FAMILY OF MARTHA JANE TWIBELL - GARDNER (Mother of John Gardner AND Alma's Grandmother by Sylvia Gardner
Date Unknown

John Twibell came from Ireland as a British soldier. An old manuscript prepared by a descendant for a Twibell reunion about 1907 does not say he deserted but records that he did no fighting against colonial forces. In Ohio be married Elizabeth Scudder and is thought to have settled in the Cincinnati area. In 1810 John and Elizabeth and seven children: David, Martha, Rachel, Elizabeth, Josiah, Penelope, and Sarah, migrated to Tyler County, West Virginia. Here the father ‘entered in” the unbroken forest four hundred acres and cleared seventy-five acres of this tract with the aid of his sons.

Two more children were born to this family in West Virginia: Basha and Thomas. Son David, born in Ohio in 1795, entered government service when nineteen for the War of 1512. Later he married Margaret Yoho in Tyler County, West Virginia. The younger brother, Josiah, had settled in Henry County, Indiana. In 1835 David and Margaret joined Josiah’s family in Indiana. They seem to have shared the brother’s home from October until February when the two brothers located claims to the north on the Salamonie River, a branch of the Wabash. If these dates are correct Martha Jane have been born at the uncle's home because her birth is recorded in John and Mabel Gardner's Bible as having occurred January 28, 1836. The place is given as Blackford County which would be the location of the new claim.

When David and Josiah Twibell arrived at the Salamonie River Country looking for land, only two white families were living there. These settlers were the Tom and John Blunt's. Arriving first at John Blunt's home the brothers asked if they might get something to eat. John explained there would be food available when he made some meal. If the men were very hungry, it is to be hoped the grain had already been ground because in this pioneer area meal was ground in a stump where a hole had been cut and then burned out to size. A wedge with a pole handle pounded the corn into meal.

The men stayed overnight at Blunt's and located their land claims the next morning. David "entered" one hundred twenty acres of which he later cleared fifty along the river near what is now the town of Montpelier. Josiah also "entered" one hundred twenty acres adjoining David's on the east. Their parents and unmarried brothers and sisters came from West Virginia that same year. The father, John, "entered" three hundred acres and cleared thirty. Here again he endured the hardships of the righteous pioneer life along with his sons' families.

The timber had to be cut for the houses. David's home is described as being eighteen feet by twenty and constructed of unhewed logs. The floor was punchions, the roof of clap boards with weight poles to hold it in place. The fireplace had a stick chimney. Greased paper served as window lights. Cooking was done at the fireplace -- clapboard six inches wide and two and one-half feet long substituted for a pan for cooking their "Johnny Cake". The settlers made their own sugar from maple syrup. Wild game was plentiful and made up a big part of the diet. Leaves from the woods filled their bed ticks. Hickory bark on the open fire provided the cabin light or a grease lamp might be used. Candles were used if one had any. When an outdoor light became necessary a burning stake might be stuck in the ground.

At first the trees were blazed to mark the way to the different homes. On errands or visits they walked except Aunt Sarah who went “A horseback.” Their teams were mostly oxen and these were driven on their hundred mile trips to Cincinnati for necessities.

The mail came to Muncie Town about thirty miles south. Here they paid twenty-five cents for letters when they received them. Instead of exchanging money for goods purchased they traded hides -- deer, mink, muskrat, and opossum. At this time the market price for eggs was three cents a dozen and goose quill pens brought the same price.

David Twibell's house burned March 16, 1842. He built a new log home with a plank floor. A still later house was of hewed loge which he, himself, prepared. The family record states that David died at the age of sixty-four in August of 1855. Since the old manuscript also gives 1793 as his birth date one figure must be wrong. If 1957 is the year of his death, it is also the year of his daughter Martha’s marriage to James Madison Gardner of Morrow County, Ohio, which took place February 21, 1857.

The grandfather, John from Ireland, became blind in advanced years. Some of the grandchildren remembered leading him from David’s to Josiah’s homes for visits. His wife, Elizabeth, died at the age of eighty-four and after her death John lived with his children until his own death at ninety-four.

