West Liberty History 1838-1938

Source: One Hundred Years of History
* Commemorating a Century of Progress in the West Liberty Community * WEST LIBERTY, IOWA
WALKER FAMILY

Lewis Morris Walker, fifth generation descendant of Lewis Walker of Wales, who came to America in 1686, was born in 1822, in York County, Pennsylvania. He married Elizabeth Oxley in 1848.

In 1852 with their two year old son, Joel Morris Walker, they came to build the new Walker home just north of the old Indian trail in the present Union Valley northeast of West Liberty. They came by boat on the Ohio river to Cairo, Illinois, then up the Mississippi to Muscatine and on to West Liberty settlement. Some of the furniture which they brought with them is now in West Liberty homes. Mrs. Elmer Kline has the walnut wedding bedroon suite of her great grandfather; Mrs. Chas. McCann has the old family clock as well as the gun and money belt used by her grandfather on the trip west.

The Lewis Walkers lived with several other families, seventeen in all, for the first winter until their own story and-a-half house was built from lumber hauled from Muscatine. Later Lewis Walker built the frame house which still stands on the farm. This pioneer couple lived on this farm until their deaths in 1896 and 1909. One son, Pinkney L., was born here.

Joel Morris Walker spent his boyhood on the home farm. After his marriage to Maria Gifford, he built his own home on the farm adjoining west where he reared his six children and lived until he retired to West Liberty. Here he lived until his death in 1926.

Of the thirty-three descendants of Joel M.Walker, Harold Eugine Kline is the only fifth generation Walker descendant Walker living in West Liberty. Nancy Lee Isabel, fifth generation lives on the original farm established by Lewis Walker. Janet Walker is the only fifth generation now carrying on the Walker name.

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