WILSEY - William H. WILSEY, of Little Sioux Township, came to Harrison County in 1876, when he took up his residence in Little Sioux. He was born May 6, 1822, at Troy, Bradford County, Pa., and lived there until 1836, when the family removed to Ohio, and from there to Michigan, and then to Illinois, in which State our subject obtained most of his education, and there grew to manhood. He came to Monona County, Iowa, in 1855, and settled in the town of Maple, and laid out the village of Mapleton on his farm, where he was both merchant and Postmaster for some years. By his own industry, perserverance and frugality, he rapidly accumulated both money and lands, until he became one of the largest land owners in the county, owning at one time fifteen hundred acres in Maple Township.

He remained in Monona County until 1876, when he concluded to try his fortune in the Far West, and with this in view, he removed to Colorado, but after a few months was glad to return to the Hawkeye State and took up residence in Harrison County, but lived for two years in Mapleton, but finally in 1882 came to Little Sioux Township, and has resided here since that time. He is one of the largest land owners in this and Monona counties, having five hundred acres in Little Sioux Township alone, a greater portion of which is under the plow.

Mr. WILSEY has been three times married: first in Henry County, Ill., in 1844, he was united to Miss Sarah Jane CUNNINGHAM, by whom four children were born -- Clarissa, Nelson A., Duke W. and William H.

Mr. WILSEY afterward married Mrs. Sarah (RUGGLES) MAYNARD, the widow of Amos MAYNARD, of Pennsylvania, who came to the country with him.

March 27, 1877, Mr. WILSEY for the third time entered into the bonds of matrimony, being on that day united in marriage to Mrs. Mary A. SMITH, a native of Linn County, Iowa, the daughter of Moses and Eliza (BRAZZELTON) GERMAN, of Little Sioux, and who came there at a very early day. Her father built the first dwelling house eracted in Little Sioux.

Source: 1891 Harrison County Iowa History, page 901.
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LYMAN - Thomas A. E. LYMAN, of the firm of Lyman & Smith, dealers in general merchandise, doing business at Dunlap, will form the subject of this notice. Mr. LYMAN is a native of Cattaraugus County, N.Y., and was born May 7, 1861. He is a son of Thomas Addis Emmett Lyman and Mary (Patterson) Lyman. The father was a native of Connecticut and the mother of New York, both of whom are now deceased. They had a family of seven, two of whom are now living, our subject and Clarence, who is located in Grand Island, Neb. When our subject was but nine years of age he accompanied his mother and three brothers to Dunlap, since which time his mother and two brothers have died. He was reared and educated from his ninth year in Dunlap, and when thirteen years old commenced clerking in a store, which he followed until he formed a partnership with S. T. SMITH in 1890. He was a salesman for R. B. HILLAS for ten years, but now is the senior member of the firm to which he belongs. It should be said of this gentleman, that he is a purely self-made man, having started from the lowest round of the ladder and by business tact, with a large amount of energy, has kept gradually advancing.

Politically, Mr. LYMAN is a supporter of the Republican party. He belongs to the Knights of Pythias order, being a member of Harrison Lodge, No. 284.

He was united in marriage October 20, 1886 to Miss Lucy Barber, daughter of George and Ann Barber, who was born in Toronto, Canada, July 21, 1868. Mr. and Mrs. Lyman are the parents of two children -- Addis Emmett and Clarice. Our subject and his wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Mr. LYMAN partner's name is S. T. SMITH, both of whom are young men, just in the prime of their life. They succeeded R. B. HILLAS, now of Chattanooga, Tenn., and took possession September 15, 1890. The stock was valued at $10,000 which is kept in two rooms, 25 x 90 feet. The east room is devoted to clothing and gents' furnishing goods, together with a full line of carpets, while the west room is devoted to dry-goods and groceries. They now carry a $16,000 stock, which is nicely arranged and presents an inviting appearance to their large circle of customers. There are but few, if any, stocks of goods between Cedar Rapids and Council Bluffs superior to this. Their trade extends throughout a portion of Harrison, Crawford, Shelby and Monona Counties.

