TACKABERRY FAMILY HISTORY
Written by William Tackaberry
Sioux City, Iowa
Early 1900's (Before 1910)
Typed by Sandy Wunder
From: Sandy Wunder Original in Possession of and Story Shared By:
Cheyenne, Wyoming Larry & Anne (Tackaberry) Roberts
December 2001 Northbrook, Illinois
November 2001





Personal Notes Concerning the Tackaberry Family Story:

As a result of my increased and intense family history research this year I came across clues to pursue to learn what became of Hiram Parish’s sisters who also came to Lee County, Iowa. In the process I pursued a significant find and was put in touch with Larry & Anne Roberts, who so kindly shared this family story with me. The copy I received is a typewritten carbon on onionskin paper. Therefore I have retyped it in WordPerfect in order to share it with the family.

I will include explanations sent to them since they had no knowledge of most of the people mentioned in the story. And although these people seem like my own immediate family, I realize that most family members who read this will also be unfamiliar with those named herein. This is one of the best genealogy finds I’ve ever made and it brought tears to my eyes while reading it. These pages not only confirm the Tackaberry/Parish family connection, but they reaffirm my burning desire to not only find ancestors, but to also track descendants because the family stories are out there if we can only make the connections with those who hold them.

Since these folks don’t “do” genealogy, I’ve been working with them via email to explain the documents I’d found for Sarah Parish Tackaberry and her family and have now shared with them. They asked how my husband Dick Wunder was related to Anne Roberts. I include that below.

Hiram Parish (b 1808) (Bro & sister) Sarah (Parish) Tackaberry (b 1813)

Delorma Parish (b 1837) 1st cousins William Tackaberry (b 1833)

Andrew Jackson Parish (b 1867) 2nd cousins William E. Tackaberry (b 1861)

Ewing Landon Parish (b 1894) 3rd cousins Ralph Widman Tackaberry (b 1891)

Lois Parish Wunder (b 1926) 4th cousins Anne Tackaberry Roberts (b 1928)

Richard Wunder (1944-1992) 4th cousin, once removed

The information contained in this story is absolutely priceless. In all of the years I’ve been working on this Parish family history I’ve not found anyone who had a clue to the migration route taken to Iowa. That puzzle has now been solved.

It is my hope that you will share this with your family members in order to preserve it for the following generations. When I count my blessings, I always start with my husband Dick, as he brought his family to me to research and he continues to help me with clues from the “other side”. This story is the result of just one assist of several he’s provided me this year. The ties of love and family connection are not severed by death.

“As long as there are those who remember and smile at the small fragments of another time, the past is never really gone. It is gathered like petals and spices in a potpourri of remembrance.”












TO MY DEAR WIFE MARY -


The woman who has been more to me than any other person, one who has been my aid and comforter for nearly fifty years, and who has earnestly and repeatedly requested a brief outline of my life and of my ancestors, I hereby dedicate this brief history, praying that God’s blessing may be with her and that she may continue to fill the great and loving place to her children and grandchildren that she has in the years that are passed. If God continue us to each other and to our dear ones for many years to come we will be thankful and will love Him and serve Him faithfully -

