Dennis Lynn Lackland, 1783–1864

Dennis Lynn Lackland was born on 13 December 1783 in Montgomery County, Maryland, the eldest son of James Lackland and Catherine Lynn; he died on 31 March 1864 in St. Louis, Missouri. He married Eliza Appleby on 11 April 1810 in the first Methodist Church in Baltimore. She was born on 10 March 1784, daughter of John and Margaret Moore Appleby. Eliza died on 15 June 1860 in St. Louis. Dennis was a clerk in the John Poole store and first postmaster in Poolesville, Maryland, in 1810.

On 18 April 1820, Dennis Lackland and others as trustees recorded a deed for a lot in the town of Poolesville, to build a house of worship for the use of the Methodist Episcopal Church. However, due to sundry judgments in county court for debts, the property inherited from his father was sold by sheriff’s sale in 1823. His brothers, George L. Lackland and James C. Lackland, and his brother-in-law, Ignatius Davis, were the purchasers. His affairs in Maryland were not settled until 1835, when he followed his brothers to St. Louis.

Dennis acquired a farm near his brother George in Overland, in what is now St. Louis County, starting out in a log cabin and, in 1844, building a two-story frame house which still stands on what is now Lackland Road. On the 1850 census, he is listed as a farmer. Their farm is in the 1878 Pitzman’s Atlas under the name of his son, Rufus J. Lackland.

Dennis Lackland and Eliza Appleby had the following children:

• • Margaret Ann Lackland, born about 1811, married 17 July 1834 in Baltimore to Joseph Rutter Snyder, 1804–1874. She remained in Maryland, where she died on 18 April 1906.
  • Lavinia Moore Lackland, born on 7 February 1813, died on 3 January 1871 in Dubuque, Iowa. She married on 15 June 1837, Stephen Hempstead, born on 1 October 1812 and died on 16 February 1883. He was a lawyer and the second governor of Iowa, from 1850–1854.
  • Catherine Margery Lackland, born in 1815 in Maryland, died on 25 July 1838 in Florissant, Missouri. Catherine married William Mackey Mills, on 17 November 1834 in St. Louis. He was born on 22 February 1809 and died on 16 April 1841.
  • Jane Lackland, born and died in 1817.
  • Rufus James Lackland was born on 8 July 1818 in Poolesville, Maryland. Rufus died on 28 February 1910 in St. Louis City. (See separate biography.)
  • Ignatius Lackland, born in 1822 and died in childhood.
  • Louisa Moore Lackland, born on 6 February 1826, in Maryland, died on 12 November 1869 in Washington, Franklin County, Missouri. Louisa married Edward Nelson Parker on 7 February 1848 in St. Louis. He was born on 7 April 1822 and died on 28 April 1881. He was a newspaper editor of the Franklin County Observer.
  • Dennis Summerfield Lackland, born on 1 April 1828 in Maryland, and died on 27 September 1835 in St Louis, probably during the cholera epidemic that year.

(Sources: Fee Fee Cemetery Records, Charles W. Elgin Sr., Brief History of Poolesville, John Thomas Scharf, History of St. Louis City and County, sketch of Rufus Lackland; Missouri Historical Society archives, St. Louis, holds report by Dr. Wm G. Swekosky, dated 21 December 1954, on the Dennis Lackland house.)

Submitted by Patricia A. Andersen
January 2021

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