Generation 2

Jacob Moyers and His Wife, Sarah Walker Rogers

JOSEPH MOYERS >> JACOB MOYERS

Jacob Moyers was born on March 27, 1797 in Franklin County, Pennsylvania. He died on June 13, 1863 in Des Moines County, at age 66, and was buried in the Loper Cemetery. Jacob was the grandfather of my own great grandfather, George Washington Earl Moyers.

Jacob was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church as were many of the Moyers family in ensuing generations. Studying the religious habits of ancestors, one does note that they often will simply attend the most convenient church available, but apparently in the Moyers' case, a Methodist Church was often nearby.

At age 7, Jacob Moyers went to Cincinnati, Ohio where, though very young, he worked as farm hand until 1826. In 1818 Jacob was married to Sarah Walker Rogers in Ohio. He and Sarah moved to Illinois in 1826, and they settled in Greene County and bought 80 acres of land near the town of Carrollton.

In 1832 Jacob fought in the Black Hawk War. The University of Northern Illinois has concisely summarized this war as follows: "In May of 1832 Sac and Fox Indians under the leadership of (Chief) Black Hawk left the Iowa territory and returned to their homes across the Mississippi River in northern Illinois. These Native Americans had lost their Illinois lands in a disputed treaty signed in St. Louis in 1805. Their return to northern Illinois sparked widespread panic among white settlers, and Illinois Governor Reynolds quickly called up the militia, which included a young Abraham Lincoln. Both the militia and regular army troops proved unable to locate the elusive Indians at first, but by July they had begun to pursue Black Hawk's band across northern Illinois and southwestern Wisconsin, engaging them in a major conflict at Wisconsin Heights before finally routing the Indians at Bad Axe on the Mississippi River." (see: http://lincoln.lib.niu.edu/blackhawk/), Possibly because of his involvement in this conflict, Jacob Moyers saw and liked the lands to the north of Greene County. In 1839 soon after it was opened to white settlement, Jacob and Sarah moved to Des Moines County, where Jacob bought 160 acres of land.

Jacob's wife, Sarah (Rogers) Moyers, was born March 16, 1802 in the part of Virginia that would become Kentucky. Her parents' names and ancestry are presently unknown, although in a family biography written at the end of the 19th century, she was said to be Scottish.

Jacob and Sarah had nine children. Their eldest child, Elizabeth Ann, called "Eliza," remained in Illinois when the rest of the family moved to Iowa, as she was married to man named Jordan Lakin. She apparently decided that the proper spelling for her name was "Myers," or else she never spelled it at all and only spoke it with that pronunciation, as that is how it was spelled in a son's biography, that of Judge Leander R. Lakin, written in 1885.

The other eight children in Jacob and Sarah's family came with them to Des Moines County. They were: Joel Moyers, John Wifoley Moyers, Samuel Nelson Moyers, Andrew Jackson Moyers, Susannah Jane Moyers, George Washington Moyers, Benjamin Franklin Moyers, and Jacob Josiah Moyers.

Two of Jacob and Sarah's sons, Joel and John, died young, and not long after arriving in Iowa. Joel Moyers was born on July 20, 1822 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and died on January (or August) 1, 1839, in Burlington Township at age 16. John Wifoley Moyers was born in Cincinnati on April 3, 1824, and died at age 15 on August 7, 1839 in Franklin Township, Des Moines County. They were both buried in the Loper Cemetery in Franklin Township. If they both died a few days apart in August of 1839, the likely culprit was a contagious disease.

Jacob and Sarah's son, George Washington Moyers, was born on Christmas Day, December 25, 1832 in Carrollton, Greene County, Illinois, the first of their children not born in Ohio. Although he moved with his parents to Iowa in 1839 (he would only have been 7), reports state by 1850 he lived near Shoo Fly in McDonough County, Illinois and still later he moved to Saline County, Kansas. I have not been able to find out much about him at this juncture.

This particular George W. Moyers married Elizabeth Ann Kurtz, the daughter and one of at least twelve children born to Peter Kurtz and Elizabeth Fairchild, natives of Pennsylvania. George and she were married in about 1857 in Oakville, Louisa County. Elizabeth was born on May 31, 1840 in Pennsylvania, and died in June 1926 in Salina, Saline County, Kansas, at age 86.

Benjamin Franklin Moyers, the eighth of nine children born to Jacob Moyers and Sarah Walker Rogers, was born on March 7, 1836 in Carrollton, Greene County, Illinois. In 1860 or 1861 he married a woman named Barbara, a native of Ohio who was born in January 1830, and by 1888 they lived in "southwestern Missouri." They were listed in the 1900 census for the village of Green Ridge in Pettis County, Missouri (it is more or less in "central Missouri" rather than the southwest part of the state, and it is situated in the same county as the larger and better known city of Sedalia). Ben worked as a hotel keeper in Green Ridge. They had no children. By 1910 the couple had retired to the town of Butler, in Bates County, Missouri where they lived on Henry Street, and that census confirms that Barbara had had no children during their marriage. Barbara was is still living in this home in 1920, a widow.

Jacob Josiah (who used the name Josiah) Moyers, the youngest son of Jacob and Sarah Moyers, was born June 20, 1842. By 1888, when a biography of his brother, Sam, was written he was said to be a resident of Illinois. A man who fits the description except for the irregular last name spelling (which happens with the Moyers family) has been found in the 1900 US census in Chicago managing the Park Hotel. He was listed as Josiah J. Myres, age 57, born June 1842 in Iowa, widowed.

The patriarch of our Moyers family who moved the family to Iowa, Jacob Moyers, died at age 68 on June 13, 1863 in Burlington; his wife, Sarah died September 16, 1867 also in Burlington. Both are buried at the Loper Cemetery.

Next: Generation 3 - The Children of Jacob and Joseph Moyers Jr.
Previous: Generation 1 - Joseph Moyers Sr. of Germany
The Moyers - Index

Navigation

E-mail