The records on my mother’s folks side are lost except for a few typewritten pages by my Great Grandmother, Patsy (Wheeldon) Smith. Patsy Smith remembers little about her mother, Cynthia Ann (Callaway) Wheeldon, since she passed on when Patsy was only 12. Her fathers’ name was James Wheeldon.

The Wheeldon as the Smith, were a strict religious family. They belonged to the United Brethren Church in Indiana where Patsy Wheeldon was born and raised. Great Grandmother Smith was raised by her mother’s brother after her mothers death. We have no real date of the death of Cynthia Ann Wheeldon but it is known that Patsy’s brother Charlie got leave from the Civil War to be with the family at the funeral. Patsy (Wheeldon) Smith had four sisters and five brothers who grew to women and manhood and two sisters who died in infancy.

Patsy Wheeldon was sixteen years old when she married Moses Smith of Exeter, Missouri. She gave birth to eleven children three of whom passed on at birth or shortly after. My grandfather Jesse Moses was the 9th being born September 26,1879.

When Patsy Smith wrote this short history of herself and her family in 1937 she was 88 years old and the only one living of her 9 brothers and sisters. She noted she had 38 grandchildren, 62 great-grandchildren and 1 great-great- grandchild making a total of 101 descendants. The phrase she lived by was "And We’ll Cross The River Jordan By and By". Before death she said she hoped all her descendants would have as happy and full a life as hers had been.

My Grandfather Jesse Moses Smith was born in Marion County, In. in 1879 He came to Sloan as a young man and bought a farm. He courted 7 Monona, County lasses and married the seventh Miss Palma Peterson, he also had seven children so he always claimed 7 as his lucky number.

I’ll take you back on Palma Peterson’s side now and then tell of Jesse Moses and Palma Smith’s life.

Johannes Olson my Great-Great Grandfather and Palma Petersons’ Grandfather came from Toten Norway. Johannes Olson was born in 1823 he married Johane Jensen, born 1821 in Nace Norway. Johannes and Johane left Norway in 1850 to make their home in America. It took the thirteen weeks to make the trip across the ocean in a sail boat. They arrived in Muskego, Wisconsin in the first part of August and went on foot to Neenah, Wisconsin a distance of 25 miles. They settles on a farm near Winchester, Winnebago County, where they lived a pioneers life until Johannes was called to serve in the Civil War.

Since they still owed for their transportation to America they sold their farm in 1869 after the war and came by covered wagon to see if they could do better in Sloan, Iowa.

They settled near Albaton and raised their seven children of whom Clara Olson, my Great Grandmother was the third. Johannes Olson died on December 26, 1897, his wife Johane died 10 years later in 1907. Johannes Olson was said to be a thrifty, honest, hard working man. His motto was: "Old age is hard enough without worrying about your daily bread".

Clara Olson was born in 1856 in Winchester, Wisconsin. She married John Peterson in 1878. John was born in Warwalenes, Sweden. Clara and John Peterson lived all their life in Albaton where they brought up their nine children. My Grandmother and namesake Palma Peterson was the fourth.

Palma Peterson born in 1885 and married Jesse Moses Smith in 1907. Theirs was not an easy life. They started farming in Missouri but when things did nit prosper they moved back to Salix, Iowa and farmed what is now the Ekberg farm. Palma Peterson was a small but strong hard working woman when she married and was always a great help to Jesse. Palma Smith gave birth to 8 children. Roy Smith who would have been the oldest died two days after birth.

My mother Harriet Mable Smith was the fourth of the seven. She has 5 sisters and 1 brother, the boy, Bob, being the youngest. After my grandmother’s death in 1934 Jesse took up carpeting as a business. Palma Smith died at the age of 49 leaving one married daughter and six growing children. The children scattered and began to work. Mother, who was 17 worked and lived with Grand Lord of Sloan until she finished high school. Although they had little help from home since times were very hard, three of the girls worked their way through enough college to teach school and one became a nurse. My mother, Harriet Mable Smith, born in 1916 taught school only one year before she married Don Martin Pullen in 1937. Grandfather Smith died in 1955.

