Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1891
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 774
SAMUEL VITTITOE

Samuel VITTITOE, a farmer living on section 28, Clay Township, came to Harrison County the last year of the Civil War, 1865, and rented land for two years in Clay Township, at the end of which time he purchased eighty acres of wild land in Taylor Township, which he improved and lived upon until the spring of 1881, when he sold and bought one hundred acres where he now lives. He has thirty-five acres under cultivation while the balance is in timber and pasture land. At the time he came to Harrison County, but few persons had effected a settlement on the bottom lands of the Missouri, and grass was actually as high as the top of a man's head while riding on horseback. One could travel in almost any direction, regardless of lines, as there were but few roads worked at that time. Farming on the Missouri bottoms was not carried on much at that time, but the few inhabitants were chiefly engaged in getting out logs for wood and lumber.

Our subject was born in LaRue County, Kentucky, March 6, 1826. He remained at home with his parents until May 17, 1844, when he enlisted in the Mexican War. He was in Company C, of the First Regiment of Kentucky Infantry, and participated in the battles of Monterey, and in a battle near Robber's Ranch. His company was surrounded in a small town for five days; here they had quite a hard struggle. There were about three hundred and sixty teamsters, all killed, and nearly everything in their train consumed by fire. Our subject was discharged May 17, 1847, at New Orleans, after which he returned to Kentucky and remained until the spring of 1848, then came to Ft. Des Moines, Iowa, when there was nothing there save two little stores and the old fort. Here our subject operated a ferry across the Coon and Des Moines rivers, until the spring of 1852, when he fitted out an overland ox-team conveyance, and started for the gold regions of California, and was there until the autumn of 1857, when he returned to Des Moines, and kept the toll-bridge across the Des Moines River, the same being the Vine Street Bridge, on which site now rolls the electric street car -- the emblem of modern civilization. He remained in that position until the spring of 1859, when he pre-empted a quarter section of land near St. James, Cedar County, Nebraska. He was there until the fall of 1864, at which time he sold and came to Crawford County, Iowa, and the following spring removed to Harrison County.

He was united in marriage at Des Moines in 1857, to Miss Susan WHEELER, by whom four children were born: Ellen, Thomas F., Mary (deceased), and Jacob.

While living in Cedar County, Neb., there occurred a terrible Inidan crime. One of our subject's neighbors was a soldier in the Union army, and the mother had gone to Yankton, SD, and upon her return she found three of her five children had been slaughtered by the Indians. Two were able to speak upon her return, but died within a few hours; this was known as the Wiseman Indian massacre.

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