CHICKEN, FRAZEY, HOLT, SCHERER

CHICKEN, FRAZEY, HOLT, SCHERER

Posted By: Ruth McDowell (email)
Date: 3/9/2011 at 09:18:25

From "Arispe Centennial 1887-1987", p. 92

In the early 1800's people in Europe, Canada and various places in the United States were making decisions that influence the course of events many years later in Sand Creek Township, Union County, Iowa.

In Hull, Ontario, Canada, Elvira Henderson played wit the Indian children and spoke their language. When she grew older she married Silas Holt, also of Hull, and they came to the U.S. following the rivers south to Illinois. Ten children were born, among them a son, John. As a young man, John went west as far as Afton, Iowa, where he settled.

About the same time in Bavaria, Europe, William Scherer was immigrating to the U.S. He landed in New York City on his twenty-fifth birthday in 1854 and went as far as Burlington, Iowa on the Mississippi River. The Abel brothers from Damsendorf, Prussia, were in Burlington, having come a year or so before. They sent money home for their sister, Fredrica, to also come. She came steerage, bringing food for the trip and all her belongings in a large wooden box. After six weeks on the ocean, they arrived at New Orleans and came up river to Burlington where she joined her brothers. She had passed her 16th birthday on the ocean. Later she married William Scherer.

In the 1850's, the Abel brothers and the Scherers went to Union County and settled on Twelve Mile bottom in Sand Creek Township. Their home was on the route the Pottawattamie Indians followed each spring and fall as they went back and forth from their winter home in Kansas to their summer home on Grand River. They often stopped and camped over night with the Scherers and Abels.

The Scherers had three sons, Charles, William and Frank, all of whom established homes and farmed in Sand Creek Township.

Sophia Scherer was married to John W. Holt, also a farmer in 1880. John was the first person to break the prairie sod and he found many Indian artifacts. John and Sophia Holt, the Scherer parents, and the young Scherer families were influential church people. Due to their efforts, church services were held at Center School House near Billy Scherer's home. Later John Holt gave land and the Bethel Evangelical Church was built in 1894.

In 1844, back in Bedford Co., Pennsylvania, Enoch Frazey and his father, Joseph, were making plans to go west to Iowa. Enoch left and two years later, in 1846, Josiah joined him in Jefferson County. Enoch was a cobbler by trade and Josiah was a tanner. Enoch married Mary Collins from Kentucky, who was living with her brother, Waltus, in Salina, Iowa in 1848. They were the parents of several children. Among them were Ida and Anna. In 1878, Enoch and Mary came to Union County in Sand Creek Township, Section 15, and established a home. Their two daughters, Ida and Anna, came with them. Anna was married to Dr. Hiram Whisler and they made their home with the Frazeys until 1888. He was one of the very few doctors in this part of the county and was in much demand.

The Whislers had 13 children, all of whom grew to adulthood. The children were Gertrude, Norval, Harry, Ida, Percy, Edna, Nell, Hattie, Ross, Everette, Bryce, Della and Darl.

In the winter of 1879, Ida went to Nebraska to visit her brother, Flemon Frazey. While out there she met and married Daniel Chicken. He had a homestaed near Benedict, Nebraska. They lived in a sod house. It was this house where their first son, Hal Chicken, was born. After enduring the blizzard of 1888, their home being destroyed by tornado, and her parents both dying, they bought out the other Frazey heirs and returned to the Frazey farm in Sand Creek Township.