Mottsville
Douglas County, Douglas County, Nevada
Marker Inscription
Mottsville. This is the site of the settlement on the emigrant trail known as Mottsville, where Hiram Mott and his son Israel settled in 1851. Their homestead was the scene of an impressive number of firsts in Carson County, Utah Territory: 1851: Israel Mott’s wife, Eliza Ann Middaugh, was the first woman settler of European descent. 1854: Mrs. Israel Mott opened the first school in her kitchen. The Mott’s second child, Louise Beatrice, was the first female child of European descent to be born. 1856: Judge W. W. Drummond held the first session of the United States District Court of the third district of Utah Territory in the Mott barn built in 1855. 1857: The third child of the Motts died and was buried in the yard. This tiny grave was the first in what became the first cemetery. The cemetery is all that marks the site of Mottsville today.
Erected by Carson Valley Historical Society
The Story
When Hiram Mott and his son Israel settled here on the emigrant trail in 1851, their homestead became a stage for a string of Carson County firsts. Israel's wife, Eliza Ann Middaugh, is remembered as the first European-descended woman settler; she opened the area's first school in her kitchen in 1854, and the family saw the first such child born and the first burial that seeded the region's earliest cemetery. That little graveyard is all that now marks Mottsville.
Why it matters
Mottsville shows how a single pioneer family's daily life—births, schooling, courts, and burials—laid the civic groundwork for permanent American settlement in the Great Basin.
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Related people
- · Hiram Mott
- · Israel Mott
- · Eliza Ann Middaugh
Themes & tags
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