John T. Struble
John T. Struble (November 5, 1828 – November 27, 1916) was a builder and farmer during the formative years of the state of Iowa. He was an older brother of two prominent Iowa politicians: Congressman Isaac S. Struble and Speaker of the Iowa House of Representatives George R. Struble.
Except for any financial assistance to his brothers' political campaigns, and his own stint in Johnson County as justice of the peace, Struble was far more the businessman than the politician. His primary contribution as a pioneer of Iowa was to the state's developing economy. Upon his death in 1916, the Iowa City Daily Press described John T. Struble as a "pioneer loved by all." "Helps build Iowa City," read one of the article's headings.
John T. Struble's great-grandfather, Dietrich Struble (1714–1807), was the progenitor of the Struble family in America. After Dietrich and his wife Elizabeth emigrated from Albig bei Alzey, Germany they tarried for a time in the Netherlands until arranging a relationship of intentured servitude with William Allen (loyalist) of Allentown PA fame. Allen paid the family's passage on the ship, Edinburgh, which landed at Philadelphia in 1748. After working as a stonemason to pay off his indentured debt, Dietrich moved to German Valley, New Jersey (now Long Valley). There he purchased over time from Allen a 310-acre (1.3 km2) farm where he and Elizabeth raised their large family. About 1777, however, in order to escape their predominantly loyalist neighbors and more safely support the American Revolution, the Strubles sold the farm and moved some 30 miles (48 km) north to Sussex County, NJ.
The Struble children numbered ten sons, of which nine lived to adulthood and married. From this patriarchate, most Strubles in the United States trace their lineage. One of Dietrich's boys, Daniel, served under General Washington at Morristown. Another, John (who is alleged by one biographer to have been born during the Atlantic voyage), begot Isaac Struble, and it was he, Isaac the Elder (1801–1891), who led his family on a migration in stages – to more than one location in Virginia (including the future state of West Virginia) beginning in 1839, thence to Knox County, Ohio in 1846, and in 1857 (though with John T. blazing the trail in 1852) to Johnson County, Iowa. Three of Isaac’s twelve children (John T., George R. & Isaac the Younger) were destined to play important roles in the early polity and economy of Iowa.
Isaac the Elder’s first wife, Sarah (Atkinson) Struble, gave birth to John T. in Sussex County, New Jersey, on November 5, 1828. She died when John T. was about the age of four, but after a period of a year or two Isaac remarried, and Emma Teasdale raised Sarah's four children and gave birth to eight more of her own. By March, 1852, John T. had left the family fold for Iowa City, to be joined there five years later by his parents and several of the children.
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