R. H. SCHOOLING

SCHOOLING

Posted By: Jake Tornholm (email)
Date: 4/20/2020 at 15:05:48

R. H. SCHOOLING, one of the pioneer settlers of Adams county, and residing on section 23, Washington township (postoffice Mt. Etna), was born in Bullitt county, Kentucky, February 13, 1813, the son of Joseph and Polly (Frame) Schooling, his father a native of Virginia and his mother of Kentucky. His father, a farmer by occupation, was a captain in the war of 1812, although he never saw active service. He was brought by his parents to Kentucky at the age of sixteen years, and after his marriage there he moved to Vermillion county, Indiana, in 1822, locating upon a farm. In 1837 he removed to Barry county, in the southwestern part of Missouri, settling again upon a farm, and lived there until his death, in 1850, at the age of about seventy-four years. His wife died while in Indiana, about the year 1823. He married again in that State, Miss Margaret Wilson, by whom he had five children; he had had eleven by his first marriage, of whom five are still living.

The subject of this notice, the third-born in the above family, began business for himself at the age of twenty years, mining lead at Galena, Illinois. A year afterward he began farming, in which he has ever since continued, with fairly good success. Beginning without other means than his own brain and muscle, he pushed himself on to victory.

In 1852 he came to Iowa, entering 160 acres of land, to which he has since added until he now owns 500 acres, half of which is now well improved. It is mostly fertile bottom land, susceptible of raising good crops of corn, hay and oats. He has a good orchard, raises also small fruits, and has all the comforts a good farm life can bring.

Publicly he has been a county Supervisor, Justice of the Peace, etc. He is a substantial and prominent citizen. He was married in 1835, to Miss Susan Ireland, daughter of William Ireland, of Vermillion county, Indiana, and they had nine children, as follows: P. G., a merchant at Mt. Etna, who married Caroline Ireland; Joseph, who enlisted August 13, 1862, in Company A, Twenty-Ninth Iowa Volunteer Infantry, and died of sickness contracted in the service April 9, 1863, at the age of twenty- four years, was born April 17, 1839; William F., who enlisted the same day as his brother, in the same company, took the same disease and died in the same hospital, at the same hour; he was born October 5, 1841. Mary A., wife of J. N. Fisher, a farmer of Washington township. Martha A., the wife of F. M. Thompson, of this county; R. N., a merchant of Massena, Iowa, who married Margaret Cummins. The other children died in early childhood. Their mother died in 1880, at the age of sixty-three years. She was a dutiful wife, a model mother and a good neighbor.

Politically Mr. Schooling has acted with the Republican party. Coming here, as he did, as early as 1852, he is one of the oldest pioneers of the county, in which there were but seven families at the same time, who had to go to Savannah or St. Joseph for their trading.