My granddaughter Kate is 8 years old, the same age as her great-great grandmother Leora’s grandmother (Emilia), when she emigrated from Indiana to Iowa with her family 170 years ago.
The Moores were the first of my motherline to come to Iowa. On May 6, 1855, Ephraim and Lucy (Branson) Moore of Parke County, Indiana, loaded their belongings and seven children–ages 14, 12, 10, 8 (Emilia Ann), 5, 2, and an infant–into two wagons and rumbled west, all the way to Guthrie County, Iowa. The trip of nearly 500 miles, including getting ferried across the Mississippi River, took about a month.
Interesting tidbit: Iowa became a State the day after Emilia was born in 1846.
Kate’s parents don’t want her pictured on social media, but here we are, our first mosey across a new bridge in a neighborhood park.
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