USA > Iowa > Washington County > History of Washington County, Iowa from the first white settlements to 1908. Also biographical sketches of some prominent citizens of the county, Vol. II > Part 54
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CYRUS BUSH.
Cyrus Bush was as hard-headed as a granite boulder and his head was packed full of common sense and sound judgment. He was born in Ohio, February 18, 1818, married Mary Miller, September 20, 1842, and had five children ; married Mary Watters, September 22, 1850, and nine children were born to them. On September 6, 1853, the family started for Iowa, got a farm of four hundred and seventy-one acres, and he farmed and kept store at Richmond. He served a few terms on board of supervisors. Every- where and always a sensible, honest man.
REV. JOHN O'LOUGHLIN.
Rev. John O'Loughlin became a Hoosier, April 2, 1821, and in March, 1839, went on his claim on English River, which he had made when with a surveying party the year before. In 1844 he found out what ailed him. Cupid had set at work in his system a lively germ and he married at Pilot
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Grove, near Pilotburg, Dicey Farley. They had eight children. He was converted when twenty-three years old and soon began to preach, much of it missionary preaching. His songs-I think composed by himself-were a feature at old settler annual meetings.
CAPTAIN J. F. BLICKENSDERFER.
Captain J. F. Blickensderfer was a noted man in Dutch Creek, settling there after the war. He was a Hawkeye, dating from July 11, 1835. In his youth he taught school. He was captain of Company A, One Hundred and Sixty-first Ohio, and at Winchester with Sheridan was under fire thirty-six hours and got five balls through his clothes, three of them through his hat. It was a very well ventilated suit. That regiment was discharged in 1864, and he commanded Company C of the One Hundred and Eighty-ninth Ohio, March 4, 1865. Coming to a farm here, he raised Percheron horses and Poland China hogs. In religion he was a Moravian, and a Mason and re- publican. He was thrice married and had nine children.
DR. W. F. RODMAN.
Dr. W. F. Rodman was born in Pennsylvania, March 20, 1817, and when a year old went with his parents to Ohio, and at the age of twelve matricu- lated at Kenyon College, graduated in medicine in Cincinnati, in 1838, and practiced in Ohio till he came here in 1856. In 1839 he had married Edith Cadwallader, a sister of an old bachelor that all affectionately called "Old Cad," in business, in society, and at the dances that he graced in expansive white low cut vest and ample shining shirt bosom. Everson was tickled all his days telling how he, for fun, once criticised Cad's steps when he said with great dignity, "I am dancing this set myself, be --. " The Doctor had three sons, but only George survives. The old Doctor was a very quaint man, liked by all, skillful in his profession, and at his funeral his fellow Doctors acted as pallbearers. The family life was ideal.
ROBERT W. MCELROY.
Robert W. McElroy was notable as having, as an elective constable, more lives than a back yard full of cats. For twenty-seven years he served, and no one could beat him, because the most of the people never wanted him beaten. Then he was our first city marshal, acting seven years ; was coroner four years ; and while Sheriff Hawthorne was in the army, McElroy was sheriff, ex officio. Besides, he was Tyler of the blue lodge many, many
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years, and helped organize Washington Lodge, No. 26, A. F. & A. M., and was its first senior warden and its second worshipful master. At the start there were but seven Masons in this county, but church opposition made the order breed like rabbits. At first he was a tailor by trade and sat cross legged in the courthouse with shoemaker J. C. Conger, but Mac was no Turk. On August 2, 1887, he and his good wife, who was a mother in Israel, cele- brated their golden wedding, and were sort o' gold-plated and gold-washed by their friends. His wife was Matilda Reed, and they had seven children. He was also a patriarch of the first division of the Sons of Temperance.
HENRY MORGAN.
At the time of his death, which occurred May 5, 1904, Henry Morgan was one of the oldest residents of Washington county, not only in the years which his life record covered, but also in the years of his connection with this part of the state. He came here in pioneer times and for an extended period was closely associated with agricultural interests and with the work of general progress and improvement. During the evening of his life he was not only regarded as one of the most venerable but also as one of the most highly respected citizens of his locality. He was born on a farm in Tennessee on the 9th of April, 1818, and in 1832, when a youth of fourteen years, he accompanied his parents on their removal to Indiana, where many evidences of frontier life were still to be seen. There he was reared and educated, attending the common schools of that state and in 1846, when twenty-eight years of age, he came to Iowa, thinking to have better business opportunities in this later settled but rapidly growing state.
