Thomas Howard

Part One – The Family That Stopped at the Falls

In the late 1850s, a branch of the Howard family bound for the Iowa frontier unexpectedly stopped at Howard Falls for several years. What began as a temporary pause along America’s westward migration would eventually end in tragedy on the Iowa prairie.

In previous blogs, we have mentioned several early pioneers of Franklin Township, including the Weiggel family in “Jake Weiggel and the Counterfeit $20”, the Baker family in “Moses and Philena Baker”, and the Patterson family in “Coming to America.” Our own family pioneers, Henry and Levi Howard, settled here in the 1830s, and descendants still live on the property they homesteaded from the wilderness.

Over the years, however, it has become increasingly clear that Henry and Levi were not the only members of the extended Howard family drawn westward through Erie County in the early nineteenth century. Research has uncovered that several close relatives, including an aunt and two uncles, also came to Girard and nearby communities during that era. Without efforts to document stories like these, many of their names and connections might otherwise be lost to time.

One of the most intriguing of these relatives was Thomas Howard, a closely connected member of the extended Howard family whose journey westward unexpectedly brought him and much of his family to Howard Falls for several years in the 1850s before they continued on to Iowa.

Of course, Henry and Levi were drawn to this area when their maternal uncle, Elijah Smith (1796-1862), located here from Grafton, VT, to work as a stone mason on building the locks for the Erie Extension Canal.  Another maternal uncle, Nahum Smith (1789-aft 1870) had married Sally Howard (1797-aft 1870) in Grafton, VT in 1830 and by 1850 the couple had also moved to Girard.  Sally was a paternal aunt and Nahum a maternal uncle of Henry and Levi; thus, the couple had a very close relationship with the Howard brothers. 

While Elijah Smith and his wife, Sarah Howe, and Nahum Smith and his wife, Sally Howard, all remained in the Girard area for the remainder of their lives, Thomas Howard and his family would eventually continue westward to Iowa, where tragedy would strike only a few years later.

The Ziba Hayward/Howard Family of Grafton, Windham, Vermont

From 1780 onward, an extensive Hayward family clan resided in the Grafton, VT community. Prominent among them were Ziba Hayward and his wife Mary Stickney, and recorded in the vital records of the town were the births of two of their youngest children, David (1784) and Ziba Jr. (1787). But census records of the family compiled in 1790 onward reveal several other young children living in the household, yet there were no recorded births.  So who were these other children?

There has been much speculation over the years about their possible identities, but the advent of direct-to-consumer DNA testing has opened countless windows into the past.  Results of DNA analyses increasingly serve as roadmaps for family genealogists to document those elusive relations. Today, Ancestry.com, the largest DNA testing service, holds over 25 million test results, and matches between distantly related individuals have had a profound impact on genealogical research. In the case of Ziba and Mary Hayward’s children, such test results have been used to conclusively identify many of them.

Below is an example of the results of a documented descendant of David Howard and how that individual matches to descendants of other Howard lines.  Descendants of those other Howard families would not match one another unless they shared a common ancestor, in this case, Ziba Hayward.

Results like these have occurred with many other documented descendants of these Howard lines, and when consolidated, lead to the conclusion that the children of Ziba and Mary (Stickney) Howard include:

The Thomas Howard Family

Ziba and Mary Hayward, along with their children, left Grafton, VT, about 1825 and resettled in Essex County, NY, near Westport and Moriah.  Their youngest children, Peter and Thomas, would move on to Saratoga Co., NY, where Peter and his family would remain permanent residents of the Malta, Saratoga, NY area. 

Thomas married Elizabeth (maiden name unknown) about 1830, probably in Essex Co., NY. By 1840, Thomas and his family had moved to Corinth, Saratoga, NY, and by 1850 had moved again to Edinburg, Saratoga, NY.  By then, Thomas and Elizabeth had a large family, with eight children: Merritt Z, b1830; Horace, b1832; Asa, b1834; Mary Ann, b1836; William A, b1838; Jane, b1839; Sarah Amelia, b1843; and Henry, b1848.  They had moved several times in the first 20 years of their marriage, and their years of migration were far from over!

