Reuben Wilder (1783 - 1858)

Born 1 Aug 1783 in Sterling, Worcester County, MA, USA

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 30 Aug 1858 at age 75 in Dyer, Lake County, Indiana, USA

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Biography

Birth

Reuben Wilder was the first child of Reuben Wheeler Wilder and Eunice Bailey, who were married at Sterling MA on 6 February 1783. Reuben Wheeler Wilder, farmer and schoolteacher, eventually a resident of Geneva Ohio, was a Mayflower descendant through his mother Phoebe (Wheeler) Wilder, descended from William and Susannah White and their son, Resolved. Reuben Wheeler Wilder's father, Jotham Wilder, fought at Bunker Hill at the age of 65.

The family is found at Saltash (Plymouth), Vermont, in the 1790 census, but sometime prior to the 1800 census they moved on, probably to the Norwich, New York, area, where Reuben's youngest sister Polly was born on Christmas Day, 1802.

Marriage

By about 1804, probably in Norwich NY, Reuben met and married Anna Eunice "Polly" Herring, and they settled on a farm in Onondaga County, New York, where their three oldest children were born: Joseph on 24 Jan1805 (died 24 Feb 1805), Almon on 21 May 1806, and Mary Relief on 25 September 1808.

War of 1812

By the time of the birth of their fourth child, Hiram Ordell, on 22 October 1811, the family had joined the elder generation at Batavia, New York. There Reuben enlisted in Captain Richard Godfrey's company of the New York militia in the War of 1812.

Residences

After the birth of Louisa in 1813, but prior to the birth of Betsey on 25 February 1815, both Wilder generations moved farther west, to the Kingsville, Ashtabula County, Ohio area, where Reuben and Polly's younger children were born: Reuben B. on 20 August 1817, Cephas on 10 September 1819, Nathan W. on 8 August 1821, Sarah on 10 September 1823, and Riley on 17 September 1826.

The family attempted a move west to lower Michigan and were driven out by Indians, but later were successful traveling across the states of Ohio and Indiana, driving their stock along with them, Riley riding the lead horse of the spike team, until they reached the Illinois state line. In about 1835, they settled southeast of a small but rapidly growing town called Chicago, in the area now known as Dyer, and were among the earliest pioneers there. On one trip to Chicago for supplies, the oxen they had driven got loose at night, and the next day they hunted for them in the swampy, boggy land where now stand some of Chicago's tallest buildings, whose foundations reach some forty feet underground to bedrock.

By this time several of Reuben and Polly's children had married and established families of their own, some remaining back in northeast Ohio or northwest Pennsylvania: Almon settled at Crete Illinois, where he was a prominent citizen; Mary Relief (Page, Hitchcock, Barber) lived at Dyer until her parents' deaths, but she settled later at Hobart, Indiana; Reuben B. and Cephas both owned property at Dyer, although Cephas' residence was in Chicago. Cephas' death record, from Van Buren County, Michigan, identifies his mother's name as Anna. Nathan settled in Crown Point, Indiana, after residence near his sister at Hobart.

Death

After Polly's death at Dyer on 4 August 1846, Reuben remarried, to Mrs. Jane Holmes. On 30 August 1858, Reuben died at Dyer. Reuben and Polly are buried in the old Dyer pioneer cemetery, near where their oldest son Almon's first wife Anna (died 5 March 1840) is buried.

Burial

Reuben is buried in what is now the town of Dyer, Lake Co., Indiana just off of US 30. Under what is now the faculty parking lot at the community's junior high school. This is documented with the state of Indiana's DNR cemeteries registration.

~ Contributed by Ramona Eleanor (Larson) Pekarek, descendant through Reuben and Polly's son, Riley Wilder, of Baraboo, Sauk County, Wisconsin.

Sources

• County records, the book of "Wilder's", and notes from the Mayflower Society.
• family records
• Dyer cemetery records