John William Munn, Sr

Recollections of John Munn Sr. by Emma Blanche Munn, His Granddaughter

The following paragraphs are excerpted from a memoir written by Blanche Munn Hayes (Emma Blanche Munn) for her grandchildren, so they might know something of her parents and grandparents. You must be the judge as to their veracity. For the record, John was living with her parents -- Lewis and Emma Munn -- when she was born, and did so for the remaining nine years of his life. Thus her recollections are both from close at hand and from a child’s point of view. They also no doubt reflect something of her parents’ point of view. They may also be colored by her age: she was about 83 years old when they were penned. From this point on, everything is hers except the footmotes at the end.

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John Munn--your great-great-grandfather (on my father's side)--was a Scotsman who came to America in the early 1800's, Though he was born somewhere in Scotland in 1803 nothing is known of his family or the place where he was born. The family must have been wealthy, for when he came to America, he had plenty of money with him. A very, valuable corner in the town of pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, was his first investment. In later years it was sold to the Scientific American Magazine. This was owned by a branch of the Munn family but we never knew any of these "Scientific Americans." (1)

How he [John] happened to come out to Iowa and buy 640 acres of farmland in Cedar County and start his big family is not known. He never did any work - was always able to get someone else to do it and he paid for it. He was a gentleman. He must have been a young man when he came out to Iowa. [Actually, he was about 47!] The family home he had built was a large frame house, only a front porch to decorate it.  It must have been a very large house. I was born in this house August 14, 1888.

"Daddy Munn", as he was always called, had a roving disposition; and had plenty of money to gratify this trait. He was married three times and had three good sized families. I do not know the names of his first and second wives, but I do remember some of the names of some of his children. The first family had John, the oldest of his children. [Actually, the oldest was Ann, and John Jr. was of the second, as she says below.]  Easter and Rachel were two girls and there was Sarah Gear. I once saw Aunt Rachel. She looked like a thin workworn woman.

The second family had John, the first boy, then Samuel--"Sammy", who was the most beloved of all the children. Harriet and Mary were daughters.

The third family was the one to which my father belonged It was said Daddy Munn picked out his third wife at the funeral of his second wife. It was said she was very young and very beautiful. Her name [was] Phoebe Baker and she was an orphan living with relatives in Cedar County, Ia., as her parents and seven brothers had been scalped by a band of roving Indians, in the East. She was an 'eastener*. I never saw her. (2)

The family was a large one. John was the oldest, then Oliver Dunster, and Silas, Lavina, Eliza, and Flora, (always known, even when married, as the "three Munn girls") Then Liverton, who was very frail and died in his 40's; Lewis James Munn, named for a Pittsburgh doctor, a friend of Daddy Munn's was the "baby" of the family. He was my father.

During this time Daddy Munn engaged in the California "gold rush" and came back with gold dust and nuggets. (3) But the children got nothing but a living and the boys and girls had no education other than "country school" when it was too cold or too rainy to work in the fields. Only my father, who had a teacher that recognized Papa's ability to learn, was allowed to go to school longer than any of the others. This teacher taught him Advanced English and history and mathematics. He gave Papa what was then called a High School education got Papa admitted to the University of Iowa to study law. Papa's tin trunk was all packed with his books and a few clothes and was to be taken to Iowa City by horse and buggy when he heard his mother crying in the night to Daddy Munn that she was losing her baby and she knew she would not be alive to see him when he came home. She was then troubled with a bad heart, having become very heavy and having worked as all farm women of that era did. She always had to have Daddy Munn's supper at five o'clock, winter or summer, and a baked potato at five o'clock was a 'must' every day (and that wasn't so easy in those days). Often he demanded fresh fried chicken for breakfast.

Papa [Lewis] felt so badly when he heard his mother lamenting that he unpacked his trunk and didn't go to college. So he lost his opportunity of becoming an educated man and become a farmer, which he hated. But he had the reputation of being the best farmer, getting the biggest crops, in Cedar County - but he was a 'laboring man'.

