Soon after her marriage to John Fletcher Pershing, the pregnant Ann moved to Linn County in northwest Missouri, where she gave birth to her first child, John Joseph Pershing.
John Fletcher had always been an enterprising man, and when land prices skyrocketed at the end of the 1860s and early 1870s, he joined in the frenzy of speculation.
While a young John Pershing was growing up in the post-war years, his father John Fletcher ran a general store and served as postmaster of Laclede, placing the Pershings among the most respectable families in the town.