Your Husband,
WM. TACKABERRY





The Tackaberry family emigrated from Ireland in the year 1819. A family of seven children sailed from Dublin, County of Wexford, in a sailing vessel, and as they had only the wind to push them across the Atlantic, they were seven weeks and three days on the way. The name of the vessel was the Isabella. The Captain’s name was North Shields, with two mates, one Robert Losson, the other James Dillian. The first landing was at Quebec, and then they came up to Montreal where they stopped for a while, and they came up to Brockville on the St. Lawrence. The family was a week at the home of Mr. Scofield, one mile below Brockville. Then they moved to Lambs Pond where they spent the first winter. In the spring they moved to the Tidd Farm and spent their first year there, and at the end of that year bought a farm in Plum Hollow and built a fair sized log house and began farming in that new country.
In this log house I was born and began my life. While on the way over the sea their youngest child Jane, a four year old died and there was no way but to wrap the dear little one in a winding sheet and let her slide down a plank into the great water, and with the other six children and with their deep grief, allow the fishes to make a meal of their dear one. Mother has told me that the sharks would follow a vessel for days in the hope of getting the body of someone who might die. How many times my sympathy would go out to Janey’s mother whose arms were empty now.
My Father was born in 1806 and my Mother in 1813, and they had a family of eight children. I did not get an outline history of my Mother’s family, only that they had emigrated to Canada from the State of Vermont and her name was Sarah Parish. She was too young to remember much and I was young and did not think as I ought and so her history in this is too brief. She died in my home in Sioux City and I took her to our family burying place in Keokuk for her last resting place. She has two girls and one boy in that cemetery and my own children are there also. We have changed to Floyd Cemetery and now our dead are being buried there.
From the time of my birth, which was Nov. 12th, 1833, to the time when I was 9 years old, I lived in Plum Hollow, County of Leeds, Canada West, and at that time my parents moved to Morley, St. Lawrence Co., N.Y. I think I had better make these nine years a section in this account and record some of the things that occurred in my life from birth to the age of 9. My boy life was highly delighted with things of nature; the woods and trees and birds and rocks and sky in summer and in winter I delighted in the outdoor sports in snow and ice. My parents lived on a farm with only a few neighbors and because there was only a few I enjoyed them all the more. I had quite a list of uncles, aunts and cousins in the neighborhood who became very much to me as I got older. My father had at that time one brother that was married who had a small family. His name was Charles and his other brother not married was Robert. He also had two sisters both of them with families. Also my mother had two brothers with families and four sisters all of them with families and homes. This gave me a good lot of relatives to visit with. We had up to that time six children in our own home so you can see I started life with quite a large list of kinsfolk.
My father had two colored men who worked for him on the farm. One of them was very religious and while out in the fields at work would be singing religious hymns. One of his favorites was the old one–“On Jordan’s stormy banks I stand and cast a wishful eye”. I learned it fairly well myself. His name was Walter. He would talk to me a boy of six about God and he would get me to kneel in the stable or barn with the horses and pray to God to make me a good boy, and afterward when out alone in the fields I would go to God in prayer for help to be a Christian and keep me from sin. Another colored man whose name was Anson. We called him “Ans”. This one played the violin and his music was a great delight to me. These two men had run away from slavery and had “Run away to Canada where colored men are free” as the song goes.
One time Mother let me go to visit my Uncle Ira who was Mother’s brother, - I think I was about five years old. On my way I passed through a thick woods, and while there a man overtook me; he was on horseback and asked my name, and after telling him I asked him “What name was he? And he said it was Pat Mac-Na-me”.
Once in going to school in the morning, the teacher a young man that boarded at our house - he was “Boarding round” - was with my brother and I and was throwing stones at the birds - just for fun! He let a stone come back and struck me on the head and cut quite a hole in my head and the blood ran and I was hurt some and frightened more and I turned and ran back home to Mother.
The name Plum Hollow was given to about eight or ten miles of country round about where I was born. A large number of wild plum trees grew in the woods and pastures about there and my first fruit of any amount was this kind of fruit. The mothers used them for sauce and put them up for our winter use. The nearest town was five miles away and was Farmersville which was afterwards changed to Athens. It was a great joy to my young life when I could go with my father in a lumber wagon to one of these towns, so I would see the houses and the stores. My grandmother on my mother’s side lived with us part of the time and I was very greatly delighted with her and her kindness to me. She was the only one of my grandparents I ever saw, the others had died before I was born.
- From Nine to Fourteen -
At the age of nine my parents made a move and left Canada, crossing the river St. Lawrence on the ice in the early spring and went back from the river at Ogdensburg eighteen miles to a place called Morley and settled there. When we had crossed the river and while at Ogdensburg a band of music was playing in the streets and it was such a great enjoyment to me that I was near following it off. It was the first time I had ever heard a band.
Our stay at Morley was five years and it was here that I made my first important growth - my body grew, my mind grew and my spirit grew. We had a very good Public School here and we attended it faithfully and I applied myself to my school work the best of any time in my life. It was an honest effort on my part to get an education and while I did love to play I did make my school lessons first.
