Samuel Marker

    Samuel Marker was born in Frederick County, Maryland, July 7, 1815, a son of John and Elizabeth (Waterbecker) Marker, natives also of Maryland. In 1823 the family moved to Montgomery County, Ohio, where they lived nine years, when they moved to Miami County, near Piqua, where the father died in 1860, and the mother in the spring of 1865.

    In the summer of 1836, when our subject was twenty-one years old, he went to Darke County, Ohio, which was then a wilderness, and exchanged land in Miami County for a a tract of land in Darke County. About 1840 he located on his land, which he cleared and improved, making of it a good farm, on which he lived until 1864, when he moved to Blackford County, Indiana, and settled on 110 acres of land he had previously bought in Harrison Township. A part of this land was partially cleared, but the most of the improvements have been made by Mr. Marker. He has given forty acres to his children, his homestead now containing seventy acres, sixty of which are under cultivation.

    Mr. Marker was reared in a new country, and has assisted in developing two counties. In the twenty-three years he has lived in Blackford County he has seen the country change from a comparative state of wilderness to one of thriving villages and well improved farms.

    Mr. Marker was married April 27, 1837, to Rosamond Robinson, a native of Huntington County, Pennsylvania, but reared in Darke County, Ohio, where her parents settled when she was a child. To Mr. and Mrs. marker were born eight children, four of whom are living -John R., now of Warren County, Iowa; Elizabeth, wife of Andrew Mendenhall; Mary, wife of William Pugh; and Sallie, wife of Theophilus Gunckle. Andrew, Jacob, Solomon and Amanda are deceased. Mrs. Marker died September 26, 1886, when within but a few months of the fiftieth anniversary of her marriage.

    In early life Mr. and Mrs. Marker united with the Untied Brethren Church, and held their membership with that denomination until the church in Harrison Township disabled, when they joined the Methodist Episcopal Church at Shinn's Chapel. In politics Mr. Marker has been a lifelong Democrat, casting his first vote for Martin Van Buren.

Source: Biographical and Historical Record of Jay and Blackford Counties, Indiana by The Lewis Publishing Company, 1887.