Earlier Smelser migration to Black Hawk County, Iowa

We’ll look at Aaron Smelser’s ancestors later on.  However, my second theory about “Why Black Hawk County, Iowa?” somewhat relates to them.

Aaron’s great-grandpa, Jacob Smelser (born in 1790), was one of 14 siblings.  I’ve identified two of Jacob’s brothers and one of their sister’s sons who settled with their families in Black Hawk County, Iowa, in the mid-1850s.  They lived mostly in the Cedar Falls & Janesville, and LaPorte City areas.

It could be totally coincidental that some of Aaron Smelser’s Texas County, MO, family ended up in the same place as some of his uncles and cousins who migrated to Iowa from Tennessee.  Or perhaps, the Black Hawk County and Texas County Smelsers kept in contact via mutual Greene County, TN, kin. Perhaps they met at a family reunion?

Did the two groups know, or know of, each other *before* the 1921 migration north to Black Hawk County?  In 1976, I visited Gaylord Smelser from LaPorte City, IA.  He was born in 1908, thus was about 13 in 1921, about the time the Smelsers moved to Black Hawk County.  He said he remembered Aaron and Jessie visiting his father.  [NOTE that Gaylord and Aaron were 3^rd cousins, although there was a 41 year age difference.  Aaron and Gaylord’s father, Robert, were closer in age and were 2^nd cousins-once removed.  The “once removed” just denotes that they weren’t of the same generation.]

But, did they know of each other *before* the 1920s, or did Aaron & Jessie find out about them via a telephone book or mutual acquaintances?  I don't know.

So after the discussion in this post and the previous one, my long-held theory that Aaron & family learned about jobs at John Deere from distant Smelser cousins already in Black Hawk County, looks more like a "nice story" than a provable theory.