Source: 1891 Harrison County Iowa History, page 534,535.
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DOUGHERTY - James DOUGHERTY, ranks among the early settlers of Harrison County. He located in St. John's Township, on section 26 and 35, in 1858, where he bought forty acres of land, to which he has added until he has two hundred and ten acres. Vast has been the change since he purchased his wild land, and made various improvements up to the present time. His nearest post-office and trading point was Council Bluffs. He lived in a log cabin, and the snow would sift through the clapboard roof and had to be removed each day for weeks at a time. This house served the purpose of a home until 1861, when a frame house was built. He has since built a fine residence.

Of his early life it may be said that he was born in Ireland, in the County of Davey, October 30, 1827. He can trace his ancestors only to his grandfather, James DOUGHERTY, who married Nancy FISHER, and they had three children, one of whom was our subject's father, James DOUGHERTY, born in Ireland. He married Miss Jane NELSON, a daughter of John and Jane (Watson) NELSON, who reared seven children, two of whom are in the United States. The children were John, Thomas, James, William, Margaret, Jane and Nancy.

Our subject's early life was spent in the Emerald Isle, where he received a common-school education. He remained at home on his father's farm until he was seventeen years of age, when his father gave him money to pay his passage to America. He sailed for this country in March 1848, and landed in New York City, and went to Roundout, on North River, where he visited relatives for a time. One of his cousins was a railroad contractor, and he worked for him several years. August 10, 1854, he married Mary SNYDER, a daughter of Patrick and Catherine (FLAHERTY) SNYDER, natives of Irland, who came to this country in 1851.

Mr. and Mrs. DOUGHERTY are the parents of twelve children, seven of whom are living -- Mary, deceased; Catherine (Mrs. PRATER) of Missouri Valley; John and Thomas, deceased; Jane (Mrs. WARD), living near Logan; James, a resident of Harrison County; Rosella (Mrs. HILLIARD), a resident of this county; Lydia, at home; Teresa, Robert, now in Colorado; William and Charles are deceased.

Politically, our subject affiliates with the Democratic party, and in religious matters, he and his family are members of the Roman Catholic Church.

To have been a pioneer of Harrison County as early as 1858, was to encounter many hard-ships, to undergo many pleasures. Money was scarce and the settlers were far from market, and far from each other. Verily, the present and future generation will never know, save by history all that the vanguard to settlement went through in developing Western Iowa. All praise to those who came and remained through those perilous years.

Source: 1891 Harrison County Iowa History, page 684,685.
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STRAUSS - John STRAUSS, another pioneer of Harrison County, and one of the settlers of 1860, who now resides on section 20, of Cass Township, is the subject of the following sketch. His birth-place was in York County, Pa., and the date of that evenet was June 27, 1831. He is the son of Adam and Rebecca (MORTHLAND) STRAUSS, whosw father was of German descent, while the mother was of Scotch ancestry. The father was a tanner by trade, and followed this nearly all the days of his life, but at an advanced age he found his way to Harrison County, where he died two years later at the house of our subject, aged eighty-three years. The mother died in Wooster, Ohio, two years later.

When our subject was fourteen years old, just when boyhood puts on the ambitions of manhood, he started for himself, following farm labor until he was of age, with some time spent at teaming and driving a stage. He was large of his age, and could always command a man's position. The year he was of age he hauled grain and merchandise for H. J. Frost, of Wooster, Ohio, who operated a large store, and the following year drove stage out of Wooster to several country points. In the fall of 1854, in company with several others, he came West, bringing a lot of horses and stage coaches to Iowa City, which was then the capital of the State.

From that point they made their way through Iowa to Council Bluffs, there establishing what is known as the Western Stage Company, and later was at St. Joseph, Mo. -- drifting about in this kind of work until he came to Harrison County.

