USA > Arkansas > Historical review of Arkansas : its commerce, industry and modern affairs > Part 22
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In polities Mr. Austin is aligned as a stanch supporter of the principles and policies for which the Democratic party stands sponsor, and he is ever alert and enthusiastieally in sympathy with all measures projected for the general welfare of his home eity and county. He is broad-ganged, and the list of his personal friends might almost be said to include the list of his acquaintances, and they are legion, bound in no sense by party lines, religious creeds or social status. People of . every diversity of condition, position or relative means know him and, knowing him, respect and honor him. He is a man of sterling integrity, a home lover, who seeks and finds his chief pleasure by his own fireside in the companionship of his family and intimate personal friends. Club life, or the mad whirl of political strife, have for him little or no attraction. "
On the 6th day of November, 1881, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Austin to Miss Mattie Keeler, who was born and reared in Jefferson county, Arkansas, and who is the daughter of George W. Keeler and Mary Anne Keeler, representative citizens of Pine Bluff. Mr. and Mrs. Austin have one child, now Mrs. F. F. MeNeny, of Dallas, Texas.
In 1890 his wife died. On the 21st day of December, 1903, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Austin to Miss Estelle Buckner, who was born and reared in Norfolk, Virginia. and who is the daughter of Robert L. and Mary Anne Buekner, of Norfolk, Virginia. Mr. and Mrs. Austin have two children.
SEBASTIAN GEISREITER. One of the most valuable clements eon- tributed to the complex and cosmopolitan social fabrie of our American republie has been that furnished by the great empire of Germany, whose sterling sons and daughters have brought to bear the character- istie energy, judgment and constrnetive ability that typify the race as a whole. From this source Ameriea has had meh to gain and nothing to lose, and this fact is shown in every community that has its eon-
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tingent of those of German birth or ancestry. Arkansas has not been denied its due quota of sterling citizens of such lineage, and prominent among the number is Sebastian Geisreiter, who is one of the most extensive landholders and most successful planters of Jefferson county and who as a citizen commands the unqualified confidence and regard of the people of the county that has been his home for more than two score years. His career has been marked by many and varied ex- periences and incidents, and he is a man of broad intellectual ken and of that strong individuality that qualifies one for the stern duties and responsibilities of a workaday world.
Sebastian Geisreiter is a native of the kingdom of Bavaria, Germany, where he was born on May 30, 1840, and his rudimentary education was secured in his fatherland, where he was reared to the age of four- teen years. He is a son of Jaeoh and Elizabeth (Von Schmuck ) Geis- reiter. both of whom were born and reared in Bavaria, where they continued to maintain their abode until 1854, when they immigrated to America and located in the city of New York. The father devoted the major portion of his active career in America to the voeation of eabinet- maker and he passed the closing years of his life in Iowa. His wife died in 1844. The father was of sterling character, earnest, honest and industrious, a man of scholarly attainments, having a collegiate educa- tion, and to him was never denied the fullest measure of popular esteem.
As already stated, Sebastian Geisreiter was reared to the age of fourteen years in his native land and he then accompanied his parents on their immigration to the United States. He initiated his business career as elerk in a cigar store in New York City, later he was solicitor for a large furniture establishment in the national metropolis, and finally he assumed the position of bookkeeper for a business concern in the city of Brooklyn. When he was about seventeen years of age he set forth to seek his fortunes in the west, and as his health was in such condition that physicians advised him to seek outdoor employment, he turned his attention to agricultural pursuits, in the state of Iowa. Though his early educational advantages had been meager he had dis- tinetive appreciation of the practical value of thorough mental dis- cipline and his ambition had been such as to lead him to devote as much time as possible to well directed reading and study, through which he finally proved himself eligible for matriculation in Washington Col- lege, at Washington, Iowa, where he applied himself with all of dili- genee, with the result that, after attending this institution for two years, he passed a satisfactory examination and was granted a first- grade teacher's certificate. The Civil war was in progress at this time and instead of turning his attention to the pedagogic profession Mr. Geisreiter enlisted in the Second Minnesota Cavalry, with which he served in the campaigns against the Sioux Indians in the northwest. In 1864 he was a member of the military force sent out as escort for an immigrant train that was erossing the plains to Montana, where the gold excitement was then at its height. He had shown marked ability as a disciplinarian and tactician, and he served as sergeant of cavalry on this expedition, and in the same year he was ordered to the city of St. Louis by the secretary of war, was commissioned first lieutenant in the volunteer infantry and was transferred to the Department of the South; where he continued in active service for some time after the surrender of Generals Lee and Johnston and the practical cessation of hostilities. In 1866 he again passed examination before a board of regular army officers with a view to entering into the regular army.
