Daniel & Anna Huggins Houser

HOUSER HUGGINS

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 9/22/2010 at 17:12:40

History of Woodbury County, Iowa 1984

Daniel and Anna (Huggins) Houser
By Evelyn Lukens Beckmann

Daniel Henry Houser was born April 24, 1838, at Aurora, Indiana. His mother’s name was Susan. He lived there until he was eight years old, when he moved with his parents to Davenport, Iowa. At the age of eighteen he came west with three other young men to Sioux City, Iowa, in June 1856. They settled in an unclaimed shanty on the Floyd River Bottoms.

Sioux City had a population of around 200 upon his arrival. The center of town was about Pearl and 2nd Streets. The mail was delivered from Council Bluffs, Iowa, by state coach.

The Civil War began and Daniel volunteered on the side of the Union. He was in Company K of the Iowa Cavalry, which operated on the North-West Frontier as a border guard. His unit was to control Indian uprisings and protect the settlers, while the regular army was engaged in battle with the south. After his discharge he attended many reunions and had a keepsake ribbon from the 7th Annual Reunion of the Marion County Veterans’ Association at Knoxville, Iowa, held October 9th and 10th, 1901. He also kept a button from his uniform.

Around 1867 he saw the first train come into town from Missouri Valley, Iowa. Daniel said he was cutting wood on ‘Cod Fish Hill at the time. ‘Cod Fish’ meant the nice people lived there, while the term ‘Mud Eagle’ was the name given to the jail, and sometimes applied to the hill. He liked to watch the steamships come up the river and the ‘melee’ that followed a night on the town by the riverboat men.

Daniel married Anna Elizabeth Huggins on December 25, 1867. She was born July 14, 1845, at Middle Town, Vermont, and moved with her parents to a farm near Alcester, South Dakota, in Union County. They received their mail at Calliope, Iowa, now a suburb of Hawarden. Union County had a country school named Huggins that the family helped start. It was located by their farm buildings.

Daniel and Anna had seven children: Hattie Susan, born October 26, 1868 and died July 18, 1879; Mary Eliza, born July 29, 1870 and died November 4, 1910. (She married John Baldwin and had four children.); Eugene Houser was born January 14, 1873 and died February 3, 1873; William Elvin was born September 4, 1874 and died July 10, 1917. (He had two children, Glen and Harold.); Nellie Blanche was born June 21, 1875 and died October 28, 1964; Martha ‘Mattie’ Elizabeth was born November 27, 1877. (She married Martin Hendricksen and had one son, Eros. Date of her death is known.); Walter was born May 1881, and died June 23, 1950. He married and had two children, Deva and Duane.

Daniel was a carpenter by trade and built fine furniture. In later years he helped build a house on a Boyd County, Nebraska, farm and stayed with his granddaughter, Mr and Mrs Harrry Cagley, who were to live there. Mr and Mrs Houser spent all their lives in Sioux City, except for a time when they lived at Knoxville, Iowa. They were members of Seventh Day Adventist Church, and Anna was also a member of the Women’s Relief Corps. They were interviewed at their home, 3018 Correctionville Road, by the Sioux City paper shortly after celebrating their wedding anniversary Christmas Day in 1928. They said their ‘receipt’ (always ace of recipe) for their long happy marriage was to ‘kiss, make up, and forget’. In this interview Daniel had some interesting comments concerning prohibition.

Daniel died a few weeks later of pneumonia January 6, 1929, at the age of ninety. Anna died December 28, 1932, after a paralysis of two weeks. Both are buried in the Graceland Park Cemetery in Sioux City on a lot belonging to a grandson, Glen Houser. No stones mark their graves.

Nellie Houser married Charles Lukens (son of Richard and Harriet Tatlow Lukens) May 14, 1892 at Randolph, Nebraska. They had five children: Elsie Hazel, born February 14, 1895 and married to Harry Cagley; Richard Daniel, born July 21, 1896 and died June 26, 1962; Charles Enos, born February 8, 1898 and died November 19, 1952; Mark Harvey, born April 21, 1900 and died August 26, 1974; Martha Esther Wennefred, born June 29, 1910 and married to Martin Brummer.