Family History Notes and Photos by Bob Mesenbrink

Growing up in Iowa, I was surprised to learn that I had g.g. grandparents who had lived in Colorado. So after moving to Colorado myself, I wanted to find out more about their lives in Colorado. Cyrus and Hannah (Dippery) Vangunda homesteaded near Ramah, Colorado in 1906. I found the paperwork, located the land, and I went to see what was there. Even when you can identify a plot of land on a map, it isn't always easy to find it from the road. And this was rural eastern Colorado which doesn't have many people. No doubt the homesteaders filled up the land well in that day, but this wasn't prime farm land and families couldn't make it on 160 acre farms. People moved away, as did Cyrus Vangunda. I wasn't even sure the roads were still passable. But they were. By carefully watching the map and monitoring the car's odometer I came to the place I thought would have belonged to Cyrus Vangunda, and the land further back, to his daughter and son-in-law, Nancy and Norma...

Einer was my stepfather, really more than that. He had a huge impact on my life. From left to right: Hans, Ingvert, Einer, Henry, Paul - taken about 1936. Einer, taken around 1940.Here are the five brothers, Back: Hans, Henry, Einer; Front: Ingvert, Paul; taken about 1946. Confirmation Class: Taken around 1945. Einer 2nd row, farthest right. Virginia Bisgard to his left. Einer, Graettinger High School Class of 1949. Einer with his parents, Otto and Bothilde Appel, taken around 1955. Appels at dinner table:Henry, Paul, Einer, Ingvert, Hans, Gwenna, Bothilda, and Otto - around 1950. Einer with niece, Kathy Appel, 1958. Einer married my mother, Dorothy Mesenbrink, in 1970. Einer had been a bachelor for quite some time. Here we are, a new family. Milking cows was an important part of farm life. When we got the pipeline in we didn't have to haul the milk to the cooler, and we could sell Grade A milk. This w...

On November 26, 1857, Robert Squibb left his home south of Elvira, Iowa to go get married. He had been into Clinton the week before with his bride-to-be, Salucia Sophronia Clark, to get the license, and now he had the necessary paperwork. The crops were generally harvested by then, so he had some time off. November 26th was a Thursday, the fourth one of November in fact, but Thanksgiving hadn't yet been established as a national holiday. Robert Squibb just had to take his bride to the Justice-of-the-Peace for the ceremony. The JP was William W. Beatty, who lived just a few miles north. This 1865 map of a portion of Clinton county, Iowa shows where Robert's father's farm was, in the lower left, and the Justice-of-the-Peace in the upper right, just four or five miles away. You will also see, not far from the Squibbs, an A. Clark. Could it be that Salucia lived on the road to the JP? Is it possible that A. Clark was father or, at least, a relative of Salucia Cl...

In my previous post, I mentioned several tidbits about the origins of the Squibb family. My Squibb ancestry goes back through Robert Squibb, who in 1721 married Mary Coebourne as reported in the Chester Monthly Meeting of the Quakers. As pointed out by RJF in his comment, the Coebournes had both Irish and Berkshire, England links, and had come from families of some social status and wealth. It is likely that Robert Squibb also had a similar background. Beyond that, nothing is known for sure. The Squibbs were centered in Dorset, England, southwest of Berkshire, but they had Berkshire connections as well. The Visitation of Berkshire, 1665-66 , includes a Squibb pedigree for a Robert Squibb , b. ca. 1606 in Winterbourne Whitchurch, Dorset, living at Reading in Berkshire, and wife Frances Castle. His eldest son was also Robert, born ca. 1642. He married Anne Beckingham. Neither of these Roberts could be the immigrant, Robert who married in 1721. If you look at family trees on Ancestry....

By all accounts, the Squibbs came from England. According to Lawrence G. Blochman, in his book  Doctor Squibb , "The earliest known English Squibb is believed to have been made a yeoman by Edward IV in the fifteenth century. His grandson was Great John the Yeoman of Dorsetshire. Great John's grandson, Nathaniel Squibb, came to Pennsylvania early in the eighteenth century, settled in Chester County and founded a populous family...." Most Squibb families today would trace their ancestry to this Nathaniel or at least to Robert Squibb who is thought to be his son. There are few records of him, despite the generally thorough records kept by his Quaker faith. Nevertheless, later Squibbs were in fact Quakers. But exactly when they took on this faith isn't clear. One early Robert Squibb actually held title to a large part of New Jersey in the late 1600s. Whether he ever set foot on that soil is doubtful. Some of the Squibbs were important officials and served in various ...

In genealogy, the female lines are generally more difficult to trace back, because women changed their surname after marriage, and records are generally less prevalent than for men. Salucia Sophronia Clark Squibb (my g.g. grandmother) is no exception. In some ways she should be easier to trace back than most as we have a marriage record for her and know the her maiden name was Clark. The problem is that she just shows up in Clinton county Iowa as a teenager, marries Robert Flemen Squibb, with no sign of relatives around, and few clues to go on. Salucia Squibb ca 1910 Clark is a fairly common name. There were several families by that name in Clinton county, Iowa in the time around November 26, 1857, when she and Robert married. There was a state census taken in 1856, and Salucia Clark doesn't show up there. She could have come after that, but it seems likely that she would have had family around still, and a thorough study of Clinton county biographies and census data has ruled...

Robert Turner (b. 1851, d. 1911) was a Scotsman who immigrated to Iowa and lived in Des Moines. He bought the Iowa Boiler Works from his uncle, William Turner, my great great grandfather. The history of Des Moines, published by S. J. Clarke Publishing Company of Chicago in 1911 includes his biography in volume 2, page 1129. The interesting biography states that "He was born at Burnt Island, in Fifeshire, Scotland ... a son of Robert and Margaret (White) Turner." Then it gets very interesting. "The father was the seventh generation bearing that name and was born in 1816 upon the farm in Fifeshire which had been presented to the first Robert Turner by the Duke of Bucclench for valor in the early wars of the Highland." Now I love local history and genealogy and a good mystery so I set out to sort through this and determine how much of this was true. The biography provided a lot of detail with names, places, and dates, that I didn't include here. They provided a ba...