Nancy Elizabeth Boyles Hauser in the 1911 book Past and Present of Hardin County Iowa, pp. 658-660:

Thomas N. Hauser ... on August 23, 1844 ... was married at the home of William and Hannah Voyles to their daughter, Nancy Voyles. On December 26, 1850, Mr. Hauser, with his wife and three children, located on section 23, Union township, Hardin county. He built a small log cabin and moved into it, and Mrs. Hauser stuffed the cracks in the walls with blankets. She used to carry her infant on her arm and walk half a mile to get water. Mr. Hauser hauled lumber and grain from Waterloo to supply his necessities. They made bread from corn and, having no mill, pounded the corn in a hollow stump for a mortar. Mr. Hauser had brought with him only fifteen dollars in money, and when he obtained three hundred and twenty acres of land from a Mr. Higgins, traded him a horse and wagon and all his money. Later he bought land from the government at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre. The county was all very wild at his time, and the early settlers must bear the hardships incident to pioneer life. The Hauser family still keep as a momento the broad ax which Thomas N. Hauser used in hewing the logs for his first house.

The Hauser cemetery, which bears his name, was originally given by a man named Smith, but Mr. Hauser donated an addition at the time the Cemetery Association was formed, and the cemetery has since been known as the Hauser cemetery. Here he was laid to rest after his death, on August 28, 1909, at the age of eighty-seven. His wife is still living on the home farm. She was born in Owen county, Indiana, on March 23, 1826.

Mr. and Mrs. Hauser were the parents of ten children: Elias, born in 1845, was in the one-hundred-days service in the Civil war, and married Harriet Sargent, of Iowa Falls; Sarah Jane was born in 1847; David in 1849; William, deceased, in 1852; Harriett was born on October 15, 1854, and married William Herron, and lived in Plymouth county, Iowa, where he died in 1896, leaving one son, Errol. William Herron ws formerly sheriff of Plymouth county, Iowa; Errol is now living in Union township, Hardin county, Iowa; Nelson O. was born on October 3, 1856, and married Ella Crider, and is a farmer in Union township; Leonard was born on March 1, 1859, married Anna Hoffman, and is living in Delta, Colorado; George, born on October 11, 1861, married Rose Rodwell, and lives in Union township; Carie V. was born on October 29, 1862, and married Ada Lundy, of Union township; Paulina was born on November 8, 1865, and married T. R. Madole, of Union township; Sarah Jane is the widow of George Lockard, of Whitten.



Info provided by Dan Stevenson and Robert Fahey