Giles M. Pinneo is a native of Duxbury, Washington County, Vermont, where he first saw the light of day April 10, 1809. His parents were Giles and Hannah (Davis) Pinneo, also natives of Vermont. The elder Giles Pinneo was a soldier of the War of 1812, and an old-line Democrat.
The subject of this sketch was reared on a farm and obtained a good education in the public schools of his native State. In 1834 he came west by the way of the lakes to Detroit and by wagon to the Fox river country in Illinois. From the Fox river country he walked to Springfield, Illinois, where his brother was living at the time. Springfield and the surrounding country were then very unhealthful and wages not very encouraging to a young man, and he remained there but a short time. Proceeding westward he landed July 23, 1834, in Rock Island, where he was stricken down with a fever and was confined to his bed for several weeks. In the fall he crossed the river into Pleasant Valley Township and made a claim of Government land, on which he built a cabin and after living there a year he came to Princeton Town ship and settled on the farm on which he now resides. His first summer here was spent in camp and the following fall he built a hewed log house. He being the first white settler in the Township his only neighbors were Indians, who were very plentiful in Scott County in those days. He has ever since been identified with every enterprise which would benefit the public, and has held many places of public trust. In 1818 he built with his own hands and at his own cost the first school-house erected in the Township, and he was an active member of the board that built Princeton's present fine school building. He took the first assessment of Scott County, going over the whole County. In those days the assessor ruled his books with a goose quill pen and a strip of board. He was one of the three commissioners who settled the dispute in regard to the location of the capital of Iowa, giving the vote that decided in favor of Des Moines. Late in the ifties and early sixties he was Princeton's representative in the board of supervisors. In religion he was a Methodist and was a charter member of that church in Princeton and founded the Methodist Sabbath school.
Mr. Pinneo was married in 1837 to Miss Asenath Stricker, a native of Clarke County, Indiana.
BIOGRAPHIES