Price, Rees D.

PRICE

Posted By: Joyce Hickman (email)
Date: 8/18/2008 at 21:57:37

Rees D. Price

(From the 1883 History of Pottawattamie County, Iowa, by J. H. Keatley, p.112, Hardin Twp.)
Rees D. Price, farmer, P. O. Snapp. The oldest settler now in Hardin Township is Rees D. Price, who was born in Wales in 1813, and is the son of Daniel and Mary (Hopkins) Price. His father was a mason, and died in 1835, and buried on Christmas Day; his mother died in 1827. In the family were five sons and four daughters, of whom Mr. Rees D. Price is the only one now living. Mr. Price was educated in Wales, in his native language. He started in life as a miner, and continued in the same till he came to America, and has since followed farming most of the time. Was first married in 1834, and had one daughter by first wife, who is now living in Omaha, Neb. In 1839, his wife died, but Mr. Price was married a second time, in 1840, to Miss Janes Jones, of Wales. They have had nine children, seven of whom are still alive. February 13, 1849, Mr. Price and family left Wales and went to Liverpool; from there they embarked about March 1. After seven weeks and two days on the ocean, they arrived at New Orleans, and there took a boat on the Mississippi River to St. Louis. A little son, who had taken sick on the ocean, died at landing in St. Louis; they buried him there, and took a boat for Council Bluffs, Iowa, at which place they landed May 17, 1849. During the trip from St. Louis to Council Bluffs, the cholera had been raging on board, and out of the 240 Welsh immigrants on board, forty-seven died, besides many others of different nationality. They remained that year at Council Point, where they landed. The fall of 1849, there being no work to be done here, Mr. Price went to St. Louis on the last boat from Upper Missouri; worked at St. Louis till, in the winter, word came that one of his children was sick, and as there was no other way of traveling, he, with two of his friends, walked all the distance from St. Louis to Council Bluffs, making the trip in twenty days. June 8, 1850, Mr. Price moved with his family to Hardin Township, buying a claim and settling in what was called Log City, it being a colony of Mormons, and in the city there were thirteen log huts. This was on Section 28, and on Section 32 there was another settlement of eveln huts. Besides these two settlements, there were only two more huts in the township in 1850, and, in the summer of this year, most all of the Mormons moved to Salt Lake, and Mr. Price's family was the only one remaining in the township. In the year 1854, Mr. Price moved to his present farm, one mile south of his first place. Here he entered 200 acres of Government land at that time. In 1863, he went to Pike's Peak, but remained a short time, when he returned home, and has been on the farm ever since. Mr. Price came here with a Mormon colony, but after getting here, he found that their practices were different from what they preached in Wales, so he forsook them, and, when they went to Salt Lake, he remained behind. Mrs. Price has two brothers still living - one in Wales, while the other John E. Jones, is now in Rosedale, Kan. In 1879, he paid his sister a visit, it being the first time he had seen her for over thirty-three years, and her other brother she has never seen since leaving Wales. Jhn E. Jones had been in Scotland for several years before his sister came to America, but he came to America about 1863, and has since lived in Chicago, Ill., Pittsburgh, Penn., Topeka and Rosedale, Kan., being in rolling-mills. Mr. Price's daughters are all married, but none of the sons. The oldest son, Evan J., lives at Fort Benton, Mon., and is in the stock business. The second, John A., was the first child born in Hardin Township, and is now Township Assessor, and owns the land on which he was born, the old log city. Rees A., the third, is now in Denver, Colo., but has a farm in Hardin Township. William E. is the youngest, and is farming at home. Together, Mr. Price and sons have 480 acres of land, and are farming and stock-raising. When Mr. Price came to Pottawattamie County, Indians were of common occurence, although they had been removed over the river the year before; and the best house at Council Bluffs was made of logs. When first coming here, Mr. Price had no hogs, or nothing of any kind to make meat of, so they had to depend upon game, but prairie chickens were so thick that it was not much trouble to trap them; catching more than they could use at a time, they salted and dried the breasts for use in the spring. There being a mill near Council Bluffs, their grain wa taken to it to be ground, but it had been built for the Indians, so, if a white man had his grist in grinding and an Indian brought his, the mill had to stop and the corn taken out of the hpper, and give the Indian the preference. One time, after high waters, and what bridges there were were washed away, their meal gave out and they resorted to grinding corn in a coffee-mill, and found that it could be done quite well, at least fast enough to keep off hunger. At Mr. Price's we find two old relics, one, a hand-board or waiter, used in the time of Queen Elizabeth, is made of solid mahogany, and is about eighteen inches in diameter; the other, a Welsh Bible, "Published in London by John Bill, Christopher Barker, Thomas Newcomb and Henry Hills, printers to His Royal Highness the King, and sold by John Hancock, under the sign of the three Bibles, in Pope-Head alley, in Cornhill, 1678." This Bible contained the prayers and all the ceremonies of the Church of England at that time. (From the 1882 History of Pottawattamie County, Iowa)