West Liberty History 1838-1938

Source: One Hundred Years of History
* Commemorating a Century of Progress in the West Liberty Community * WEST LIBERTY, IOWA
THE BAGLEY'S
by
Ella Louise Farquhar

William Bagley was born January 14, 1791 in New Hampshire. Lois Loveland, his wife, was born May 11, 1793 in Connecticut. They were married in Castleton, Vermont, May 11, 1814.

Names of the children of William and Lois Bagley : Phoebe Adaline, Mary Ann, Louisa, William Alanson, Nancy, Elizabeth Jeannette, Samuel, Amy, Alvin, Lucena Loveland, Horace Mann.

Adaline, the oldest of the Bagley children, married William Cornes, and had two children when she came to Iowa with her father's family.

Louisa Bagley married William T. Clark in Muscatine, Iowa, January 28, 1839. They lived in a log cabin for a while, then built a farm home near West Liberty and spent the remainder of their lives there. They had nine children : Sarah, Will, Katherine, John, Elizabeth, Mary, Robert, Joe, and Fanny. None of the family is living.

William Alanson Bagley, oldest son, married Lucretia Burgan, purchased the family home from his mother and lived there for a time. His mother moved to Tipton where she died in 1852. Her body is buried beside that of her husband in the cemetery north of West Liberty.

Lucena Loveland Bagley married Francis P. Farquhar, Sept. 19, 1852. They lived at West Liberty about six years and then moved to Ohio where they lived until 1873 when they returned to West Liberty. They moved to Audubon later where she died in December of 1893.

The William Bagley family now consists of six generations. The first : William, Charlott ( who married Enos Barnes and came to what is now West Liberty in 1837 ), Simeon Arvin, who came the following year and laid out the town. West Liberty was named for Liberty, Ohio where the Bagley family had lived. Louisa Bagley Clark was given the privilege of giving the town its name.

The second generation are the eleven children of William and Lois Bagley.

In the sixth generation there are five small children, the youngest one being the great grandchild of George and Elizabeth Farquhar, and the son of John and Elizabeth Marsh of Chicago.

All the children of William and Lois Bagley except three, lived practically all their lives in Iowa. Although widely separated in the state, six of the nine children who lived to be grown and married, are buried in Iowa.

We have almost a perfect record of the six generations and the location of all the permanent homes.

Ella Louise Farquhar

---