THE DAVID SAGA WEST
By Eddy L. David
After crossing the Wabash River into Illinois, the wagon train follows the National Road toward St. Louis. There are many fellow companions along the way, all with hopes and dreams of a better life out West. The Federal Government had promoted these lands as rich and fertile, and the settlers had much hope for a better life. The truth of the situation was much different. There were hostile Indians, little law and order and much uncertainly before them. The land in Missouri is hilly and rocky, except for the bottom lands around the Missouri River and parts North. It was difficult enough for subsistence farming, with little leftover to provide any income. The winters of that time where very harsh compared to what they had known back East.
Jeremiah and Thomas joined Lewis in Bolivar, Missouri prior to1840, after leaving Bartholomew, County Indiana. Bolivar had been a part of Greene, County, Missouri which was in the process of being split up into smaller counties. There was a contest to rename the smaller county at the 1840 census, so the records reflect "county unknown". It was later named Polk County after a settler from Tennessee nominated it from his own home County. My Uncle Oscar David has a horse farm just a few miles East of Bolivar at Buffalo, Missouri now. He had no idea his GGGrandfather lived there 160 years ago.
The family moved up into Gentry County, Missouri by the1850's. Jeremiah was in Kanesville (later Council Bluffs, Iowa), where he died in 1854. Family tradition has it that Jeremiah earned a living cutting wood for the steam boats that came up the Missouri River to Omaha, Nebraska. According to family word-of-mouth, he was buried on a bluff on the East side of the Missouri River between Council Bluffs and Omaha. Later, a spring flood undercut the bluff and washed his remains down the Missouri River.
From these roots the David's have branched out over all most every State in the Union, we have served and suffered in every War this country has ever asked us to serve, from the First tithe Last in Viet Nam and Desert Storm. We have and are now serving in law enforcement, from Lake Patrol, to Deputy Sheriff to U.S. Federal Marshall. Yes, we have our faults, like many other families, but we can be proud of the sacrifices and the honor of those who came before us.