Armstrong, Samuel

ARMSTRONG

Posted By: Joyce Hickman (email)
Date: 11/13/2007 at 21:44:06

Samuel Armstrong

(From the 1883 History of Pottawattamie County, Iowa, by J. H. Keatley, p.238, Valley Twp.)
Samuel Armstrong, hotel, Hancock, was born in Ohio in 1834, son of Samuel and Roxie (Wheeler) Armstrong; his parents moved to Southern Illinois when our subject was about four years old, then into Jo Daviess County, Ill., and afterward, back to Portage County, Ohio, where they lived two years, and then to Wisconsin. Our subject went to school in Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin. He has two half-sisters and one half-brother. His father was a farmer, and Mr. Armstrong has followed the same occupation most of his life. He enlisted, August 14, 1862, in Company B, Thirty-third Wisconsin Infantry, and served three years, or until the close of the war, coming home in August, 1865. At first, he was under Grant, at Vicksburg, McPherson being the Seventeenth Corps commander, in which he was a member; he was at the taking of Spanish Fort; his regiment went on the Red River expedition, but Mr. Armstrong was regimental Postmaster at the time, and was left behind with the sick at Vicksburg. He was also under Sherman in his Meridian expedition, under Gen. Smith at Tupelo, Miss., and in other engagements. At Vicksburg, he was wounded in the hand, losing a finger. Mr. Armstrong was married, first, in 1857, to Miss Nancy Jane Loney, of Wisconsin; he has three children by this wife - one boy, Charles O., living in Pottawattamie County, and two daughters. Hiw wife died in 1863, and he was married the second time, in April, 1866, to Miss Lydia E. Millard, of Ohio, who died in August, 1867. Mr. Armstrong was married to his present wife in 1869; she was Miss Mary J. Fitzgerald, born in Wisconsin; her parents are both dead; she is the daughter of Peter Fitzgerald, born in Kentucky; her mother was born in Ohio. Mrs. Armstrong has three brothers and four sisters. In 1871, Mr. Armstrong came to Iowa, and settled in what is now Valley Township, where he followed farming till the fall of 1880, when he sold his farm, came to Hancock and built the first dwelling-house erected in the town after it was laid out. After coming here, he dealt in coal for about a year, but now devotes his attention to the hotel business and is having good success. Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong are members of the Methodist Church. Mr. Armstrong is an Odd Fellow and a Republican.