Thomas Hales 1822 - 1904

HALES, GRANT, HERRINGTON, WATSON, EMMONS, JACKMAN, OBER, TAYLOR, ROSE, PEARSON, BAKER, COLE, BURTON, COX, PETERSON, ELLER, BLACKLEDGE, WESFALL, CROWELL, CUBBERLY, SHERMAN

Posted By: Charles E. Hales (email)
Date: 3/12/2005 at 19:27:23

Thomas William Hales
This is the Ohio emigrant who produced four generations of Iowans. He was born in the rolling tree-covered hills of Eastern Ohio, just 4 months after another Ohio native, Ulysses S. Grant, was born near Cincinnati.
Today the quaint country way is called Arbor Road, it continues westerly about a mile past the Herrington Church named for his Revolutionary War grandfather, John Herrington.
The farm, and the church land, was all owned by the old veteran who died in 1862 at the age of 103. Since 1832 the farmstead has been a part of Carroll County, but in 1822 when Thomas was born it was a part of Jefferson County.

The name “Thomas Hales” was not new to America, having first appeared in 1631/36 as a landowner on Kent Island, Maryland.

In the spring of 1864, at the age of 42, Thomas and his pregnant wife, Sarah Jane Watson, left Ohio for Van Buren County, Iowa. They brought seven of their children with them ranging in age from 19 years (Margaret A.) to 5 years (Josephine). Their ninth and last child, William George, was born that fall in Iowa.

Their oldest son, James Andrew 17, was already in the Union Army. He had enlisted the year before at Alliance OH in Ohio Battery 3rd Div Army Corp, also listed as the Cavalry Volunteers. He would serve until his discharge 10 Aug 1865 at Camp Cleveland, OH (from the Civil War Pension files.) Fox Township, the most certain location of James Andrew’s birth, is noted in the history of the Civil War as being:
"…the most northern engagement of the entire Civil War… July 26,1863…".

This would have occurred 4 months after he had enlisted at Alliance.

Why would Thomas make this 600-mile trip during the traumatic times of the Civil War? The family was probably familiar with Southeast Iowa since an older brother, Moses, and wife, Mary Jane Emmons had moved to Keosauqua in 1840.
Extensive probate records for Moses's estate are on file in the old Wisconsin Territorial Courthouse at Keosauqua. This ancient brick building is still in use. The papers indicate that Moses had a successful merchandise and milling business on the “Desmoines River” there. However, Moses sudden death in 1845 occurred nearly twenty years before Thomas moved to the area.

Moses Hales 1818-1845
In the spring of 1840 a young man named Moses Hales left Carroll County, Ohio to begin a new life in the Iowa Territory. With $250 borrowed from his uncles, Jacob Herrington and Adam Jackman he made a large decision — head west with the movements of the times. Moses and his bride of only a few months, Mary Jane Emmons, chose to stop at a growing area in the new Iowa Territory — the village of Keosauqua on the Des Moines River.

For most early settlers an important requirement, in addition to land, was water for transportation and power plus timber for building. Keosauqua with its new courthouse under construction met all the requirements for this young merchant. Later his two younger brothers, John and Thomas would also move west to the new state of Iowa.
By the late 1800’s the Hales people would own more than 800 acres of land, mostly in Vernon Township southeast of Keosauqua.

Moses established a merchant business, which included the “Desmoines Mill” for milling grain on the river, and prospered as proven in his estate papers on file in the Van Buren County Courthouse. He paid off the $250 loans, how do we know?
In the early days one of the interesting ways of doing financial transactions shows up in the dusty old probate pack #493. When a loan was paid off the debtor’s signature was torn off, in this case the uncles’ two notes are found in the file with Moses’ signature torn off.

By now it is obvious that there is a sad ending to the story of Moses Hales and his promising future. He died in Keosauqua on September 23, 1845 without a will at the age of 27. Drs. Cyrus H. Ober and F. W. Taylor had called on him for a period of eight days prior to his death. Could the reason for his early death be explained in a publication The History of Van Buren County — Keosauqua Incidents — which says:

“In 1845 and 1846, there were but three families out of seven hundred people who were not ill. Bilious and intermittent fevers raged, and there was a heavy mortality list in consequence.”

For those of us doing family histories, dying intestate can provide a great deal of information. This record also tells us that Moses had a partner, Robert Rose, who was doing wool carding along with Moses main business of milling flour and selling lumber. Even the famed Keosauqua resident, Benjamin Franklin Pearson, later a Lt. in the Civil War, is on his books for flour.

The probate file doesn’t say if he and Mary Jane had any children, I rather think not. This court record does not list a cause for his death nor does it give a burial site. Burials made during epidemics in the frontier were often done in haste and poorly marked which makes a search 150 years later nearly impossible.

Another of his uncles, Nathan Herrington and wife are buried in Keosauqua’s Oak Lawn Cemetery, the wife Julia Ann Baker died in 1867 according to their tombstone.

Another reason for Thomas' move to Iowa may have come from another older brother, John. According to his obituary John moved from Ohio to Northeast Iowa in 1849 and lived near McGregor in Clayton County He then left McGregor to be with Thomas and family near Keosauqua in 1865.

An 1897 atlas of the County shows that John owned two-hundred and sixty-two acres south of Keosauqua.
The last and possibly greatest reason to leave Ohio, concerns three of Thomas's uncles who preceded him to Iowa.

They are Jacob Herrington (in Clinton County in 1850's) Nathan Herrington (who is buried in the Oak Lawn Cemetery at Keosauqua), and James Herrington, who had a daughter born in Iowa in 1846 and owned land in Harrisburg Twp, Van Buren County in the 1850 census.

It is therefore possible that James Herrington and his family were not too far from his young nephew, Moses in Keosauqua. During the pioneer years it was common for men with families to remain close to relatives.

In my opinion all of this explains why my great grandfather, Thomas Hales came to Iowa in the spring of 1864.

Thomas purchased sixty eight acres southeast of Keosauqua in Vernon Township, which he had rented as early as 1875. Sarah Jane died on this farm on November 19, 1889, just four days before their forty-sixth wedding anniversary. She was 64 years old, no obituary has ever been found and no cause of death is known.

The farm is located a mile south of the Center Chapel Cemetery where both of them are buried. Their children are:
1. Margaret “Maggie” A. (Hales) Mrs. Frank M. Cole 1845-1900
2. James Andrew Hales 1846-bef 1923
3. Thomas Watson Hales 1848-1925
4. Elisabeth Jane (Hales) Mrs. Edward F. Burton 1849-aft 1880
5. Mary Elvira (Hales) Mrs. Alonzo Cox 1852-1923
6. Sarah Catherine (Hales) Mrs. George A. Peterson 1854-1923
7. John Parker Dodds Hales 1856-1928
8 Josephine (Hales) Mrs. Benjamin Franklin Eller 1859-1942
9. William George Hales 1864-1915

After being a lonely widower for more than a year, Thomas journeyed back to Fox Township and the small town of Mechanicstown, Ohio to find his second wife. Though he had been in Iowa for 27 years, his Ohio roots remained strong, after all, Carroll County, perhaps even Fox Township, was his birthplace.

There in Mechanicstown on February 5, 1891 he married Elizabeth Blackledge. Not much is known about her, she was sixteen years younger than him when she married Thomas 3 days past her 52nd birthday.

They returned to a house that he was purchasing in Keosauqua. Land transfer records in the Van Buren County Courthouse show that the house occupied “Lots 5 and 6 of Block 21 Original Town of Keosauqua.” It was purchased by Thomas Hales on May 16, 1896, possession dated in February 1891. It appears that he made a five-year purchase contact.

The location is about two blocks north on a continuation of the main business district of Keosauqua all of which is on the flood plain of the Des Moines River. It was still standing in 2004, occupied and appeared to be in good shape — a basic 18' by 24' low roofed bungalow.

In a May 1891 letter to his sister Elizabeth Westfall in Ohio, we learn a bit more:

“Our house is small just four rooms and a large porch on the east side…”
Then continuing about their work.
“……to have a ridding out and repairing done as you know that a house that has been in hands of renters for a number of years, and some pretty hard ones to the house must eventually go to wreck and such was the case with our house.“

From the magazine Popular Science an article on housing reports that; in 1900, there were no long-term home loans. You paid cash. It further states that just 46% of Americans owned their own home at that time.

By all accounts, Thomas was a tender, loving family man, always drawing people to his home. One old photograph shows he and wife, Elizabeth, with fifty-seven others gathered in front of their home on First Street! It is really a large group for that age of inconvenient horse-and-buggy transportation.

The old photo has been a puzzle to me since the early 1960’s. The exact date it was taken or reasons for the assemblage has been a question. Recent information uncovered indicates that it was a birthday reunion for Thomas and likely occurred on October 21, 1891. Over the years I’ve been able to identify only a few of the people. However, a list of those possibly in attendance is quite lenghty.

Thomas provided a home for his widowed sister, Sarah Jane Crowell for the last six years of her life and his older brother, John III also died there. For a man now past eighty Thomas was hit with an overwhelming series of tragedies in his remaining years.
First there was the devastating Des Moines River flood of June 1903. This forced him and his dependent family to permanently abandon the pleasant little bungalow that they had been living in for the past 12 years.

The following spring his grandson, Edward Cox, 30, was fatally injured in a sawmill accident near Center Chapel.

This was followed in September with the commitment of his oldest son, James Andrew, 57, to the Saint Joseph, Missouri Insane Asylum. He was a veteran of the Civil War and had been kicked in the head by a mule.

Finally there was the loss of his close brother, John, in October of 1904 just 5 weeks prior to his own death. It is little wonder that Thomas died from a stroke!

After the Des Moines River flood we find a clipping, dated June 11, 1903, from the Keosauqua newspaper that states:

“Mr. Thomas Hales has bought the Charles Cubberly house near the opera house and will improve and make it his residence. He will not move back into his former residence on East First Street, where the water, during last week's flood, was up to the roof.”

Sadly Thomas would not enjoy his second Keosauqua home for long — within eighteen months he was dead. On his death certificate Dr. Sherman of Keosauqua lists “paralysis” as cause of death, probably meaning he died of a stroke.

The1891 wedding picture shows him as a large robust man impressive in appearance, with pure-white hair and a Van Dyke beard. Also obvious is a prominent “English” nose that has come down through four more generations of men folk including this writer!

Judging by a copy of the one well-hand written letter we possess he had considerable education showing a strong signature.

He and first wife Sarah Jane Watson are buried in the Center Chapel Cemetery a mile north of his farm in Vernon Township.

His second wife, Elizabeth Blackledge, was fondly referred to as “Grandma Hales” because the grandchildren never knew their Watson grandmother who died before two of them were born. Elizabeth returned to Ohio in the spring of 1906 and lived another twenty years. She is buried at Mechanicstown, Ohio.

This biography of my great-grandfather has been written with the aid of many cousins, much travel and many frustrations. Thanks to LuRee Runnells for the latest information about dating the old Reunion Photo which data she is about to post. Hopefully we can identify more of the persons present.
Finally I would like more information about Great-grandmother Sarah Jane Watson.

View Hales Keosauqua Reunion Photo
 

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