Martin Luther McIntire
Introduction
Martin Luther McIntire, the second son of Alexander and Mariah Lovina is the “Great Grand Father” I know without having ever met. He was born one hundred years before me, however his legacy was well-known in my immediate family. My parents, Rod and Elaine McIntire along with brothers Tim and Scott and myself would make a yearly summer trip from our home in Long Beach, California to Grand Junction, Colorado which always included a few days stay in Olathe, Colorado. Olathe, famous for it’s sweet corn, is a small town about an hour drive from Grand Junction on the Western slope of Colorado, known as the Uncompahgre Plateau. Olathe is also the 1917 birthplace of my father, since over a decade earlier Martin brought his family there. The area is a vast mix of rocky canyons and gorges, badlands, mesas and rivers, streams and lakes! Grand Mesa, the largest flat top mesa in the world looms large in the surrounding landscape.
Martin enjoyed writing letters to family members and submitting editorials to the local newspapers. We are fortunate to have these relics, not only as family records, but to gain insight into his thoughts, heart and soul. In one of his editorials he describes how his mother would watch the boys play ‘sports’ in the evenings, after a hard day of work. Because Martin’s legacy was passed on to me it has been a profound desire to share what I consider to be family jewels with whomever wanders onto this website! As curator of these gems, I am humbled and honored to pass this on to the next generations! All of these wonderful letters and editorials will be found in the Martin Luther McIntire Letters section on the Home Page. I am also working on uploading the “It’s Been a Honey” book to the internet so more people may have access to this wonderful resource. Stay tuned!!
Martin Luther McIntire was an insightful and reflective man who liked to share his thoughts in personal letters and letters to the Editor of the Express. He addressed his letters to the “Editor of the Express” but likely the newspaper was the Olathe Criterion or the other newspaper in the area, the Montrose Daily Press. The surviving clippings and his handwritten drafts will be available in the section title Martin Luther McIntire’s Letters. We are so fortunate to have these precious documents! As much as possible, it will be Martin telling his own story, in his words and handwriting.
“I was born in Keokuk County, Iowa in the year 1850, near the town of Richland. My Father died when I was five years of age leaving my Mother with five small children, four boys and one girl, the oldest son not yet seven. My Mother had to become the bread winner and the responsibility of rearing into good citizenship the five children. I can recall in memory the hard struggle she went through with getting us up to the age that we would be of any help to her”.
“When I merely take a glance at the time in years past, though I have seen over 79 years of them in all, it seems but a span of short duration. But again when I review the past in detail of my earthly sojourn my pilgrimage in the flesh appears more as it is, a lengthy friend I return in memory 79 years. Many of the events at the age of 5 years I call to mind now, and see them as I saw them then. Much of my past from that early in life is as (an) open book but a bygone reality in fact”.
“In the year of 1869 we moved from Keokuk County to Marion County and located on a farm in Liberty township, across the section line from where the town of Bussy is now situated, living there several years before a railroad was built through that township. We soon formed acquaintances with the young and the old pioneers in the town of old Bellfountain, Marysville and Hamilton. At that time they were our nearest towns. What was a fact 60 years ago when we came to Marion County is now the larger portion of it only a record, towns all in new hands. The unborn, the babes and the youth of sixty years ago have taken the places of the old pioneers”
Both the 1870 and 1880 Iowa Federal Census show the McIntire family living in Marion County, having moved from Keokuk. Olive was also married to Dayton Greeson and they too had a one year old son. They had moved on to Belmont Township in Warren County and her mother Lovina Mariah plus her mother, Hannah Hiatt was also living in the Greeson household. Joseph married Susan Strawn in Kirkville, Wapello County, Iowa and later settled in Pella, Iowa where their firstborn infant was born and died in 1878 and Walter, their son was born in 1880. Martin then married Sarah Bridges in Marion County where they stayed a short time.
“Several years after the town of Bussy and Tracy was built, we sold our farm in Liberty township. My three brothers and sister were married then and wanted their interest they had in the farm to use. I then (drop) from the farm for two years. Apart of one summer, I was under the employ of the Iowa Central Railroad doing construction work”.
