Norwich 1865 - The Fallen
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Nice quiet area. Please watch out for muggles and make sure to bring a pen.
Among the early settlers in Fairview township, in the area adjoining Greenfield township, were members of the Soper family: represented by the Jacob Soper family, Timothy Soper, and Orin R. Harvey. Their westward trek from Chenango county, New York, to Jones county, made with horses and wagon, consumed five weeks in the fall of 1847. Of the Jacob Soper family, a two year old son, Chauncey, died in 1848; the mother, Mrs. Jacob (Celinda) Soper died in 1857. Apparently both were buried in a private plot around which the Norwich cemetery was platted in 1865, attested to by various deeds by which parcels of land were transferred to the Norwich cemetery. Attached to the Soper monument in the old part of the cemetery, is a plaque with the following inscription thereon:
"Jacob Soper, his wife, Celinda, and their four children: Erastus G., Roswell K., Lillis, and Chauncey, aged from six years to four months, accompanied by his brother, Timothy Soper and a brother in law, Orin R. Harvey, drove a team of horses with a farm wagon containing family wearing apparel, bedding, etc., from the town of Pitcher, Chenango county, New York, to Jones County, Iowa, during the autumn of 1847, leaving their home in New York on the 11th day of September and arriving on the 18th day of October via Ithaca, and Corning New York,; Erie, PA,; Cleveland and Toledo, Ohio; Adrian and Coldwater Mich.; Michigan City, Chicago and Savanna, Ill.
"The same fall, Jacob Soper entered at the Dubuque land office a farm of 320 acres upon which the family settled and on a portion of which they, who this monument commemorates, new lie buried. They opened up and improved the land, reared and as best they might, educated their children, and died comparatively young in years, a result of the labors and privations of pioneer life.
"This stone is erected to the memory of Jacob Soper and Celinda Harvey Soper, in grateful appreciation of what they did, and endured, in order to establish their family in the new and prosperous State of Iowa--by their eldest child, Capt. Erastus B. Soper, A. M., LLD of Emmetsburg, Iowa"
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