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The volunteer forces having been mustered out he was retained by special order from the secretary of war to serve on detached service and ordered to Fort Smith, Arkansas, where he remained until the autumn of that year, when he was transferred to Little Rock, where he reported to General E. O. C. Ord and was assigned to inspection duty throughout eastern Arkansas. The military post at Pine Bluff was at that time the most important in the district, and here Mr. Geisreiter passed the major portion of his time until he resigned from the army, at the close of the year 1868. In the following year he established his permanent home in Pine Bluff, which has continued to be his place of residence during the long intervening years. Upon returning to civilian life he engaged in the insurance business. His genial per- sonality and sterling integrity soon gained to him the uniform con- fidence and esteem of the people of the community, and after a period of five years he amplified the scope of his business enterprise by en- gaging in the handling of real estate. In this line he built up a success- ful business, in which he continued until 1878, when he found that his large interests in connection with the agricultural industry demanded his entire time and attention. He had accumulated in the meanwhile a large and valuable landed estate, and he has long been numbered among the progressive, successful and representative planters of Jefferson coun- ty. His finely improved plantation comprises 2.000 aeres and is most attractively located in Jefferson and Lincoln counties and in addition to this fine property he is also the owner of improved and nnim- proved property in the city of Pine Bluff, where he still resides, the while gives his supervision to his extensive and substantial interests.
In polities Mr. Geisreiter is aligned as a stanch supporter of the best man from his point of view. As a loyal and publie-spirited citizen he has been actively identified with those enterprises and undertakings that have tended to further the development and eivie advancement and prosperity of his home city and county. None is held in higher regard in the community and none has shown a deeper interest in the welfare of the community. He has served as a member of the board of public affairs of Pine Bluff (1902 to 1906), and his labors in this office have not been in the least of perfunctory order. He is an appreciative member of the Masonic fraternity, in which he has attained to the thirty-third degree (honorary) of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite, and he is also affiliated with the Knights of Pythias, in which he served as captain in the uniform rank divisions, of which he is an honorary member.
In November. 1877. Mr. Geisreiter was united in marriage to Miss Mary Olive Merrill, who was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and who was a daughter of the late Joseph Merrill, one of the most distinguished and honored citizens of the state and one of whom a memoir is entered on other pages of this volume. Mrs. Geisreiter did not long survive her marriage, as she was summoned to the life eternal in June, 1878. In the year 1889 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Geisreiter to Miss Linda D. Chinn, daughter of the late Dr. Raleigh Chinn, of Mason county, Kentneky, in which state she was born and reared. She is a woman of gracious personality and marked culture, having received ex- cellent educational advantages, including a course in the Millersburg Academy, at Millersburg, Kentucky. They have one child. Mary Mer- rill, born October, 1890, at home.
JOSEPH MERRILL. Measured by its beneficence, its rectitude. its productiveness, its unconscious altruism and its material success, the life of the late Joseph Merrill, of Pine Bluff. counted for much, and in this history of a state in which he long maintained his home and
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to whose progress and prosperity he contributed in generous measure, it is most consistent that there be incorporated a brief tribute to his memory. A man of much ability, of broad mental grasp and of intrinsic nobility of character, he left a deep impress upon the history of his day and generation, and none manifested a higher sense of stew- ardship or greater civie loyalty and generosity. He contributed much to the social and material development and upbuilding of the city of Pine Bluff and the county of Jefferson and was one of the honored pioneers of this now opulent and favored section of the state.
