EDITOR’S NOTE: This is part of a weekly series on our region’s history coordinated by the Trumbull County Historical Society.

This is part 2 of a continuing series on Louisa Maria Morris Edwards Montgomery.

A year after husband John Stark Edwards’s death, and after waiting in vain for an escort to take her and her children back to Connecticut, Louisa remarried on June 21, 1814.

Louisa’s second husband, Robert Montgomery, a Pennsylvania native, was the son of William Montgomery, a Revolutionary War veteran and Continental Congress representative, who also served as a judge and Pennsylvania state senator.

Sadly, less than a week after their marriage, Louisa’s two oldest sons, Pierpont and Lewis Morris Edwards, both passed away. A grieving Louisa buried her boys alongside their father in the Old Pioneer Cemetery on Mahoning Avenue in Warren.

Louisa’s second husband, Robert Montgomery, was a pioneer in the Mahoning Valley’s coal and iron business.

Robert’s business partners were John Heaton, who started the area’s first furnace in 1806, and John Struthers, after whom the City of Struthers is named. In 1812, when the hardwoods then used to fuel his iron furnaces were depleted, Montgomery turned to farming, settling in Poland, which was then part of Trumbull County.

Five months after their marriage, Robert and Louisa Montgomery, along with her surviving son, moved to Robert’s estate in Fishing Creek, Pennsylvania, near the family homestead in Danville. Today, Danville is a four-hour automobile drive from Warren over the Allegheny and Pocono Mountains. Imagine what a difficult trip that would have been on horseback or in a carriage.

According to letters that Louisa wrote, she was sad to leave her friends in Warren. Unfortunately, Louisa’s asthma made living in Danville very difficult, so in the spring of 1815, she returned to Warren, staying temporarily with good friends Simon and Nancy Perkins. Louisa wrote to her husband that Dr. Harmon advised her “returning to this country was the wisest thing I could have done and hopes it may be in time to avert the danger.” Later that autumn, Robert rejoined Louisa in Warren, where their son, Robert Morris Montgomery, was born.

Two months after their son’s birth, Robert and Louisa settled into a rustic cabin built by early settler Roger Brown on 440 acres in the southeastern portion of the Connecticut Western Reserve near Yellow Creek.

Today that property is located near the intersection of Coitsville Road and Wilson Avenue in Campbell.

Shortly after the move, Robert departed for Pennsylvania, where he remained for two months, leaving Louisa alone in the wilderness with a 2-year-old toddler and 2-month-old baby. Robert and Louisa later built a larger, more spacious home on their property, which they named Dry Run Farm. Louisa happily noted that the new house had “a doorway high enough to enter without bumping your head.”

The Montgomery home was full of activity and a social hub for the local community.

Robert spent most of his time on business in Pennsylvania, returning home only a few times a year, leaving Louisa responsible for running Dry Run Farm along with raising her four children, including daughters Caroline Sarah Montgomery born in 1817, and Ellen Louisa Montgomery born in 1819.

To be continued. …