Edward Keasbey (1827-1900)

He was born in Salem, New Jersey. In 1848, he married his first of three wives, Mary Anna, daughter of Dr Elijah Griffith. Two years later, with one (having already lost their eldest child) of what would become their family of three children, they took the train to the Mississippi River and then joined a wagon train across the trackless prairies to Des Moines, Iowa, which was then just a small village of log cabins. Mrs Keasbey died ten years later at which point Edward took the family back east and was married twice more, having one more son by his second wife. His eldest surviving son, Henry, was a chemist who co-founded Keasbey & Mattison, Asbestos.