An important event in the history of his life, which should here be recorded, occurred July 5, 1857, and was his marriage at Glenwood, Mills County, Iowa, to Jenette RUNYAN, a native of Trumbull, Ashtabula County, Ohio, born September 13, 1838, and the daughter of Nicholas and Emily (WOODRUFF) RUNYAN, and was the second child of a family of five children.

After coming to Harrison County, for two years he rented land and worked in the packing house at Council Bluffs until the fall of 1866, having bought his present farm in the summer of 1865, moving his house from Jeddo, the same having been built for a hotel by Mr. VORE. Mr. STRAUSS' present farm consists of one hundred and twenty-five acres, sixty acres of which is plow land, and the remainder pasture and meadow.

Source: 1891 Harrison County Iowa History, page 777,778.
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STRAUSS - Ephraim STRAUSS, who came to Harrison County in July, 1861 (that being the first year of the Civil War), is now a resident of section 20, of Cass Township, to which place he moved in 1864. The first two or three years he was in the county wild game was exceedingly plentiful, and he having a tatse in that direction, spent part of his time in hunting, through which occupation he made a livelihood. He narrates to the writer that he possessed only $5 in money, an old linch-pin wagon and a yoke of oxen. In the fall of 1863 he filed a claim, by which he was enabled to homestead his present place. For ten years he lived in a prairie palace, which may better be described by the use of the word "digout," Now that those early days have passed by, and people are in better circumstances, it may be said that our subject was somewhat of a mechanic, and used his mechanical genius in the erection of a superior style of dug-out -- laying up sod for a part of it, and employing pucneon for the interior of the walls, which provided him with a residence at once warm, cozy and strong, though perhaps not beautiful.

Our subject was born in York County, Pa., on the site of the present town of Wellsville, April 7, 1828. He is the son of Adam and Rebecca (MORTHLAND) STRAUSS. The father was of German extraction and was a good old-fashioned tanner by trade, who doubtless served a seven-year apprenticeship, in order to fit him for the art of leather-making. At an advanced age he came to Harrison County, and January 23 died at John Strauss', and the mother died in Ohio two years later.

When our subject was sixteen years old he commenced to battle life for himself, having worked four years previous to this time in the tanyard grinding bark, as this was before the days of "patent tans." He tired of this laborious work and went to Shermantown, Cumberland County, Pa., to learn the wheelwright trade. He had saved up a small sum of money from his work in the tannery, and his father made a bargain for him to work two years and a half, furnish his own clothes and received $20 therefor, but on account of his boss having borrowed $1 of him and failing to pay the same, he quit short of his time.

He then commenced working in a wagon-shop in the country near Harrisburg, where he worked a year, and then went to Dauphin and worked two years, after which we find him in a boat-yard, and in order to get his wages from the wagon-maker boarded with him. After a year and a half he ran on a canal for a time, and was at one time engaged in the Pennsylvania car-shops, which he left in the fall of 1855, and went to Lafayette County, Wis., where he worked at house-carpentering for two seasons, and then dropped over to Grant County, Wis., and went into a wagon-shop. In the spring of 1858 he formed a partnership and started a wagon-shop in Beetown, Wis., but sold his interest within a year, believing that there was more money hidden away in, and about Pike's Peak, awaiting his arrival, than there was in the wagon business, he forsook that trade and fitted out for an expedition, taking in company with him his brother-in-law, named Quimby. They started with one yoke of oxen, one yoke of cows, one span of horses and two wagons; and upon their arrival at Winterset, Iowa, they concluded to go to Texas. They consequently started for St. Joseph, when their plans were again changed, Quimby going to Texas, and Strauss sold out his stuff and went to St. Louis by boat, and we soon find him working on a farm in Missouri, but next working at the carpenter's trade at Iron Hill, which he followed until May 8, 1961, when he started on a journey which finally brought him to Harrison County, Iowa.

