William Holston
William A. Holston was born on October 3, 1845, in Portage, Indiana, a small farming community near the shores of Lake Michigan and not far from the border with Illinois. His parents, John Holston and Harriet Ferris, may have been living there temporarily, as they made their home somewhat further east, in Penn Township, a part of St. Joseph County. It’s likely that he retained no memory of his mother, who died shortly after the birth of his brother, Chauncey, two years later.
There is no record of Harriet’s death, but we know she signed a document mortgaging her parent’s property to her husband in March of 1847. Less than a year later, in February of 1848, John had remarried. His new wife was a girl—only 14 years old and 20 years his junior—named Rosanna Ketchum. This union was scandalous even in its day. The ceremony was performed by William’s grandfather, John Holston Sr., and Rosanna used an alias on the marriage certificate. Over the following 26 years, she gave birth to 11 children. William grew up in his mother’s house as the eldest child in a large family with a stepmother young enough to be his sister.
The Holston family still lived in Indiana at the outbreak of the Civil War. At 14, William was too young to fight, but as the conflict dragged on, it’s surprising that did not participate, willingly or not. There is no evidence that he served in any capacity. By the time of the next census, in 1870, he had moved out of his parents’ house and found work as a carpenter in Iowa. During the course of his life, he would continue to move West.
Iowa Missouri Ogden
Iowa Missouri Ogden was born on June 23rd in 1850 in Gary Owen, Iowa. Family lore has it that she was born on the border between two states as one of the youngest in a large family. Unable to come up with a name, her parents resorted to the local geography. Sadly, the facts don’t fit the legend. Iowa was sixth of nine children, and though she was born in Iowa, Gary Owen is nowhere near the border with Missouri. Oddly enough, her siblings all carried rather mundane, popular names like Henry and Sarah.
Iowa’s parents, Robert and Mary, were second generation Americans and fairly prominent in their frontier state. People referred to Robert as “Judge Ogden.” There are no records to indicate he held an official post (the census says he was a farmer) he died with significant land holdings and personal property. Without question, Iowa grew up in a comfortably upper-middle class family. It’s apparent that she received an education and that her parents instilled in her a community spirit, as she and her siblings devoted much of their adult life to political activism.
Married Life
We know little of how the couple met. At the time, William worked as a carpenter in Monticello, Iowa, and boarded with the family of Robert Henderson. Iowa still lived with her parents in Prairie Creek, and there was a fair bit of distance between the two communities. The Holston and Ogden families had no prior relationship, so we can only assume that their paths crossed socially or they were introduced through a common acquaintance. Apparently, the distance was not enough to discourage their courtship. William and Iowa were wed in autumn, on October 6, 1870, in Monticello, Iowa, just six months after the death of Robert Ogden, Iowa’s father. At the time, Iowa was 20 and her new husband was 25.
Ten years later, they had settled in Monticello where William had established himself as a carpenter. Iowa gave birth to four boys that decade: Bert, George, Fred and Guy. Her mother, Mary, also lived with them, which seems to indicate that the family had attained some level of stability, as she could have chosen someone else from among her many children.
Shortly after 1880, the Holston family began to consider a move to California. Newspaper stories indicate some back-and-forth travel, at least for William, between 1881 and 1884. Iowa became pregnant during this time and gave birth to another boy, Harry, at the end of 1884. Just months later, in February of 1885, The South Bend Tribune published a short article noting the family had left for California “to reside permanently, the exact location not having been decided upon.” Though the newspaper makes them out to be rather impulsive, they were following a number of Iowa’s brothers and sisters, who also made the move to California around this time.
Voter registration records just a few years later put them in East Modesto, a growing farm community in the Central Valley of California. These were unsettled years for the family. William continued to work as a carpenter for the Southern Pacific Railroad, which took him as far away as Bakersfield and Santa Cruz. It’s unclear how often his family moved with him for these assignments or if he left Iowa alone to care for the children and household.
The couple’s last child, Klyde, arrived in the summer of 1890 and died some eight months later. His short life was the beginning of a tragic period for the Holston family. In 1893, Guy—just 13 years old—fell into the water while playing near a creek and drowned. Just one year later, Fred died from typhoid fever with his brother Harry also coming dangerously close to death. Fred passed at the age of 16. All three boys died in the Modesto area and are buried at Acacia Memorial park in that city.
There is some evidence that the Holston’s lived briefly in Santa Cruz in the early 1890’s. In 1891, Iowa joined the California chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement and in November of that year—only months after the death of her infant son—wrote and presented an essay on “Juvenile Work” at the meeting of the Santa Cruz chapter. A newspaper account at the time noted that she “expresses herself with clearness and decision, and her arguments appeal to the intellect and the heart.” Over the years, Iowa became prominent in the temperance movement, rising to the position of treasurer for the California state WCTU organization and regularly speaking at community events.
In 1908, William and Iowa moved to Santa Clara, California. Their youngest surviving son was 22 and likely living on his own. William took on steadier work as a mill operator in a lumber yard. They first settled on Hedding Street, but eventually moved a few blocks to Asbury Street in neighboring San Jose. Five years later, in 1915, Iowa passed away in this house at the age of 64. Her cause of death is unknown.
After his wife passed, William moved to San Francisco, lodging in a boarding house on Mission street. His son, Bert, lived in Mayfield (now Palo Alto), California where he worked as the station master for Southern Pacific Railroad. George settled in South San Francisco, where he would later be elected mayor, and Harry lived in a rental house on Cole Street in San Francisco, where he owned and operated a candy store.
William boarded in the city for the remainder of his life. The 1930 census finds him in a boarding house on Haight Street, not far from Harry’s house, and his obituary notes he died at this location the following year at the age of 85. Both he and Iowa were buried in Modesto next to their sons.