JOHN GOURLEY

GOURLEY

Posted By: Jake Tornholm (email)
Date: 4/21/2020 at 16:58:06

JOHN GOURLEY. — Few pioneers of Montgomery and Adams counties are better known than he whose name heads this sketch, and it is with pleasure that we present a biography of him on these pages.

John Gourley was born in Washington county, Pennsylvania, October 31, 1833, the son of Thomas and Catherine (Gardiner) Gourley, both natives of Washington county, Pennsylvania. The father was of Irish ancestry and the mother, a daughter of Henry Gardiner, was of German extraction. Thomas Gourley and wife reared a family of eleven children, whose names are as follows: Betsey Zain, of Wheeling, Virginia; Peggy Russell, residing near Villisca, Montgomery county, Iowa; Robert, of Uhrichsville, Ohio; Thomas, Montgomery county, Iowa; Jane Richards, Zanesville, Ohio; Rachel Stewart, Villisca, Iowa; Nancy Cooney, Montgomery county, Iowa; John, the subject of this sketch; Henry, who settled in Adams county, Iowa, in 1856, where he improved a good farm, and where he died in July, 18980, leaving three sons and two daughters, his widow being now a resident of Villisca, Iowa; and Joseph, a resident of Montgomery county, Iowa. In 1856 the parents moved west and settled in Montgomery county, Iowa, where the father subsequently died at the age of sixty-six years, and the mother at seventy-two. The former had been a farmer all his life. In politics he was an Abolitionist and later a Republican. For many years he was a member of the Presbyterian Church.

John was reared in his native county and received his education in an old log school-house. he was an ambitious young man of twenty-three when the family came west and settled in Iowa, and many are his pleasing reminiscences of their journey by steamboat down the Ohio and up the Missouri to St. Joseph, Missouri, thence by team to near where Villisca now stands. At that place the family had relatives, the Dunns, prominent early settlers of that portion of Iowa. John Gourley was an expert hunter when he came here, and brought with him from Virginia a pack of hounds. Game of all kinds was abundant and the crack of his rifle seldom failed to bring down the object aimed at. He was frequently sent for far and near to go and take part in a wolf hunt or a wildcat chase, and when John Gourley and his hounds were on the scent there was lively sport. One season he killed eighteen wildcats and one season forty deer, besides a large number of wolves. He received $70 for the pelts he obtained one year. He paid his first taxes on personal property with the scalp of a wolf and had 15 cents left from it.

At first Mr. Gourley began his farming operations on rented land. He afterward bought swamp land in Adams county, which he sold before buying his present farm, in section 19, Douglas township. Only six acres of his soil had been broken at the time he purchased it. Now he owns 520 acres, one of the best farms in Adams county. His first home here, a cottonwood log house, after being used for some time gave way to a box house, 14 x 16 feet, now utilized as a granery. His present modern residence was built in 1880, is two-stories high, and is surrounded with beautiful oaks and a fine orchard of 200 trees. This farm is supplied with windmill, stock scales, a barn, 40 x 60 feet, and other substantial improvements. Mr. Gourley raises more hogs than any man in Adams county, his annual product being three car loads. One hundred acres of his land are in timber.

Mr. Gourley has been married twice. At the age of twenty-six he married Caroline Baker, who was born in Missouri, daughter of Judge Samuel Baker, the first judge of Adams county, Iowa. She died in 1871, leaving five children, as follows: Robert, James, Emma, wife of Cordy Phillips of Montgomery county, Iowa; Ida, wife of William Harvy of Wyoming; and John, also of Wyoming. In 1885 he married Laura Baker, sister of his former companion, and by her has three sons, - Samuel, Harry and an infant.

Politicaily Mr. Gourley has been a Republican but is now an Independent. He has passed his sixtieth milestone, weighs 265 pounds, and is still the same frank and cordial man that he was in the old pioneer days. He and his family are surrounded with all the comforts and many of the luxuries of life, and from their modern home the latch string hangs out as truly as it did from their cabin door.