Thomas J Allen Pettit

PETTIT

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 10/13/2010 at 19:58:26

History of Woodbury County, Iowa 1984

Thomas J Allen Pettit
By Lani Pettit

Thomas Pettit lived in Sioux City as early as 1892, mostly in the Morningside area. Their home on what was then Grace Street, stills stands at 4113 Davis. Tom and his wife, Rosetta raised seven children, plus two sons by a previous marriage. Their descendants still live in Morningside.

The earlier known ancestors of Thomas Pettit, who were of French descent, appeared in Kentucky in the 1790’s. Samuel and Sarah Pettit were the parents of Samuel G, Allen G, Mahala, Cyrus, and William G Pettit. Allen G Thomas’ father, was born around 1825 in Green County, Kentucky. He and his parents also lived in Greenup County. By 1850, they had migrated to Adams County, Illinois.

Allen G first married Martha C, and they had one son, Samuel Jacob. In 1857, he remarried to Martha Jane Bayles, in Adams County. On December 14, 1858, their only child was born, Thomas J Allen Pettit.

Tom’s father, standing over six feet tall, a large man for Civil War days, enrolled with the Kansas Volunteers, Sixth Cavalry, Company B, at Fort Leavenworth. He served the Union from 1861 to 1864. Soon afterward, on May 7, 1865, Allen’s second wife died. Little Tom was only six years old. By 1866, Allen had found a new mother for his boys, and married Rachel G Parsons Jackson, in Wyandotte County, Kansas. In the following years there were four more children: Sarah, Charles Lewis, George W, and Allison James.

The family left Kansas to homestead in Todd County, Minnesota, in 1878. Descendants of these Pettits still live in this area, and Wright County, Minnesota (where the patriarch, Samuel, died around 1870). Some of the sons, and the parents eventually moved to Oregon and Washington following a group of Seventh-Day Adventists. Allen G died in Yamhill County, Oregon, July 27, 1893.

Meanwhile, in Minnesota, Thomas married Mary A Brakefield in 1883. He started a general store in Clarissa. But the tragic early death of his young bride must have ended this venture.

Before long, Thomas married Rosetta A Mowers, daughter of Charles Morticar and Susan Jane Bicknell Mowers. A son, Frank Allen, was born on September 26, 1886, at Burlington, Iowa. In the years that followed, the family lived in South Dakota, Iowa, and Nebraska. Their children were: Mary Jane Clopper Brockopp, Bertha Birdie Raynor Wehrli, Martha Mabel ‘Mattie’ Carlson, Thomas W, George, who died of diphtheria at age three, and Daisie Florence Culver. Rosetta’s sons were W Dan and John Beard. (See Rev John Beard)

Like the Pettits before him, Tom was a big man, quite strong, and a good worker. He enjoyed baseball and was a talented organist. In addition to the general store, he later worked in market gardening, carpentry and meat packing. It was at Cudahy’s Packing plant that an elevator fell, leaving him an invalid for the rest of his life. Unable to admit that he was handicapped, Tom continued working. He spent his last few years in Omaha, where he sold newspapers from a wheelchair on a street corner near the World Herald. At the time of his death, on December 24, 1916, a front page story related that he would be greatly missed by many. He was a likeable man whose ‘sunny’ disposition imparted the knowledge that happiness may be had for the asking’.