At the age of 20, Howard McCorkell moved to Portland Township with his parents, Joseph & Mary Moore McCorkell. He engaged in farming with his father. On March 27, 1901, he married Estella, a teacher and daughter of Preston and Sara Strong Tucker and granddaughter of John W. and Elizabeth Yanney Strong, early Akron residents.

With the exception of one year, when they moved to a farm south of Akron, they lived in the same house, known as the Sargent home at the corner of 6th and Reed streets until Howard's death in 1938.

Howard was Akron's street commissioner and did maintenance work on the highways with his horses, grader, and dirt wagon.

They usually had a big garden to help feed their nine children.

~Source: Our Life 1882-1982 Akron, Iowa pp 358-359