A little river called “Grass River” ran through the town, and it had a dam across it which gave a good water power and there was one mill for grinding flour, two or three mills for sawing lumber and there was a starch factory and one for the manufacture of pearlash which was quite an article of commerce. This river afforded a place in which to swim in summer and on which to skate in winter. This play gave me a good growth of body and made me strong to do and to endure.
The work of religion was neglected. Only two churches in the town - one an Episcopal, but they seldom did anything. The other was a Wesleyan Methodist, and they would start a Sunday School every spring and run it until warm weather, say about four months, and they took their lessons from the third chapter of Matthew, and gave us seven verses for a lesson, and we would get over a few chapters and the school closed because of hot weather. I have always had a good recollection of the scripture, - “In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness of Judea and saying Repent ye for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”. Then the next spring a year later we began at the same scripture and had it over again.
Once my brother Eliada and myself with two other boys of our age were out on a skating trip. We were up the river several miles and we struck a spot of ice covered with running water, so the ice was very thin and we all four went down into the water. The current was swift and the only way for us was to go with it and break ice until we got to where it would hold us and then to slide out on the ice on our hands and feet, and when I got up and stood the water ran down to my feet as if it were a river. Then we went on shore and took off our skates and on that cold winter day in Northern New York we took off our clothes down to the skin and wrung the water out of them and put them on again and when we had put our skates we took our back track for home. We got our clothes dry at the home of one of the other boys and it was a week or two before our parents heard about it.
While at Morley my father kept a team of horses about four or five cows and say fifty sheep. It was fun for we two boys to help the men with the sheep in the springtime when the water got to be a little warm. Another bit of fun was to go with the men to fish with a large net. About six or seven men with we two boys would take each a strong pole about ten feet long and while two of the older men would hold the net so the bag of it would go down with the current the rest of us would form a circle and drive the fish into the net. Then when done fishing, they would divide the fish into piles, one for each man and one pile for us two boys. When that was done with equal piles some man would turn his back and another would put his pole on a pile of fish and say “Who shall have this?” and the man with his back turned would call the name of some man or perhaps he would say the two boys, and the owners would then take their fish and get ready to take them home. When we took our fish home and showed Mother we were two proud boys.
After we had been in Morley a little over a year, we had become so anxious to go back to Canada on a visit to see our old friends and relatives that our parents granted our request to let us go back. Father took us to Ogdensburg in his wagon which was eighteen miles and after staying there over night, he put us on one of the steamers that run up and down the St. Lawrence and before noon we were at Brockville. We got a team that had come to town take us out and that night we were out in Plum Hollow our old home country and were with our Aunt, a sister of my father’s. This visit lasted several weeks and was a great occasion to us. We enjoyed it very much and when the time came to go home, our cousin, William Stevens, furnished each of us a good riding horse and one for himself and went with us to Brockville and after an all day wait there we got a steamer on the Canada side and went to Prescott to meet a boat that made stops only on that side of the river. On the way down the night was dark and a heavy fog had settled and the pilot came near running aground on a bed of rushes out from shore, and he got a signal from a man in a skiff, and after backing out into the stream, they cast anchor and when they did that in a little while the vessel had turned about and her head pointed the way from which we had come. We lay there until the fog lifted and the stars came out and then the boat went on its way and we went to a hotel in Prescott and stayed overnight, and in the morning we crossed in the first ferry and started on our march on foot for home eighteen miles - but it had been a great visit for us.
In the autumn of 1847 my Father died. He had a hard attack of Pleuro-Pneumonia and I think because of poor medical attention he did not get better but went down, and on Dec. 20th he died. We had a regular physician who on that day called another as counsel and they examined him and wanted some coffee which we did not have in the house, and Mother sent me in a hurry to the store to get some, and while the clerk was putting it up I sat there on a box and I threw my eyes up to the ceiling and thought this is Dec. 20th. I was impressed that my Father would die then so soon and when I got Home he was dead - I did not see him any more alive. We were a long distance from our relatives but we must get them word and so wrote them a letter and got it off on a special mail and sent it, but it was slow and the funeral had to be delayed two or three days waiting their arrival. Finally Father’s brother Robert and our cousin William Stevens and another cousin Eliada Fraser came and attended the funeral. We had no church connection or acquaintance and a minister we did not know was called who preached the sermon and had charge of the service. I remember he gave the children some special advice - there were eight children now - he said if we would look to our dear Mother for advice and obey her word it would be good for us - she could be depended on to say and do the best for us - other people might deceive us and lead us falsely, but she never would. The burial place of the town was on a beautiful bluff that lay close up to the river above the town and had a beautiful growth of trees with quite a number of evergreens. It was there we buried our father and a