living. at that place, Clarence C.
Price, to see if anybody by the name of Tope lived
there, and he replied (July 8,
1895), that there were none. And we know
nothing further.
7. Maria Tope married William
Moles; they moved to
Marion county,
Iowa
, where they lived a while and then
moved to Lettsville, Louisa county,
Iowa
. He was at one time a
hotel-keeper, but later he ran a blacksmith-and-wagon-maker's
shop. They had seven
children: Hiram, William, George,
Mary,
Elizabeth, and two others whose names we do
not know. It is proper to
state that before going west Mr.
Moles lived at Tope's Mills and worked with
Eli Tope at the blacksmith trade.
8. Eli Tope was born
May
10, 1815, in
Carroll county, 0. He was
married
to Catharine Davis, daughter of
Joshua and Isabel Davis,
March
23, 1837,
who was the mother of ten children,
five of whom died in infancy and five now
living. His wife died
Sept. 15, 1858, and he married again, April
29, 1854,
Margaret Tope, daughter of John and
Mary Tope, of
Jackson
county, 0., by
whom he had eleven children more,
one of whom died in infancy and the rest
are still living. He worked at
blacksmithing for over sixty years. In 1853 he
moved from near the old homestead
at Tope's Mills to
Jacksoncounty and settled almost in the woods,
there
being only a small lot cleared around a log
cabin. He felt himself in rather close circumstances, as his
means were limited;
but still greater tribulations were
to follow, for in the fall of the same year he
lost his wife, and in May 1859 his
house burnt down, destroying considerable
property with it, which was
followed on the 5th morning of June, same year,
by the memorable frost that killed
nearly all the wheat. In 1861 he built a brick
house, which burnt in the spring of
1873, entailing another severe loss. But he
rebuilt and just as he was ready to
retire from wielding the heavy hammer
another calamity still followed, it
being the failure in business of one of his
sons, which involved him to a
considerable extent. In all of these trials he never
yielded to discouragement, but at
his ripeness of age, the last one on top of the
others, with all of the others,
with all of his hard work, overpowered his nerves
so that his hands, as stated in a
letter written to us by Wm. W. Tope May 10,
1893, "are shaking all the time;"
notwithstanding that, his general health was
then at his 78th birthday quite
good. But he did not remain on earth much
longer. A letter from Davis Tope,
Geneva,
Nebraska, dated Jan. 15,
1896,
says his "father died about two
years ago at the age of about 80 years." His second wife died
Aug.
11, 1890. The
address was Cove, 0. The
account of the
children is as follows:
FIRST WIFE
Wm. W. Tope, who married Catharine
Rapp
April
16, 1865;
they had six
children, three of whom died in
infancy, and three are now living. Address is
Coalton, 0.
Isabel Tope, who married James H.
Heath, now of
Geneva, Nebraska. They
have had seven children, one of
whom died in infancy.
George F. Tope, who married Lucinda
House, and they have five children,
all living.
Hiram M. Tope, who was married to
Eliza Coy, and have three children, all
living.
Davis Tope, who married Mary C.
Rapp, and has four children all living.
They live at
Geneva Neb., and he is general agent for the
Neidhart Marble Works, of Beatrice, Neb.
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