Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1891
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 777
JOHN 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.

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