Iowa Begins Calling

On December 28, 1846, President James K. Polk signed a law making Iowa the 29th state, but the first Public Sales of what would become Iowa had begun in 1838, with auctions held in November of that year.  Land that went unsold at auction was then available for private entry at the standard minimum price of only $1.25 per acre. 

Land sales reached a peak in 1855, when 3,708,000 acres, or 11 percent of the state’s land area, were sold for cash and military warrants.  The Mississippi was finally bridged in 1856 by the railroad at Davenport.  The Howe Truss design of the bridge was distinguished by long wooden arches, anchored to the piers on either side of each fixed span.

The December 1854 view from downstream, shown below, drawn some sixteen months before the bridge was completed in April 1856, shows how the bridge utilized Rock Island as a stepping-stone. On the left are the six spans of the bridge across the main channel of the Mississippi River extending from the island to Iowa. On the right are three spans of the bridge over the Slough between the island and the City of Rock Island on the Illinois shore.

With the new bridge, settlers poured into Iowa, and as the frontier and land surveys were pushed farther west, more land offices were opened at convenient points for the farmers to buy the land.  Subsequently, the Homestead Act of 1862, signed by President Abraham Lincoln, allowed citizens to claim up to 160 acres of public land for a small registration fee, provided they lived on and improved it.

Beginning in 1836 and completed in 1858, Iowa had been surveyed and laid out in an orderly system of townships, each defined as an area six miles on each side. Each township was further divided into sections of one square mile, and sections were numbered from 1 to 36. Then each section was further broken down and sold by the ½ section, ¼ section, or even smaller unit.  This land description system is chiefly responsible for the physical farm boundaries in Iowa and figures in every early land transaction there.

Cheap land, expanding railroads, and the first bridge across the Mississippi suddenly made Iowa feel accessible to families seeking opportunity. Iowa land records show that in November of 1855, Thomas and Elizabeth Howard staked their claims to Sections 33 and 34 in Township 092n in Fayette County, Iowa.  But they weren’t ready to move there quite yet.

Let’s Stop at Howard Falls along the Way

In our previous blog, “The Portage Escarpment,” we described that it is the defining feature of upstate New York, northwestern Pennsylvania, and northeastern Ohio. It marks the boundary between the Lake Erie Plain to the north and the Allegheny Plateau to the south. Its close proximity to Lake Erie creates a narrow but easily traveled corridor between the Mohawk Valley region of upstate New York and the Midwest region of the central United States.

This plain’s corridor north of the Escarpment provided one of the few natural low-lying routes from the Atlantic Seaboard into the North American interior. Settlement of northwestern PA and most of Ohio occurred along this route from the early 1800s, and onward to Iowa once the Mississippi was bridged in 1856.

Thus, the Thomas Howard clan would have come through Erie County on their migration to Iowa.  What we did not anticipate was that they would stop here for a few years, in what would be an extended visit! 

Thomas Howard and members of his family appear in the 1860 census of Franklin Township, Erie, PA.  They are living on Eureka Road, just east of Howard Falls.  In the family are Thomas, his wife Elizabeth, and three children, Merritt, Henry, and Sarah. 

Other members of the Thomas/Elizabeth family are also living nearby.  Jane had married Abner Clark of Franklin Township about 1857, and they were living next door to Levi/Hannah Howard, on Falls Road.  They have a 7-month-old son, J. Alvin Clark.

To the East, in McKean Township, are found Thomas/Elizabeth’s son, Asa Howard, and his family, including their delightfully named daughter, Leafy Ann.

Even further east in Erie County, Thomas/Elizabeth’s daughter Mary Ann is found in North East, PA, married to Chauncy Letch, and now with two children, both born in PA.

From the birthplaces of the various grandchildren of Thomas/Elizabeth, it appears that most of the clan left Saratoga Co., NY, around 1856, about the time they began buying land in Iowa, though they first stopped in Erie County, PA, for a few years. Unaccounted for in 1860 and onward are only two children, Horace b1832 and William b1838.  They are mentioned in documents in 1866 and 1868, but their whereabouts in 1860 are unknown.