Joseph Merrill was born in Rockingham county, New Hampshire, and the family was founded in New England in the colonial epoch of cur national history. He was the youngest son of William and Mary (Sweet) Merrill, both of whom continued to reside in the old Granite state until their death, the father having devoted the greater part of his active career to the great basic industry of agriculture. The early educational advantages of Joseph Merrill were confined to an irregular attendance in the common schools of the locality and period, and that he early initiated his association with the practical affairs of life is assured, as he was a lad of but eleven years at the time when he entered upon an apprenticeship to the trades of tanner and shoemaker. He continued his apprenticeship until he had attained to his legal majority, and in the meanwhile attended school when opportunity offered. After he had perfected himself in the work of his trades he secured employ- ment as a journeyman shoemaker in the city of Boston, where he was thus engaged for a period of five years, at the expiration of which he removed to the state of Ohio and located in the village of Sidney, Shelby county, where he conducted a shoe shop for himself about three years. He then wended his way southward and in December, 1835, he came to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he secured employment as clerk in a store. He continued to reside in that place, which was then a mere village, until 1847, when he accompanied his employer to Pine Bluff, which was then a straggling little hamlet, containing a few houses and one or two primitive mercantile establishments. In the following year he engaged in business upon his own responsibility, by opening a modest general store, and this he conducted until 1860. In the mean- while he had gained a strong hold upon popular confidence and esteem and had succeeded in building up a prosperous enterprise, the scope of which he expanded as circumstances and demands justified. In the year last mentioned Mr. Merrill disposed of this business, in connection with which he had served as postmaster of the village during the greater part of the time of his residence here. Like many others, he suffered the loss of property and marked financial reverses from the ravages of the Civil war, but he carefully conserved such interests as he could protect and when hostilities between the north and south eame to an end he had sufficient capital to enable him to add to the landed estate which he had previously seenred in Jefferson county. His judicious investments in real estate brought to him excellent returns, as the property greatly appreciated in value with the increasing of settlement and the rapid development of agricultural interests, so that he was the owner of a comparatively large estate at the time of his death.
An enduring monument to his memory is the Merrill Institute, which is located in the city of Pine Bluff and which is one of the fine educational institutions of the state. He gave the ground upon which the institute is located and there erected the present fine brick build- ing, which is three stories in height, and which provides a lecture hall
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or auditorium. a library, a gymnasium and commodious parlors, which are made available for the instruction and entertainment of the young people of the eity and also for others who wish to avail themselves of the advantages thus afforded. Mr. Merrill's benefaction in the found- ing of this splendid institution involved the expenditure of fully thirty thousand dollars, and no citizen of Pine Bluff has ever given more worthily or generously to the cause of education or to the forwarding of the best interests of the community. Mr. Merrill barely lived to see the completion of the fine institution which he had thus founded, and but a short time after its dedication his lifeless body lay in state in the hall of the Merrill Institute, through which his name and benevolence shall endure and his benefaction prove of ever increasing value to the community. It may be said with all of consistency that "his works do follow him." and none has been more deserving of popular confidence and honor. He lived to attain the age of four score years and was in the most significant sense a self-made man. He died in the year 1890.
Mr. Merrill married Miss Harding, eldest daughter of Dexter Hard- ing, a pioneer of Arkansas, having come hither from Kentucky, the state of his nativity. In polities Mr. Merrill was a Democrat.
EDGAR WILLIAMS. Blytheville is indeed fortunate in having as the ineminbent of that most important office, the superintendent of sehools, an educator of the high ideals of Professor Edgar Williams, under whose wise and progressive leadership the city schools have been carried toward the accomplishment of high purposes and to the realization of a high mission. His career as an educator in the state of Arkansas has been of only a few years duration, dating from the year 1905. The first three years of this period were passed in Mississippi county as principal of the schools of Osceola. and he was elected to take charge of the Blytheville schools in 1908.
