Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1915
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 954
M. S. VAN EATON

The career of M.S. VAN EATON, who is now living a retired life at Pisgah, Harrison County, Iowa, is full of very interesting incidents. Born in Minnesota, at a time when the Indians were still very troublesome, he lost his father when a small child and afterward lived in various placed with his mother, who later remarried, until he came to Harrison County in 1876. He has made this county his home since that time, with the exception of ten years when he was in Canada where he engaged in farming and buying and shipping horses. During his active career in this County, he was engaged in the hardware business, but having been very successful in his affairs while living in Canada, he has retired from active work and is devoting his time to the managing of his business interests.

M. S. VAN EATON, the son of Reverand Thomas and Caroline (POYNER) VAN EATON, was born at Faribault, Rice County, Minnesota, on July 8, 1859. His father was born in Wisconsin, and his mother in Terre Haute, Indiana. M. S. VAN EATON was a minister in the Methodist Church and also engaged in farming, and all of the five children were born and reared on the farm. The VAN EATON family are of Dutch descent, whose genealogy has been traced back for more than six hundred years. It is indeed noteworthy that during all of these centuries, not one of them has ever been convicted of a crime or misdemeanor, and that all of them have lived lives of usefulness and honor.

Rev. Thomas VAN EATON sold his farm in Rice County, Minnesota, in 1861, and took up a government claim in Pope County, in the northern part of the same state, where he farmed and in addition held religious services at the different settlers' homes in the community. The Sioux Indians at that time were on the war path. The settlers asked for guards from the Government. Troops were sent, but some of the frontier districts were not afforded the proper protection. Among them Pope County was an unfortunate example.

On Sunday morning in August 1862, Rev. Thomas VAN EATON and family went to the school house, where they were holding meetings. After the services were over, the family were invited to the home of a neighbor for dinner. The dinner had just been served when a man came running, out of breath, and informed them that the Sioux Indians had broken out and were headed in that direction, destroying everything in their path, that he had expected to find all of them massacred before he could reach them. Mr. VAN EATON, with his wife and five children, including M. S., started for Soc Center, a distance of twenty two miles from Grove Lake, where they lived. Another family lived about eight miles in the opposite direction. Neighbors were not plentiful in that time, and it was necessary for someone to reach this family to warn them of the impending dangers around them. After starting his own family on the road to safety, he himself made the trip, warned his neighbor and family of the outbreak, overtaking his family on the road to their destination, at which place they arrived safely, and where he enlisted in the Home Guards. After two days' drilling, he decided to return to his home to look after his stock. The Captain promised to send with him three men, but at the last moment they failed him, and he was forced to return alone. When he reached the place where his home had stood, he found that the Indians had destroyed everything, among which was a rather large collection of books. In those frontier days, these books were rare and of great value. The Indians had carried out the books and thrown them in a heap on the ground and there had killed his best cow on the heap, thus soaking the books in the blood and totally destroying them.

Mr. VAN EATON started to return home, but was never seen alive again. The Indians had chased him into a slough where his horse mired, and after a fight for his life in which not a few Indians paid the penalty of death, he was killed. Four months later they found his body lying on the prairie with his head gone, and it was not until nine years later that his head was found on a hill and was easily recognized as the head of the lamented minister, because of a dent in the skull. The Indians had decapitated him after killing him and had then taken his head up to the hill and held a war dance around it.

Soon after this tragedy in the home, the mother moved into Blackhawk County, Iowa, near Waterloo, where she had a brother who helped her to care for the young children. Some time later, she married James EMMERSON, and moved to LeMars, Iowa. Here the family lived until 1876, when they moved to Magnolia, Harrison County, Iowa, where the mother lived until her death in 1912.

M. S. VAN EATON lived at the home of his mother in LeMars until the age of 17 when he began to follow the carpenter trade. After working at that trade for some time, it was discovered that he was exceptionally fast when it came to shingling or lathing. He followed this line alone for 15 years, 6 years of which time he held the world's championship in these two lines, backed by a printed challenge that had been posted by a banker friend in LeMars. As a result of this challenge, he entered 27 contests and won them with comparative ease. The hardest man he ever met was his brother, T. C. VAN EATON, now of Eatonville, Washington. The best day's lathing M.S. ever did was 5,000 lath in ten hours, or 315 yards, and the best day's shingling was 10,000 shingles in ten hours. He followed this trade until it began to injure his health, when he moved to Tacoma, Washington, where he did teaming and contracting work, during the boom of that city, after which he returned to Magnolia, Iowa, where he handled implements for about five years. About that time the Northwestern Railway Company put in a branch from Wall Lake to Mondamin, Iowa, and rumors were afloat that a new town was to be established at the site of Mt. Pisgah, in Jackson township, this county. Consequently, Mr. VAN EATON felt that here would be a good place for a store. He immediately sold his store building in Magnolia and built a new one on the proposed town site of Pisgah. It proved to be a fortunate venture. The town boomed and business flourished from the start. He received the first carload of merchandise which was shipped over the new road - a carload of wagons. After being in the business in mt. Pisgah for several years, he disposed of his store and moved to Saskatoon, Canada, where he bought a large farm. During all the time he was in Canada, he farmed from six hundred and forty to one thousand acres of land. In addition to his farming, he traveled over the country and bought horses and sold them, selling about twenty-one hundred during the ten years that he lived in Canada. He also bought and sold land and handled more than thirty thousand acres during his residence in that country.

M. S. VAN EATON had accumulated a very comfortable fortune by 1913, so he decided to sell out his holdings in Canada and return to Harrison County to spend the remainder of his days. In that year, he came back to Pisgah, where his wife and son had located the year previously, and again purchased the hardware store which he had formerly owned. He has not been actively engaged in business since returning to this county, but gives his attention to the general management of his extensive business interests. Such, in brief, is the career of M. S. VAN EATON, and it is certainly a history which should be preserved in the annals of his county.

M. S. VAN EATON was married on March 1, 1887, to Pearl DERRY, who was born in Iowa, August 24, 1867, and is a daughter of Charles and Elizabeth DERRY, old settlers in Harrison County and the parents of three children. Mr. VAN EATON and his wife have one son, Charles S., who was born on August 10, 1889. He is a graduate of the Latter Day Saints College at Lomoni, and later graduated from the Iowa Business College, at Council Bluffs. He has also been a student at the University of Chicago and is a young man of marked promise and ability. He was married to Bertha STEELS of Kansas City, Missouri, and is now managing the hardware store which he has bought from his father. His wife's grandfather, Jarius PUTNEY, was one of the earliest pioneer settlers of Monona County. Charles is a very active and prominent young man in the community but has never aspired to office. He is a public speaker of ability and is frequently called upon to deliver addresses of various kinds.

Mr. VAN EATON and his son are both Republicans. Mrs. VAN EATON is a member of the Church of Latter Day Saints, and Charles and his wife are also members of the same denomination.

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