Josiah Twibell's first wife died in 1843 at the age of thirty- three. She was Mary Sharpneck the mother of John, William, Thomas, Sarah, Daniel and Elizabeth. Margaret Church whom Josiah married in 1844 became the mother of seven. Dave, the oldest of the second family, lost his life during the Civil War at the Battle of Mission Ridge. This was Grant's defeat of Bragg in northwest Georgia in November of 1863.
Josiah, himself, enlisted in the Union Army in 1861. He was mustered in as Captain of Company I, the 34th Regiment of Indiana Volunteers. He resigned later because of ill health. The old manuscript describes him as a successful farmer and merchant who lived out his life on his Indiana farm at Muncie.

After David Twibell’s death his wife, Margaret, continued to live at the farm with their unmarried children. They had raised a family of eight children but the 1907 writer lists the names of only three: Luther, George, and Martha. Evidently George operated the farm in June of 1964 at the time of the mother’s death. She was sixty-eight.

George Twibell’s children mentioned by the John Gardner family were Ed, John, Cal ,Anna and Lella. There may have been others. Ed and Lella Twibell Murray filed on claims in Harding County, South Dakota about 1909. No doubt Martha and Madison had recommended the country at the time of the reunion. Lella and her husband returned to Muncie, but Ed “proved up” on his land and often visited Martha’s family. He and his second wife, Lottie, made Hot Springs their home after their 1918 marriage. Ed barbered at Battle Mountain Sanitarium which was the name given the U.S. veterans facility in Hot Springs. Their new bungalow became a hospitable home and Ed and Lottie were favorite relatives!

Luther had married Sarah Bowman March 6, 1641. At the time of his marriage his father, David, gave him forty acres of land three and one-half miles northeast of the home farm. He had to cut out a road to his land and build the customary log cabin with punchion floor and clapboard roof. He lived to enjoy the conveniences of farm life in the early years of the 20th century. At age eighty-four on a visit to his first home in West Virginia he had been pleased to see a producing apple tree he had helped plant as a young boy. He and Sarah had three children. Their names are not given in the record. Sarah may have been some years older than her husband. She is said to have died at the age of ninety-one while Luther is alive at the time of the reunion and only eighty-four!

As told earlier, Martha Jane, daughter of David Twibell, married James Madison Gardner. She became the mother of Allie Gardner Knight and John Eugene Gardner and the grandmother of Eugene Knight, Martha Knight Fisher, Alma Gardner Cooper and Herbert Gardner. She and Madison lead interesting lives and should rate some pages on their own. In the old manuscript about the pioneer Twibell’s they are mentioned only as having come thirteen hundred miles from Harding, South Dakota, to attend the reunion.

At twenty-one Martha Jane, one of David Twibell’s daughters. married James Madison Gardner in Montpelier, Blackford County, Indiana. The town, no doubt, had developed with the settlement on the Salamonie River to become the local market. The Gardner’s had come to Indiana from Woodbury in Morrow County, Ohio. Madison, his parents, six brothers and four sisters were all born in Ohio. The oldest of the family, Margaret, died as an infant of two years, the mother, Sarah Goodin Gardner, died shortly after the birth of a daughter in 1848, and the fourth child, John, died the following year at age eleven. Since the surviving girls, Rhoda, Mary, and the new baby, Sarah, were all under six at the time of the mother s death it had become necessary for Madison, then fourteen, and the oldest, to take over much of his mother’s work. This training surely helped him in his duties as sergeant in the Civil War when field troops assigned to tents were responsible for procuring their own food and preparing it. They also washed their own clothes.

After their February 1857 marriage Martha and Madison remained in Indiana until 1859 when they moved to Morengo (Marengo) Iowa. According to an account of Madison’s brother C. V.'s life their family went to Iowa in 1851. If that account is true, the Madison Gardner’s were joining the others when they left Indiana. The -town’s name, Morengo (Marengo), could have been chosen because of the Ohio town of that name near which they had formerly lived. Old records include little of the girls or of the father, John L Gardner, except their birth dates and that of the father’s death in 1874. The five brothers: Madison, Craven V., Asa, Isaac, and Washington, all served and survived the Civil War.

