Introducing William Allen Cross

Before we delve into William's journal, it seems prudent to provide the reader with a bit of background...

William Allen Cross was born 27 Mar 1842, in Salt Creek Township, Pickaway County, Ohio—just outside the budding city of Columbus. The third of nine children born to Henry Cross and Catherine Hedges, William’s early years were shaped by the challenges and opportunities of a rapidly expanding nation.

When William was barely a year old, his family embarked on a journey of more than 400 miles west, crossing the Mississippi River into what was then known as Iowa Territory. The family's migration was emblematic of the era’s restless spirit—a time when the concept of “Manifest Destiny” drove families to risk the unknown in search of a better life. At the time, Iowa was still an untamed frontier, having only a decade earlier seen the arrival of its first American settlers arriving from the East in search of fertile land and fresh beginnings. It would be another three years yet, before statehood was granted in 1846.

By 1850, the Cross family had settled in Clay Township, Jones County, where Henry Cross established himself as a cabinetmaker—a skilled trade that was highly valued on the frontier, where every piece of furniture had to be crafted by hand. While others may have struggled to adapt to a life far removed from the comforts of more established cities, for young William, life on the frontier was the only life he knew.

Despite the rugged conditions, childhood education was not neglected in early Iowa. William and his siblings attended school in what were likely modest one-room schoolhouses, where students learned the basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic—tools that would later provide us a treasured window into William's world through his later journal entries.

The Cross family remained in Jones County through William’s formative years. When William turned eighteen in 1860, he was still a resident of the area, witnessing firsthand the gradual transformation of a wild territory into a structured agricultural community. By then, the family had moved to a tenant farm in Madison Township, a reminder that even on the frontier, land ownership was not guaranteed

It's interesting to note that in 1860, the federal census does not identify William as a farm hand or laborer but instead records him as still attending school. This suggests the possibility that he may have pursued some form of higher education—an interesting contrast to the fact that his mother could neither read nor write.

By the summer of 1863, the nation was fully embroiled in the Civil War, and William—now twenty years old—was registered for the draft as a farmer in Madison Township., underscoring the fact that even the far reaches of the American frontier were not immune from the war’s impact. In fact, although Iowa saw no fighting within its borders, it sent to battle more men per capita than any other state, Union or Confederate.

William's story over the next several years becomes a bit murky. Unlike many of his peers, William does not appear to have served in the Civil War. By 1870, census records show that his parents and younger siblings had moved deeper into the heart of Iowa, settling in Marshall County. But William himself is absent from the census, leaving a gap in his documented history. For a single, independent young man on the frontier, such gaps in are not untypical. He might have been on the move—seeking new opportunities, engaging in seasonal farm work, or simply caught in the imperfect and often incomplete record-keeping of a developing region.

We do know that on New Years Day 1871, William was in Mills County, Iowa, where he spent the day with Luther and Calvin Hubbell. And that's where our story picks up...