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 57
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A man of resourceful ability, marked enterprise and notable in initiative spirit. H. G. McMillan has extended his efforts to still other fields of labor. On his removal to Cedar Rapids, in 1898, in company with Cyremis Cole, who had been the principal editorial writer of the Des Moines Register, he purchased the Cedar Rapids Republican, a morning caily, also an extensive printing plant, which they operated in connection with the publication of the paper. Later they established the Evening Times. In 1905 Mr. McMillan purchased the controlling interest in the Farmers Tribune, a weekly paper, and two years later sold his interest in the Cedar Rapids paper. Later he became the sole owner of the Farmers Tribune and incorporated the business with a capital stock of one hundred thousand dollars. At that time he asso- ciated with him his eldest son and has since continued the publication of the paper, the father remaining as managing editor with general charge of the business. The Tribune has a circulation of fifty thousand and is now re- garded as one of the leading papers of the class that is published in this country. His personal interest in farming and stock raising enables him to understand the demands and needs of the public for a publication of this character and his time and energies are now devoted to his journalistic in- terests and to the management and control of his extensive farming and live- stock interests, for since his retirement from the position of United States attorney he has not engaged actively in the profession of law. He holds no official position at the present time save that of president of the Percheron Society of America, in which capacity he has served since the organization of the society seven years ago. This association is composed of over two
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thousand members of the leading horse breeders and importers of the United States and is the strongest and most powerful organization of its kind in the world.
The life record of Mr. McMillan is a notable example of what may be accomplished by a man of energy under the pressure of adversity and the stimulus of necessity. Constantly watchful of his opportunities, which he has utilized to the best advantage, he has made steady progress in his business career. He has been extremely prosperous, succeeding beyond his expec- tations in a financial way, but a careful analyzation of his life record shows that his prosperity has been won through determined, honorable and per- sistent effort. His long and extensive experience in farming and the breed- ing of pure-bred stock has made him regarded throughout the United States as an authority on those subjects, and during recent years especially he has had frequent cause to address state breeders' meetings, farmers' institutes and other like organizations. By special request he prepared an article on draft horse breeding in the United States, published in the Breeders' Gazette in Chicago, which article was given a prominent place along with articles on various subjects written by such distinguished men as Secretary Wilson, position in the field of labor to which he is now directing his energies. Any James J. Hill, J. Ogden Armour and others. He has attained a foremost one meeting Mr. McMillan would know at once that he is an individual em- bodying all the elements of what in this country we term a square man-one in whom to have confidence ; a dependable man in any relation and any emerg- ency. His quietude of deportment, his easy dignity, his frankness and cor- diality of address, with the total absence of anything sinister or anything to conceal, foretoken a man who is ready to meet any obligation of life with the confidence and courage that come of conscious personal ability, right concep- tion of things, and an habitual regard for what is best in the exercise of human activities.
DANIEL WOOD LEWIS.
The name of Daniel Wood Lewis is inseparably interwoven with the history of educational progress in Washington and it is therefore imperative that extended mention be made of him in this volume else the record would be considered incomplete by the many friends whom he has in this section of the state. Deeply interested in the profession to which he has largely devoted his life, his work in this connection has been of immeasurable value to the county, for he has held to high ideals in all of his professional service. He is now living in Pasadena, California, but in Washington county his circle of friends is almost as extensive as the circle of his acquaintances.
Professor Lewis was born near Fredericktown, Knox county, Ohio, on the 20th of October, 1835. His father, Griffith Lewis, was a native of western Pennsylvania, born March 12, 1808. The paternal grandfather was of Welsh and English descent, a man of good intellect and of sound judgment who was opposed to slavery and to war and in favor of education and temper-
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ance. His business interests were represented in farming and tanning. His son, Griffith Lewis, was but an infant at the time of the removal of the family to Knox county, Ohio, where he was reared. He became a farmer, lime burner and nurseryman and in following those pursuits made a good living for his family. He was married May 1, 1834, to Miss Anna Wood and unto them were born six children. His wife was of English and Dutch descent, her father being a successful farmer and a leader in his neighborhood. He was always on the right side of any moral question and was an able orthodox Quaker preacher. Five of his children became preachers and two others were exhorters. Both the grandmothers of Professor Lewis were women of ability and integrity, so that he has back of him a most honored ancestry. His father was a stanch opponent of the system of slavery and a stalwart advocate of the cause of temperance and in both regards the mother was a helpmate to him.
