JOHN CARR

CARR, MILLER

Posted By: Mona Sarratt Knight (email)
Date: 5/24/2009 at 07:37:41

Source: The History of Appanoose County, Iowa, Containing A History of the County, its Cities, Towns, etc., A Biographical Directory of Citizens, War Records of its Volunteers in the late Rebellion, General and Local Statistics, Portraits of Early Settlers and Prominent Men, History of the Northwest, History of Iowa, Map of Appanoose County, Constitution of the United States, Miscellaneous Matters, etc.; illustrated; Chicago: Western Historical Company, 1878.

JOHN CARR, farmer, Sec. 13; P. O. Unionville; born in County Tyrone, Ireland, in 1817; emigrated to America in 1840; landed in New York City with 50 cents only, which he gave for a passage to Albany; there met a friend, who bought a loaf of bread on which, with canal water to drink, they lived two days, traveling West; secured a passage on Lake Erie by making himself generally useful on board the boat, and landed at Fairport, having had a purse of 50 cents made up for him on the boat before landing; walked to Columbiana Co., Ohio, where he earned his first money in America by working on the canal, which was being built then, from daylight until dark for $10 per month; wheeling dirt; after working there for five or six years, bought 140 acres of wild land, which he kept until 1854, and sold still unimproved; paid out a great portion of the money thus obtained for a team and tools and started West; stopped one year in West Virginia, fifty miles west of Wheeling, farming; then came on to Appanoose Co., and landed here in 1855 with team, wagon and $500 in money, and notwithstanding he has always been liberal to church and public enterprises, having given at one time $400 for railroads, he now owns 553 acres of well-improved land, valued at $30 per acre, out of debt and money to loan. He married Eliza J. Miller, Feb 20, 1850; she was born in Columbiana Co., Ohio, December 1818; have had seven children - Sarah Jane, born May 19, 1851, died Oct 7, 1855; James, born Feb. 4, 1853, died Oct 11, 1855; Louisa, born April 15, 1855, died Oct 16, 1855; John H., born Sept. 24, 1856; Samuel A., born June 30, 1858; Stephen A.D., born July 31, 1860, and an infant, born and died Oct. 1, 1862. Members of the Christian Church; Greenbacker. Has held office of Supervisor; now School Director.