MARGARET STOKER, of Pottawattamie County, was born May 29, 1822, in Wilkes County, North Carolina, the daughter of John and Rhoda (Judd) Stoker, the former a native of North Carolina. Mrs. Stoker was in her seventh year when her parents moved to Wayne County, Indiana, where they lived until after her father's death, which took place when she was about seven or eight years of age. He left his widow and nine children, of whom Mrs. Stoker was the youngest. In 1838, when she was sixteen years of age, the family moved to Iowa, on the Des Moines River, when the state was still a Territory and where they lived until the mother's death, which occurred one year later.

In 1839 Mrs. Stoker was married, at the age of seventeen years to Eller Stoker, who was born in Jackson County Ohio, the son of Michel and Catherine Ella Stoker, the mother a native of North Carolina and the father of Germany. Eller Stoker was reared in Ohio, when about twenty-one years of age moved to Missouri, where he lived two years and then came to Iowa, and afterward moved to Nauvoo, Hancock County, Illinois, where he became a member of the Church of the Latter-Day Saints, in 1846. He then came back to the old homestead, where Mrs. Stoker still lives, and cultivated a portion of the land before his death, which occurred July 18, 1855, lacking but a few days of being thirty-nine years old, and leaving a widow and seven children: Orson Hyde, who lives near Yorkshire, Harrison County, Iowa, is married and has seven children: Allen, who lives near Union Grove, Harrison County and has five children; Michel E., lives near Union Grove, Harrison County; Lavina, the wife of William Spears, lives in Pottawattamie County, and has six children, Mary, wife of William Shene, of Garner Township, has three children; Calpernia, lives in Minden Township, the wife of George Spears, and has four children; and Lucretia, who lives in Garner Township, the wife of William Heileman. Mrs. Stoker has had a wonderful experience on living in Iowa and she has witnessed the growth and prosperity of the State.