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- George Belcher Gaston founded the town of Tabor, Iowa in 1852 and Tabor College. He was "first identified as a young farmer with a missionary spirit. He lived near Oberlin, Ohio. So intense became his mission zeal that he obtained a commission under the American Board of Missions to work among the Pawnee Indians in a territory that later became Nance County in Nebraska. He worked among the Pawnees four years.... When his wife was taken ill, they returned to Ohio, and he became more closely acquainted with Oberlin's history. He conceived the plan of developing a similar community with its colony patterned after Oberlin College. His idea led to its reality...." Enlisting the aid of Deacon Samuel H. Adams and Rev. John Todd (who left a ministry in Clarksfield, Ohio), they and their families took out claims for the town in April 1852. The terrain led them to name the town "Tabor," after the Biblical name of Mount Tabor, a mountain near Nazareth. George B. Gaston's plan for a college was soon put into motion, and Tabor College's first incarnation, Tabor Literary Institute, opened on Nov 3 1857.
Meanwhile, the area had come to the attention of John Brown, the famous abolitionist. Born in Connecticut in 1800, Brown moved to New York in 1849 to promote his abolitionist ideas. In 1857, he moved to Kansas, where five of his sons had moved the year before. Continuing his abolitionist mission, Brown became involved in kidnapping and smuggling slaves across the border into Nebraska and Iowa. "With his 'underground railroad' functioning, Brown left Kansas. Brown became aware that the settlers of Tabor were sympathetic to his cause. He also viewed Tabor's location as close-by to set up a station from which smuggled slaves could be relayed to Canada.... John Brown, often accompanied by his four sons, frequently came to Tabor. There were some occasions in which he would remain in town weeks at a time." The home of George B. Gaston was among those in Tabor where John Brown was entertained and that Brown and his associates used for slave hideaways.
When George's sister Emala and her husband Julius Hume died at early ages, George and his wife Maria took in Emala's young son Loren and raised him as their son.
In July 1925, George B. Gaston's son Alexander Cummings Gaston wrote a 3-1/2 page typewritten manuscript entitled "An Account of the Journey of the G. B. Gaston Family from Ohio to Southwestern Iowa, and Something of their Life in Civil Bend and Tabor in the Early Days." A short addendum was subsequently provided by Alexander's daughter Cora Gaston Rice, based on stories of those times related to her by her father.
www.doddridgecountyroots.com/register/13678_JourneyOfGeorgeBelcherGastonFamilyFromOhioToIowa.pdf
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1814 - 1873 (58 years)
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