Prosperous Farmers: Abraham and Sarah Carrier

The Carrier family was prominent in Jasper County during the last half of the 19^th century, and for a short time, two Carrier brothers owned the land around Owl Acres.

Abraham Carrier was born in Shenandoah County, Virginia, on Christmas Day, 1825. When he was ten years old, his parents, Salamon Carrier and Elizabeth Halvia Carrier, decided to move the family to Ohio. They settled in Highland County, Ohio where they farmed until Salamon’s death five years later at the age of 67. Abraham was the seventh of thirteen children, and in time he became a blacksmith. He opened a shop in Fayetteville, Brown County, Ohio. He married Sarah Jane Anderson, daughter of John and Mary Lemon in 1846. During the next eleven years, Sarah Carrier would bear five children, two of whom died in infancy, leaving two girls, Emma Elizabeth, (born 1851) and Amanda (born 1853, as well as a boy, Frank, (born 1855). When Frank was two years old, in 1857, Abraham and Sarah Carrier moved again. This time, they settled in Jasper County, Iowa on a farm south of the town of Newton. They would add three more children to the family, Milton in 1859, William in 1864, and Carrie Anna in 1870.

Rather than reestablish his blacksmith trade, Carrier focused on farming, land acquisition and stock raising. He began buying and selling land immediately upon his arrival in 1857. One example is that in 1860, five years after the land in Palo Alto Township sold for $1.25 an acre from the Government, he sold 80 acres to James Hickey for $24 per acre. By 1878, Abraham Carrier had acquired 600 acres of rich Iowa farmland and an interest in half-again that much. He was actively breeding short-horn cattle, hogs, and Percheron horses. He fed some 400 head of hogs per year and 5 rail-car-loads of cattle.

Active in civic affairs almost from the beginning, Abraham Carrier was elected to the Jasper county Fair Board in 1860 and served as secretary and president of the Agricultural Society for many years.

The Carriers’ three surviving daughters married in Jasper County. Of the three surviving sons, Gilbert went into the dry goods business, opening a store in Newton. Frank and his wife Sophia M. (Herbold) Carrier remained on the original family farm, and William, the youngest son, came to manage his father’s business affairs, including buying and selling land, breeding hogs and cattle, and operating a thriving ice business.

William was also busy with community affairs. By the time he was 24 years old, he was a member of the Shorthorn Breeders Association and the Percheron Society. He was a member and director of the Jasper County Agricultural Society and vice-president of the Fine Stock Breeders Association of Jasper County. He was also a member of the Newton Business Men’s Association, and belonged to the Delta Lodge No. 53, Knights of Pythias at Newton.

Part of the Carriers’ success was based on buying and selling land. In 1888, William Carrier and his brother Frank bought the 163-acre piece of land that contained Owl Acres from Lewis A. Woodruff. They would hold that parcel for a couple of years and then sell it to two brothers of German descent who came to Jasper County from Illinois, Charles and Henry Dammeier. The Dammeiers would build a homestead where Owl Acres stands and their descendants would farm the land for the next 130 years.

Photo from Jasper County, Iowa Recorder’s Book 156, Page 180. Feb. 9, 1888 purchase by Frank S. and William Carrier and their wives of the 2, half-quarter sections (163 acres) that contain the future Owl Acres.