The first photo below shows the 4-acre parcel of land Horatio owned in Indian Village Township northeast of Montour, Iowa and today is north of US Highway 30 on F Ave.  Coming from farm county in Iowa, I would say that this land is not good crop land and the person who owns it now apparently agrees.  He seems to be raising hogs.  This land is hilly with shallow ravines.  It does have a good water supply, however, and so maybe Horatio, too, used it for raising livestock.  He buys this land on November 2, 1859.

Horatio and Lucina buy this 10 acres of land pictured below on July 15. 1856 and sell it on May 6. 1864.  His wife, Lucina, died the year before on October 4, 1863.  He is 53 years of age and still has his younger sons William, age 24, and Duncan, age18, living with him.  It appears that they head west to join his son, Joseph.  Family memories differ here as to when exactly they left Tama County but most agree that they went to Utah joining a wagon train.  This ten acres is rich black soil but bottom land next to the Iowa River which floods frequently.  Therefore it is not reliable to raise crops on this land.  Even when we took this photo in July of 2007, we could see that the spring flood waters were still in the process of receding.  The farmer who owns this land today had recently planted his crop in the furrowed soil.  A major portion of this 10 acres is now covered with the new pavement of four-lane US Highway 30, but it is the land they own closest to the town of Butlerville--where the family lived about 1 mile to the west.   

 

This photo shows one of the two eighty-acre parcels of land that Horation owned in Highland Township just south of Indian Village Township. The land here appears to be good cropland and it shows a healthy stand of soy beans on gently rolling hills.   Horatio and Lucina apparently buy this land early after they arrive in Iowa in March 1855 but sell it on Dec 31, 1856 for the sum of $200.00.  This land purchase makes him one of the first white settlers in Highland Township.  This is not a bad price for this time in history.  The other 80-acre parcel is about 1 mile to the northwest of this land but both are about 6 miles from the town of Butlerville.  I can't imagine that it was convenient to "farm" this land from Butlerville and haul farming equipment back and forth that distance.  I would be willing to bet that Horatio again ran cattle or livestock and used both places for pasture land.  I am going to take a long shot here and guess that Horatio is in the business of selling goods and livestock to the many wagon trains that pass very close to where they live.  People who travel in wagon trains need supplies and foodstuff frequently.  It's later that we find out that Horatio and his boys all become involved with freighting supplies from the east to western settlements along the Oregon and Mormon trails whether they be Mormons or gold miners.  

I have no photo of the last piece of land that we know it belonged at one time to Horatio and Lucina.  They may have owned more.  We also have no buy and sell dates on this property.   We know that the first two parcels of land are very near or even within the Mesquakie Indian Settlement in Tama County.  The Mesquakie Indians were formerly called the Sac (or Sauk) and Fox Indian tribes.  Perhaps Lucina felt more at home among them especially at a time when feelings ran high against Indians during the "Indian Wars" when white Americans were eager to obtain the lands of Indians and the Indians were stubbornly resisting.