JOHN DETWILER

DETWILER, BAIRD

Posted By: MARCIA THOMAS (email)
Date: 1/30/2009 at 11:27:44

John Detwiler was born 1805 in Strasburg, Pennsylvania and died 1884 in Bonaparte, Iowa. During his later teen years John was apprenticed to a tanner. When his apprenticeship was finished he joined the throngs moving westward from Franklin County. He located his log cabin and first tannery near Uniontown in Fayette County, Pennsylvania. Later he added a sawmill.

In 1832, in Perryopolis, Pennsylvania he married Cynthia Baird, daughter of John Baird and Ursula Burgess. She was born 1808 near Ripley, Ohio and died 1877 in Bonaparte. He and Cynthia had seven children, all born in Fayette County.

For twenty-six years he active in his Pennsylvania community and in the Flatwood Baptist Church. However, 1852 he felt the urge to move westward again. He went as far as Zanesville, Ohio and settled in a little town named Adamsville. These were disappointing years and in 1854 he again felt the urge to go westward. In Wheeling, West Virginia, he and his family boarded a riverboat on the Ohio River for Hannibal, Missouri on the Mississippi River. At Hannibal, having heard that Iowa had good farmland, John decided that was he would take his family north to Bonaparte, Van Buren County. This was their final home.

In Bonaparte, John was known as a good and generous neighbor. Three sons enlisted in the civil war service with Iowa regiments. These were George Miller, who accompanied Sherman on his march to the sea and was captured at Andersonville; Isaac Winfield? who died from battle wounds in 1863; and Clarence Smith Detwiler. Both Issac and Clarence died before their father. The other children were John Henry, Mary Frances, Lucy A, and Harriet Elizabeth.

The sources for this information are primarily oral and written family tradition based on letters and papers.

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