# Prairie City, White County, Indiana For the Spence family, Prairie City was a single point on a much longer westward journey — a place where, in 1860, they paused long enough to be counted together under one roof. ## The Family in 1860 In that year the household included Matthew and Margaret (Swallow) Spence and their children, among them John W. Spence, Dorothy, Edward, John Mathew, and Thomas. All were living in Prairie City, White County, in the flat, open prairie country of north-central Indiana from which the town took its name. John W. Spence, born in Pontefract, England, in 1835, had already crossed the Atlantic by this time. His presence in Indiana marks one of the earlier stops in a life that would carry him across a remarkable stretch of the American West — Ohio, Nevada, North Dakota, California, Oregon, and Washington. Prairie City belongs to the eastern end of that arc, before the long hauls as a teamster that would define his later years. ## What the Place Meant Prairie City sat in a region newly opened to farming families and English-born settlers looking for land and work. For a family like the Spences — immigrants who had come far already and would go farther still — it was the kind of prairie settlement where a household could gather, establish itself for a season, and prepare for the next move. The gathering of the whole family here in 1860 is the clearest thing this place tells us: parents Matthew and Margaret, and their children Dorothy, Edward, John Mathew, John W., and Thomas, together in one Indiana town before the roads west drew them onward. For John in particular, the pattern that would mark his life — leaving to bring others west, sometimes gone for months — lay ahead. Prairie City was one of the places he called home before those long absences began.