John Hanson Meader, son of Samuel Meader (1765-1843) [0130] and Louisa Higgins (1795-1844), was born in Ryegate, VT in 1832 and died at Falmouth, VA June 9, 1863. In 1857 he married Mary Ann Fleming, born near Dublin, Ireland May 1, 1838 and who came to America when fifteen years of age, soon after the Great Potato Famine of 1846. As most of the Irish Immigrants of that time, she was probably of the peasant class whose sufferings from starvation were the greatest. She had probably settled in New York or Boston, the large cities where the Irish congregated because they were disillusioned with farming.

Soon after their marriage they moved to Ryegate Corners, where he worked at his trade as a stone mason at $1.25 per day. In August, 1862 he enlisted in Company F, Colonel Berdan's Sharpshooters, and he died in 1863 from a hatchet wound received at Gettysburg.

His family moved from Ryegate Corners to their later Ryegate home in 1869.