short time after I got an old friend who lived there to contract for and have a headstone and a foot-stone placed over him. I have visited his grave quite a number of times since then and once on my trip there I found all of the foot-stones of all the graves had been removed. Once I got off a train at Madrid on my way from Boston to Ogdensburg and I went to a hotel where a livery was kept. I asked if I could get a conveyance to take me to Morley and the landlord said yes and that he would go with me and drive me up there. I said no I know the way, I had lived there years before and I could drive. All right he said, so I got into the buggy and drove into the town and across the river on the bridge and out one of the many roads and back again, out another and back again, until I had gone the whole number and then to the cemetery, and there I took out my Bible from my valise and sat by Father’s grave and read of death and the resurrection and prayed and communed for a long time, and then I called on an old friend and family with whom we had been intimate, and then I went back to Madrid and took train for Ogdensburg. It was a time to me in which I lived over and over many things of my past life.
- From Fourteen to Seventeen Years -
After Father’s death, Mother decided to move back to Canada which we did in the spring of 1848 and we remained there for three years. Mother put our stock in the hand of an old personal friend of Father and he was to sell them as soon as possible and send us the proceeds. We had a team of horses, several cows and a good number of sheep. Mr. Eb. Wilson took the stock to sell and Mother and the children went back to Canada, and I remained to wait and take the money which he would get for the property. While he was making the sale I went to the Curtis home to stay and wait. They were old friends of Father’s, a friendship that started when he was over in N.Y. State alone before the family went to him, and Gen. N. M. Curtis after this made great distinction for himself at the battle of Fort Fisher during the war of the rebellion. In my time of waiting I got a job of working for a neighbour of theirs who was a farmer, and when I got paid off in silver dollars I was very proud of them. I did not start to go home for a month or two waiting to get the money or part at least of the proceeds, but I could not get it. Mr. Wilson would always say he could not make a sale of the stock and would talk down the grade and the value until I finally got tired and went over to Canada and left them. I waited and did all I could to get the money and made several trips back to get that money and finally did get part of it - only part. Mother got a little house and the children got work wherever we could and Mother having a home made us a place to go and be, and so the time went on. It was three years in which we all worked hard and made a living but that was all. I and sister Chloe went to school at the same place and the other children were scattered and Mother kept the very youngest at home with her. Mother had two brothers and two sisters that moved to Iowa to live and she decided she would follow them after talking and planning we got started. The time was May 1851 and taking a boat at Brockville we went up the river and up the lakes, we passed Niagara Falls and up Lake Erie, we landed at Detroit and taking a railroad there, we went across the State of Michigan to New Buffalo, and then taking a boat again we went to Chicago, and from there on board the La Salle Canal on one of their boats we were at Peoria, and taking a steamboat we went down the Illinois River and up to St. Louis, and there by a Mississippi River boat named “Kate Kearney” we went up to Keokuk. We had been out from Brockville three weeks then. We got a team at String Prairie and the man who owned it went with us and we arrived safely at last with one of Mother’s sisters Mrs. Benedict. We lived there two years and during that time I had got a small house and a 40 acre piece of land and I had built a fence along one side of it after going to the timber and splitting rails for it. Also had got out logs and built a good log house nice and new and we were quite comfortable in our living. During this time Mother had a very hard spell of sickness and came very near dying. I had charge of her as nurse and I did the work of the cooking and giving medicine and all both night and day for a month or two and finally she got well. While we lived there I got a chance to teach a summer school so I had a little experience as teacher, but we were not satisfied there and in the spring of 1853 I went to Keokuk to find work, and with a few clothes and a light lunch in a handkerchief I made the trip on foot and took up the job of finding work and after going from place to place I got work in a house that were selling groceries and I ran on the levee of the Mississippi. The firm’s name was Chittenden and McGavic and I worked there nine years.
On the 4th of October 1860, I married the best girl I ever saw and also the best looking girl, and we began keeping house in Keokuk, and as the war of the rebellion was approaching, the firm that I was with decided to close up their business and quit, and I got a position with Mr. Smith Hamill. I took a house on the hill in Keokuk and my wife, Mary S. Van Keuren and I set up housekeeping there. I had given my heart to Christ about 1855 and she had joined with me the M. E. Church, and we set up a family altar and began an active Christian life. The war came on soon and we were surrounded with the events of the war and great excitement.
I got an interest in the firm of S. Hamill about 1862 and made some money and in 1870 withdrew from that firm and started another with R. S. Van Keuren and a Mr. Foreman as partners. Mr. Foreman soon withdrew and Van Keuren and I ran on together until 1878, when we moved our stock of goods to Sioux City, Iowa.
I was a resident of Keokuk for 25 years from 1853 to 1878. I got interested in a Mission Sunday School through my work in the Y.M.C.A. in Keokuk and was elected its Superintendent in 1858 and I had that place until I left Keokuk. The name of the School was Banner Mission and for three or four years it had no church connection whatever but finally was taken in by the Chatham Square Church of which I was a member.

William came from Canada in 1860. In 1900 he lived at f849 Sixth St, Sioux City, IA. He said he was a Traveling Salesman.344