In the meantime, however, a most important even in his life had occurred -his marriage on the 13th of May, 1840, to Miss Dicey H. Barnett, who was born in Ohio on he 13th of January. 1823, and when but two years old was taken by her parents to Huntsville, Indiana. Mr. Morgan was a mem- ber of the Quaker church until the time of his marriage but his wife was not identified with that sect and for marrying outside of the church he was expelled from that communion. He withdrew gracefully, however, and for sixty-five years he and the lady for whom he had sacrificed his church con- nections but not his Christianity, shared together the joys and sorrows of life.
After their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Morgan resided for six years in Indiana, where he was employed most of the time in a flourmill. As a young man he was very strong, often carrying a three hundred pound sack of wheat to the second floor of the mill. He was also active and influential in com- munity affairs and in 1845, the year before the removal to Iowa, he was a candidate for state senator on the abolition ticket but at that time the party was weak and he therefore failed of election. The following year, packing all of his goods that he could into a spring wagon driven by two horses, he and his wife started for Iowa. When near Indianapolis one of the horses
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HENRY MORGAN
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MRS. HENRY MORGAN
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
died and as Mr. Morgan was not able to buy another he was obliged to remain in that locality until he could earn money enough to make the pur- chase. After many difficulties he reached his destination and settled a half mile south of Richland, where he lived for two years and then purchased the farm on which his remaining days were passed. In 1848 he paid two: hundred dollars for the first forty acres and later bought the unimproved forty acres for fifty dollars. On the farm he built a log cabin with an old- fashioned sod chimney, his wife cutting and handling the sod as he worked. They suffered all the privations incident to those pioneer days and shared in all of the hardships of frontier life. Mrs. Morgan, with a spinning-wheel, loom and reel, made all of the clothes for the whole family and, being a natural hunter and trapper, Mr. Morgan furnished plenty of wild meat from the timber.
Upon the farm which he there developed he and his wife lived for almost sixty years and reared a family of nine children : William H., who was born in 1842 and became a soldier of Company I of the Eighteenth Iowa Infantry, commanded by Captain Blanchard, and died in Jefferson City during the Civil war ; Isaac Newton, who was born in 1844; Hezekiah Thomas, in 1847; Emily Jane, in 1849; Mary Louisa, in 1852; Harriet Evangeline, in 1855 ; Albert James, in 1858; Oliver Perry, in 1861 ; and William Henry, in 1866. Of these Emily Jane and Oliver Perry are both now deceased.
The death of the husband and father occurred May 5, 1904, when he was eighty-seven years of age. He has been a most honored and respected citizen of this part of the state. He was justice of the peace in Clay town- ship for many years and before the war he maintained one of the stations on the famous underground railway, making trips in the night to convey to the home of Uncle Johnny Kilgore the negroes whom he had himself sheltered. He had as many as ten colored people living on his farm at one time. When the republican party was formed to prevent the further ex- tension of slavery, he joined its ranks and continued to support it through- out his remaining days. During his later years his son Albert and his wife lived with the aged parents on the old home place, doing everything in their power to make their last days comfortable and happy. The family has for sixty years been represented in this county, being one of the oldest here and also one of the prominent families of this part of the state because of the! active and helpful interest they have taken in public affairs.
JOEL R. CRUMPACKER.
Joel R. Crumpacker saw the light in Virginia, July 6, 1825, went to Texas in 1848, located in Eldora, Iowa, was elected county surveyor and dealt in real estate, and married Catherine Bennett. In 1856 they moved to Illinois, and in 1863 came to this county and bought a quarter section. His orchards were for years the common talk of admirers. His greatest feat was organ- izing The Farmers' Mutual Insurance Company, of which he was president
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twelve years. He had two children, Charles B. and Mrs. Mary Eystone. His wife was so desperately injured in a runaway in our fair that she died twenty days later.
ROBERT W. GRIFFITH.
Robert W. Griffith, a native of Delaware, came to Clay township in 1848, his birth date being September 22, 1804. His Quaker ancestors came from England with William Penn in 1680. In youth he was as strong as Samson, hired out on a farm at eight dollars a month for a year, the next year struck for nine dollars, and the third and fourth years got ten dollars. He saved nearly all his wages and felt justified in marrying, December 27, 1832, Eleanor Long. In 1834 he bought and improved a wilderness two hundred acre farm in Ohio, and stayed till 1846. To his original two hundred acre farm in Clay he added up to two thousand and twenty acres. Thirteen chil- dren came to him, and as each left home, he gave, in all nine hundred acres. The log cabin gave way to a fine two story house, and for years his barn was a wonder, its capacity thirty-six horses, one hundred cattle, two hundred tons of hay, costing five thousand dollars. Near by is a famous spring, whose water is furnished by pressure for both house and barn. He was a capital farmer, and his emphatic and picturesque language and epigrams amused the community.
