Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1891
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 667
MARSHALL E. OVIATT

Marshall E. OVIATT, deceased, who resided on section 35, Jackson Township, located at Magnolia in October, 1865, and four months later moved to Loveland, Pottawattamie County, where he worked in a flouring mill until July, 1867, and then went to the present site of Logan, and made a temporary house, by setting boards up edgeways to make a shelter. He erected the first building upon what is now the plat of Logan, and that building was the Waterman drug-store. The next building was erected by a man by the name of Jones, and he completed the work on that building, and then built the cellar of what is now the Logan House. From there he went to Magnolia, and from there over to Loveland, and worked in a flouring mill for eight years, and then bought the place he recently occupied, which consisted of eighty acres of wild land. Upon this place he built a house 16x24 feet, with a wing 12x21 feet. He also built a barn, hog house, cribbing, and brought water through gas-pipe a distance of one hundred and twenty rods from a spring. He set out an orchard of one hundred trees of fruit-bearing kind, as well as a large amount of shade trees. His farm now comprises two hundred and ninety-six acres, seventy five acres of which are under the plow, and the balance in pasture and meadow land. The whole tract, including sixteen acres of timber, is enclosed by a substantial fence. Our subject came to the county "$27 worse off than nothing," but hard work and good management, with the endurance of many hardships, has provided himself with a good home.

He was born in Franklin County, VT, March 9, 1847, and is the son of William and Sarah OVIATT, natives of Vermont, who had a family of twelve chidlren, our subject being the tenth child. The children were as follows: William (deceased), Eliphalet, Rosette, Horatio, Harriet (deceased), Almon, Sarah, Cordelia, Fred, Marshall, Addie, and Nettie. The father is still living at the advanced age of eighty-three years. Our subject remained in the Green Mountain State with his parents until he was eighteen years of age, and then came to Council Bluffs, by the way of St. Joseph, MO. The first night he stayed in Iowa was at a stage station, about seven miles south of Missouri Valley, his objective point being Magnolia.

Our subject was married March 22, 1870, to Emily FOREMAN, daughter of Mason and Sarah FOREMAN, who were natives of West Virginia, and who were the parents of ten children, our subject's wife being the oldest. The children were named as follows: Emily, Agnes, Henry, Joseph, Margaret, Evaline, Elizabeth (deceased), William, Charles, and John. Two of these are in Kansas, one in Nebraska and six in Iowa.

Our subject and his wife are the parents of six children -- Harry, born June 3, 1873; Nettie (deceased), May 10, 1876; Hattie, September 6, 1879; Ora, November 26, 1881; Owen, December 10, 1884; Jessie, April 17, 1888.

In 1866 Mr. OVIATT was sent with four hundred sacks of flour to the Indian Reservation in Nebraska, sixteen miles south of Sioux City. He did not get it loaded until one o'clock at night. He had to pay $1.00 per hundred freight, to get it up the river, and being so long detained, and anxious to get home, he stole a canoe, and crossed the river to get on a boat that was carrying ties to Omaha, knowing that he could get as far as the Blair Bridge, and then went on foot ten miles in the night time to get to his place of business,

The notes for this personal sketch were given the historian by the deceased August 25, 1891, when he bid fair to live many years yet, but "in the midst of life we are met with death." So it was with the late Mr. OVIATT, whose name occurs many places within this volume in an historical way; but his race is run and he is now numbered among those who inhabit the "City of the Dead." He departed this life September 14, 1891, aged forty-four years, six months and five days.

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