TOPE FAMILY PAGE

the 10 February 1864 at Lima, Ohio, and was promoted to Corporal on 1 May 1865. He mustered out with the regiment as a Corporal at Nashville, Tennessee on 23 August 1865.¹³

Davis filed for Homestead Land in Section 30, 4 North, 68 West in Weld County14 and took 150.5 acres in the North West quarter on 13 April 1874.¹⁵ He farmed this land that became the site of a town named Niwot (left hand).¹⁶
Martha and Davis spent the rest of their lives on this land. Their first home was built in 1874, and a second home was built in 1877. Improvements to the property were valued at $700 according to Homestead papers dated 26 February 1881. Davis dug a well, made corrals and a shelter for his cows, and put up fences. For the first two years he worked on a neighbor's farm until he could dig ditches to carry water to their land. Then he planted 45 apple trees, 50 grapevines, plowed up fifty acres and planted wheat, corn, oats and barley. This comment is in the Centennial Project:

The work must have been hard for a slender man only 5' 9". Red-

headed with a beard, he had a lot of stamina to survive while others

succumbed. After the death of his wife in 1876, his Mother cared

for the two children, Agnes and Samuel. Agnes died 1877 and

Samuel in 1886. Their graves are in the Old Burlington Cemetery

on South Sunset, Longmont.¹⁷

Davis Baxter had Quaker background, but was Superintendent of the United Brethren Sunday School for nine years, and he was a charter member of the Christian Church.¹⁸

In addition to the family connections given in chapter 2, Mary Baxter, older sister of Davis, married George D. Tope, Martha's brother.¹⁹ (See chapter 6.)
Martha and Davis Baxter had three children:
+33 i. Lula Myrtle5 Baxter, bom 19 September 1867, Van Wert County, Ohio.
+34 ii. Myra Lena Baxter, born 29 December 1882, Berthoud, Weld County, Colorado.
35 iii. Beulah Baxter, bom 21 July 1886, Berthoud, Weld County, Colorado,

and died 1 June 1888, Berthoud, Weld County, Colorado.