Satellite photograph of the Niagara River, which flows between New York and Canada, with Ontario, Canada on one side and New York on the other. At one end of the river is Lake Erie, and at the other Lake Ontario. The two large islands in the river belong to the United States. BELOW is a photo of portion of the Niagara River.

Something else that's important to consider is that Martin was probably named after a prominent New York politician, Martin Van Buren, who soon after our Martin's birth became Vice President of the United States (1833-1837) and then the eighth president of the United States (from 1837 to 1841). Van Buren was not yet Vice-President when our Martin Vanburen Reagan was born in May, 1832, but was in the running and he had been a well-known politician in the state of New York for many years, having already risen to the office of Governor. In fact it was in May of 1832 (when our Martin Reagan was born) that Van Buren was nominated for vice-president (with Andrew Jackson running for president) at the 1832 Democratic National Convention. It seems much more likely that New Yorkers would be enthusiastic enough about Van Buren to name one of their children after him than, let us say, Canadians. Also, Van Buren was a Dutch name (for Martin Van Buren, English was a second language), and it doesn't seem likely the Reagans would pull that name out of the blue to use as a middle name for their son.

Whatever is the case, Martin made it known, whether in person or via someone he'd told, to census takers in the United States throughout his life, that he had been born in Upper Canada (which is now Ontario), and it has been noted elsewhere that he was born in Black Rock, Canada. It was also noted in censuses taken in places where Martin Reagan lived and also taken where his father lived, that his father, Daniel O. Reagan, was born in Ireland. In any case, by the time Martin was two years old, the family (there were six children by this time) was living in western Erie County, Pennsylvania (quite close to Buffalo, and to Canada). They lived on Conneaut Creek in West Springfield Township. This was very close to Lake Erie.

Conneaut Creek is in far northwestern Pennsylvania and in neighboring Ohio, though most of it is in Pennsylvania, where it begins. It eventually flows into Lake Erie in Conneaut, Ohio (the Reagans lived very close to Lake Erie). Conneaut Creek is very popular with fishermen. Whether or not the farm produced enough for the Reagan family, certainly there were fish to catch in the creek.

Martin's parents had bought the land by Conneaut Creek in 1833. A dozen years later, in about 1845, with ten children in tow (Martin was about thirteen years old), the family moved to Aurora, Illinois (now part of greater Chicago, but it was out in the country back then). Mary Ann Reagan, Martin's mother, spent the entire trip from Pennsylvania to Illinois lying down in the back of the wagon. One wonders whether that was good for her back. One also wonders if she was expecting a baby, as one more (their twelfth and last) was born in 1846, in Aurora, Illinois.

As she was traveling with her husband and ten children, ranging in age from about one year old to twenty, there may have been nowhere else where she could fit.

The family settled in northeastern Illinois in Aurora, near Chicago - or maybe they settled in Naperville...at least eventually they did. George Will, whose wife Shirley is also descended from this family, says that relatives who still live in that area told him that Martin's father had a blacksmith shop in Aurora and later bought a farm three miles east of Aurora, where he and his wife lived for the rest of their lives. That farm "three miles east of Aurora" must have been in Naperville, which is immediately adjacent to Aurora (center to center they are about five miles apart), as he and his wife both died in Naperville (which is in DuPage County), although they are buried in Aurora (which is in Kane County).

In 1856, approximately eleven years after the Reagans settled in Aurora, or Naperville, Martin Reagan, at age 24, married a twenty-year old woman who had come from Norway with her two brothers in 1854 to settle with her stepfather (Jens Jensen) and family in Leland, La Salle County, Illinois, in the Fox River Valley area that had been settled by Norwegians. That happened to be in the vicinity of where the Reagans had settled in 1845. Martin Reagan and Christina Helland (sometimes known as Holland since coming to this country) were married on August 2, 1856 in Leland, La Salle County, Illinois.

In 1860 the couple were, according to the census, living in Naperville. Martin, it says on the census (on which his name is spelled "Ragan") was twenty-seven years old, he was working as a laborer, and it says he was born in Pennsylvania, which is no doubt untrue - The census taker probably asked him where he was "from." He had lived since he was a couple of years old in Pennsylvania . . . His wife probably talked to the census taker and may not have realized he was not born in Pennsylvania.

Also on that 1860 census (a photographic copy of which was provided by Kirsten Bowman, another descendant of this Reagan family) it says that his wife, Christina (spelled this way) was twenty-four years old and was born in Norway. It also mentions their children, "Betsey, who was three years old (Betsey was actuallly Bertha Emelina, later called "Ella"), and "Chas. H." who was one year old. We know that "Betsey" was born in Earlville, in La Salle County, Illinois and that "Chas. H." (our Charles Henry Reagan) was born in Aurora, in Kane County, Illinois. All of these places were near each other.

Martin died on May 13, 1904 (on his birthday), in Nora Springs (Floyd County) Iowa, which is in far northern Iowa near Minnesota, within the general area where he had lived since first coming to Iowa from Illinois. He was buried in Park Cemetery in Nora Springs.

There is much more on Martin Reagan and his family on this page about his wife Christina Helland Reagan.

Christina Helland Reagan - Biography

Jens Jensen - Biography

The Children of Martin & Christina Reagan

The Story of the Reagans, the Hellands, and the Jensens

The Reagan Home in Nora Springs, Iowa

Drawing of Iowa House

Christina Reagan and family about 1904

Christina Reagan and adult children

Reagan Gravestone - Nora Springs

Norway - Pictures