In looking over the list of eligible citizens in LInion township for a work of this nature one does not carry his investigations far until the name of Abraham Lutz is encountered, and that his career has been a worthy one is seen by a glance at his very active record, which is here briefly set forth. He was born in Knox county, Ohio, March 8, 1845, but nearly all his life has been spent in this state, having come to Missouri in 1857 with his parents, Jacob and Sarah (Bulyar) Lutz, both natives of the state of Pennsylvania. Upon coming to Nodaway county, the parents located on the farm adjoining the one on which Abraham Lutz now resides, paying eight dollars an acre for one hundred and sixty acres and even as low as five dollars an acre for some; only a very small portion of this was cleared and broke. Their nearest neighbors were three miles to the northwest and there was but one house where the town of Maryville now stands; so this was the first family to locate on this prairie, but, being of the true pioneer type, they soon had a comfortable home and a good farm. Four families accompanied them from Ohio, but the others stopped in Iowa, the Lutz family being the only one to locate in Missouri, and it was two or three years before other families settled close around them. There were open stock ranges in this section up to i860. Jacob Lutz lived on the place he first settled here until his death, in 1872, at the age of sixty-five years. He became the owner of a large body of land, about one hundred and sixty acres of which he placed under cultivation. He was born August 27, 1815. His wife was born June 15, 1819, and died February 20, 1906, having reached the advanced age of eighty-six years, having survived her husband nearly thirty-five years.
The following children were born to them: Samuel lives in Pickering; John died in the army hospital, in the sixties, at the age of twenty years; Abraham, of this review; Eliza married George McGinnis; she is now the wife of George M. Ulmer, of Hopkins township; Sarah married John Taylor, of Hopkins township; William died when seventeen years of age.
Abraham Lutz was thirteen years of age when he came to Missouri. He served in the state militia early in the war for a period of six months, having marched with a local company to Lexington. He remained at home until February 19, 1863, when, lacking one month of eighteen years of age, he wedded Melissa Thornton, daughter of Richard and Charlotte Thornton, of Ohio. She came to Missouri when a child with an aunt, Mrs. Edwin Wray, living near Pickering. Mrs. Lutz was about seventeen years old when she married. On March 5, 1865, just two years after her marriage, her death occurred. She left two children, one dying when young; the other, Echvin Grant, grew to maturity and is now living in Atchison township, having spent most of his life on a farm near his father. He married Cyntha Moon, and they are the parents of three children, Henry, Walter and Edith.
Abraham Lutz married a second time, on September 23, 1866, to Lucetta Thornton, a younger sister of his first wife. She was reared in Ohio, and came to Missouri to visit her sister; however, she did not get to see her. Until her marriage she made her home with Mr. and Mrs. Wray. Her death occurred on October 20, 1903. She became the mother of the following children: Rosa married Frank Lock, of Lhiion township, and they are the parents of five children, Millie, Nora, Katie, Mary and George; Malissa, the wife of George McElray, and they have five children. Johnnie, Bessie, Abraham, Glen and Bernice.
The third marriage of Abraham Lutz was to Mrs. Maggie E. Proctor, of Maryville, on March 2, 1905. She was born in Delaware county, Ohio, and when ten years of age, in 1866, accompanied her parents to Missouri, she being the daughter of William and Catherine (Ingles) Hinton. They settled two miles south of Pickering, in Polk township; there her father remained until his death, in 1886, at the age of seventy-seven years, his widow then moving to Maryville, where her death occurred at the age of seventy-four years. When seventeen years of age Maggie Hinton married Newton Proctor, the latter being twenty years old. After living on a farm fifteen years, they moved to Maryville, living together over thirty years and becoming the parents of six children, two of whom reached maturity, Grace, who married Richard Broyles, of Clearmont, and Edward, of St. Joseph, who married Bertha Miller in March, 1908. Mr. Lutz took Leslie Taylor, when three years old, to rear, he being seventeen now, and he is working on the home farm, having the same advantages as if he was the child of Mr. Lutz.
Abraham Lutz began his married life on his father’s farm, which he started to rent, but the father gave him eighty acres on which he still lives, but he continued to rent. He finally came to his own land and lived in a log house until 1872, when he built a better house and in 1880 he built his present home. He has prospered and has added one hundred acres to his original holdings, paying fifty-two dollars and fifty cents per acre for land that could have been purchased at one time for five dollars per acre. He has a splendid hay barn, built in 1891. He has also a hay barn on the last land he purchased. About the place is to be seen a beautiful grove of maples. He has had a good income from his hay for years, also has raised a great deal of grain. At one time he had one hundred and seventy acres in hay. Unfortunately that year hay declined in price, selling at two dollars and fifty cents per ton. After that Ire gave more attention to grain.
Mr. Lutz has been a loyal Republican. He is a worker in the Methodist Episcopal church and his wife is a member of the Baptist church at Maryville.
Source: B. F. Bowen & Company. Past and present of Nodaway County, Missouri. Indianapolis, Indiana: B. F. Bowen & Company. 1910.