He was united in marriage, August 24, 1852, to Mary A. HOFFMAN, a native of the Keystone State, born September 23, 1834, and the daughter of Daniel and Anna (COLEMAN) HOFFMAN, who was the fifth child of a family of eight children. Her father was a caibnet-maker and died in Pennsylvania, in 1870, aged seventy-five years. The mother died at Dallas, Tex., in 1997, aged seventy-eight years.

Our subject and his wife are the parents of eight children -- Charles A., born December 1, 1853; Emma R., July 11, 1856; William C., January 8, 1861; Harry E., born October 19, 1863, died November 5, 1863; Ella J., born January 21, 1865; Anna M., born January 25, 1868, died September 14, 1869; George N., born October 23, 1871; Arlon V., January 20 1886.

Politically Mr. STRAUSS is identified with the Republican party. The above sketch is but a brief outline of an eventful life of a man who has seen much of the world, and over whose pathway the ill-winds of adversity have not unfrequently swept by, but who has lived a life of integrity, believing that a fair name was better than untold wealth.

Source: 1891 Harrison County Iowa History, page 779,780.
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FISCHER - John H. FISCHER, one of Harrison County's representative farmers came to this county, in March, 1883, and removed to his present farm on section 24, Jefferson Township, having purchased the same the fall before. He has two hundred and forty acres of well improved land, one hundred and thirty-five being under cultivation; twenty acres in timber, the balance in pasture and meadow.

Mr. FISCHER was born in Prussia, Germany, January 1, 1830, and is the son of Herman H. and Catherine (WILLMAN) FISCHER, who died in Germany before our subject sailed for America. He sailed for America in November, 1847, landing at New Orleans, January 1, 1848, and immediately went to Putnam County, Ill.; where for two years he worked at a hotel and on the canal one season, subsequently he rented a farm, operating the same for five years. He then came to Pottawattamie County, Iowa, and remained until coming to this county.

Our subject was married December 10, 1856, in Bureau County, Ill., to Mary NEIDERBROKER, a native of Prussia, who came to America with one sister in 1855; the mother died in Germany and the father came to Missouri in 1857. Our subject and his wife have reared a family of eight children�Fred H., Amelia, Charlie F., Edward W., Robert H., Matilda M., Albert H., Andrew A. F., all of whom are living.

Mr. FISCHER politically votes with the Republican party. Upon arriving in this country, he only possessed $21, and has accumulated a handsome competency, through his own energy and hard labor. At one time he worked as low as $6 per month, clothed himself and saved some money. The highest wages received per month was $12 and his washing, which was given him when working on the canal. This case but illustrates what an honest, painstaking, adopted citizen, coming to our shores from a foreign land, may accomplish under our peculiar form of Government.

Source: 1891 Harrison County Iowa History, pp. 364
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DAKAN - Lehigh DAKAN, a farmer located on section 17, Union Township, moved to the farm on which he now lives in the spring of 1876. His farm consists of one hundred and twenty acres, paying $8.65 per acre. He built a house 22 x 28 feet, with a wing 12x16 feet; dug a well, erected out buildings, put up a windmill, and set out an orchard of one hundred trees. He has added to his farm until it now contains two hundred and eighty acres.

Our subject was born March 17, 1840, in Ohio. He is a son of Ebenezer and Elizabeth (SHAFFER) DAKAN, who had five children. Our subject lived at home, until about twenty years of age, when he enlisted in Company E, Thirty-eight Ohio Infantry, and was in the Army of the Cumberland, under Gen. Thomas, and remained in the army until May, 1864. He was in the battles of Mill Spring, Murfreesboro, the siege of Vicksburg and other engagements. He served under his original enlistment until April 4, 1863, and was discharged at St. Louis, Mo., and was then appointed captain of Company K, Mississippi Marine Brigade, by Edwin M. Stanton, then Secretary of War. He served in this capacity until May, 1874, when he was discharged at Vicksburg, Miss.

