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Mercer Home Page Return to Mercer County Resources Page Surnames Page Iowa Connections |
Looking at the Iowa Shoreline from New Boston |
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1854 map of Mercer and surrounding counties including the Iowa Counties across the river. Township lines are shown - they are not numbered but you can deduce what they are by knowing that Eliza Township was T15NR5W and T15NR6W (closest to the River). |
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The connection to Iowa for New Boston & Eliza Townships was an intimate one. People could look at Iowa from the shoreline in the two townships. People could easily travel over by the Ferry. Many families owned land on the Iowa side of the River and can be found there during harvest time in the census. People waited for the freezing of the River so they could cross over, particularly to harvest wood on the Iowa side and save their own supply on the Mercer County side (History does not record how the Muscatine County, Iowa, people felt about this!). There is a link to modern U. S. Geological Survey Topographic Maps on our Maps page. To see how close this connection is, look up New Boston in Illinois on the maps. When the map comes up click on the left hand arrow on the map to move over to the Iowa side and see how close the location is! And Iowa received the first wave of immigrants to the West. The Muscatine, Iowa Rootsweb Site has three early biographical histories of Muscatine on line. Click on biographies, choosing either 1879, 1889, or 1911. And if you are researching in Muscatine County prior to June 1849: District Court June Term 1849 - name Musquitine changed to Muscatine. Samples of Mercer County families found at varying times living in Iowa are (location of County indicated by Longitude/Latitude of the map below): Adams - Louisa & Muscatine Counties 14/41 Carr - Hardin County 16/42.5 Eikenbary - Butler County 16/42.8 Muscatine County 14/41.5 Endicott - Carroll/Greene County 18/42 Endicott/Pratt - Washington County 15/41 William & Emma Honeyman Jarvis Lee County 14/40 Mossman - Hardin County 16/42.5 Levi Myers - Wappello County 15/41 Spitznogle - Louisa & Muscatine Counties 14/41 Rachel Woodward Welch - Hardin County 16/42.5 Allison Willits - Linn County 15/42 There were many, many more - we are concentrating on getting all the family information up and have not updated this for quite awhile. |
Modern Iowa County Map |
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Ancestry.com - Map Center - to search for free map images Past and Present of Hardin County, Iowa ed. by William J. Moir, Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen, 1911  History of Hardin County, Iowa, Springfield, Ill: Union Publishing Company, 1883  USGenWeb Page - Muscatine County, Iowa USGenWeb Page - Louisa County, Iowa |