Hiram Spencer was born in 1811 in Pennsylvania to Jesse Spencer and Polly (Southwick) Spencer. His father, Jesse, was an early Pennsylvania settler from England. The family lived in a small cabin on Potato Creek, Pennsylvania. They made money by felling pine timber. A timber buyer brought a young man, William Horton, to the Spencer home to await the breaking up of ice. Horton and Hiram became friends.
Allegany River in McKean County, Pennsylvania
Fascinated by stories of the outside world, Hiram joined Horton’s crew taking logs back downstream. Hiram visited the Horton home, where he met Wililam’s younger sister Henrietta. They fell in love, and in 1836, he was married to Henrietta in McKean, Pennsylvania. They a son, Amza, on August 7, 1838. Hiram had cleared some land on his father’s farm and built a cabin. He financed this on his own account – “a Spencer’s word was as good as a bond.” He paid his obligations, bought oxen, two cows, two pigs, and hens. His father gave him an old sickle.
Around 1839, Hiram’s uncles, David and William Southwick, brothers of his mother Polly, were living near Galena and Schullsburg, Illinois and needed help farming. They offered Hiram and his family a log house near them and $10 salary for a month, so the family moved to Illinois, taking the sickle.
The Spencers left Pennsylvania, took a flat boat down Ohio to Cairo, Illinois. It was a clumsy craft. They had a basket of food Grandma Spencer had fixed. The men all played with Amzy–he was a plucky little boy, no cry baby. They carved him wood toys. Their crude speech frightened Henrietta.
At Cairo, Henrietta took a small steamer up the Mississippi River to Fever River. In the late 1830s there was little data on Jo Davies County, Illinois (in 1819 the first Europeans settled there). The Spencers spent their first night tired at a hostelery. The land was beautiful and the Southwicks were kind to them; they were good men.
George Renwick, a newfound friend, often stopped by. The Spencers’ son James was born in Lafayette, Wisconsin (near Jo Daviess) on March 27, 1840. Hiram and his famiy are recorded as living in Western Division, Iowa, Wisconsin Territory on the 1840 census.
Lafayette County, Wisconsin
In December of 1840, Hiram was in Galena, Wisconsin to pick up a load of supplies to be delivered to Shullsburg, Wisconsin. Eager to get home, he lifted a barrel of salt that weighed one hundred and eighty pounds by himself. The excessive lift strained him badly. Shortly after, he became cold, then nausea swept over him and violent pains cramped him. He drew the horse blankets around him, but he was violently ill.
Upon reaching home, he succumbed to the pain that wracked him past endurance. Home remedies were tried. There was no doctor within call, and they could only hope his youth would help him to pull through what they recognized as a serious injury. Sadly, the next night Hiram passed away. He never had a chance to meet his daughter, Elizabeth Janette, born on July 31, 1841. The Southwicks were kind to the family, and the family friend George Renwick did little things for the children, brought their mail and groceries, etc. Henrietta married Renwick in 1842, and they had twelve children. Hiram Spencer’s two young sons and unborn daughter were raised by their mother and George Renwick.
Taken from the full story of Amza Spencer (Hiram’s son), edited by Grace Greenwood & Jeff Gurvine:
