Cyrus A Crawford

CRAWFORD KERR

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 4/12/2010 at 20:26:01

Woodbury County History 1984

Cyrus A Crawford
By Audrey Rippke

Cyrus A Crawford, the son of Alfred W Crawford, was born January 31, 1847 in Holmes County, Ohio. He died November 21, 1929, in Woodbury County, Iowa. He married Mary Jane Kerr, daughter of Andrew J Kerr, on the fourth of October in 1866. She was born April 28, 1847, in Wayne County, Ohio. She died October 14, 1935, from complications after falling down the basement stairs.

Even though he was not old enough to be in the Army, Cyrus convinced them that he was eighteen and signed up for a hundred day enlistment. His older brothers were already in the Union Army. He was with Company A of the Ohio National Guard from May until September in 1864.

The first years of their marriage, he farmed in Ohio. In November, 1869 he came to Iowa, settling first in Cedar County where hefarmed until 1884. They came to Plymouth County in March, 1884 to a place south of Kingsley. They moved to Woodbury County in the fall of 1884 and made their home in Wolfcreek Township, where he homesteaded a quarter of land. He built a house and later built the barn and sheds. He bought additional land and soon had 400 acres. It is noted tht he rented 160 acres to one of the neighbors for cash rent for one year and that he was to have received $1000.00 for that year.

Cyrus and Mary Jane were the parents of eight children. They were Wesley Allen (1869-1938) who farmed nearby; Clara (1871-1955) who became the wife of Horace Hall, a farmer; Owen (1872-1944) and Clark (1886-1970) who never married and farmed the home place; Fannie (1878-1935)was the wife of A M Williams of Moville Township; Effie, born in 1882, married Severin C M Sneve and moved to California. Ervy (1875-1895) was nineteen when he died in an accident and a daughter, Faith, (1891-1892) died when she was about fourteen months old.

Both Cyrus and Mary Jane and five of their children are buried in Fairview Cemetery at Rock Branch. Rock Branch is about halfway between Moville and Correctionville. At one time thre was a store and gas station there.

He was firm believer in the cause of temperance and gave political support to the Prohibition Party. He and his wife were members of the Methodist Episcopal Church where he served as an officer at one time. He also served as commissioner of highways.

Their son, Wesley, married Elsie Laura Willson on December 27, 1893. They had met a church at Lucky Valley. Lucky Valley was a small community west of Anthon. She lived there before moving to Kingsley and then on to Lineville, Iowa, whee she was living when they got married. Her grandparents Christy lived at Lineville.

Wesley bought a farm in 1892 only a mile from where his parents were living. The house that still stands on the place was built in 1907. The family lived in the cobhouse and a tent during the time that the old house was being torn down and replaced with the new and more modern home. It was one of the first homes in theneighborhood to have electricity and indoor plumbing. They put in their own power plant in 1919. The plumbing had been put in the year 1916.

They milked cows, had a few chickens and raised hogs. These animals were the source of the milk, cream, butter, eggs and meat used on the farm.

The family was Methodist and because of the distance to surrounding churches, a class was organized to meet in Diamond schoolhouse only a half mile from their farm home. This is the school where their children were educated. On Sundays the school seats became pews and the recitation bench became the ‘mourners bench’ and communion table.

Wesley and Elsie became the parents of three children. Lyle, born in 1901, married Leona Thiesen. He was born on that farm and is still living there. Florence married Magnus Christensen and they spent many years in South Africa as missionaries. Madge married Rufus Spurrell. They farmed near Watertown, South Dakota.

Lyle farmed with his dad until Wesley died in 1938. He continued the livestock and grain farming. The farming was done with horses until 1938 when he purchased his first tractor. One of the big summer jobs was threshing the small grain. After the grain had been made into bundles and stood in shocks, a group of neighbors worked together getting it threshed. They went from one farm to another until each had his grain in the bin and the straw in a stack. They used a threshing machine. It usually took several weeks of good weather to finish. Another hard and time-consuming task was picking corn by hand. It sometimes got pretty cold before all the corn was in the crib. It took quite awhile to fill the wagon one ear at a time.

My folks (Lyle and Leona) had ten children. We are: Audrey (Mrs Wilbur) Rippke, Vera (Mrs Walter, Jr) Sterrett, Phyllis (Mrs Kenneth) Anderson, Kendall Crawford and Gerald Crawford in Woodbury County. Kathryn Smith is in California and Shirley (Mrs Joe) Kurasz is in New Jersey. A son, Dale, died in 1971 and a daughter, Bethene, died in 1935.

We attended the one-room school (Diamond School also known as Wolfcreek #8) that was located just one half mile down the road. This school was closed in 1948 and the students bused to Moville.