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| HISTORY OF MACEDONIA |
In 1846, two years after the assassination of Joe Smith, the Prophet, father of
the Mormon Church, Brigham Young, with several hundred members of his church in Navoo,
Illinois, crossed the Mississippi river in the spring and started westward.
Several stopped at Garden's Grove in Dayton County and several stopped at
what is now called Macedonia. They stayed for some time at the place called Old Macedonia.
Four of the elders of the Mormons died and were buried on what is now the Clyde Scott farm.
Brigham Young continued and stopped at a place he named Weeping Water. late. Florence,
north of Omaha.
The next spring, 1847, Levi Graybill discovered the stone and the fall of the water in the river at Old Macedonia, while camped near the river. After going on to Knoxville,
(now Council Bluffs) he left his people and came back to the Nishnabotna river and posted a squatters notice at the waterfall in the river and then took eighty acres of land that was covered with heavy
timber. Here he built the first log cabin on half mile south of the main street of the present
Macedonia and moved in his family.
Calvin A. Beebe, a Mormon elder was the next settler. Next came Joe Smith
(grandfather of Henry Smith), then came John Weiniger and John Mowry. All these came in 1847.
Thomas J. Ring came from Gardens Grove in 1848 with three yoke of oxen and
settled between Macedonia and Carson.
Levi Graybill sold his squatter's claim to J. B. Stutzman of Council Bluffs. To
hold such a claim it had to be occupied so Mr. Stutzman sent Luther Tuttle, who had just married
a Miss Wilmot, to live on the Graybill place for him.
At this time the people who had settled here had to drive a hundred miles south
into Missouri to get their grain ground into flour. They wanted a mill nearer so the persuaded
Stutzman to build a mill on the Nishnabotna River.
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