Where the Prairie Became Home

Memory Cemetery

In Memory Cemetery, the name Peterman is cut deep into stone. Above it are two lives joined in death as they had been joined in work: J. P. Peterman, born September 16, 1852, and Mary, his wife. The stone stands on Iowa ground, but the story behind it begins in several older places: Pennsylvania farms, Ohio clearings, Indiana settlements, Virginia and Tennessee borderlands, and the raw prairie country of southwest Iowa.

The marker is a fitting doorway into this generation of the family. John Pierce Peterman was born in Ohio and brought west as a toddler. Mary Deliah Scarlett was born into the Iowa frontier itself, a child of the Scarlett and Pace families. Together they became the generation that turned migration into belonging. Their parents had known the uncertainty of moving west, building cabins, burying children, and making farms out of unfinished country. John and Mary inherited that world, but they did not leave it as they found it.

By the time their lives were over, the Peterman name was tied to an East River Township farm, a rural school, the Christian Church of New Market, Memory Cemetery, and a wide circle of children and grandchildren. The chapter of their lives is therefore not chiefly a story of departure. It is a story of settlement. It is the moment in the Peterman family history when the prairie became home.

The Youngest Child Carried West

John Pierce Peterman was born September 16, 1852, in Liberty Township, Crawford County, Ohio, the youngest of the thirteen children of Jacob Peterman and Mary Ann Magdalena Cornman. He was still too young to remember much, if anything, of Ohio when his parents joined the stream of families moving toward southwest Iowa. In the spring of 1854, Jacob and Mary Ann brought him west to the Hawleyville area, where the family began again near the Page and Taylor County line.¹

That single fact gives John Pierce his special place in the family story. His older siblings could remember Crawford County, Ohio. They had known the Peterman life of timber, mills, infant burials, and the beginning years of Sulphur Springs and Liberty Township. John Pierce, by contrast, belonged almost entirely to Iowa. He was Ohio-born, but Iowa-raised; the youngest child of a migration family who would grow into the elder of a settled one.

The 1910 biographical sketch of John P. Peterman remembered that Taylor County was still a pioneer district when his family arrived. The work of improvement had scarcely begun, and the wild prairie was only gradually transformed into cultivated fields. John’s childhood unfolded in that transformation. He saw, in the ordinary course of growing up, the passage from frontier to farm country.

By 1860, he was a school-age boy in the Nodaway/Hawleyville area. By 1870, after the death of his mother and the disruptions of the Civil War years, he was still in his father Jacob’s household in East River Township, a young farmhand in the same countryside that would become his adult home.²

Mary Deliah Scarlett of Old Memory

Two Westward-Moving Families

John Pierce carried the Peterman story from Pennsylvania and Ohio into Iowa. Mary Deliah carried the Scarlett and Pace story from Indiana and the older southern borderlands into the same Iowa neighborhood. Their marriage joined two migration streams and made them one household.

Mary Deliah Scarlett was born May 6, 1855, in Polk Township, Taylor County, Iowa, the third known child of Harlen Scarlett and Mary Catherine Pace. Her earliest world lay around Polk Township, Buchanan, Clarinda, Old Memory, New Market, and the Page–Taylor County borderland. Unlike John Pierce, who had been born in Ohio and carried west, Mary was Iowa-born. She entered life in the same frontier country the Petermans were learning to call home.³

Mary’s father, Harlen Scarlett, was the son of William Pratt Scarlett and Delilah McGrew. He had married Mary Catherine Pace on January 31, 1850, in French Lick, Orange County, Indiana. Their first child, William Scarlett, was born in Indiana in 1851; by 1853, the family was in southwest Iowa, where Susannah Emaline Scarlett was born at New Market. That places the Scarlett-Pace household among the early families of the New Market and Old Memory country.

Mary’s mother, Mary Catherine Pace, gave her daughter another deep inheritance. Mary Catherine was born February 25, 1834, in Dubois County, Indiana, daughter of Edward “Neddy” Pace and Susannah Foster. The Pace line, as preserved in family notes, had roots in Virginia and Tennessee before moving through Indiana and into Iowa. Edward Pace appears in Virginia tax and census records before the family’s Indiana and Iowa years, and family accounts place Edward and Susannah Pace at the end of their lives in Clarinda, Iowa, buried in Memory Cemetery.⁴

Through Mary Deliah, then, the Peterman story gained more than another surname. It gained a maternal line that had moved through a different corridor of American settlement: Virginia and Tennessee into southern Indiana, and then into Iowa. The Petermans had moved from Pennsylvania to Ohio to Iowa. The Scarlett and Pace families had taken another road, but the roads met in the same prairie country.

Two Children of Loss

One of the strongest bonds between John Pierce Peterman and Mary Deliah Scarlett may have been one the records never name directly: both entered adulthood having lost their mothers young. John’s mother, Mary Ann Cornman Peterman, died in August 1865, when John was about thirteen. Mary’s mother, Mary Catherine Pace Scarlett, died April 14, 1869, in New Market, when Mary Deliah was about thirteen or fourteen. Both mothers were buried in the Iowa soil their families had chosen, and both deaths left adolescent children to grow quickly into adult responsibilities.

