- PIONEER LIFE Part I: Account of Early Settler Jeremiah Suiter
- PIONEER LIFE Part II by Jeremiah Suiter
- A PIONEER OF '49 by Berrimand Breeden, husband of Margaret Elizabeth Suiter
In the spring of 1846, the family of Mordecai Y. Suiter, a 43 year old miller, left Ohio to move to Iowa. They made part of their trip by canoe to the Ohio River, and took a series of steamboats to the Mississippi River, where they landed at Le Claire, Iowa, and spent the winter. In the spring of 1847, they traveled by covered wagon to their claim on the Iowa - Keokuk county line.
The first year was marked by a house raising, bad weather and the struggles of preparing the prairie sod for its first planting.
The father died in the spring of 1852, in an unfortunate accident while trying to build a dam across the English River. One son, Jeremiah, became the blacksmith at Hinkletown through the 1880s.
If this doesn't interest you, check out the Hinkletown photo essay: the llama-riding goat
I received an email from Kristin who writes:
ReplyDelete"...you mentioned being from the family of Israel Luke Suiter. I am from the family of his brother, Philip Jacob Suiter, who settled in LeClaire and had a large family there. His granddaughter Elizabeth Agnes Suiter was my great-great-grandmother. She married Daniel Freeman, the first homesteader, and lived in Nebraska. My grandmother grew up on her grandparents' homestead land, and moved with her mother and siblings to Oregon when she was a teenager. I'm from Oregon.
http://www.twentyyrs2.blogspot.jp/
Bye for now, and yes, we are cousins, but I don't know how distant! Probably 4th or 5th cousins."
- Kristin :)