Martin doesn’t mention his marriage to Sarah Bridges during this time period, but after their marriage they left Marion County for Kansas too. His brother Mahlon and his wife Eva Downing and brother Harvey also made the move several years later with his first wife Eleanor (also Elnor) Blackburn. Elnor passed away in 1891. Harvey soon met and married Amy McNutt in Kansas. The three brothers, wives and their children all lived in Rooks County, Kansas, where their mother Lovina had moved in 1885. While in Kansas Martin and his very musical siblings wrote and published music to supplement their struggling farm income. Their publishing company, out of Cawker City, Kansas was known as ML McIntire & Sons. No sons of Martin or Mahlon had the initials of ML, so it was likely meant to represent Martin Luther and Mahlon Lewis themselves as ‘sons’! Because all their music is written as composed by “M.L. McIntire” it is hard to know which of the brothers wrote what piece. Mahlon did dedicate one to his wife Eva, which I will include in his biography. It is the only piece of the many they wrote that seems to have survived. I do have a songbook titled “Royal Gems” that will be scanned and included in the Document Section on the Home Page. This book was to be used in “Public Schools, Teachers’ Institutes and Juvenile Conventions” as the title states. There is a brief “Rudimental Department” at the beginning with helpful music theory lessons on music notation, part singing and solfege. The back cover serves as an advertisement for the Martin and Mahlon’s pieces. You could buy all five for one dollar, or individual pieces from thirty to forty cents!
A note from the “Honey” book (page 21)
“Nellie McIntire Clark saw in the Capper’s Weekly an inquiry from a lady wanting to know about Mahlon’s old song books. Nellie wrote to her. The lady, in her eighties said her mother used to have one of the books, loved it so much, used to sing songs from it. The lady just wondered if any others had been published. Each of my girls have one. They and Effie, too, used to sing from it”
Sometime around the turn of the century, Martin, now quite weary with Kansas farming, packed up his family and returned to Marion County, Iowa where Sarah’s family (the Bridges) lived. Her father, Thompson helped them settle back in with farm property that adjoined the Hall family farm. Yes, the same Hall family that would soon become an integral part of the McIntire family! John “Hipe” became lifelong friends with Perry, the name he preferred, and in later years Hipe and Effie would become husband and wife, with Edna and Wilna joining their family. Not wanting to get too far ahead, but only mentioning this to reveal their identity in the midst of a growing family! The McIntire kid’s enjoyed playing with their Bridges cousins, of which many were in the vicinity in addition to the large Hall family nearby!
“With the hardships of droughts, hot winds and grass hoppers, I sold out there (Kansas). Came back to Marion Co, located in Indiana Township living there for four years. I sold out again to the Coal Company that is in operation at Perishing. Bought again in Washington Township, southwest of Knoxville.
Lived there three years”.
Martin and Sarah added four children to their family while living in Kansas. Effie Mae was their first born, in 1885, Avilon Perry in 1886, followed by Nellie Grace in 1891 and Oliver Simpson, my grandfather, in 1893. A fifth child, a daughter named Eva Edna, was born on November 4, 1895. Little Eva passed away on September 17 1896, at ten months and thirteen days.
Died, at the home of its parents, near Attica, Wednesday, Sept 16, of dysentery, the infant daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Martin McIntyre, aged one. The funeral services were held at the home the following day, and the remains were interred in the Gullion Cemetery.
Marion County Newspapers 1896
Eva is buried in Bridges Cemetery , not Gullion as the obituary states.
While in Marion County, Martin served on the Carlisle School board where his children attended. John Henry Whitlatch served as President with Martin as Secretary on and William Bridges as Treasurer, Jonathan (John) Hall and A.A. Mark served as school board members. For clarification, John Henry Whitlach was the son of Millie Hall Whitlach, the sister of Jonathan (John) Hall. Jonathan Hall was also John Hipe Hall’s father!
And as a note of transparency and complete confusion, the Carlisle School District is currently in Warren County and is seemingly unrelated to this particular school. Both myself and the kind people at the Iowa Historical Society are baffled! But here is the evidence that our family did indeed attend a school in Carlisle, Marion County, Iowa!
In the above photo and memory card of the 1898 classmates of Carlisle School, the family surnames of McIntire, Davis, Hall, Lemmon and Whitlatch have carried through many of their adult lives. They are all related to the Bridges family in some way or form! Just what you might expect from a small town! Mattie Belle Lemmon is the daughter of Nancy Bridges Lemmon, sister of Sarah Bridges McIntire. Effie McIntire would later marry Hipe Hall. Dessie Whitlach is the grand daughter of Hipe’s Aunt Millie Hall Whitlatch. The young man sitting in the photo where Dessie should be is unknown! So, Dessie is not in the photo as far as I can tell.
Another observation by my very astute cousin and grandson of Hipe, John Miller:
“The photo you sent shows Carlisle students with very different ages. Hipe Hall was born in October 1882 and Effie McIntire in July 1885. So, they could have been three years apart attending Carlisle, although Hipe may have attended the school only part-time one or more years, since the school had three sessions each year, with the winter term being the most popular for the farm kids.
The photo showing both Hipe and Effie at Carlisle indicates they attended at least one year together. The list of students from the back of the 1898 school district card includes Ida Hall, who was born in December 1880, and would have been 17 in June 1898, somewhat old for attending a 1-8 grade school. John Sharon was born in October 1884.
