Ezra Meeker
Ezra Manning Meeker was born in Butler County, Ohio, on December 29, 1830. Meeker and his family moved to Indiana when he was a boy. He married Eliza Jane Sumner in 1851; the couple, with Ezra’s brother and with their newborn son, set out for the Oregon Territory. They settled at what is now Puyallup in 1862, where Meeker grew hops for use in brewing beer. By 1887, his business had made him wealthy, and his wife built a large mansion for the family. In 1891 an infestation of hop aphids destroyed his crops and took much of his fortune.
About Ezra Meeker in brief
Ezra Manning Meeker was born in Butler County, Ohio, on December 29, 1830. Meeker and his family moved to Indiana when he was a boy. He married Eliza Jane Sumner in 1851; the following year the couple, with Ezra’s brother and with their newborn son, set out for the Oregon Territory, where land could be claimed and settled on. They settled at what is now Puyallup in 1862, where Meeker grew hops for use in brewing beer. By 1887, his business had made him wealthy, and his wife built a large mansion for the family. In 1891 an infestation of hop aphids destroyed his crops and took much of his fortune. He later tried his hand at a number of ventures, and made four largely unsuccessful trips to the Klondike, taking groceries and hoping to profit from the gold rush. In 1906–1908, although in his late 70s, he retraced his steps along the Oregon Trail by wagon, seeking to build monuments in communities along the way. He traveled the Trail again several times in the final two decades of this life, including by oxcart in 1910–1912 and by airplane in 1924. In 1928, Meeker fell ill but was succored by Henry Ford. He died there on December 3, 1928 at age 97. He was known as the “Hop King of the World”, he was the first mayor of Puy allup, Washington. His paternal ancestors had been among the early settlers of Elizabeth, New Jersey, where their ancestral home was located.
In the American Revolutionary War, about twenty Meekers fought for the new nation. He had four brothers and a younger sister, with older brothers John, Manning and Oliver, and an younger sister Hannah and brother Clark. He and his brother Oliver walked behind the family wagon for 200 miles in 1839, and later estimated a total of six months. Ezra was the fourth of the six children Jacob and Phoebe had together, with younger brothers John and Manning and Oliver. He enjoyed the outdoor life more than inside work, so Jacob placed Ezra in charge of the farm, allowing the elder Meeker to work as a miller. In October 1851, the couple set for Eddyville, Iowa, where they had heard that land would be free, but this was not the case. Ezra, working in a surveyor’s office, decided that he did not like Iowa’s winters—a prejudice shared by his wife. Also influencing the decision was the urging of Oliver Meeker who had come out to Oregon to recruit his brother and wife to come to Eddyvil. He also influenced the decision of his wife to vacillate from Iowa to the free land and mild climate of Oregon, also influencing his wife’s decision to leave Eddyillville and move to Eddville. He wrote several books; his work has continued through the activities of such groups as the Oregon-California Trails Association.
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This page is based on the article Ezra Meeker published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 05, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
