Mary Dinsmore

Marriage: Spouse: William Dinsmore, May 7 1844, Pleasantville, Fairfield County, Ohio
Death: Mar 5 1915, Fremont, Iowa
Burial: Cedar Township Cemetary, Fremont, Iowa, http://findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=16853929
Parents: John Hampson, Leah Eyman Stevenson
Husband: William Dinsmore
Children: Leah ( Lillie) Ellen Dinsmore, John Wesley Dinsmore, Allie M. Dinsmore, Josie Dinsmore, Daniel Hamer Dinsmore, Samuel Edwin Dinsmore, James William Dinsmore, Josephine Dinsmore, Charles Franklin Dinsmore, Cornelia Catherine Dinsmore
Siblings: Daniel Hampson, Henry Hampson, Isaiah Hampson, John Hampson, Lewis Hampson, James Hampson Sr

The Hampson family motto Nunc Aut Nunquam is Latin for Now or Never.

Mary Hampson Dinsmore illness, Evening times-Republican, Marshalltown IA, Jan 13, 1902, page 6:
Mr. Charles F. Dinsmore and brother-in-law, Mr. W. B. Higgason, the latter of Zearing, left Saturday evening for Fremont, where they were summoned by a telegram announcing the critical illness of the former's mother, Mrs. William Dinsmore [Mary Hampson Dinsmore]. Mrs. Dinsmore is not expected to live. She is 77 years of age, and her illness is due largely to ex­posure in going to the bedside of her daughter, the late Mrs. Higgason [Josie Dinsmore Higgason, wife of Wallace B. Higgason], who died in Zearing suddenly about Christmas time.

Note: the above article says she was expected to die in 1902 but she pulled through. Her grave marker says 1915, not 1902, and the following article from 1915 reports her actual death:

Evening Times-Republican - Mar 12 1915:
Mrs. James Ruxton, of Zearing, was in the city Thursday evening on her way home from Fremont, where she attended the funeral of her grandmother, Mrs. Mary Dinsmore.
[Mrs. James Ruxton is Orpha Avis Higgason Ruxton, daughter of Wallace B. Higgason and Josephine Dinsmore Higgason]

The story of Iowa Pioneers
William and Mary (Hampson) Dinsmore
The westward trek across the Mississippi River reached its peak about 1857, the year that William Dinsmore and his wife Mary packed up all their worldly goods and came to Iowa. They brought with them their son, Daniel Hamer, a baby daughter they called Lillie and a fervent hope for a better life in what was then the western frontier.
They had been married 13 years when their journey began from the village of Jacksontown, Ohio, located in Licking County a few miles east of Columbus. They came by covered wagon across streams and rivers, unbroken prairie and land recently claimed by other emigrants a few years before.
Like most of the newcomers to the Hawkeye State, they were attracted by the fertile land, which was selling for less than half the price of similar land just east of the Mississippi in Illinois. Horace Greeley wrote in his New York Tribune that no State nor Territory can hold out inducements to settlers equal to Iowa." He had advised Josiah B. Grinnell in 1854 to "Go West, young man, go West, and grow up with the country."
Many people living in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and other eastern states had already taken his advice. Between 1838 and 1846, the population grew from 22,859 to 96,088. New counties were established as settlers spilled over into central and northeastern Iowa. Following Constitutional Conventions in 1844 and 1846, Iowa was admitted to the Union on Dec. 26, 1846.
"Iowa is probably not quite so fertile as Illinois," Greeley wrote, "but its prairies are smaller, its timber better distributed, and its plains more frequently cut by the ravines of swiftly running streams. We consider it more healthful in the average than Illinois, while its population, mainly emigrants from New England and New York, are decidedly intelligent, moral and thrifty."
"We have traveled far less in Iowa than in other Western States, but have seen none, on the whole, to be preferred to this for a home," Greeley concluded. A large portion of the lands in Iowa had been purchased by the settlers and was increasing in value according to the improvements made on them. In Illinois and other states east of the Mississippi, speculation had run wild, resulting in inflated land prices.
A Davenport editor asked, "What other state or what territory offers greater inducements of cheapness of land, fertility of soil, rich abundance of mineral wealth, healthiness of climate, greater freedom from financial burdens and heavy taxes, a more moral tone of society, better schools, more churches, greater freedom of opinion and action, than our own glorious State of Iowa?"
Keokuk and Mahaska counties, located in the third tier of counties from the southern line of the state, were included in the territory known as the "New Purchase," which was opened to settlers on May 1, 1843. The United States government had obtained the land in a treaty made with the Sac and Fox Indians on Oct. 11, 1842. The Indians agreed to remove themselves from the land within three years. The first claims were allowed in Keokuk county in 1844.
William Dinsmore was first lured to the west in 1851 when he went to California during the great "gold rush." But he stayed there only a couple of years before going back to his wife and son, Daniel Hamer, in Ohio.
Their decision to leave Ohio for Iowa in 1857 was undoubtedly influenced by reports they had received from the Daniel Martin family, who had made the journey to Keokuk county in 1854. Daniel Martin had been named guardian of William and his seven brothers and sisters following the deaths of their parents, William and Helen (Hayes) Dinsmore, in the spring of 1833.
William, born April 7, 1822 in Guernsey County, O., was barely 11 years old at the time his parents died and he made his home with the Martins for several years. Although he left "in early youth" to become an apprentice wagon maker to his older brother Samuel, he would always be grateful to the Martins and they would remain close life-long friends.
Daniel Martin, who helped Samuel arrange for homes for William's other brothers and sisters, arrived in Keokuk county in 1854 and settled in Steady Run township on a farm where the town of Martinsburg is now located. He laid out and sold the first lots the following year in the community which was named for him.
The founder of Martinsburgh--the original spelling had an "h" on the end-- and his wife, Sarah, had lived in Licking county, O., near Newark. Of their 11 children, at least two of them were treated by the Dinsmores as part of the family and are included in several early family photographs. They were Gilbert Brady "Doc" Martin, a painter who remained at Martinsburg until his death, about 1931; and Rachel, who was married to Robert S. Scott and died at Hedrick in 1927. Another son, R.S. Martin, bought the year-old Martinsburg Journal in 1886 and moved it to Hedrick in 1888. His sons, Walter and C.M. "Kitty" Martin, published the Journal until 1932.
The Martin family surely sent word to Ohio by 1856 of the opportunities available in their new community and urged Samuel, William and their wives to join them. William and Mary had already suffered the heartbreak of the deaths of three of the five children by then born to them.
Their firstborn child, John Wesley Dinsmore, was born July 2, 1845 at Jacksontown and he died on Feb. 14, 1846. Cornelia Catherine Dinsmore was born March 14, 1847, also at Jacksontown, and she died just a few months later on Sept. 28, 1847. After the birth of Daniel Hamer their third child, James William Dinsmore was born July 10, 1853 at Jacksontown. He was not quite two years old at his death on May 15, 1855.
All three Dinsmore infants who died while the family was in Ohio are buried in the Hampson Cemetery near Pleasantville in Fairfield county, ancestral home of William's wife, Mary. Her father, John Hampson, had obtained a grant of the west half of section 3, range 18 in Pleasant township of Fairfield county on Mar. 6, 1806, signed by President Thomas Jefferson.
The Hampsons were among the original settlers of that community, were prominent landholders and well respected. Mary was born June 15, 1824 on the family farm near Pleasantville in the eastern part of the county. She was the youngest of seven children born to