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biography from Portrait & Biographical Album of Mahaska Co., Iowa, 1887
DAVID F. LAUGHLIN, who has been a resident of Scott Township for nearly forty years, was born in the town of Elizabeth, Allegheny Co., Pa., Nov. 5, 1816. He is a son of Adam and Rebecca (Wall) Laughlin, the father a native of Fayette County and the mother of Allegheny County, Pa. Both parents died in this county, the former in 1876, and the latter in 1878, both having been devoted members of the Methodist Episcopal Church. David Laughlin left the old home in Pennsylvania in 1832, removing to Carroll County, Ohio, where he engaged in blacksmithing and gunsmithing until 1847. In the spring of that year he removed to Mahaska County, and entered eighty acres of land in Scott Township, on section 16, which he still owns, and which he has improved until it is a pleasant and comfortable home. He owns other land, but only the home farm is in cultivation. Mr. Laughlin was married in the spring of 1844, in Carroll County, Ohio, to Margaret, a daughter of John Robertson, a native of Pennsylvania. She endured with him all the trials and privations incident to pioneer life in a new country, and passed away at her home in this county, Feb. 22, 1884, aged nearly seventy years. In the spring of 1886, he was again married, to Elizabeth Johnson, a native of Virginia. Mr. Laughlin has been Township Trustee several terms and held the office of Justice of the Peace for two years. He is a member and Ruling Elder of the Presbyterian Church at Olivet. He came to Mahaska County before the land was put upon the market, and when there were less than seventy houses in the county, and the changes of all these years have been made under his observation. Then no school-houses, churches, costly residences, ample barns, no railroads, telegraph or telephone lines spanned these broad acres and in fact, few, if any, evidences of civilization existed, while now the prairies blossom as the rose, and the fertile acres yield an abundance and to spare. One bows almost with reverence in the presence of a pioneer of nearly half a century, and envies him what his eyes have seen and his ears have heard of the sketches and incidents of his early days.
Portrait & Biographical Album of Mahaska Co., Iowa, 1887
Mahaska County, Iowa Genealogy