[WED]emigration to Dyersville

[Mary Jackes]

I have been following up relatives of Sandi and Tim in the
Dyersville/Farley/Cascade area of Iowa.  This has led me to believe that
Methodists were very active there, e.g. the first cemeteries, the earliest
churches...  I know from the 1850 cenus that the Wedmore emigrants were
accompanied by a Methodist minister.  

Was Methodism really strong around Wedmore? - (it was in Bristol, I think).
Did this large number of people emigrate from the Wedmore area BECAUSE they
were Methodists? Maybe they went to Iowa because that was already
established as the right place for Methodists to go (I see that there were
already influential Methodists in that part of Iowa who were not from
Somerset, e.g. J.P. Farley).

Sandi quoted for me (from Halbach's history of Dyersville) that the Dyer
colony of people from Somerset failed because the people were greedy and
alcoholics.  Actually, that does not seem true - I see mentions of
temperance in some of the villages in the part of Iowa that they later
settled.  I also see a mention of people leaving Dyersville early on
because: -  

"It has thus far [talking about the early 1850s] labored under the
disadvantages of river and railroad facilities, and goods and lumber have
been wagoned at a high cost, consequently the population of the place has
been seriously kept back by the want of houses and hotel accommodations,
and hundreds who have come to settle have thus been compelled to go
elsewhere."

quoted from a 1911 history at http://www.rootsweb.com/~iadubuqu/townships.html

That certainly fits in with what I saw from the 1850 Iowa census, when
people were packed into the log cabins like sardines.  So people were just
not able to hold out until the railway line came through.  But once it did,
then more people from the Wedmore area settled there, even on into the late
1860s.  Here I have come across a mention of Joseph Counsell and his wife
Jane Wall, and William Wall, and the child of his first wife, Jane Baker,
and his second wife, Eliza Cox.  Someone on the web has been asking about
these people.  There was already a John Wall, and his wife Charlotte, there
in 1860. Who would they all be?

My mother had the vaguest wisp of a memory of part of her family having
gone to the US from England with a group to found a colony, under some sort
of religious motivation - but it was all so uncertain - there was even a
story of a wild young man who wasn't going, and at the last moment was
persuaded to go to church and saw light shining from the communion bread at
the moment of consecration, and so joined the emigrants.
Mary Jackes
Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 0N8, Canada.