LENOX DAYTON.
This name was a familiar one in this county for many years. Born in Maryland, November 12, 1812, at the age of twelve years he became the support of the fatherless family. He married in 1835 Annie Coleman, who bore him six children. They came here in 1840 and entered three hundred and twenty acres in Cedar township, Indians thick all round them. He belonged to the New Light church and wife to the Baptist. His two sons, Thomas and Patrick, figured in the history of the county.
JOHN S. MAPEL.
Millers were to the fore in the pioneer days. John S. Mapel was born in Pennsylvania, August 22, 1810, the son of a Methodist minister who preached over fifty years and raised fourteen children. The father dispensed the bread of life, but John was content just to make flour to turn into the staff of life. After milling there several years he came spying out here in 1845, paid six dollars per acre for one hundred and twenty acres, and the next
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year brought the family to lodge in a log cabin so low that John could not stand upright in it. Indians and wolves were all round, but a fort just west of Wassonville protected them. He acquired in all four hundred acres and lived on the farm eighteen years. He ran the Hewett mill, dating from 1842, and it is still doing good work. He had married Mary Smith, June 4, 1834, and they had six children. He brought the first reaper into this county. He was a Mason over forty-six years. He and his wife celebrated their golden wedding in 1884, and a gold headed cane was his reward for staying married fifty years.
DR. O. H. PRIZER.
Dr. O. H. Prizer was a notable citizen of Brighton, born in Pennsyl- vania, January 16, 1814. Locating in this county in 1844, he fumbled wrists, looked at tongues and gave pills and powders many years. June 27, 1843, he married Eliza Griffith and they had nine children. He was a stalwart repub- lican, and in 1854 ran for the legislature, but was beaten by three or four votes. In 1862-3 he was county supervisor, then postmaster in Brighton four years and was always interested in education. Few men were more useful than he. His bearing was military and his aspect somewhat stern, but under the crust rills of humanity ran merrily all the years.
JOHN STEWART.
John Stewart, of Jackson township, was born on the Catawba Indian reservation in South Carolina, July 2, 1809, and was one of thirteen children, but he was not the unlucky one, for he was a money maker. He wedded Matilda Mccullough in 1824. She had been born at sea. They had ten children, all hustlers and not one a quitter, only one of whom was born in this county after their settlement in 1857. In 1865 he married Emma Fer- guson and she bore eight children. In the south Mr. Stewart was naturally a democrat and voted for General Jackson, but up here his political views changed to republican. He was a first class citizen.
CAPTAIN SIDNEY E. WOODFORD.
He is a large figure in Brighton, coming there from Ohio in 1850. On March 14, 1854, he married one of the bright girls of Squire Anson Moore, a very superior family. He went to the war as captain of Company K, Thir- teenth Iowa Infantry. A sunstroke at Corinth, Mississippi, compelled his resignation. He was a strong member of the board of supervisors and
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superintended the building of the county infirmary. He belongs to the Con- gregational church, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and the Grand Army of the Republic. The county has no better citizen than Captain Wood- ford.
HIRAM WALLINGFORD.
He came to this county from Kentucky in 1849 and served one term as sheriff, and during the war in Company I, Eighteenth Iowa Infantry. He owned eighty acres in Jackson township. He came there from Kentucky in 1849. He died at the age of sixty-nine years in the Presbyterian faith. He regretted to say he "Wasted the best part of his life," but when converted he strove to honor and serve his Master. His six children are all living.
CAPTAIN SAMUEL A. RUSSELL.
He was born in Baltimore, November 21, 1816, his father a rich mer- chant, dying in the cholera epidemic in 1833. Three years later Samuel moved to Ohio, attending college at New Athens and studying law in the office of Dewey and Stanton, the latter destined to be Lincoln's secretary of war. He married Mary Ann Crawford, and Crawfordsville was named in honor of her father, the Doctor. Samuel came here in 1850, went to the legislature in 1853 and was an elector-at-large on the Fremont-Dayton ticket in 1856. In 1862 he was elected Captain of Company I, Twenty-fifth Iowa Infantry, but bad eyesight prompted his resignation within a year. He went again to the legislature and in 1872 was elector on the Grant-Wilson ticket. He was a remarkable stump speaker and a great wit. Had he not been handicapped by semi-blindness, and had he been endowed with ambi- tion, that last infirmity of noble winds, and had had vim, gumption and initiative, he would have made a signal mark in the world. As it is, he is in local fame the greatest wit and humorist that ever lived in this county, and the memory of this odd, quaint character will last longer than that of any other man.
