JOSEPH MCELROY, b 2 Sep 1815

MCELROY, DUNCAN, GILROY, REMKE, SCHRAMLING

Posted By: Donna Moldt Walker (email)
Date: 7/10/2004 at 16:48:04

Joseph McElroy, one of the honored pioneers of the southeastern part of this county, and one of the first men to venture into this section to make a settlement, after the labors of a long and useful life, is practically retired from care and toil, and is living amidst the comforts of a pleasant home in Sabula. For years and years after locating on what was then the frontier, he labored early and late in the accumulation of his property and the improvement of his homestead, and finally met with his reward - the competence which now insures him against want for the balance of his natural life. He has been a man quiet and unobstrusive in his habits, thoroughly honest, reliable, and praiseworthy, and numbers his friends by the score in this county.

Erie County, Pa., was the early tramping ground of our subject, and where his birth took place about two miles from the city of that name, Sept. 2, 1815. Hugh and Margaret (Duncan) McElroy, his parents, were natives of Cumberland County, Pa., and the father served as a soldier in the War of 1812. He participated in several active engagements, and was wounded at the battle of Lundy's Lane; a ball passed through his liver, but notwithstanding this, he recovered and lived to the advanced age of seventy-three years. To him and his excellent wife there were born twelve children, four of whom are still living, and of whom Joseph, our subject, was the eldest. Of the others, John resides in Sabula; Jackson is Colusa County, Cal.; Margaret in Ida County, Iowa.

Young McElroy continued a resident of his native county until a young man of twenty-three years, then in the spring of 1838 set out for the Territory of Iowa, and coming to this county entered 200 acres of land in Iowa Township. He still retains seventy-five acres of this; and owns besides, four lots and a dwelling in Sabula, to which he removed in the fall of 1882. On the 22d of September, 1853, he took unto himself a wife and helpmate, Miss Mary A., daughter of G. Gilroy, then a resident of Jackson County. Mrs. McElroy was born in Erie County, N.Y., and departed this life at the homestead in Iowa Township, Nov. 1, 1872. She was a lady of many estimable qualities and a member of the Episcopal Church. Of this union there were born four children, three of whom are living, namely - George, Joseph and Jessie -- George, married Miss Katie Remke, lives at the homestead, and has five children - Allen, Clarence, George, Marion, and Joseph. Jessie became the wife of John Schramling, of Sabula, and has one child, a daughter - Mary E. Mr. McElroy, politically, supports the principles of the Republican party, and in religious views is a Universalist, believing in a free and full salvation for all.

("Portrait and Biographical Album of Jackson County, Iowa", originally published in 1889, by the Chapman Brothers, of Chicago, Illinois.)