Mary Effie Martin, my fathers Grandmother on his mothers’ side was the daughter of James and Lucinda Martin. Mary Martin was one of Monona County’s real pioneers having spent 66 years of her life in that vicinity. She came to Onawa, Iowa at the age of 13, attended school there and was one of the early school teachers in Monona County. Caring for her invalid mother she rode horseback to her teaching job. In 1884 she was united in marriage to Lucian Douglas Hagan who’s ancestry is lost in Indiana. Very few people knew him by his first name as he kept it as much to himself as possible and went by his middle name, Douglas. Mary Effie Hagan gave birth to four children the second of whom was my Grandmother Zoe B. Hagan.

Zoe Hagan was born in 1886 and married after three years of teaching in Northeast Nebraska. She always tells of a boy she was teaching; he was a year older than she, as she was only 17 when she began teaching, and he had a crush on her so she could always persuade him to get the wood and light the fires. Zoe Hagan married my Grandfather Gail Criner Pullen in 1909.

Charles E. Whiting my Grandfathers, Grandfather was born in Otsego County, New York in 1821. He was the son of Charles Whiting and Lorinda Eveleth both natives of Prinston, Mass.

When Charles E. Whiting was three years old he was taken by his parents to Wayne County Ohio where he remained on a farm with his parents until April 13, 1843 when he moved to Madison County Alabama and started in the dry good and cotton trade. He worked at this until 1850 when he went west, to California. The stories of gold Sacramento Valley lured him like it did so many others to seek his fortune. He staked a claim and searched for gold for two years, getting only enough to carry him back to Ohio to visit his parents and then to Iowa. He settled in Iowa County and purchased what is now the Old Homestead Place. On July 4, 1855 he disposed of his place to its present owners the Amana Society because the German socialists were moving all around him and setting up a colony of their own. Since he was not one of them he didn’t feel he could stay there. On his farm there later arose the Amana town. With the money from the sale of his farm he purchased a place with his brothers in Monona County which at that time was very sparsely populated.

His 7500 acre farm was located east of the town which was named after him, Whiting. It’s a simple story of how Whiting got its name. Charles E. Whiting and his wife, who he met and married in Alabama, Nancy Criner by name, had a very big house on their farm in Monona County. When the railroad was being built between Missouri Valley and Sioux City they offered lodging to the men. One of who liked especially to stay there was the man in charge. He liked to stay with the Whitings because he was from the south as was Nancy Whiting and he liked her southern cooking, especially her biscuits. As the railroad went by the area which is now Whiting they saw the need for a town so the boss told Charles E. that if he would pick out a good spot for a town they would name the town after him. This was done.

Nancy Criner, Charles E. Whiting’s wife was born in Madison County Alabama. She was the daughter of Isaac Criner and Nancy McCain prominent citizens of Alabama.

In 1857 Charles E. Whiting was elected to fill the office of Monona County Judge. He held this position for two years and presided at the head of the Monona County Government. In 1884 he was elected a member of the board of supervisors and the next year was chairman of that body. In 1874 he became the nominee for a member of congress but was defeated. In 1883 he was elected on the Democratic ticket as a State Senator and served Monona County for 4 years.

Judge Charles E. Whiting had six children. My Great Grandmother Julia Whiting, being the oldest. Julia Whiting was born in 1850; she married Malden B. Pullen in 1881.

Now I’ll go to the Pullen side.

It is found that the Pullen name originated in Normandy, France. The Pullens went to England with William The Conqueror. Records show that the earliest instances of the name Pullyn were found in York, England.

In early England few people knew how to write, so local scribes wrote their letters for them, and spelled names as they sounded. The Pullen name in most cases had the P and one or two Ls and the N, but the other letters are uncertain.

There have been a number of well known Pullens who are distant ancestry.

