“The Carsons and Cockleburs
took over Jackson Township”

     This is one of the variations of an old saying known to many Clarke County natives, due to the numerous descendants of early pioneer Abraham Carson.   The original homestead properties, two 80 acre tracts, purchased in 1855 and 1869 by Abraham are still in the Carson family today. 

Abraham Carson was born in 1813 in Pennsylvania, the middle child of twelve.   His father, Thomas Carson, was said to have either been adopted or a runaway who took the name of Carson.  He married Anna Layton after settling in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, and they spent the rest of their lives there in the area of Perryopolis. 

      Abraham married Elizabeth Chambers, a West Virginia native, before 1834. In 1854 they left Pennsylvania for the rolling hills of southern Iowa, first setting in Henry County for a few months.    They then set their sights on Clarke County, which had been formed only nine years before and larger scale settlement started only four years before, in 1851.  The original 80 acre government issued land of their 1855 log cabin homestead is in Section 11, Jackson Township.   Early settlers entered land at the office at Chariton at a price of $1.25 an acre.  Their only method of communication was the Western Stage Company, which ran three times a week until the coming of the railroads and its dissolution in 1870.

     The Carson land was located only a few miles from the town of Ottawa, which was founded in May, 1855, on land deeded from the Benjamin Coppock family.   When Benjamin and his brother, Lindsey, arrived in 1854, there was only one house between their land and Osceola.   The Coppocks had also been in Henry County before moving here, so it is possible the families made plans together.  Members of the Carson family attended the United Brethren church at Ottawa and Methodist Episcopal churches at Ottawa and Woodburn.  

 Eight of the Carson children were born in Pennsylvania, the ninth and last, Caroline, was born in 1857 in Clarke County.    The second and third sons, Thomas and James, served in the Civil War.    Most of Abraham and Elizabeth’s children remained in Clarke County, their grandchildren numbering fifty.    

     Asa, the eldest, married Sarah Abrams (topping the number of children at twelve), Thomas married Mary Coppock (Lindsey’s daughter) and moved to Missouri in middle age, James married Sarah Tedrow, and after her death, Martha Chambers.   Mary married Jacob Arnett , Ellenor married John Reese (early stagecoach line driver).  Sons Ephraim and Jobe both married daughters of Rev. Jacob Delay Clark, Sarah and Martha respectively.  Nancy married Daniel Johnson, and Caroline’s spouse was Eli Crowl, they were Indiana residents.

Some of the families who married into the Carson line were:  Chambers, Heston, Weaklend, Wiley, Powell, Waugh, Page, Porterfield, Mackey, Thornton, Penick, Phillips, Jones, Lingle.   If your family has deep Clarke County roots, there is a good chance someone in your family has ties to them.  

                                                                                                           Lynnette Davis

(Sources referred to besides personal family research were genealogies by Marjorie Carson and Clarke County histories).  

Abraham and Elizabeth Carson

(Marjorie Carson files)