James Brown Huston (1811 - 1889)

Born 20 May 1811 in Nelson County, Kentucky,

Ancestors

Husband of Nancy Catherine (Hill) Huston — married 29 Dec 1831 in Orange, Indiana, United States

Descendants

Died 29 Jan 1889 at age 77 in Boone Twp, Dallas county, IA

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Karen Bronk [send private message]

Biography

James was born on May 26, 1811, in Nelson Co., Kentucky, and moved to Lawrence Co., Indiana in 1825, where he worked on a farm and taught school. He married Nancy Hill on December 29, 1831, in Orange Co., Indiana. (She was the daughter of Joseph Hill of Orange Co., Indiana). They moved to Hancock Co., Indiana, where James sold saddles and bridles as a sideline to farming and teaching. They lived in Hancock County during the 1830's and in Martin County, Indiana, most of the 1840's. James taught school in Hancock County, 1834-35, and Martin County 1839-1849. ^[1]

Research Notes

Reading the will of James Brown Huston provides confirmation of some living descendants as of 25 June 1888, based on specific numbered provisions:

4: dau Margaret Jane Newby

5: son David

6: son James Polk

7: son George Dallas

8: son Frederick Robert

9: son Johnathan William.

10: gson Charles, son of Johnathan W.

11: gdau Ida, dau of David

Sources

1. ↑ [1] Huston Family of Dallas County. Nice site with photos and quotes from will

• [2] Find-a-Grave
• Karen Bronk, firsthand knowledge. See the Changes page for the details of edits by Karen and others.
• "The Huston Family: Iowa Supplement" by Sgt. Major Richard Alan Huston, Des Moines, Iowa, 1981. State Historical Library and additional research by Lynnette Davis.

• Lillian McLaughlin, Cemetery in the Middle of Road, Des Moines Tribune, about 30 May 1976.

Another Memorial Day brings decorations to graves in many cemeteries, a custom begun 108 years ago to honor Civil War dead, then Spanish-American, World Wars I and II, Korean -- on and on -- and along the way graves, too, of any beloved friend or kin.

Take another look at one cemetery which began 21 years before the first Memorial Day in 1868: Huston Cemetery -- better known to many central Iowans as "the little cemetery in the middle of the road." (An easy route from Des Moines: West on Ashworth Road to County Line Road, south on this to the first gravel road leading west, a few miles and there it is -- dead center in the crossroads.)

Two little "soldiers" were buried here in 1847. According to the marker placed on the plot some years ago by the Dallas County Historical Society, they were "two small daughters of the Harper family going by wagon train to California..."

Three Old Trees The circular plot with its three old trees -- hemlock and pines -- backed by neighborhood friends, stood victoriously against north-south, east-west gravel roads that sought to intersect at its site.

"Go around me! Look at me!" it seems to cry to surprised travelers who come upon it.

And so they do, some stopping to look over the little iron fence that circles it in a protective embrace. If any of theose stone mark the graves of the Harper children, the viewer would not know. Even inscriptions of later, larger heastones -- when the plot became the cemetery of the James B. Huston family a few years later -- are in places worn until unreadable.

There's James B.'s grave, his wife Nancy's. And a poignant footnote to the rugged life of the pioneers -- the graves of at least five children: James and Nancy's daughter Sarah, who died in 1879, only 12 years old; another daughter, Burnetta, only 10 years old; a Josiah, son of (undecipherable), 12 years old, died 1862; Elizabeth, daughter of G. E. and E. Huston, died 1880, "aged four weeks three days;" "an infant daughter of Wm. and M. J. Newby, died 1862," her age worn away.

According to Dallas County census records of 1856 and 1860 in the Iowa State Historical Building library, Margaret, a daughter of James and Nancy, married a Newby.

Boone Township, before it was such, once was "Huston country," says an 83 year-old Waukee farmer who should know. He's Ed Huston, James' grandson, who was born on his farm home that sits today on the west edge of Waukee. Huston, injured in a fall a few months ago, is now a resident of Adel Acres. But his adopted daughter -- Mrs. Mark McNeeley, who lives in Des Moines -- fetched him home Saturday. There was a pilgrimage to the Waukee cemetery. His Memorial Day ties are there.

"I think more about my wife buried at Waukee," he said. "I've got my father, mother, sister, brother-in-law, a brother -- all buried in Waukee I can see my little sister's grave." ("Effie R. Huston, born October 1906, died March 1907." The headstone -- like all the others in the Huston plot in Waukee -- reads: "Sleep on, sweet babe, and take thy rest. God called thee home. He thought it best.")

Census records show 26 Hustons in Boone Township in 1860; in 1856, 18. Andreas' Illustrated Atlas of Iowa (1875) includes among many lithographs one depicting the James B. Huston home, "settled 12 miles west of Des Moines 1849. Born in Nelson County, Kentucky, 1911."

It is a pleasant scene, young windbreak trees, a gentleman driver sitting erect in his spider phaeton, barking dogs, cattle, observing roosters. Another illustration shows the home of J. H. Huston, also in Boone Township. Huston country!

Since his wife Virginia died three years ago, Ed Huston has been somewhat lost. He couldn't remember, he said, "who the dickens put that plaque up" at the old cemetery. "The older I get, the less I remember," he chuckled. "But before Mother (Virginia) died, we'd go out there and leave flowers on Memorial Day. I straightened up that plaque once, I remember. And I planted Peonies there." That plaque tells that the plot became "the private cemetery of J. B. Huston family."

"Stage route ran by cemetery," it reads. "Mr. Huston ran station & post office 1/2 mile E. He was first Dallas Co. Atty. The Stage Route (Iowa City-Des Moines-Council Bluffs) was abandoned 1867 when railroads came."

The Sherman Ploegers, who have lived in the farm across the road for five years, keep an eye on it.

"People are always stopping, often children," said Mrs. Ploeger. Boon Township trustees have delegated her sons, Gregory, 17, and Gordon, 12, to keep it neat. Sometimes flowers are tossed over the fence, and not just on Memorial Days, Mrs. Ploeger said. "I know, because our dogs have brought the flowers home, and we have to take them back," she said. (The Ploeger dogs -- Zip, a great bronze and white Saint Bernard and Rags, a shaggy friendly animal of mixed breed -- are good guardians, too.)

The little middle of the road cemetery today belongs to history, to Iowans with time for the past and tourists who turn off the Interstate and find it there, a tiny Place de la Concorde in the midst of Iowa's rich prairie rolling toward the Raccoon River. This is transcribed from a fading photocopy of the original. The article was accompanied by three photographs by Warren Taylor.

Bibliography: Lillian McLaughlin, Cemetery in the Middle of Road, Des Moines Tribune,

Acknowledgements

• Originated by Karen Bronk, Jul 9, 2011