Moses Meeker

Background

Moses M. Meeker was born on June 17, 1790 in Newark, New Jersey.

Education

Meeker was educated in his native state.

Career

In 1817, following the migration westward, Meeker settled in Cincinnati, Ohio, and engaged with success in manufacturing white lead. In 1822, while in St. Louis in search of a supply of raw material, he learned that lead was to be found in great abundance in northwestern Illinois, near the present city of Galena. Returning to Cincinnati, he closed out his business, and in the fall of 1822 made a trip by boat and on horseback to the Fevre River region. His inspection convinced him of the value of the lead deposits there, and he returned to Cincinnati to secure the necessary concession from the federal government. After correspondence with John C. Calhoun, secretary of war, and upon the execution of the ten-thousand dollar bond offered by Meeker in accordance with the law, he was given authority "to build furnaces, operate mines, and make other improvements, with no interference until some action on the part of Congress should determine the procedure for the lead-mining region. " He thereupon loaded a seven-thousand dollar outfit onto a keelboat, and with a party of forty-two other persons, including women and children, made the eighty-nine day trip down the Ohio and up the Mississippi to the Fevre River. Here he engaged in lead mining, to his great profit, the first year's output of smelted ore from the region amounting to 425, 000 pounds. He went back to Cincinnati in 1824, returning to the lead mines with his family and a year's supply of provisions. In the Black Hawk War (1832) he became a captain and at the close of the conflict removed to Iowa County, Wis. , also a lead-mining region, where in 1837 he began the erection of one of the first smelting furnaces in the territory of Wisconsin a four-blast furnace, the largest thereabout, which cost him $25, 000. In 1842 he was elected from Iowa County to serve in the territorial legislature, and was reelected in 1843. In 1846 he moved to Mineral Point, in the same county, and was there chosen a delegate to the constitutional convention of that year. In 1854 he removed to a farm near Benton, Lafayette County, Wis. Having retired from active life, he became a corresponding member of the State Historical Society, and wrote in 1857 an entertaining and valuable account of the early settlement of the Illinois and Wisconsin lead region as he knew it an account which is a source for the years (1822 - 25) which it covers. He was an active Freemason and for several years an officer of the Grand Lodge of Wisconsin. He died at Shullsburg, Lafayette County, in July 1865, a few months after taking up his residence there, and was buried at Galena, Illinois.

Achievements

• Moses Meeker has been listed as a noteworthy lead miner by Marquis Who's Who.

Membership

a corresponding member of the State Historical Society, Freemason

Connections

In 1818 Meeker married Mary R. Henry. In 1837 she died and in 1839, he married Eliza P. Shakelton. He was the father of five sons and three daughters.

Father:

Jonathan Meeker

11 February 1744 - 6 October 1805

Brother:

Jonas J. Meeker

1770 - September 1852

Brother:

Denman Meeker

20 June 1781 - 26 January 1857

Brother:

David Meeker

13 June 1788 - 24 September 1863

Sister:

Polly Meeker

12 May 1786 - 7 April 1805

Sister:

Hannah Meeker Bigelow

12 December 1766 - 23 May 1852

Wife:

Mary Rose Henry Meeker

1790 - 23 March 1829

Wife:

Eliza Pridden Shackleton Meeker

9 December 1809 - 8 September 1903

Daughter:

Julia Clara Meeker Smith

8 April 1841 - 26 August 1919

Daughter:

Emma Shackleton Meeker Rumbold

8 February 1838 - 5 November 1863

Daughter:

Elizabeth Meeker

1820 - 1828

Daughter:

Lida Rebecca Meeker Snow

26 January 1847 - 11 October 1920

Son:

Jonathan Denman Meeker

17 January 1810 - 3 May 1877

Son:

Edmond Irving Meeker

4 October 1839 - 1 December 1902

Son:

John Avery Meeker

21 May 1823 - 13 February 1911

Son:

Moses P Meeker

Died in 1865.

References

• Memorial Record of the Fathers of Wisconsin; Containing Sketches of the Lives & Career of Members of the Constitutional Conventi
• The Convention of 1846 (Classic Reprint)
• Report and Collections of the State Historical Society on the State Historical Society of Wisconsin For the Years 1877, 1878 and 1879 Vol. VIII (Volume VIII)
• The United States Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-Made Men: Illinois Volume (Classic Reprint)