It would be interesting to know what life was like for Martha on the Iowa farm during the three years Madison served in Company H. of the 24th Iowa Infantry. Their first child, Margaret, and two baby boys died when less than two years of age. The fourth child, Almaretta (called Allis), a baby of three months at the time Madison left for the army, lived to be almost sixty-six. This little child must have made the lonely years bearable for Martha during the war-time separation. The young sisters-in-law and other members of the Gardner family may have lived nearby. Madison tried to keep in touch by writing letters. Often in his diary he notes, “I wrote to No. 1~( and this meant Martha), “I wrote to father,” or “to Lewis Twibell” -- a brother or cousin of Martha’s in another part of the army. He also corresponded with Isaac Vorhes who afterward joined his company toward the end of the war. And there was a Mr. Miller at Morengo (Marengo) - I thought he might have been the farmer who took care of the crops while Madison was away or the former owner of the farm if it had not been a claim.

The journal kept-in small bound books - one for each year --had to be brief. The reports of the first two years were lost when the family household goods were stored in a shed in Piedmont, South Dakota, after Madison's assignment as minister there ended. The last booklet found among his daughter-in-law Mabel’s keepsakes at the time of her death in 1970, had evidently been dropped by the children who rummaged through the storage boxes, and returned to the family. Some pages were missing and the little volume showed water and mud damage. A typed copy is included with these pages. A copy and the booklet itself were given to the Adams Memorial Museum in Deadwood. Left with the record were his army discharge, his bayonet, a picture of the five veteran brothers as mature men, an unusual cup and saucer from his and Martha’s wedding dishes, and their silver cream and sugar set. The family table made from walnut grown on the Iowa farm and made by one of his Civil War comrades, is also at the museum. One of the Bibles he used may be found there with other Bibles from pioneer families.

Toward the end of the war the diary shows impatience with delays in final orders but conveys the exuberance felt by the soldiers in victory. Some notes are missing but the record of the homeward bound men is there. Madison indulges in a little marine talk as the ship from Savannah passes Hatter's Lighthouse, Hampton Roads, and picks up a pilot for the run to Baltimore. There troops boarded trains for Pittsburg, then Chicago, and Davenport, Iowa, and went into quarters at Camp McClellan. It was July 27, 1865. They were only about eighty miles from Morengo (Marengo) but not yet discharged.

There are no entries covering the joyous news of the final dis-charge and reunion with the family, but on September second he reports he has finished haying. He seems proud to have “put up” eight tons. Maybe that was real achievement with a scythe, hand rake and pitchfork. Madison’s careful penmanship had brought him many clerical jobs in the service. The last note of the diary states , ‘l received a letter from J. E. Lewis Qntainin (?)-. $3.50 tor (for) a company record for two, himself and I. Vorhes. Madison's own copy apparently, did not get done. The large, tattered, and crumbling form has only a few names on its roster. Just possibly it could be carefully mounted and the names added. To you descendants the important post war event of Martha and Madison’s life in Iowa is the birth of their son, John Eugene, in October of 1869. He became the father of Alma, Herbert, and another boy, Leroy, who died when less than two years of age. John, although not a husky boy grew up to be a healthy, friendly man who enjoyed people, outdoor work, out door recreation, and reading.

The sixth and last child born to Martha, a daughter Lizzie, lived only a few days. One must admire the courage of the young woman called upon to give up several of her children and worry through three years of war-when her husband and other close relatives were a part of it. There is no mention of infant deaths in the old account of her family -the Twibells. The rigors of the early settlements surely prepared the members to face reality and accept what they could not change. There is no mention of faith or religion in the old manuscript, or of school. It was not written to analyze, to entertain, or to give a complete family history, but to report outstanding facts for a family reunion. Martha’s character as a practical person given to household duties and to handwork in which she excelled, may have helped see her through difficult times. The little pencil note she tucked into a small purse with Madison’s watch and chain to give John shows her grief at his death in 1916:
“Johney, I hope you may live to carry this as long as your Father did. I am so lonely without him --it gets worse every day.” Your Mother
(She lived until July 7 of 1924)

Herbert had vivid memories of his grandfather including the old man’s death at Allie and Ed Knight’s home. Because of the grandfather’s illness, John and Mabel and the children had come to the aunt’s home. During the evening meal Herbert had been asked to or had volunteered to sit with his grandfather in the bedroom. It was a day in early March and Madison and the young boy watched a bright Sunset. “I will never see the sun set again" the elderly man said and this proved to be true. He died at 4:15 the next afternoon.