MONTGOMERY AND
HARRIET KITCHEL MC CORMICK
Genealogical Notes

Return to Index  Return to Genealogy Notes

Montgomery McCormick was born June 17, 1843 on the site of McCormick Creek State Park, across the White river just east of Spencer, Indiana. He was eldest of ten children born to James and Jane McHenry McCormick.

Montgomery served as a private for 3 years and 4 months during the Civil War in Company A, 59th Indiana Volunteer Infantry. He served under Generals William Tecumseh Sherman and John A. Logan. He was in many battles and skirmishes from Shilo through the Vicksburg Campaign around Chattanooga, the Atlanta Campaign and Sherman's march to the sea. He also went with the army to Washington, D.C. and participated in the Grand Review on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Soon after returning from the army he married Margaret Dunn at Spencer, Indiana. They moved to Sandyville, Iowa in 1867 and she died within the year leaving an infant daughter, Margaret McCormick, who grew up and married Charles Hornady. They had one daughter, Gladys who was born in 1899, later Mrs.. Harry Reynolds of New Virginia, Iowa who left no children.

He was married second to Harriet Kitchel McCormick on September 4, 1871 at Palmyra, Iowa with Rev. B.B. Kennedy, officiating. She had taught school for seven years. She attended Simpson College at Indianola before the civil war when every male student volunteered for service in the Union Army. When a girl, she had joined the Methodist Church and was baptized in the South River where they had to cut the ice for the immersion.

Throughout her long life, of 99 years, six months, she remained an active Christian, a Methodist, an Abolitionist and staunch Prohibitionist and active in Women's Suffrage and the WCTU.

Montgomery and Harriet moved in 1880 to a farm 5 miles south of Stanton, Iowa where they lived until 1891 when they moved to College Springs to give their children better school advantages. Montgomery McCormick died there February 22, 1914 at age 70.

After selling the place and closing up affairs at College Springs, Harriet lived with her children and near relatives until her death at Fort Collins, July 2, 1943. On account of war conditions no space on trains except for soldiers, no times or gasoline available, making it impossible for transportation to Indianola for burial there, she was buried in Grand View Cemetery at Fort Collins in the plot of her son, James G. McCormick and near many of her relatives.

Harriet had one son by her first marriage to Sidney A. Gaylor, John B. Gaylor, and Montgomery and Harriet had three children: George C. McCormick, James G. McCormick and Jennie Martin.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Return to Index  Return to Genealogy Notes