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17 July 1807 – after 1880 · born in France, settled 1831
The tie, exactly: settler, spring 1831 — and the fullest first-generation biography Chapman gives this township. Born in France on 17 July 1807, a son of Jacob and Mary Meyer, who brought the family to America in 1828; married Catharine Bueb in 1829; came to this county in 1831 and settled the farm he was still on when Chapman sketched him in 1880 — the same Section 15 ground where Buell, Augustine and Hartzel also planted in 1831.
The course: Meyer began, as many immigrant farmers of his decade began, working on the canal; his first purchase was 160 acres, and by 1880 he owned 460. His first work in the township is dated to its first harvest — he helped cut Jacob Harris's wheat crop of 1831, the township's first. Eleven children were born to the marriage. He held the township trusteeship in his turn — the office stands in the Government leg; the man stands here. He was a Mason. Chapman prints him still residing on the original farm in 1880, forty-nine years after he settled it, which makes his the longest continuous settler tenure this section can document from the histories.
Sources:
- Chapman (1880), Harris Township biographical sketches, pp. 715–717 — the full Meyer sketch.
- Howard (1907), ch. V, §3 — Meyer in the early settler roll.