JOHN BRYSON.
John Bryson was another cabinetmaker, apprenticed at ten years of age. He one of thirteen children, but he wasn't the unlucky one. He set his stakes to become a millionaire, or "milliner," as he called it, and I guess he won out. He had strings of lumberyards that looked on the map like links of sausage. He came here in 1856 with fifteen hundred dollars' capital, and
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lost seven hundred dollars the first year, but when his magic thumb got into action, he made money fast. He built the Colensor Hotel, then called the Bryson House, and all thought it fine. It took the place of the old Wash- ington House, which had been previously called the Eichelberger House, and was run by the father of Frank Eichelberger, who became a notorious Iowa editor, and his brother, who was a prominent judge. Finally Mr. Bryson moved to Los Angeles, and if he had had his nerve with him and gone into real estate, he could have died, in 1907, a "milliner" fiftyfold.
J. L. L. TERRY.
He was a man of mark in the early days. A giant in form, big-brained, full of fun and ginger, he attracted attention as surveyor, as justice of the peace, as harness maker and as an all around good citizen. His grandfather Stephen was a Revolutionary soldier. Our man was a Virginian, born in 1790, but came here by the way of Kentucky and Illinois in 1837, with Gen- eral Ewing's surveying party, and their stunts were townships 74 and 75, north of range I to 7 west, a part of which is comprised in Washington county. He also got sight of Miss Sarah J. Mount and married her in Washington, Illinois, in 1839 and came to this county in 1844. The office of justice of the peace haunted him all his life. His cabin in English River was sixteen feet square, just one room in it, and no bric-a-brac. He sold his claim and moved to Washington to give his sons, J. H., Dr. M. C., of Brighton, Josie (Mrs. Dr. McConnaughey), William M., a schooling chance. J. H. Terry was killed in battle. The Squire helped organize the first division of the Sons of Temperance in this county and assisted in the first grand lodge of Good Templars in the state, joined the Masons in 1851, was master at Richmond four years and went to the Royal Arch degree. He was a very merry man, yet he would "take no sass" from any man, being a mus- cular Christian and belonging to the Church Militant.
JOHN GRAHAM.
He was born in 180+, in Pennsylvania. In 1838 he came to the land sales in Burlington, and the next year he bought of Holcomb in Brighton township four hundred acres, and kept on buying to the limit of fifteen thou- sand acres, and selling off to the minimum of two thousand acres. He was a wool grower in Pennsylvania, and was a horseback shuttle, shooting from Pennsylvania to Iowa and back, and on those journeys he struck a friend's bed and board every night, and said grace at supper and breakfast, and the Amen was swiftly chased with the command, "Pass the biscuits," or "Pass the slapjacks." He was a very eccentric man and amusing. He achieved a wife in 1874, at the age of sixty-eight. He was a humorous man, florid-
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faced and handsome, and his "winnin' ways," as Jim Lemley used to remark in his own case, as the fetchey factor in winning the ladies, scored a great triumph. His bride, Belle Davis, was a beauty, and the old man was buoyant and kept getting more airy as his boys John, William Henry and Sammy Hodgins were born. The family is now extinct. Papa and Sammy were killed by a train. John was in such a hurry to cross the track, he got all eternity to regret it in. He was a generous giver to church, academy, opera house, and our two opera houses were named for him.
Dr. ABRAM N. MILLER.
He was a quaint man, in thought, speculation, belief and dress. He was a Virginian, coming here in 1847. By trade a cabinetmaker, like Keck and A. H. Wallace, but he drifted into medical practice, via the hydropathic. and magnetic routes. His head was packed full of ideas. He was a Spiritualist. He was thirty when he married Mrs. Weltner, by whom he had four chil- dren. He liked the homely, simple old times, and always talked well at the Old Settler annual meetings. He could not write poetry like Father Drake, or sing like Rev. John O'Loughlin, but he was entertaining. Withal he had lots of humor, and his friend Henry Clay Dean tickled him all to pieces. Miller affected white vests and ample shirt fronts well laundered, and when Dean's quaint wit and humor started the Doctor's diaphragm, he looked like a massive penguin as pictured in the old geographies, sitting on the edge of a cliff in white breast plumage. Dr. Burrughs could also caricature the good Doctor to the life.