Mary’s childhood also carried the imprint of war. Her father, Harlen Scarlett, served during the Civil War in Company C of the 11th Missouri Cavalry. Family military notes state that he entered service March 31, 1863, was promoted to second lieutenant of Company B on August 22, 1863, and mustered out February 21, 1864. The 1910 biographical sketch of John and Mary remembered that while Mary’s father was absent at the front, Native people sometimes came to the pioneer home asking for food, an occurrence Mary herself recalled.⁵

That memory should not be treated as frontier melodrama. Its importance lies in what it reveals about Mary’s childhood household. Her father was away in uniform. Her mother and children were left in a rural home in a still-new settlement region. People came to the door in need. Mary remembered it. The scene belongs to the same world that shaped John Pierce: war far away, absence at home, women carrying households, and children watching the adults meet uncertainty with whatever resources they had.

Marriage in New Market

On December 22, 1877, John Pierce Peterman and Mary Deliah Scarlett married in New Market, Taylor County, Iowa. He was twenty-five. She was twenty-two. The marriage joined two families whose histories had already crossed state lines, buried parents, and endured the uncertainties of frontier life.⁶

The timing matters. By 1877, the world into which Jacob and Mary Ann Peterman had arrived was no longer quite the raw frontier of 1854. Hawleyville had seen stores, schoolhouses, churches, blacksmith work, mail, and travel. New Market and Clarinda were becoming more settled centers of trade and community life. The Civil War was over. The first pioneer generation was aging. The children who had crossed or been born into the frontier were beginning homes of their own.

For John and Mary, marriage did not mean setting off into an unknown territory. It meant taking up responsibility inside a place their families had helped define. They were not the first generation to reach Iowa; they were the generation that would make a farmstead, raise children, support school and church, and give the family name a settled address.

Section 13: The Farm That Rooted the Family

The heart of John and Mary’s adult life was the farm. The 1910 sketch describes John P. Peterman as cultivating a farm of one hundred fifty acres on Section 13, East River Township. It says he had lived in that township for thirty-five years, raised corn, wheat, and oats, kept good grades of stock, and had “a modern farm property.”⁷

That phrase — modern farm property — deserves attention. John’s father Jacob had entered Iowa when the prairie was still raw and the family’s survival depended on basic shelter, crops, and livestock. John came of age in that world but spent his adult life improving beyond it. His farm was not merely land to be endured. It was land to be organized, cultivated, fenced, stocked, and made productive enough to support a large family and a respected place in the community.

A 1900 land notice reported a transaction from Robert L. Wilson to John P. Peterman involving 140 acres in Section 13, Township 68, Range 36, for a consideration of $6,000. Whether this represented the core of the same 150-acre farm or an additional land transaction to be reconciled with plat records, it confirms the economic scale of John’s farming life by the turn of the century.⁸

John’s farm should be understood as the chapter’s central symbol. It was not only a source of corn, wheat, oats, livestock, and income. It was the place where children were born and raised, where chores and meals structured the day, where weather and market prices mattered, where school and church were part of neighborhood life, and where the next Peterman generation learned what it meant to belong to Iowa.

A Schoolhouse and a Church

Land alone did not make a community. Schools and churches did. In the record of John Pierce Peterman’s life, both appear clearly. He served as a school officer, and a 1902 notation identifies a Peterman School House in District 8, Fremont, on John P. Peterman property. That detail is one of the most meaningful in the chapter. It shows that the family farm was not only private property; it was woven into public neighborhood life.⁹

The rural schoolhouse represented more than reading lessons and arithmetic. It was a sign of permanence. The first generation had crossed uncertain roads and built provisional homes. The next generation sent children to school. A schoolhouse near or on Peterman land says that the landscape had become organized around families, districts, responsibilities, and futures.

Faith also stood near the center of John and Mary’s household. The 1910 sketch says John belonged to the Christian Church of New Market and took an active and helpful part in its work. His obituary later stated that he united with the Church of Christ early in life and remained a constant member until his death. Mary’s obituary remembered that she had been a faithful member of the Church of Christ from the age of fifteen.¹⁰

In a rural world, church membership was not merely a private belief. It was fellowship, moral identity, funeral community, Sunday gathering, and a framework for facing illness and death. The language of both obituaries reflects that world. John was remembered for sterling character; Mary for patience, self-reliance, faith, and good works. Their public legacy was inseparable from the church life of New Market and the school life of their neighborhood.

Eight Named Children and One Remembered Infant

John Pierce and Mary Deliah Peterman raised a family that carried the Peterman name and memory into the twentieth century. Compiled family records identify eight children. John’s obituary, however, says that nine children were born to the marriage, two of whom had died before him: one in infancy and Bert E. Peterman. Until a cemetery record, family Bible, or other evidence identifies the unnamed infant, that child should be remembered as part of the family story even if the name remains unknown.¹¹

The children show both rootedness and movement. Several remained tied to New Market, East River Township, Clarinda, Shambaugh, and nearby farm communities. Others carried the family outward to South Dakota, Minnesota, Kansas, Colorado, and beyond. This is one of the patterns of rural America in the early twentieth century: a strong home place, surrounded by branches that stretched across the plains and westward states.

