Means, Thomas

MEANS, BICKSLER, ROTROFT

Posted By: Kathy Leach (email)
Date: 10/25/2010 at 10:26:12

From The History of Monona County, 1891, page 454-455 (at the Onawa Public Library)

THOMAS MEANS, who is engaged in farming and stock-raising on Section 2, Jordan Township, was born in Mercer County, Pa., August 10, 1842. His father, Hugh Means, a native also of the same county, was born about 1807, and was a miller and shoemaker by trade. In 1842 he removed to Jackson County, near Bellevue, Iowa, where he died. He was married at the age of twenty or twenty-one to Miss Elizabeth Rotroft, a native of Baltimore, Md., who was born in 1811 and who is still living in Jackson County, Iowa.

Thomas, the seventh in a family of ten children, came with his parents in childhood to Iowa, and at Bellevue, on the banks of the mighty Mississippi, grew to manhood. On the death of his father he commenced working on a farm and continued in that line of employment until he was some twenty-three years of age, laboring for other parties. For two years, subsequently, he worked on rented land after which he emigrated to Burt County, Neb., where he took up a claim of one hundred and twenty acres of land , and made his home for seven years. Selling out, he returned to his former residence, and there and in other places, followed various avocations until the spring of 1875, when he came to Monona County and renting a farm in St. Clair Township, took up his residence there. Leaving this county in 1879, he went to Oregon and in that State and Montana Territory remained until 1882, when once more he returned to Monona County. Purchasing eighty acres of land on Section 2, he has developed it into an excellent farm, and has there made his home ever since.

Mr. Means was married in 1864, to Miss Lucinda Bicksler, a native of Jackson County, Iowa, who was born March 12, 1845, and is a daughter of Thomas J. and Mary (Jonas) Bicksler. Her mother died April 1, 1869. Mr. And Mrs. Means have had a family of four children: George M., born November 13, 1864; Solomon W., July 3, 1873; William, born March 1, 1866, died November 15, 1871; and Burt, born December 17, 1879.

As a relic of the past Mr. Means still preserves the team of mules that he drove through to the Pacific Coast and back, one of who is twenty-eight years old and the other past seventeen. Both of them will run to him on every occasion, well knowing their old master.