[WED]Wedmore to Iowa

[Mary Jackes]

>I don't think there was a specific Wedmore Settlement in Iowa. I suspect two
>or three families went over and then reported back on the opportunities.

Since there have been recent queries, a summary of the info we've got
together over the last year or more:-

"colony" was the word in my mother's vague memory of this family past, and
it seems an appropriate word.  This was a classic colony - bad conditions
at home, a couple of young males (the Dyers) searching out good prospects,
then organizing a large resettlement, which hives off other settlements,
and eventually is assimilated. 

Sandi quoted from Halbach's history of Dyersville that 60 families were
recruited for the two specific settlements that were established by the
Dyers.  Mary Thacher has told us something of how this came about based on
the records of her Dyer ancestors.  The original settlers apparently
crossed the Atlantic in several boatloads within months, from 1848 to early
1850. 

The 1850 Iowa census for Dyersville, as well as details on the early
arrivals who swore oaths that they intended to be naturalized, confirm the
large numbers established there within the first year or two.  There is
also information from the 1850 census for the Manchester area, the second
Dyer settlement in Iowa.  I have been told that the Sarah Whiting recorded
there - as a 5 year old in 1850 - stated later in life that she had arrived
in 1849, after a stormy 6 week voyage, in a group totalling 32 families.

After 1850, people arrived as individuals or small groups, wives and
children joining family members, relatives being given work on farms (as
Karla suggests, and this is confirmed as the general pattern by the census
records, as early as 1850). Some of these new arrivals married immediately,
suggesting that they were already engaged.  Several of the men had first
earned their marriage money in central NY state or in Ontario or in
Burlington, Wisconsin (the Dyers had been first in Onondaga County NY and
Burlington WI for a while - but the famous Dr. Dyer of Burlington was from
an unrelated family). 

People moved out to three townships around Dyersville (to villages like
John's Creek) during the 1850s-60s as they bought their own land (I don't
know if any land there was available under the Homestead Act in the 1860s),
and no doubt also around Manchester. Information sent to Mary Thacher from
another Dyer descendant confirms the spread of the families among several
villages near Dyersville, and also the links to Manchester IA. One group of
families moved up to St. Charles, Minnesota bit by bit during the 1850s.
On the list we have discussed how people kept arriving in Iowa for at least
50 years.  Eventually, some settled in other areas of Iowa and we have
heard of one family moving south (to Louisiana).  Some people from St.
Charles moved on to other areas of Minnesota and into the Dakota Territory.

Contacts were maintained among the settlements.  This is very
well-established for the Manchester IA/St. Charles MN nexus. Sandi's
Somerset relatives encompass a couple of areas in Iowa, and again there are
links to St. Charles. Marriages were mostly within the Somerset group at
first, it seems, and there were even cases of people returning to Somerset
to bring new wives. Obviously there were letters to and from Somerset.  I
actually know of an elderly lady in St. Charles MN maintaining contact with
an equally ancient distant relative in Cheddar up until a year or two ago -
that's 150 years of contact by mail, through several generations!
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Mary Jackes
Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 0N8, Canada.