Professor Williams was born in Texas county, Missouri, March 8. 1880, and was reared upon his father's farm near Turley and supple- mented such edneation as he secured in the public schools with attend- ance at the Mountain Grove high school. He finished school here at the age of seventeen and at the age of eighteen years taught his first session at "Long Valley," a country district near his birthplace. For several years he was a regular addition to the teaching force of his county and in 1904 he was elected president of the Watson Seminary at Ashley, Missouri. At that place he was elected principal of the schools of Osceola and began his professional career in Arkansas.
While engaged in country school work, Professor Williams also took advanced work in the summer sehools of the Missouri State Uni- versity, and he was for a time enrolled in the Missouri Normal School at Springfield, where he equipped himself for advanced work as a teacher and aseertained the most modern and enlightened methods in the management of graded schools. His interest in the subject of higher education is emphasized by his membership on the board of control of the State Reading Cirele and also in the State Teachers Association, of ' which he was first viee-president in 1909. He also served on the County Text Book Board by appointment of the state superintendent of public education.
Professor Williams represents a family founded in Texas county. Missouri, just after the Civil war by his father, John Williams, who was born at MeKeesport, Illinois, in 1837, and passed his life as a farmer. He married in Wright county. Missouri, Miss Armazinda Franees Wallace, who passed on to the "Undiscovered Country" in
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1903, the year previous to the death of her husband. The issue of their marriage was as follows: Walter, a ranchman, living near Stillwater, Oklahoma ; Alice, wife of J. R. G. Murphy, of Mahan, Missouri; Mabel, wife of T. R. Shacklette, of Mahan, Missouri; Frank, who is living at McKittrick, California; Martin, a teacher at Blytheville, Arkansas; Elizabeth, a teacher and the wife of E. S. Palmer, of Fulton, Missouri ; and Bertie Frances, a student in the high school at Houston, Missouri. Professor Williams established a happy home life when on August 25, 1901, he was united in marriage to Miss Ada Wallace, a daughter of Quincey and Celia (Hollenbeck) Wallace, both natives of Missouri. Mrs. Williams was educated in Mountain Grove Academy and in the Springfield Normal School and has been associated with her husband as a teacher during the years of their married life, and at present is principal of the Blytheville High School.
The Blytheville schools have grown steadily since Professor Will- iams became their captain, and the number of teachers has increased from seven to fourteen regularly employed, and its enrollment is fully seven hundred at the present time. The school standard has been raised until its graduates are now admitted without examination to the State University, this affiliation having been brought about in 1911.
HENRY KUPER, SR. A resident of Fort Smith, Sebastian county, for more than half a century, this venerable and honored citizen is now living virtually retired, and he merits consideration as one of the sterling pioneer business men of the city, as one of its loyal and public spirited citizens and as one of the gallant soldiers who upheld the honor of the state in the Confederate service during the civil war.
Mr. Kuper is a scion of a stanch old German family and was born in the province of Westphalia, Prussia, on the 8th of October. 1832. He gained his early education in the schools of his Fatherland and there also learned the tailor's trade. In 1854, soon after attaining to his legal majority, he severed the home ties and set forth to seek his fortunes in America. Soon after his arrival he secured employment at his trade in Waterloo, New York, where he maintained his home for five years and where his marriage was solemnized. Believing that better opportunities for gaining success and independence through individual effort were to be secured in the southwest. he set forth for Arkansas, a journey that in that day, 1859, was a somewhat formid- able undertaking, as means for transportation were most primitive as compared with those enjoyed at the present time. He voyaged down the Mississippi river to Napoleon, Arkansas, and from that point made his way up the Arkansas river to Fort Smith, which city was then little more than a frontier military post, though an important place in the state. Here he has maintained his home during the long intervening years, within which he has witnessed the upbuilding of a fine industrial and commercial city, and here, save for the period of the Civil war, he was continuonsly engaged in the work of his trade, eventually amplified into a successful merchant-tailoring business. until abont 1903, when he felt justified in retiring from active business, after many years of earnest toil and endeavor. He has ever retained the inviolable confidence and esteem of this community and as a citizen has ever stood ready to do his part in the furtherance of measures and enterprises projected for the general good. His character is of the most sterling order and his nature is kindly, sympathetic and cordial, so that it is found that his circle of friends has ever been co- incident with that of his acquaintances. For many years his place of
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business was in the building which he still owns, at 715 Garrison street, and he is also the owner of other valuable realty in the city, including his attractive residence property, at 1012 North C street. For several years prior to his retirement from active business his only son, Henry, Jr., was associated with him in the enterprise, under the firm name of Kuper & Son, and the business is still continued by the son, who is well upholding the prestige of the honored name which he bears. In politics Mr. Kuper is found arrayed as a stalwart supporter of the cause of the Democratic party, and he has served as a valued member of the city council, besides which he was incumbent of the office of justice of the peace for one term.
