Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery
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The following biographical sketch of James Nettle Glover was written by his granddaughter, Mattie Laura Jodon in 1942.

SERGEANT JAMES NETTLE GLOVER
War of 1812.

James Nettle Glover was born on the plantation of his father, John Glover, near Port Tobacco, on the Port Tobacco river, in Charles County, Maryland, August 31st, 1873, six years before George Washington died. Fort Tobacco is not named for the tobacco plant, which is raised in Maryland, but is a corruption of the name of the Portoback tribe of Indians who inhabited Maryland when it was first settled by white people.

James Nettle Glover was the son of John Glover (born 1868—died 1843) and Matilda Nettle. John Glover was the son of John Glover Sr. who was one of four brothers who came from England with Lord Baltimore’s colony that settled in Maryland. This John Glover’s Sr.’s wife, was Charity Philpot. The mother of James Nettle Glover, Matilda Glover, was the daughter of James Nettle and Edith Dutton. James Nettle was of English nobility. There was a large family of brothers and sisters all born in the old home in Maryland.

When quite a young man the war of 1812 broke out and James Nettle Glover enlisted in the Army of the United States where he was a Sergeant. In his old age he drew a government pension for that service. Shortly after the war his parents and their entire family left Maryland for St. Louis in Missouri, where they settled in 1819. There he met Elizabeth Dozier, whose father, Dr. Thomas Dozier, had come to Missouri with his family from Louisville, Kentucky.

James Nettle Glover and Elizabeth Dozier were married September 9th, 1821, and raised a family of twelve children. All the brothers and sisters of the Glover family lived on large and comfortable farms or plantations and had slaves to do their work; but James Glover was opposed to slavery and in 1845 moved to Wisconsin which was then a Territory and settled in Grant County on Grant River near Beetown, and in their old age they lived in Boscobel, Wisconsin.

For several years after his wife died he lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his daughter, Sophia M. Glover, and her husband, George Jodon. There he passed away April 1st, 1873, and is buried in the Minneapolis Pioneers and Soldiers Memorial Cemetery in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

This was the age of mass emigrations to the west. “Westward, the Star of Empire took its way.” Four years after James Nettle Glover with his family and his sister Nellie and her family left their southern home for Wisconsin, James Glover’s two brothers, John and Philip Glover, in 1849, decided to leave for the far Pacific coast to what was then Oregon territory. Their sister, Matilda, wife of Nicholas Koontz, had preceded them in 1847. The country for the most part was a vast unsettled wilderness, peopled by Indians.

Arriving in Oregon territory Philip Glover took up government land for a homestead just outside of what is now Salem, the capitol of Oregon. John Glover took up a homestead some distance away. Here they remained as long as they lived, and these homesteads still belong to their descendants.

One of Philip Glover’s sons was named James Nettle Glover, a name-sake of his uncle. He was energetic and far sighted, and in some of his early trading ventures he made a long journey to see a great water-fall which he had heard about. These falls were the Spokane Falls on the Spokane river. As he stood in the wilderness beside these splendid Falls with only a camp of Indians nearby he said to himself, “This is the site for a great city,” and for many years he was the only white man at the Falls. He was the founder of the city of Spokane and was called the “Father of Spokane.” He built the first house; the first mill on Spokane Falls; the first bank; and was a civic leader in many enterprises. He was born in Lincoln County, Missouri, March 15th, 1838, and died at Spokane, Washington, November 18th, 1921. Many descendants of these pioneer families are living now throughout the North West.

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