Royal Pullen (a manager of Home Stake Gold Mine, Lead S.D), my grandfathers cousin, had spent years locating and tracing records. Here are some of his findings:

• One Pullen was to hang the lanterns for Paul Revere. He was one of three men who took turns on different nights looking for the British. He wrote a book, about how the men practiced for the night the lanterns would be used. It was not on his night, however when the British arrived.
• A colonial Pullen was killed in the battle of Breeds Hill.
• One Pullen was the sheriff of a town called ‘Six Shooter Junction‘, Texas. He was reported to have killed 7 men while enforcing law and order. The Southern Pacific Stage Line ran through ‘Six Shooter Junction‘, when the stage stopped at town ahead of it on the line the driver would stick his head in the couch and say, "strap on your guns gentlemen, ‘Six Shooter Junction‘ is dead ahead".

Nicholas Pullen was born in York county England, the date of his birth is unknown. He married Mary Tucker on January 19, 1709. Nicholas came to America with his wife and settled in Rehoboth Mass. The date of his journey is not known. Nicholas was a Worsted Comber, a trade carried on in England all during the eighteenth Century. Some records say Nicholas and Mary (Tucker) Pullen were Quakers, others say they were of the Congregational Church, which was very strong in Maine at that time.

James Pullen, the son of Mary and Nicholas Pullen was born in 1720 in Attleborough, Main. He married Lydia Woodcock in either 1742 or 1743. James died in 1785 and Lydia in 1805.

William Pullen was born Aug 5, 1753 and died in 1821. He married Patience Bishop. William was one of the 19 who march to Cambridge on the first alarm of 1775.

William Pullen the second, son of Patience Bishop and William Pullen, was born in 1774 just before the Revolutionary War. He lived his life in China Maine and was appointed Justice of the Peace by William King, Governor of Maine. He held this office for seven years. The original copy of his appointment is still in the family records. He married Abigail Steward in 1793 and he died in 1841. They had 10 children Daniel being the 8^th.

Daniel Pullen was born in 1812, the year of the war of 1812, between the United States and Britain. Daniel was born at China, Maine. He became a Millwright and followed this occupation throughout his lifetime. Daniel Pullen married Mary A. Dudley in 1825. Mary Dudley was the daughter of William Dudley and Experience Wing both natives of Leeds Maine and of English decent. Her father died 1840 and her mother in 1862 Daniel died July 24, 1849 the father of 9 children, Malden being the 8^th. Daniel Pullen was said to be a mechanical genius and helped with the development of the Pelton Water Wheels, which are still used for generating electric power to some extent today.

Malden Pullen was born in 1847. He spent his first 16 years attending school in Maine, when he was apprenticed to learn the carpenter trade and served 3 years. He graduated as a Journeyman and remained with the same employer until August 1869 when he went west to Omaha, Nebraska and worked in the car shops of the Union Pacific Railroad. After remaining two years, in 1871 he went to Onawa, Iowa and started a carpenter business. In 1880 he added the Undertaking business. He married Miss Julia E. Whiting in 1881. Julia E. (Whiting) Pullen was born in New Market, Alabama Jan. 2, 1850. She came to Iowa when six and taught school for 5 terms before her marriage. Malden and Julia (Whiting) Pullen had three children, my Grandfather, Gail Criner Pullen, was the second.

Gail Criner Pullen, was born Sept 26, 1884. Gail Criner Pullen lived in Onawa, Iowa in the house which is now the Eagle Lodge until he was 12, when he moved to the Whiting Settlement, east of Whiting, Iowa. In 1909 he married Zoe B. Hagan of Onawa (Blencoe?), Iowa. They lived on the Whiting farm (Wild Wood) where they still live ( NOTE; This was written years before their death). Grandmother and Grandfather Pullen had two children (Malden Hagan Pullen in 1911, Don Martin Pullen in 1915) my father is the youngest.

Don M. Pullen and Harriet Mable Smith were united in marriage in 1937. For a wedding present they were given the farm in Sloan, Iowa where they now live. They had 3 children; Mark Whiting Pullen born 1938, Steve Martin Pullen born 1951, and me Palma Zoe born 1939.