My assumption is the Carlisle school only went through Grade 8.
From Early Years in Iowa story:
Hipe attended school at the nearby Carlisle School until he was 12 years old. This one-room school … had one teacher who held sessions in fall, winter and spring. The winter session was the most popular, with up to 40 students enrolled. Hipe noted that “after our formal schooling came to an end, our father took over, teaching us the skills of farming, caring for livestock, rough carpentry, blacksmithing and mining.” Wilna wrote that Hipe ceased his formal education at age 12; if so, he would have left Carlisle by October 1894″.
The mystery continues!!
A few years of having the family nearby came to an end when Sarah’s mother Mary passed away on March 4, 1900. The following obituary was written by Zacheus Isaac “Z.I” Jones, the husband of Thompson and Mary’s daughter Anna.
Obituary of Mary Anderson Bridges
The following obituary for Mary Anderson Bridges was found in a book titled The Signs of the Times and Doctrinal Advocate and Monitor, Volume 68, published in 1923, page 222.
MARY ANDERSON BRIDGES
Died March 4th, 1900 – Mary Anderson Bridges, daughter of Robert and Lucinda Anderson, was born Jan. 20th, 1835, in Fulton County, Illinois. She came with her parents to Iowa, Nov. 1853, and was married to Thompson D. Bridges, April 2, 1854. To them were born eleven children, seven of whom are living, and were present at her death, with her aged husband and her youngest sister. She had been a great sufferer for four years with bronchial difficulty, and the last sixteen months was confined to her bed. On the second Sunday in March, 1868, she, with her husband, united with the Regular Predestinarian Baptist Church, called Little Flock, in Marion County, Iowa, and was baptized by Elder John A. Whiteley. She lived a consistent Christian life and died in the full triumph of a living faith. She was perfectly resigned to the will of her heavenly Father who works all things after the counsel of his own will.
Elder J.M. Arledge preached the funeral discourse from Job XIX: 25, 26. She chose the hymns to be sung: “My Latest Sun is Sinking Fast” and “My Days are Gliding Swiftly By.”
May the Lord bless and comfort the aged husband in his sad bereavement.
Z.I. JONES (Zacheus Isaac Jones, 1859-1952)
“My health had come impoverished so I could not work. I was advised to try some other climate. I didn’t care to leave Iowa. I liked the people in Marion County (and) felt that I had grown up in the hearts of many of the people of Marion County. But I had lost my pep and vitality. I felt that I was going down the sunset slope rapidly”.
On to Colorado
As Told by Hipe Hall from "It's Been a Honey"
“In those days, the railroads ran excursions out into the West. Martin McIntire, son Perry, had taken one into the Uncompahgre Valley. My father and brother Mart had taken one, as far as Ogden, Utah, cost $50 for twelve days. When the McIntires got back all they could talk about were the fruit orchards, wonderful fields of wheat, oats, barley, alfalfa and what wonderful cattle, sheep and horse country it was. The animals were driven to the hills for the summer pasture and back to the fam for the winter. There was limited water for irrigation and lots of dry land; however, Martin McIntire thought he felt better out in Colorado and most places he never felt too well. So despite the short water supply he knew about, he started thinking of moving to Colorado. There was the promise of a tunnel to be bored through the mountain to bring water to the valley. So in 1907 the McIntires sold their home and prepared to move to Colorado. Effie and I had been married a year, we had $400, and some stock, we thought it would be fun to go along. Then my brother Mart heard the news and he said he’d like to go too. So, each of us bought an excursion ticket for $20, planning to sell the ‘return trip’ for $10, which we did.
We moved our belongings by emigrant car on the standard gauge to Knoxville, Iowa on to Colorado Springs, Colorado on to Grand Junction and back up the valey to Olathe. Our car was loaded with household furniture, barrels of dishes, boxes of bedding, canned fruit, five or six dozen chickens in crates, two milk cows, a team of mules, a driving mare, plus feed for the animals, harness, a top buggy, a carriage, a wagon. Perry and a cousin Alex Gleason rode along with the stock in the emigrant car. This car was side-tracked ‘ever so often’ to let the passenger trains pass. It took a week for that emigrant car ‘to make it’ from Knoxville, Iowa to Olathe, Colorado. The chickens could move around in their crate but the stock had to be turned out in stock yards each twenty-four hours to rest and move about. This was an interstate law. The rest of the family came by Standard Gauge passenger train to Salida, Colorado. There we changed to a narrow gauge train to go over Monarch Pass, through Gunison to Montrose. Then we changed back to Standard gauge to go on to Olathe. (Standard Gauge was just too expensive to go up and over those mountains)”
As told by John “Hipe” Hall
Continue the journey of Martin and his family in Olathe, Colorado in the next posting, coming very soon!
Teri