Just as earlier generations of the Haskell family had migrated from Massachusetts to Vermont and then to western New York and Ohio, the young Haskells in the 1840s were staking out opportunities in the newly established territory of Iowa. 

We've seen how Ruth P. Haskell, later Daggett and Brooks, ended up in a small town 30 miles west of Dubuque, the Mississippi river city that was a gateway to the Iowa Territory. 

The thing I didn't know about the War of 1812 is that it mainly happened in 1814, at least in New England, when British fleets menaced the Maine coast and occupied territory east of the Penobscot. This explains why George Haskell was not with the Massachusetts militia in 1812, when he was otherwise engaged in burying one wife and marrying another. 

I have been working under the assumption that Herbert Stetson was playing the role of a kindly neighbor in his involvement in the affairs of Ruth P. Brooks and her son Joseph Daggett. 

Digging deeper into the Daggett family history, it turns out that Herbert—or more accurately his wife Hattie—was related to the elderly lady. They were both descendants of the Haskell family, which we previously encountered when tracing the Stetson family history back to the Mayflower. 

Herbert Stetson served as executor of the estate of Ruth P. Brooks in 1889. He distributed her stock ownership to her five grandchildren, along with other bequests, but the surprising thing is the Herbert himself and his wife Hattie Stetson were named as inheritors of the lady's property holdings in Earlville. 

It seems that the old lady's own children were predeceased, and that most of the grandchildren lived in Nebraska or Kansas. Herbert and Hattie may have helped out Mrs. Brooks in various ways, including Herbert helping to manage her finances. 

In January 1918 when Isetta Stetson married James Bennett, the event was reported not just in the Montana society news but also back in Delaware County, Iowa, where Isetta had been raised before her family moved west. 

In fact, the article in the Manchester (Iowa) Democrat is rather more informative. Presumably it is based on information the Stetsons provided for the purpose of keeping their old Iowa friends informed of family news.