Upon his return home he went to farming, coming to Harrison County in 1876. Politically Mr. DAKAN is a Republican, �first, last and all the time.�

He was married March 29, 1868 to Adaline LINCOLN, daughter of Thomas and Rachel (KAY) LINCOLN, natives of Ohio, who had seven children. Mr. and Mrs. Dakan are the parents of four children -- William L., born April 29, 1869; Nellie A., December 22, 1870; Harry L., July 22, 1874, and Pearl, September 27, 1885.

Source: 1891 Harrison County Iowa History, page 364, 365.
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MOORE - Samuel MOORE, ex-Count Judge, now a farmer located on section 9, of Taylor Township, has been a resident of Harrison County since September, 1856, when he settled at Magnolia, where he followed farming and also worked at the carpenter business until the fall of 1864. While he was in Magnolia, and about 1857, he entered one hundred and sixty acres of land on section 9, of Taylor Township, the same being swamp land. In 1864 he traded his house and lot in Magnolia for eighty acres of partly improved land in Taylor Township. It had all been broken, but not cultivated. He lived on that place from the fall of 1864 to May, 1866, when he moved to his present farm. He first erected on this farm a frame shanty 14x16 feet. It was constructed of cottonwood lumber, and was boarded up and down. The following autumn he built a log house 16x20 feet, in which he lived until October, 1876, which season he built his present residence. It is a frame structure, the upright of which is 18x26 feet and two stories high, together with a kitchen 16x20 feet. At the present time he owns two hundred and eighty acres of land in Taylor Township, one hundred and thirty of which is under the plow and the balance in pasture and meadow land. He also owns thirty acres of timber in Raglan Township.

When our subject came to the county, Magnolia had just sprang into existence, and most of the trading was done at Council Bluffs. When he moved to Taylor Township, he was a mile and one-half from schools, and whenever religious services were held, they were at the school house.

Mr. Moore was born in Sullivan County, N.Y., August 17, 1827. He is the son of Simeon and Mary (LOW) MOORE, both natives of the Empire State. The father was born February 3, 1802, and the mother about 1805. He remained at home until the spring of 1848, and during the summer of that year worked on a farm in Massachusetts. The following spring he went to Delaware County, N.Y., and worked in the lumber regions, continuing for three years rafting logs in the summer down the river to Trenton and Philadelphia. We next find him in Sullivan County, N.Y., where he peeled tan-bark until July, and after the season for that was over, he engaged at harvesting. This brings our subject down to the autumn of 1853, when he came to Franklin County, Ohio, in company with his brother S. S. MOORE. He remained there until September, 1856, being employed in a turning factory. He then came West and located in Harrison County, Iowa.

Our subject was united in marriage in Boyer Township, Harrison County, Iowa, Aptil 17, 1859, to Miss Eliza J. HOLETON, the daughter of John and Caroline (MILLAGE) HOLETON. Our subject and his wife are the parents of eight children -- Mary C., Mrs. FULLER; Alden S.; Larua A., Mrs. BRONSON; Sarah E., died January 9, 1868; Otis H., died April 16, 1869; Robert M.; Florence SA.; and S. S., died Decmber 9, 1884.

Eliza J. (HOLETON) MOORE was born in Muskingum County, Ohio, October 20, 1841, and came to Harrison County with her parents in 1853. They settled in Boyer Township, and she remained at home until the date of her marriage. The mother died in Apanoose County, Iowa, in 1846, and the father in Harrison County in April, 1858.

Our subject's father still lives in Sullivan County, N.Y. The mother died in that county March 26, 1884. They reared a family of twelve children -- eight sons and four daughters, our subject being the oldest child. He received his early education in te common schools.

Politically, our subject has been identified with the Democratic party, nut now is in sympathy with the Farmers' Alliance movement.

He was elected Sheriff, on the Democratic ticket, in the fall of 1862, and held the office one term. He also held the office of County Judge for the years of 1864-65. He was candidate for County Supervisor on the Alliance ticket. He is a member of Magnolia Lodge, No. 126, of the Masonic order, and was a charter member of the same.

Source: 1891 Harrison County Iowa History, page 798, 799.
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