Samuel .C. Muir

MUIR

Posted By: Volunteer (email)
Date: 5/7/2002 at 16:49:17

S.C. Muir
Dr. Samuel Muir was a graduate of the University of Edinburg and a surgeon in the United
States Army. Sometime before 1820 he married a girl of the Sac Nation and was stationed
with a command at Fort Edwards now Warsaw, Illinois. An account written by Stephen Watts
Kearny and Henry Schoolcraft of a military expedition across northern Iowa in 1820; that
on visiting Dubuque mines on the morning of August 5th, Kearny stopped his six oared keel-
boat at a settlement of traders, found Dr. Muir, late of the Army, with his squaw and two
children, and that he and his men were treated politely by Dr. Muir and the traders. Some
years later an order was issued requiring officers of the Army to abandon their Indian
wives. Dr. Muir refused to comply with this order and resigned his commission. After
leaving the Army, he settled on his farm at the mouth of the Des Moines River where Keokuk
now stands and where he died in 1832 of cholera leaving his family, wife and 5 children,
in destitute circumstances, the greater part of his property being involved in litigation.
Keokuk was then known as Pinch-e-chut-tech and Dr. Muir was the first white settler. Dr.
Muir was not particularly identified with civil practice, but to some extent with
territorial affairs.

"History of Medicine in Iowa", D.S. Fairchild, M.D., F.A.C.S., reprinted from
The Journal of the Iowa State Medical Society.

Compiled & submitted by Sharyl Ferrall for the IAGenWeb Archives, May 2002.