engaged in a wrestling match
with Anestle
Furman and put the denture in his pocket. It was lost
during the match and he went the rest of his life without his
front teeth.
During
his final illness, brother Bill and I went up to Humbolt, Iowa
and he asked Bill to sing for him. Bill sang "Sweeping
Through the Gates," and Hence joined in the chorus. Two
hours later he passed away, age 66, in December, 1918.
Jacob
Franklin, born December 2, 1855, married Ella Haines (?Haynes).
To this union five children
were
born: Ernest
Willie
May
Dessie
Earle
Frank
and Ella migrated to Nebraska, in a covered wagon in 1886. My
brother Charley and I went with
them. Charley brought his violin along and would entertain
us nightly with it. Sometimes Frank and
I would waltz in the moonlight.
They took along 8 cattle
including a calf which near Creston, Iowa, got footsore. It
wandered off and got lost in the high grass. We couldn't
find it so had to continue on without it.
At night
Charley and Frank slept under the wagon, protected by two strips
of canvas. The
rest of us slept in the wagon.
I left the party
at York and visited my sister Rose and family. Frank
continued on to Holbrook, Furnas County in the south west corner
of Nebraska, where they settled. He died in March 1914.
I remember how polite Rose's children were to their parents.
It was always
"Sir" and "Ma'am" to them.
I
had been keeping company with John Williams in Lehigh so I wrote
him several letters during my month's stay in Nebraska. I
came home by train to Burnside where I hired Milton Alsever
to bring me
to Lehigh in a sled. Although it was in the month
of March, it was so bitter cold that we had to stop
at a farmhouse to keep from freezing.
Brother
Charley stayed with Frank about a year and spent about the same
length of time with Rose and
Charles before coming home to Lehigh.
William
Leroy married Susan Barton. William was born October 1, 1858.
They had seven children: Lottie (Linn)
Agnes
(Harlow)
Blanche
(Harper)
Thomas
Frank
Millie
(Collingsworth),
Eldon
Bill
followed father's profession as a blacksmith and farmer. Bill
was a good fiddle player and had a nice
singing voice. One time as a guest at a Salvation Army
meeting, Bill the "happy blacksmith" got
so enthusiastic he beat in the head of the drum. William died
on May 9, 1931 of kidney and liver trouble.
Edwin
Lincoln, born December 20, 1860, married Laura Whitaker. To
them ten children were born: Maude (Eslick, Taylor)
Floyd
Ellege
Keziah
(?Robbins or Robins)
Tressa
(Taylor)
Ina
(Newkirk)
Walter
Verne
Lyle
One
died in infancy
Verne
served during World War I in France and drowned shortly after
returning; in the Des Monies
River July,1921.
About
1910 Link and Laura divorced. Several years later Link
married Mrs. Jean (Barrowman) Grimes. He died September
14, 1931 of kidney and liver trouble.
Charley
Fay, born November 27, 1862, married Lillian Bertha Bird. They
had three boys:
Loren
Glen
Milburn.
Lillian
died in 1900 (Lehigh Argus Reports, December 3, 1901) after
a two week illness. Several years later Charley married Mrs.
Alice (Pettibone) Cavanaugh. Her children were Emmett,
Edward, Alma, and Erma.
Charley
ran a dray wagon and farmed the acreage on the side. Of
the five brothers who stayed in Iowa, four of them lived on
acreages and were draymen, doing much the same work as today's
truckers. Charley
died of liver and kidney trouble on October 6, 1939.
Carrie
Lovina, born November 11, 1864, married Albert "Allie"
Tucker. There were no children. She died of congestive chills
when only 26 years old on March 16, 1891. "Allie"
lived to be 86 and never
remarried.
He lived his entire life 5 miles east of Lehigh.
I
was born "on the banks of the Wapsie" (Wapsipinicon
River) in Clinton County May 18, 1867. My family migrated in
October, 1867 by covered wagon to a river claim about three
miles south of Homer.
There
my father built a one room log cabin in which we lived for one
year. Then father built on another large room and a loft
where the boys slept.
When
I was about seven years old a band of Indians made camp along
Brushy Creek to trap and to make syrup in the Spring. My
mother was extremely afraid of them and had warned us repeatedly
to stay away from their camp. Nevertheless, one morning
I decided to go see the Indian baby. I slipped away and
went to the Indian Tepee. Mother became alarmed when the
other children came in for the noon meal and I wasn't with them.
She sent Link and Charley to hunt for me. Well, they found
me in the
tepee contentedly rocking the cute little papoose and crooning
the lullaby it's mother had taught me. It
sounded like this: "Ah - pi - nee - nee, Ah - pee - nee
- nee."
I
married John Albert Williams July 3, 1887. We were married in
the Lehigh Methodist Parsonage by pastor "Uncle Walter"
Goodrich. Walter "Daunt" Williams and Rachel
Linn (Williams) were our attendants.
There
were nine children born to us: Daisy Eleanor (Newkirk,
Lynch),
Merritt
Fay,
Lovina
May,
Esther
Eulalia (Hinds, Bales),
Melvin
Shelby,
Delmege
Lincoln,
Glida
Glenadeth (Miller, Woodbury),
and
Vida Valeen (Ellenwood) the twins
Winona
Maurene (Swalla).
Daisy
married Roscoe Newkirk and they raised three children: Cyril,
Doris, and Helen.
Later
Daisy married Joseph Lynch. They had two children: Dr.
William and Mary.
Daisy's
daughter Doris is a grandmother three times so, of course that
makes me a Great Great Grandmother.
Esther
wed William V. Hinds and they had Neil and Dorothy. Years
after Mr. Hinds death Esther married John Bales.
My
son D.L. ("Ching") married Winifred Diggins. They
lost a son John and have a daughter Leatrice.
Glida
married Claude Miller and had two boys Bruce and Donald. She
is now Mrs. Leland Woodbury.
Vida
married S.O. Ellenwood and has a daughter Rosalie.
Many
years ago the twins moved to Los Angles and opened "The
Twins Beauty Salon".
I
live with Winona who is married to Charles H. Swalla: they have
three children: Charlene, Sharon Kay, and Charles.
Merritt
when 14 years old shot himself accidentally while cleaning his
rifle.
Lovina
May died of pneumonia when three months old.
Melvin
Shelby died of whooping cough at 18 days.
My
husband John A. Williams was a Barber and also sold Fire Insurance.
He was mayor of Lehigh three
terms, Justice of The Peace 20 years and President of our Board
of Education 19 years.
He
was accidentally killed by the C.G.W. (Chicago Great Western)
train that ran down the main street of
Lehigh. That happened October 4, 1927.
Brother
George died at 77.
Henry
at 65.
Frank
56.
William
72.
Lincoln
70.
Charley
76.
Rose
70.
Lovina
at 26.
As
I finish this brief history I am in my eighty-eighth year. It
has been a new experience attempting to be
an author but I've loved it and hope that you get some enjoyment
reading this short history of a
family of which I am proud to be a member------THE ECHELBERGERS.
Written
By: Ina (Echelberger) Williams
1954
At
the age of 87 years
Lehigh, Iowa
Re-typed
by: Melvin Benny Echelberger
October
1992
Computer
Format
1...From
the dates involved later in this book it would seem that
he left from Iowa (Clinton Co) to serve.
2...From
further reading it seems that the Riverland Co. then wanted
the homesteaders to pay for the land they had settled and
built on or move off. Which more than a few had to do, for
lack of hard cash.
3...I
have talked to people from Fort Dodge and surrounding area who's
father's would not let them come to Lehigh because of that
reputation. These are people who then went to WWII.
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