Daniel Inman
of
Connecticut, Ontario, N.Y.,
and Sugar Grove, Ill.
and
His Descendants
ca. 1776 - ca. 1976
with
Ancestral Notes
to the
Early Seventeenth Century
Charles G. Inman
1978
To The Memory of
My Father
Forrest Glen Inman
1895 - 1965
Die Alten ehre stets,
Du bleibst nicht ewig Kind;
Sie waren, wie du bist,
Und du wirst, was sie sind.
German Folk Saying
Preface
The surname "Inman" and its older form, "In(n)man", are of English origin and mean simply the keeper of a lodginghouse or inn. Such an appelation would seem to imply a person of sedentary disposition. This was hardly the personality displayed by Daniel Inman and his children, however, for these pioneers were in the van of the migration from Connecticut to western New York, thence to Illinois, and finally to eastern Iowa. Two of Daniel's grandchildren continued this tradition by pushing on to the western part of the Hawkeye State.
Although we can take pride in the adventuresome spirit of our forebears, this continual movement preceding the establishment of efficient procedures for preserving vital statistics and records of civil transactions has severely impeded efforts to trace both lines of descent and ascent from Daniel Inman. Nevertheless, it has finally been established that Daniel stems from Edward, the first known Inman in New England, who reached Rhode Island in the first half of the seventeenth century. All of the five sons and one of the four daughters whom census records suggest constituted Daniel's family have been identified.
This book is a consolidation of a 1961 mimeographed pamphlet and a 1964 supplement thereto compiled by the author, together with such additional data as has been unearthed subsequently. It lists well over four hundred of Daniel's descendants and almost that number of other people related to this family by marriage. Considerations of both space and research time have necessitated restricting detailed biographical data to members of the first four generations. All known information regarding Daniel Inman's ancestors is also included, but the author has resisted the strong temptation to digress along other twigs of the Edward Inman family.
Daniel was born in New England about the time four of his cousins fell victims of the Wyoming Massacre in Pennsylvania. The relatives good fortune of Daniel's branch of the family faltered during the Civil War, however, for of his seven grandchildren who served in that conflict, three failed to return. Mass tragedy struck again in the early twentieth century when a house fire in Minnesota took the lives of the aged wife of Daniel's youngest son, together with two of Daniel's grandchildren and a great-grandson. Other misfortunes are revealed (or sometimes merely intimated) on the pages of this book: prairie fire, manslaughter, suicide, childhood deaths from diphtheria and accidents, shady deals, intrafamily strife, and loss of womanly virtue. yet, on the whole, this book portrays a God-fearing, middle-class, agrarian clan imbued with the "Protestant work ethic" and epitomizing the type of family that formed the backbone of nineteenth century America.
Charles G. Inman
Fort Edward, New York
January 28, 1978
Contents
Putting The Pieces Together and References
The Ancestry of Daniel Inman and References