Margaret Scott and Samuel Fairley

Margaret Scott was born in 1826 in Ohio. She was the oldest child of Prior Scott and Ruth Caraway. The year after, her father Prior Scott, with wife and daughter, moved back to Indiana where Prior had lived for about a year. Margaret’s next five siblings were born in Indiana but in 1837, the Prior Scot family moved to Iowa. The next two siblings of Margaret were named Andrew Jackson Scott and Martin Van Buren Scott. It is a reasonable guess to say that Prior Scott was a Jacksonian Democrat.

Margaret married Samuel Fairley on May 6, 1846. Samuel had been born February 19, 1817 in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.. He was the child of John Fairley, an Irish immigrant, and Mary Smith. His name was sometimes also spelled Farley. Their first child, Prior Fairly, was born about 1847. The last child of Prior Scott and his wife Ruth was born in 1848. So Margaret became a mother before her last full sister was born. Much later, after Ruth died in 1874, Margaret’s father had another family.

In 1850, Samuel A. Fairly and wife Margaret are listed in the 1850 Federal Census for Cedar County. He is 32 and she 24. He is a farmer and they have two children, Prior and John. At the time, William Fairly also lives with them. They are living next to the Prior Scott family.

Margaret had another son, Christopher Columbus in 1854. Their next child was Mary Jane Fairly, who was born December 26, 1856 in Cedar County, Iowa. Mary was the grandmother of Jennie Reed. She was the grandmother who married Francis Reed. Samuel and Margaret had one more child, William Henry, born about 1860.

Samuel died March 8, 1868 in Pioneer Grover (Mechanicsville), Cedar County, Iowa.. He was only 51 years old but there is no knowledge, at this time, of how he died.

In 1878, a history of Cedar County was written, Here is the entry on Margaret from the biography section of Pioneer township. Note that a couple of more children are listed:

(Fairley, Margaret, Mrs., widow, Section 10; Post Office Mechanicsville; born in Ohio in 1826; came to this county in 1837; owns 131 acres. She married Samuel Fairley in 1846; he was born in Pennsylvania and died in March, 1868; has seven children--Prior, John, Joseph, Christopher C., Mary J., Wm. Henry and Ruth A.; lost one--Sam)

By this time my mother Jennie’s grandmother, Mary Jane, had been married to Francis Reed, on September 11, 1871. Mary and Francis Reed had their first son Samuel A. in 1873.

After Samuel died Margaret married two more times, the first in 1887 again in 1900.

Margaret died May 21, 1914 in Mechanicsville, Cedar County, Iowa was buried with Samuel at Rose Hill Cemetery in Mechanicsville. She was 88 years old.

David Nolette on December 14, 2003

Sources:

Death Certificate of Mary Jane Reed
Obituary of Francis Marion Reed, Sr.
Federal Census of 1850 and 1900
1878 History of Cedar County
email from Jeanne Pinkler
Several Scott genealogies from the internet