This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Baylor Classification: Biography Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/ok.2ADE/1468 Message Board Post: THE FREMONT COUNTY HERALD. July 14, 1921. "Seventy-One Years on One Farm".--In the fall of 1849, John Baylor, accompanied by his wife and infant daughter, braved the discomforts of the pioneer life and came from Marion county, Indiana, to southwestern Iowa. The trail had been blazed by the Mormons who settled in large numbers at Kanesville the present site of Council Bluffs, while several families made a detour to the south and settled near Thurman. These Mormons living several miles from the land preempted by Mr. Baylor, were at first his only neighbors. The nearest postoffice was at Austin, eighteen miles southeast, while the grist was taken to Linden, Missouri, the round trip being seventy-five miles. Freight was gotten at a boat landing south of Hamburg. The following spring, April 8, 1850, Ransdell Baylor, the subject of this sketch, was born and for seventy-one years has counted it pleasure to call the place of his birth home. In early manhood he contemplated entering a profession, but the death of his father in 1871 changed his plans and he left school to engage in farming, staying with his mother while the younger brothers and sister were in school. The mother passed away in 1881. When the civil war broke out John Baylor had begun the erection of a more commodious residence and because of the tediousness of the work nearly a year and a half passed before the house was completed. It was hard to obtain finishing lumber and most of the interior was finished in hand tooled black walnut, wild cherrry and sycamore. The house is still in a good state of preservation; though not modern, it is more solid than many of the new homes of the vicinity. It was to this house that Ransdell Baylor brought his bride immediately after the wedding ceremony in 1883. One son F.B. Baylor, was born to the old home and now is a practicing attorney at Lincoln, Nebraska. Ransdell Baylor's brother lives in Los Angeles and the eldest sister in Tacoma, Washington.