For the direct line of this book, the youngest child is especially important. Jacob Elmo Peterman, born February 8, 1897, on the East River Township land, inherited not the raw frontier of his grandfather Jacob, but the established farm world of his father John Pierce. His life would carry the family into influenza, automobiles, tractors, twentieth-century farm change, and the memories preserved by later generations.

Mary’s Long Illness

Mary Deliah Scarlett Peterman died January 20, 1912, at her home three miles southwest of New Market. Her obituary in the Bedford Free Press, reprinted from the New Market Herald, provides one of the clearest character portraits in the chapter. It says she had been in declining health for more than a year and that her death was not unexpected. Her suffering was described as intense, but endured with patience and self-reliance. She did not murmur or complain, the obituary said, but trusted the Lord she loved and served, often asking for help and support.¹²

The obituary also says Mary often spoke of her death and had made arrangements for her funeral and place of burial. That is a striking detail. It presents Mary not as passive in the face of illness, but as prepared, steady, and practical. Her faith did not remove suffering; it gave her a way to meet it. Her self-reliance did not deny dependence on God; it stood beside it.

All eight named children were present at her funeral service: Bert, Edward, Merril, Harlan, and Elmo; Mrs. Myrtle Yearous of Miller, South Dakota; Mrs. Cordelia Snodgrass of Clarinda; and Miss Tammar at home. Her brother Edward Scarlett of Atchison, Kansas, was also present. Rev. W. L. Dunlavy of Gravity conducted the service, after which Mary was buried in Memory Cemetery.

Mary’s death altered the household. She and John had been married for thirty-five years. Their children ranged from adults with families of their own to Jacob Elmo, still a teenager. John, who had lost his mother as a boy, now entered his own widower years on the farm he and Mary had built together.

John the Widower and Patriarch

John Pierce Peterman lived seventeen years after Mary’s death. In those years he became less simply a farmer and more visibly the patriarch of a broad family. The 1920 census placed him in East River Township as a widower in the household world of his adult children. By then he had already seen enormous change: from ox-team migration and Civil War childhood to established farms, rural schools, church networks, land transactions, and children moving into the larger plains states.

His final illness began on April 21, 1929, when he was stricken with paralysis. He never recovered. He died June 5, 1929, at the age of seventy-six years, eight months, and nineteen days. His obituary says that all of his surviving children were at his bedside at the time of his death: Merrill and Elmo of New Market, Eddie and Mrs. Lon Thomas of Shambaugh, Mrs. James Thompson of Clarinda, and Harley and Mrs. George Yearous of Miller, South Dakota.¹³

The obituary remembered him as a man of sterling character, dearly loved by his family, and a constant member of the Church of Christ. He left thirty-three grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. For the youngest child of a migrating family, that is a remarkable measure of rootedness. John Pierce had begun life as the baby carried west. He ended it surrounded by descendants who had made the Iowa settlement a family world.

Funeral services were held at the residence three miles southwest of New Market, conducted by Rev. B. F. Hall of Clarinda. A quartet from New Market and a pianist provided music. John was buried in Old Memory Cemetery beside the wife who had preceded him seventeen years earlier.

The Legacy: Iowa Became Home

The legacy of John Pierce Peterman and Mary Deliah Scarlett cannot be measured only by acres, crops, or livestock, though those were central to their lives. It is better measured in permanence. Their parents had crossed into Iowa when the land was still raw frontier. John Pierce had been carried there from Ohio as a small child. Mary Deliah had been born there into the Scarlett and Pace pioneer world of Old Memory and New Market. Together, they belonged to the generation that made Iowa not merely a destination, but home.

Their shared stone in Memory Cemetery tells that story in quiet form. It does not list the work of Section 13, the school office, the church membership, the eight named children, the unnamed infant, the thirty-three grandchildren, the East River Township crops, the livestock, or the farmstead three miles southwest of New Market. But all of those things stand behind the stone.

John and Mary inherited movement, grief, and frontier uncertainty. They passed on land, faith, education, family identity, and place. Behind them lay Crawford County, Ohio; Dubois and Orange Counties, Indiana; Virginia and Tennessee Pace roots; Hawleyville; Old Memory; New Market; the Civil War; and the raw Iowa prairie. Ahead stood their children, especially Jacob Elmo Peterman, who would carry the family into the age of automobiles, tractors, influenza, Depression-era hardship, and the remembered farm life of the twentieth century.

Jacob and Mary Ann Peterman had once feared what it meant to die far from older kin. John Pierce and Mary Deliah lived long enough to make that Iowa ground a family inheritance. Through them, the Peterman family became not just settlers in Iowa, but an Iowa family.