Samuel Nathaniel Walker & Mae Moyers

Samuel Nathaniel Walker was a fertile man living in fertile times. Born when Queen Victoria and Ulysses S. Grant reigned on either side of the Atlantic, he saw the world evolve during his lifetime from covered wagons and a rural, agrarian economy into the modern, "scientific age." He saw the collapse of the old order of Europe, the redefining of that old Continent via two world wars, the rise of Communism, the rise and fall of Nazism, the evolution of warfare from crude cannon and saber into the age of atomic fission and fusion, the dawn of the era which gave humanity its first real chance to destroy itself completely. The world Sam lived in changed from reading by candlelight into a time when reading at all was losing ground to the more mindless pursuit of a new medium - entertainment television. Sam experienced a world that changed from farm to city to Suburban escape; from slow journeys across a single state to the earliest days of humanity spreading its curious tentacles out into the realm of outer space. "Progress," was paramount and said to be unstoppable, and it was evolving at a more and more furious pace at the end than at the beginning of Samuel Nathaniel Walker's lifetime.

Sam was born on a farm in Henry County, Iowa, and as a teenager made the one year trip to Texas with his parents, Charles and Ruth Ellen Walker, and, when Texas wasn't to his father's liking, he moved back with them first for a year's stay in Nebraska, and from there to the home for most of the remainder of his life, Louisa County, Iowa.

After his schooling, Sam worked on the family farm until he was twenty-one years old, when he got a job working for the railroad. He continued that career for thirteen years, and during at least some of that time, he and his family did live in Abingdon, Illinois.

In 1893, when he was twenty-four, he married Hattie Mae Moyers, the seventeen year old fetching daughter of George Washington Earl Moyers and Rebecca E. Pence (sometimes incorrectly written as Rebecca "Pena").

Sam and Hattie Mae were married on October 25, 1893. Earlier that evening in Europe, or perhaps at a time very nearly the same as the wedding, since they were on extremely opposite locations of the planet, composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, died. According to the official version, a glass of "raw water" killed him.

Hattie Moyers Walker was the fourth of ten Moyers children, born July 18, 1876 in Tama township, Des Moines County, Iowa (Des Moines County is in Southeast Iowa along the Mississippi River; the city Des Moines, Iowa, is in Polk County). Hattie evidently adapted well to married life early on, and the couple began to have children regularly. They both were of large families; they continued this nineteenth century tradition and soon a brood of new Walkers was scurrying around the house.

By the time their son Samuel Clinton was born in 1910, Sam had quit working for the railroad, bought a 100 acre farm, and taken up farming in Louisa county. He later bought part of his father's farm and lived there.

Sam and Hattie Mae had eleven children. Then Hattie died of scarlet fever, probably mixed with some birthing fatigue, on April 7, 1918, less than a month after her final child, William, was born. A photograph of her eight year old boy, Samuel Clinton, taken on that fateful day, is on a page within the Walker Tour.

At the time of her death, Hattie and Sam's children were:

• Elsie Ella, born 08/18/1894 in Louisa County, Iowa, died 02/17/1992 in Marhshalltown, Iowa.
• George Percy, born 04/20/1896 in Abingdon, Illinois, died 06/24/1985 in New London, Iowa.
• Maude Mae, born 11/14/1897 in Abingdon, Illinois, died 12/18/1970 in West Burlington, Iowa.
• (Albert) Ross, born 12/24/1899 near Newport in Louisa County, Iowa, died 05/15/1936 near Morning Sun, Iowa.
• (Thomas) Clifford, born 10/09/1901 in Louisa County, died 04/23/1979 in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
• (Zella) Myrtle, born 06/25/1903, Louisa County, Iowa, died 09/18/1990 in Burlington, Iowa.
• Paul Moyers, born 10/13/1904, Louisa County, Iowa, died 03/01/1959 in Tuolumne County, California. He is buried in Sonora, California.
• Sam Clinton, born 03/27/1910 in Louisa County, Iowa, died 10/20/1991 in Cedar Rapids, Linn County, Iowa.
• (Hattie) Leota, born 03/16/1912 in Louisa County, died 11/21/1967 in Burlington, Des Moines County, Iowa.
• Ruth Rebecca, born 03/28/1915, died 03/20/1939, both in Louisa County, Iowa.
• William David, born 03/14/1918 in Louisa County, Iowa, died 03/03/1977 in Marion, Linn County, Iowa.