Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1891
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 634
TERRANCE MCCABE

Terrance MCCABE, a resident of section 14, Raglan Township, has been a resident of this county since April, 1866--the closing year of the Civil War. He first located on one hundred and twenty acres of partly improved land, constituting a part of his present farm. The place had a log house and eighteen acres of land under the plow. This log cabin served the family seven years, when he built a house 16x20 feet, in which they lived nineteen years, when high water drove them out by flooding and filling in with mud and water, which was fourteen inches deep on the floor. He then built another house two stories high, 16x32 feet with an addition. He commenced in Harrison County poor, but has kept adding to his land until he now has one hundred and eighty-three acres, one hundred acres of which is under the plow and the balance in pasture and timber; all enclosed with a good fence. He has built a barn 20x3 feet, and has a large set of stock scales and other valuable improvements, including an orchard of two hundred trees. It was his ill-fortune to live in the county during the grasshopper years, and when the vast army spread their wings and took flight they darkened the very heaves at noonday, and with their going they carried away with them a large portion of our subject's crops, which made the subsequent years quite hard for him.

Mr. MCCABE was born in Ireland, November 28, 1837; he is the son of Francis and Eliza MCCABE, who were also natives of the Emerald Isle; who had a family of eight children--Terrence, John C., Mary A., Francis, Eliza, Frances and Agnes.

His parents came to America when he was but two years of age, leaving him in his native land with his grandparents, with whom he lived until nine years old, at which time he came to America with friends and met his father at Boston Harbor, with whom he lived until he was of age. His family settled on a farm in Wisconsin in 1848, and he was then twenty years old, and in the winter of 1860-61, he followed logging in the pine districts of Wisconsin. In April of that year, the thundering cannon fired on Ft. Sumter and was the signal of a great conflict, the sequel of which was only found at the end of a four-years' bloody rebellion. Our subject who was fired with the spirit of patriotism, only born of the love of liberty, and only carried out by self-sacrifice and hardship, enlisted as a soldier in the Union army, a month after the Stars and Bars were unfurled to the breeze. He became a member of Company B, Third Wisconsin Infantry, under Capt. SCOTT, enlisting at Oshkosh. He was sent to Hagarstown, Md., and from there to Harper's Ferry, Va., and was at the engagement of Balls Bluff, Winchester, Cedar Mountain, Second Battle of Bull Run, South Mountain, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg and Mine Run. He was in the service from May, 1861 to May, 1864, when he received his discharge, after which he went into the Quartermaster's Department with Gen. THOMAS' army where he remained until the spring of 1866 and then came to Harrison County, Iowa.

He was married July 20, 1865, to Martha J. DUGGER, the daughter of William and Cyrena DUGGER, natives of Tennessee. His wife was one of a family of eleven children, of whom the following are the names: Martha, Thomas, Sarah, Alonzo, deceased, John; Melvina and Harriet, deceased; Margaret, Wallace, Lafayette and Alice. Eight of these children are living.

Our subject and his wife have had their home blessed by the advent of ten children--Caroline, William, John, Terence D., deceased, Eliza, Peter, Frances, Mary, Agnes and Nellie.

Mr. MCCABE is a member of the Masonic order, belongs to Magnolia Lodge, No. 126.

From the day our subject landed in Boston, at the age of nine years, his had been a varied experience, having lived in this, his adopted country prior to the rebellion, and having marched through the long campaigns, beneath the burning Southern skies, tented in the field, and been in the ranks, where grape and canister shot fell like hail, participating in the largest battles of that terrible strife, and then returning to farm life in Harrison County, in advance of railroads, it may be said that he has seen much of true hardship.

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