JAMES HENRY YOUNG.
James Henry Young, ex-president of The Washington County Savings Bank, was born May 9, 1841, in Fleming county, Kentucky. His father, James Harvey Young, and his mother, Margaret Morrison (Henry) Young, were also natives of the state of Kentucky. They came with their family of six children to Washington county, Iowa, in 1849, where the father died in 1851, the mother surviving until 1884. James Harvey Young was a man of considerable ability with such common school education as the times afforded, and with moderate means in a financial way. He brought with him from Kentucky a number of land warrants, which he laid with good judg- ment on land in Washington county, among others the north half of section 22, Franklin township, one hundred and sixty acres of which remained in the family and was owned and improved by the subject of this sketch until the year 1878. James Harvey Young was an elder in the Associate Re- formed (now United Presbyterian) church, both the father and mother and all the children who lived to maturity being members of the same church.
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HISTORY OF WASHINGTON COUNTY
James Henry Young was eight years of age when he came to this county, and here he continued to reside for fifty-three years until 1902, when with his wife he removed to Pasadena, California, which is their present home. He was educated in the public schools in Washington, supplemented by a partial course in Washington College, where he attained the junior year. His early life was spent on a farm adjoining Washington on the northwest, a part of which he laid off in lots and sold and is now known as M. M. Young's first and second additions and J. H. Young's addition to the city of Washington.
His education was interrupted by the outbreak of the Civil war, when he left college and enlisted as a private in Company C, Nineteenth Iowa Volun- teer Infantry and served until the close of the war, being mustered out of the service July 10, 1865, at Mobile, Alabama. He was finally paid off and discharged August 1, 1865, at Davenport, Iowa, and returned to his home on the farm in Washington county.
On the 21st of November, 1867, Mr. Young was united in marriage with Lizzie N. Laughead, a native of Indiana and only daughter of the Rev. I. N. Laughead. He remained on the farm for a few years and then engaged in the coal, wood and grain business, in which he continued until the year 1876, when he organized the Washington County Savings Bank, in which he acted as cashier and president until his removal in 1902 to California.
JOHN DAVIDSON.
He came in 184% withod a dollar, but first and last he chased the Al- mighty Dollar so swi. tly, he accumulated two thousand acres, became rich, loaned money, and kept all his multifarious affairs in his head. The re- markable thing about him was that he did not acquire even an elementary education, he was so ambitious in other ways. He could not read or write, it is said, and kept no accounts, having no secretary or clerk, but his mem- ory had a grip like a steel bear trap, and he had a pigeon-hole in his brain for every business detail. The lines of his face and head were fine and noble. He quite strongly resembled old John Brown. An excellent man, he mar- ried in 1838 and gave to the census ten children.
J. F. R. LEONARD.
This Oregon township citizen is the only man, I believe, unless it be Editor C. C. Heacock, of the Brighton Enterprise, who was ever nominated for the presidency of the United States. He was born in 1832, helped make Bloody Kansas free Kansas, serving under General Jim Lane, and was chummy with John Brown and sons. He taught school there and was county superintendent of schools in Chase county, Kansas. He served in
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the ninety-third Illinois Infantry, came to this county after the war, and in 1870 married Margaret A. Sands and they have five children. His monu- ment is his farm that he coined out of the raw. He is a Mason, a student, and a good all around man.
E. NICOLA.
A history of Washington county would be incomplete without mention of E. Nicola who, although now living retired in Riverside, was for a number of years closely identified with various business interests in the county. Born in Preston county, West Virginia, on the 15th of February, 1840, he is a son of Jacob and Sarah (Cress) Nicola. The parents were both natives of West Virginia, where they were reared and married, coming to Washington county, Iowa, in 1855. They purchased land in Cedar township, upon which they resided until their demise, the mother passing away in 1871, while the father survived until 1875. In their family were eleven children, namely: John C., residing in Minnesota ; Katharine, the widow of Otir James, mak- ing her home at Delta, Iowa; Henry, a minister residing in Battle Creek, Michigan ; Zelmon, of Nebraska; Marsellus, making his home in Louisa county, Iowa : E. Nicola, of this review ; Lucinda, decease1; Collin, residing in Washington, Iowa; Amaziah, deceased; B. W., of Norfolk, Nebraska ; and one who died in infancy.
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