The Moreland family

Love of God and land figure prominently in the history of the Moreland family.

Around the mid-19^th century, a group of people migrated from Pennsylvania to Iowa to sow both the soil and the Word. (They were members of the Evangelical Association, a forerunner of the Evangelical United Brethren, which later merged with the Methodists to form the United Methodist Church.)

The clan settled on the banks of the Iowa River near the town of North Liberty, in Johnson County’s Penn Township. Among the families was at least one with the last name of Moreland.

John and Mary Moreland arrived in the area in 1845, shortly after the birth of the third of their four children, a son named William. Around the same time, John and Elizabeth Green settled nearby (and later Madison) with young Rebecca. William and Rebecca married June 25, 1868. The first of seven children God graced them with was Amos Edgar Moreland, born August 31, 1877.

Meanwhile, Mathias and Anna (Meyers) Albright moved from Heidelberg Township, York County, Pennsylvania, to Johnson County, Iowa, in 1849, bringing with them an 8-year-old daughter, Catherine.

Four years later, she met the man she was to marry: George Stetzel. Born in Alsace-Lorraine, he stowed away on a freighter bound for America in 1851 to avoid conscription (required service) in the French army.

Having converted from the Lutheran Church to Evangelism in Lyons, N.Y., George took the train as far west as it would go (the Mississippi River then) and hitched a ride the rest of the way to Iowa City.

On disembarking, he chanced upon a cooper shop
(a place where barrels were made) to ask for the name of an Evangelical family. A man there told him he happened to be on his way to visit one—the Albrights—so George tagged along. In short order, the family hired him as a farm hand.

On Feb. 24, 1859, Catherine married George. On July 25, 1882, Catherine gave birth to the 14^th of their 15 offspring: Rose. When Rose was 4 years old, the Stetzels moved to Audubon County. Job Yaggy, a horseback-riding preacher for the Evangelical Association in Johnson County, had just established a new religious classroom a mile south of the Viola Center store called the Moreland School, and he soon created another near the Stetzels’ home called Rose Hill (perhaps named for Rose Stetzel?).

In 1885, Amos’ family moved to Viola Center as well. However, due to financial hardship, the Morelands moved to Kansas and later Texas. Finding the economic climate no better and the atmospheric climate much worse, they returned to Iowa after only a few years.

In 1900, William Moreland bought some cropland a couple of miles northeast of Audubon (just north of present-day County Road F-32). Rose and Amos married on October 11, 1905, and later took over the farm. Amos later handed it down to his son Ellis Dalton, who passed it on to his son Wayne Leroy.

In addition to Ellis, Rose and Amos Moreland had three other children: Naomi Beatrice (born Oct. 14, 1906), Cleotis Amos (b. June 11, 1914) and Lawrence Duane “Ted” (b. Jan. 8, 1918).

Lawrence married Mary Ellen Ross on June 4, 1939, at Wilbur and Bessie Brenton Moreland’s (Ted’s uncle and aunt) home in Spirit Lake, Iowa.

And the rest, as they say, is history!