Daddy Munn did see to it that all his children of the third family got some money. He helped Uncle Sile and John to get farms; Sam was given a sum of money because of his wounds from war. (4)

Daddy Munn chose to live on the home place with Lewis and Emma Rochholtz who were married by that time.  Daddy Munn stayed with them the remainder of his life. When Papa and Mama [Lewis and Emma] moved to Muscatine, Iowa, he came  too. He visited all his children often, but always Papa's home was his home also. He lived to be 95 years old -- born in 1803, died Feb, 1898 in Muscatine. He was too old to serve in the Civil War, but he was made an honorary officer and helped train troops. Uncle Sile (Silas) ran away to the war when he was fourteen. He grew a beard and ran away to hunt Uncle Sammy who also was in service. Uncle Sile was drummer boy at the place where Lee surrendered to Grant. Uncle Sammy was badly wounded but was at home for several years before he died.

I know the older boys made papa learn to 'chaw' "terbaccy". There is no data as to why Uncle John and Uncle 0l did not go to war, but I believe that Daddy Munn kept them from enlisting so they would work and keep the home farm going.  This must be true of his first son John, who was over age to be in service. (5)

Daddy Munn never had any formal education but was considered an 'authority' by all his neighbors and friends. He was a wizard in his farm dealings and made money for friends and neighbors and for himself. He had a hobby of calling auctions. There were many auctions among the people out there. He could call auctions in German and English. He had the reputation of getting the highest prices of any auctioneer. He loved to do this and did it for his friends freely. His real estate dealing in farm lands and his auctioneering were the nearest things to labor he ever did.

He was a handsome old man. That's the way I remember him. Everyday he had a clean white ruffled shirt and a blue suit on. He had thick, curly hair which he wore 'reached' on the top (like a big curl). (6) It was as snow white as was his flowing white beard. Papa and Mama kept him immaculate. In the last years of his life he had to be dressed by Papa before Papa went to work. He had a big armchair with a crotched shawl in it; here, before a window he sat, day in and day out, always holding a cane. He was a man of great strength and agility. The day he was 80 years old he chopped a cord of wood, jumped up and clicked his heels together three times before he touched the ground. May 29 was always the big day in the Munn household. His children brought their children from near and far for his birthday celebration. The last year he was not active, though his sharp tongue and domineering ways never faltered. He caught cold which went into "the grippe" (we call it 'flu' now), and died in February just before he would have been 95 on May 29.

*          *          *          *          * [After they were married, Lewis and Amalia were to live at Lewis' farm.] His mother and Daddy Munn lived there too, also the "Munn girls" who were all married, but considered this their home and that they could come back anytime they chose - which did not please my little, independent, "chip-on-the-shoulder" mother one bit! She did not ever like the "Munn girls" but she loved grandmother Munn, who had been such a beautiful young girl, but life with Daddy Munn was no pleasure. He was away a great deal and was "Lord of all he surveyed" when home. He gave her no money. Mama said Grandmother Munn had one good black dress and nothing else but gray calico wrappers. She had become so large and fat, her heart was terribly effected - cooking for a family or thrashers on a red hot wood stove, summer and winter, carrying water, for no one else ever turned their hand to help her - not even the "Munn girls."

Mama said she stood it one week, then told Papa if he expected her to live there, the water must be carried in and not by her. She sent "the girls" home as fast as they could go, but not before she (Mama) had dumped Aunt Eliza into the washtub following an argument about finances!...... little Mama!  But when she got mad she was like a hen with all its feathers ruffled. Papa had a very nice gasoline stove brought down from Tipton and the wood range was banished. Grandmother Munn said she never had it so nice until "Em" came to live at the farm, but her heart was so damaged, her feet so swollen, it was difficult for her to walk or breathe. Soon she had to stay in bed. Then Papa got Mama a "hired girl" to help with the work. Grandmother Munn enjoyed being "waited on" and she loved to have Mama sit with her. Happily whe went to sleep one day, not to awaken.

