Samuel Coulter was the second son of James Coulter & Cynthia Rose. He was likely named after his father's elder brother Samuel Coulter. The younger Samuel married on June 13, 1848 in Mercer County, Pennsylvania, to Maria Bash, daughter of Christian Bash & Elizabeth George. Samuel & Maria had 11 children: Francis Marion, Emily, Priscilla, Jerusha, Mose, Aaron, Julia, Louisa, Lee, Florence, and Laura.

In the spring of 1855, Samuel & Maria moved west from Mercer County, Pennsylvania, to Marshall County, Iowa, in a covered wagon with their first four children---Jerusha only a baby. The journey from northwestern Pennsylvania to central Iowa took 42 days. The milk cows were tied to the back of the wagon so they couldn't wander away. Samuel walked most of the way; and his younger brother James walked with him for half the journey before returning home.

Migrating west with Samuel & Maria were her siblings, Henry Bash, Israel Bash, & Magdalena Bash Pettycrew, with their spouses and young children. In the 1960s, I asked Samuel's grandson, Guy Coulter, if he knew why Samuel had left Pennsylvania, where he was surrounded by many relatives: his siblings, his parents, his maternal grandparents--Jacob & Rebecca Rose--and many uncles, aunts, & cousins. Luckily, my uncle Guy had asked his grandfather the same question back in the 1890s. Samuel said it was "too crowded" back home. Whereas the young state of Iowa promised wide-open prairie with plenty of cheap, fertile farmland.

Samuel & Maria were married 67 years before her death at age 84. Grief-stricken at her loss, Samuel lived only a few months more, dying at age 90. Buried in the same Coulter plot with them are their sons Mose and Lee, Lee's wife Ella, and Lee & Ella's infant son and daughter. The second photo shows Samuel's & Maria's headstones and the large Coulter family monument shortly after it was erected in 1916. Grass had yet to grow over the fairly fresh graves. Today, all the space in the background is filled with hundreds of newer graves, including many relatives. I repeated the C in a wreath from the tombstone on the cover of my 1970 family genealogy "Our Coulter Clan & Allied Families."

The first photo shows Samuel in front of his home on Washington Street in Conrad, Iowa, on his 60th wedding anniversary, June 13, 1908. Maria's listing has a closeup of her from the same larger photo, taken, I believe, by their photographer grandson Wallace Greyson Suter of Neligh, Nebraska.