Nonetheless, the fact that Thomas and most of his clan settled in Erie County, including Franklin Township and at Howard Falls, further bolsters their close relationship to Henry and Levi Howard, who would be Thomas’ nephews.

Onward to Iowa

In the 1860s, Fayette County, Iowa saw a large wave of new settlers. The American Civil War and the new Homestead Act brought many different groups to the area. They came to farm the rich land and build new towns. Frequently, they chose Fayette County, where the government sold rich prairie land for very little money.  New train tracks were being built across Iowa, making it easier to travel longer distances and for farmers to ship crops to big markets. In addition, the State built schools, which attracted young families to the newly settled areas. Yet the 1860s were a time of hard work. Families lived in simple log cabins or sod houses. They spent their days clearing the grass to plant corn and wheat on the prairie soil.

The draw was strong, and sometime between 1861 and 1866, Thomas Howard and his family left Howard Falls for Iowa. Thomas/Elizabeth, their son Asa and his family, daughter Jane Clark and her family, and youngest son Henry Howard settled in at their new homestead in Center Township, just southwest of Randalia, Fayette, IA. Also with them was their daughter Sarah Amelia, who had married Peter Brott (brother of Asa Howard’s wife), and also their daughter Mary Ann, who had married Chauncey Letch.

The “Iowa Records of Persons Subject to Military Duty” for 1866 gives an excellent glimpse at the young men residing in various townships in Iowa. For Center Township, Fayette County, the following family members are listed: Asa D. Howard, age 32; Peter Brott, age 31; and Chauncey Letch, age 36. Not listed is Jane Howard’s husband, Abner Clark.

Thus, not all of the Thomas/Elizabeth Howard family moved with them to Iowa.  Three other sons of Thomas/Elizabeth may not have gone to Iowa.  Merritt may have briefly gone to Iowa, but before 1870, he returned to Saratoga, NY, to live with his uncle, Peter Howard.  And as mentioned earlier, Horace and William remained unaccounted for.

But for those who relocated to Fayette County, Iowa, life seemed good as they settled into the routine of establishing their homesteads.  But it was not to last.

Tragedy Strikes

In 1866, Eastern Iowa was hit by a Cholera Pandemic that raged globally from 1863 to 1875. A deadly waterborne bacterial infection, it spread rapidly along the Mississippi River corridor. Traveling up from major transit hubs like St. Louis and Chicago, the disease devastated Iowa riverfront cities and inland farming communities alike.

The pandemic severely threatened the bustling border regions of the state, including Dubuque, Keokuk, Burlington, and Davenport. In addition, the rapid expansion of Iowa’s railroads and steamboat lines acted as an accelerator, carrying infected travelers directly into the heart of expanding cities and countryside settlements. The devastation of the 1866 outbreak exposed the total inability of local health officers to manage widespread disease. This failure directly prompted the Iowa legislature to pass an 1867 law making township boards legally responsible for sanitation, eventually leading to the creation of the State Board of Health in 1880.

The Thomas Howard family, living close to the train station in Randalia, IA, was consequently severely impacted by this pandemic. After years of moving west in search of opportunity, the family’s new beginning in Iowa lasted only briefly before cholera swept through the region and shattered the household.

In Dunham Grove Cemetery, just to the north of Randalia, lie five members of the Thomas/Elizabeth Howard family who succumbed to the 1866 Cholera Pandemic.

These family members include Thomas’ wife, Elizabeth; son Asa and his wife, Maria; daughter Jane Clark; and youngest son, Henry.  A son of Asa, Elmer, who had been born in Erie County, PA, in 1861, subsequently died in 1881 and is also interred there.

The family was, of course, devastated by these deaths and gave up the property in Center Township, scattering to other locations within Iowa and beyond.

Part 2 Sequel

Part 2 of this blog will reveal the curious will of Elizabeth Howard, how it was eventually probated in 1868, and current research as to what became of the family as it dispersed over the years.

May 2026

D.D.Howard