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Footnotes by compiler. (1) We are in no position to find out whether or not John made such an investment. However, the "Munn Connection" with Scientific American which we do know something about did not take place until 1846, when Alfred Ely Beach persuaded Orson Desaix Munn, a former schoolmate, to buy the nascent magazine. If the name of their partnership was not Munn & Co. initially, it soon became so and has been so ever since. But by that time, John's immediate family at least had long since moved to Ohio and subsequently to Missouri. Yet we cannot totally discount the connection, because we know so little of John's origins and how much of the Munn family may have stayed behind. Orson Dessaix Munn (1824-1907) was a son of Rice Munn (1776-1866) and Lavinia Shaw. Rice Munn was a son of Reuben Munn (1742-1823), who fought in the Revolutionary War, and Hannah ______.  Reuben Munn was a son of Benjamin Munn, who fought in the Pequot War, and Rebecca Russell. (2) Her surname was actually Homan. Baker was the surname of the wife of Liverton Thomas Munn, Ida May Baker. (3) This is not unlikely, as loads of folks went west to try their hand, and many came back quite as fast, only the lucky ones any richer than they went out. And John Munn was nothing if not lucky. Incidentally, the biography of John Munn, son of James Munn, who may have been a brother of John Munn who is the subject of these comments, published in the History of Nodaway County, Missouri (St. Joseph, MO, USA: National Historical Co., 1882) 806, states specifically that he (a) “accompanied the family to the Platte Purchase” in 1839 and then (b) “determined to go to the California coast.” (4) Silas was from the third family, but John and Sammy were from the second. (5) Not really. He would have been 23 in 1860; prime military age. More likely John paid someone else to go in their place. That was both a legal and acceptable practice at that time. (6) Shows very clearly in photo.

http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/24407045/person/12598717962/media/1?...

Birth: May 29, 1803 Washington County Pennsylvania, USA Death: Feb. 10, 1897 Muscatine Muscatine County Iowa, USA

John Munn Sr., was born May 29, 1803 in Washington Co. Pennsylvania, and died at the home of his son L. J. Munn, who lives at Muscatine, Iowa, February 10, 1897. By trade he was a blacksmith, learning his trade in the city of Pittsburgh, Pa. after which he married Rachel Atchison. To this union was born three daughters, one of which still survives, the others with there mother having proceeded him. Two years later he married Miss Sophia Pierson (Wayne County Ohio). To this union was born four daughters and two sons. He moved from Pennsylvania to Ohio and from there to the state of Missouri where he lived eight years. His second wife having died there he returned to Ohio and two years later married his third wife Miss Phebe Homan (Wayne Co. Ohio) after which he went back to Missouri for a short time. (From there he moved to Armstrong Co. Pa. was there a short time and had son Silas Wright Munn born around Millers Eddy, Perry township, 1848). From there he moved to Cedar Co. Iowa, (Sugar Creek Township), in 1849 where he was blessed with five sons and four daughters by his third wife, of which two died in infancy and the third was Mr. Liverton Thomas Munn of Tipton, who died April 9, 1896. The mother having passed away to her reward some twelve years ago.

His three wives were all good Christian women and all died rejoicing in a Saviour's love. Mr Munn himself was a christian man the greater part of his life and also a very patriotic citizen and loved god, home and native land and was ready to defend either, so he had his battles to fight and we trust his victories. Having lived lived to the good old age of 93 years, 8 mon., and 8 days, he was callled from his sons home in Muscatine where he was tenderly cared for in his old age, to his home with loved ones in heaven.

The remains were brought to Hebron M.E. Church, south of Tipton, where a large gathering of old friends and relatives paid their last tribute of respect. The funeral services were conducted by Rev. W.F. Bacon assisted by Rev. Bowers. Internment in the Hebron Cemetery to await the resurrection.

Family links:

Spouse:

 Phebe A Homan Munn (1818 - 1885)*

Children:

 Sarah Jane Munn Walker (1826 - 1890)*

 Anna Munn Taber (1828 - 1868)*

 Esther Munn Danner (1832 - 1897)*

 David Munn (1836 - 1885)*

 John William Munn (1837 - 1929)*

 Harriet Munn Whitmer (1839 - 1916)*

 Samuel Munn (1843 - 1926)*

 Silas Wright Munn (1848 - 1936)*

 Liverton Thomas Munn (1850 - 1896)*

 Oliver Dunster Munn (1853 - 1918)*

 Lavina B. Munn Kline (1854 - 1936)*

 Lewis James Munn (1856 - 1932)*

 Clara E. Munn Harvey (1858 - 1926)*

 Flora Zetta Munn Sanley (1859 - 1945)*

• Calculated relationship

Burial: Hebron Cemetery Tipton Cedar County Iowa, USA

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Maintained by: Maggie Originally Created by: Lori Record added: May 02, 2008 Find A Grave Memorial# 26544480 https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/26544480/john-william-munn