CONNER, A.

CONNER, JAMES, DUFFUS, PHILLIPS

Posted By: Marilyn Norris Holmes
Date: 4/14/2013 at 12:31:22

The 1880 History of Poweshiek County Iowa

Warren Township

Page 891-2

CONNER, A.--Farmer, section 32, P.O. Brooklyn. Was born December 29, 1809, in Sussex county, New Jersey, where he attended school till 1821, then went with his parents to Luzerne county, Pennsylvania, where, after finishing his education, he engaged in farming till 1826, then commenced the manufacture of lumber till 1829. He then moved to Orange county, New York, where he worked in the iron works for eleven years; in 1840 engaged at work in Sterling for seven years; in 1847 moved back to Sussex county, New Jersey, and engaged as foreman of Oliver, Ames & Sons' furnaces, remaining there till 1850. He then returned to Orange county, New York, and followed boating for a few months, then manufactured lumber till the summer of 1851, when he returned to New Jersey and took charge of the Pumpton Furnace till the spring of 1852. He then again engaged in the lumber business in Orange county, New York, which he continued till the spring of 1853, when he engaged to superintend a furnace at Pilot Knob, Missouri, and remained there till the spring of 1855, when he moved his family to Bear Creek township. In the fall of 1853 he had bought 320 acres of land, and in 1855 commenced to improve it, living on the same till the spring of 1869. He then bought 160 acres in the same township, which he partially improved and sold in the spring of 1867; then he bought 640 acres in Bear Creek township, to which he moved in the spring of 1869, remaining there and improving the same till 1873, when he sold it and bought where he now lives and owns eighty acres of well improved land. Mr. C. was married November 8, 1832, in Orange county, New York, to Miss Mahala James, born there in 1814. As the fruits of their union they have had twelve children: Mary Ann (born august 8, 1834; died January 22, 1862), John (born February, 1836; married, and lives in Brooklyn), Andrew (born January 6, 1838; married and lives in Nebraska), William (born April 6, 1840; died June 2, 1877), Fanny (born October 3, 1842; died October 4, 1843), Peter (born August 8, 1844; died March 22, 1863, from a fever contracted while a prisoner of war at Little Rock, Arkansas), Charles (born September 17, 1846; died April, 1848), Archie (born August 24, 1848; died September, 1861), Margaret Jane (born April 3, 1853; now the wife of Alex Duffus), Harrison (born September 17, 1855; died September, 1864), Matilda (born September 17, 1857; now the wife of Thomas Phillips, of Kansas) and Josie (born April 4, 1880).