When the Civil war was precipitated upon a divided nation Mr. Kuper showed his loyalty to the South by tendering his services as a soldier of the Confederacy. He had been a member of that fine old military organization, the Fort Smith Rifles, of which he is now one of the few surviving members, and with this organization he was mustered into the Confederate service, the well trained command be- coming Company A of the Third Arkansas Regiment, which was as- signed to Cabell's brigade, in the Trans-Mississippi department. The first important engagement in which Mr. Kuper took part was the battle of Wilson's Creek, or Oak Ilill, on the 10th of August, 1861, and this will be recalled as one of the hard-fought and sanguinary conflicts of the early stages of the war. He lived up to the full ten- sion of arduous service, taking part in many engagements and con- tinning with his command until the close of the war. He then re- turned to his home in Fort Smith and again turned his attention to business affairs. Ilis interest in his old comrades in arms is indicated by his membership in the United States Confederate Veterans' Asso- ciation. He is a member of the Roman Catholic church, as was also his cherished and devoted wife, who was summoned to the life enternal after their companionship had extended over a period of more than half a century.
At Waterloo, New York, in the year 1855, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Kuper to Miss Gertrude Errant, and her death oc- curred at the family home in Fort Smith, in 1906, at which time she was sixty-seven years of age. She is survived by six children,- Henry, Jr., Mrs. Mary Limberg, Mrs. Teresa Guenzel, Mrs. Elizabeth Kas- berg, Mrs. Agnes Edelman and Mrs. Clara Hammer. Henry Kuper, Jr., has been one of the representative citizens and business men of Fort Smith for many years and his loyalty to the same has never wavered. He has served as a member of the city board of aldermen and as deputy county clerk, and he is at the present time a member of the board of public affairs and also assessor for the free bridge commission.
BENJAMIN F. MILES. A man of undoubted business ability and integrity, Benjamin F. Miles, of El Dorado, has served as its eity treasurer for the past twenty years, giving perfeet satisfaction to all concerned. Eminently fitted for the position, his early education hav- ing been better than that of many of the boys of his early days, he has won the respect of the entire community through the faithful dis- charge of his duties and the never-failing confidence of his fellow-men. A native of Louisiana, he was born March 25, 1858, near Trenton, but was brought up in Arkansas.
His father, Benjamin F. Miles, Sr., was born in Alabama in 1822. He subsequently lived in Louisiana until a few years preceding the
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Civil war, when he came to Union county, Arkansas. Loeating in El Dorado, he opened a mercantile establishment, continuing a business which he had previously followed for a time in Plattville, Alabama. He bought extensive tracts of land and owned many slaves, being one of the men of wealth in the community. In 1864 he moved to Russ county, Texas, where his death occurred the following year. Ile mar- ried, in Alabama, Sarah Tatum, whose death occurred in 1866, and they became the parents of nine children, namely: William F., of Dallas, Texas; Edmund, deceased; A. B., deeeased; Elizabeth, wife of Judge J. B. Moore, of Arkadelphia; O. A., of Bay City, Texas, who was for many years eireuit elerk of Union county, Arkansas; Benjamin F., the special subject of this brief personal review; W. J., of El Dorado; H. W., of Fort Worth, Texas; and Lydia, deceased. The father was a devout member of the Methodist church and Sunday- school superintendent therein for many years.
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