Walter Dilivan

DILIVAN

Posted By: Karon Velau (email)
Date: 1/29/2023 at 18:03:23

Biography of Walter Dilivan

Biographical History of Crawford, Ida, and Sac Counties, Iowa, 1893, p.295-296
Walter Dilivan, one of the well-known early settlers of Crawford County, was born in Trumbull County, Ohio, March 10, 1829, a son of Nicholas and Elizabeth Jane Dilivan, the former a native of Delaware County, New York, and the later of Mohawk Dutch descent. The mother died when our subject was six years of age. She was a Christian woman, and taught her children to fear God from their youth up. The father afterward returned to Pennsylvania, and his death occurred in Clarion County, that state, in 1855. He was a farmer all his life, and was a Democrat in his political views. The parents reared a family of nine children, two sons and seven daughters.
Walter Dilivan was reared on a farm in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, and at the age of thirty-five years removed to Carroll County, Iowa, settling ten miles northeast of Carroll. In 1873 he came to his present farm, then raw land, but he now has eighty acres of rich and well improved land, with a comfortable dwelling, good stables, cribs, etc.
Mr. Dilivan has been twice married, first, at the age of twenty-five years, to Martha Jane Kelley, a native of Butler County, Pennsylvania, and a daughter of Andrew and Jane Kelley. To this union were born five children, four now living: Eliza Jane, Aaron M., Sarah A., and Margaret A. One child, Samuel, died at the age of twenty-seven years. Mrs. Dilivan was a member of the Methodist Church, and her death occurred November 27, 1862. In March 1864, our subject married Mrs. Sarah Ford, nee Ochampaugh, the widow of Joseph H. Ford, who died in 1862. Sarah Ochampaugh and Joseph H. Ford were the first couple married in Carroll County. They had three children: Melissa E., William H., and Mary I. Her father now resides in this county, aged eighty-two years. Mr. and Mrs. Ochampaugh were the parents of six children, two sons and four daughters. Mr. and Mrs. Dilivan have four children: Harriett E., Minnie I., wife of R. C. Richmond; Lucy, and Walter Clark. Mr. Dilivan has twenty-seven grandchildren. He is a Republican in his political views; is an Elder in the Reorganized Church of Latter-Day Saints, and is an earnest and active worker in the church for his Master. He is a man of honor, and is esteemed by all who know him.