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From "The Pioneer History of Pocahontas County, Iowa" by Robert E Flickinger, Pub 1904, pages 474-475 Jolliffe, John Blake (b.1845), owner and occupant of a homestead on the ne1/4 sec.2, since April 25, 1866, is a native of England, a son of James and Mary Bake Jolliffe, who came to this county when John B was about ten, and located in the province of Ontario, Canada. He was brought up on a farm, and when he became of age, came to Pocahontas county and secured a homestead in Powhatan township. During the first season he lived a short time under a wagon box and did some breaking. During this and the next few years he realized what it was to be on the frontier. He was seven miles west of the Des Moines river and, with the exception of Robert and Edward Anderson, two miles south on 15, he was the furthest west of any of the settlers in that vicinity; and those at the Little Sioux river were thirty miles distant. At first, he worked for Judge Slosson, Henry Jarvis and Perry Nowlen, and occasionally went back and slept on his claim to hold it. During the second summer he put in a crop, cared for and harvested it, having a boarding place in a little cabin two miles distant. Potatoes that cost $2.00 per bushel at the nearest market constituted the principal article of diet, and the only money available was the pelt of the muskrat. October 14, 1867 (actually 1864) he married Jane, daughter of the Rev. Frederic Metcalf, of Des Moines township, and built first a sod shanty and later a log house. The latter was covered with a board roof that always leaked when it rained and both were very humble and unsatifactory abodes. During the years that have passed since that date, he has added acre to acre, so that he is now the owner of 782 acres of valuable farm land and the old homestead has been imporved with fine buildings, fences and groves. From a humble beginning he has attained a very high degree of success on the farm. He has rendered many years of faithful service in the various township offices and has been a leader in song in religious and various other assemblies. He is a member of the Methodist Church. His family consisted of twelve children, of whom Emma, the sixth died at 18 in 1897, soon after the removal of a great tumor that weighed 100 pounds. Two others died before her, Cerinda at 14 in 1890 and Ida in childhood.
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