Daniel Wood Lewis attended the Friends and other private schools and also the country and village public schools in Ohio and Iowa. For several months he was a student in the high school at Tipton, Iowa, and also in Oberlin College, but did not graduate at either. He greatly broadened his knowledge by reading at home, by attending literary societies, listening to lectures and political speeches and also attending teachers' institutes and associations. He likewise pursued a four years' Chautauqua course, gradu- ating in 1897, and then after a year of rest took the Chautauqua three years' course in English literature and history. He is likewise a graduate of the Eastman Business College, of Poughkeepsie, New York. He was only two years old when the family removed to Woodbury, in what is now Morrow county, Ohio, where his father conducted a hotel, and in 1840 a removal was made to North Lewisburg, Champaign county, Ohio, where they lived for thirteen years. In 1853 the father, mother and six children made their way westward to Cedar county, Iowa, and about ten years later the father sold his eighty acres and removed to Story county, Iowa, settling three miles from the State Agricultural College. Professor Lewis, however, did not go there to live but on the first Monday in January, 1865, began his career in the city schools as principal of the third ward grammar school, at Muscatine, Iowa. Through his childhood days he was in ill health and in fact has never been physically strong. He was fond of play and especially delighted in swimming and skating and although he did not like hard work a considerable share of it in connection with the farm fell to his lot. However, he found pleasure in plowing and in driving a team hitched to wagon, sled or carriage. His passion, however was for reading and his mother often said that when he was interested in a book he would not notice even a thunder storm. He would ride the old family horse, Betty, or a colt, to attend a temperance or an anti-slavery lecture, or if he could not ride would walk. He also found pleasure in visiting the home of his relatives, especially the homes of his young cousins, and he was never addicted to gambling, drinking or smoking, a single cigar finishing any attempt to acquire the last named habit. Truth, too, was upon his lips and thus he grew to manhood, strong in those traits of character which in every community awaken confidence and regard.
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As stated, Professor Lewis did not remove with the family to Story county, Iowa, but accepted instead the principalship of the third ward gram- mar school at Muscatine, and in the fall of 1868 became superintendent and principal of the high school in Washington, Iowa. His high school assistant in the first year was Mary Jane Hamilton, who had been recommended to him as "the best woman teacher in Iowa." During the succeeding two years Mr. Lewis had no assistant and Miss Hamilton taught the highest class of the grammar grade. In the ensuing vacation Mr. Lewis and Miss Hamilton were married and soon afterward went to Nebraska to teach the Winnebago Indians. Being again elected to their former positions, they returned and took up the work again, Mrs. Hamilton teaching eight years after their re- turn, or fifteen years in all, while Professor Lewis remained as superin- tendent, et cetera, for twenty-one years longer, or twenty-four years in all, at the end of which time the family removed to Pasadena.
At the time of the Civil war Professor Lewis enlisted in the Thirty-fifth Iowa Infantry but was excused. He remained, however, a loyal advocate of the Union cause throughout the period of hostilities between the north and south. Devoting thirty-seven years of his life to teaching school he would never consent to become a candidate for office during that time. In 1901, however, following his removal to California, he was elected a member of the board of education at Pasadena. He drew a short term and in 1903 was elected for a full term of four years. This service was to him a labor of love and one which he greatly enjoyed, but the demands of his private business interests were such as to prevent him giving to the school work the time and attention required and he voluntarily retired from the board. In 1893 he declined a reelection as supervising principal of the city schools of Wash- ington, Iowa, and also resigned the following positions : secretary of the school board on which he had served for eighteen years ; treasurer of the Iowa state teachers association, after twenty-four years service ; trustee of the city public library, having served from its founding ; and president of the Washington County Bible Society, which made him a life director of the American Bible Society. After the departure of Professor Lewis and his family for the Pacific coast graduates of the Washington school, teachers and friends, met in a very interesting reunion, and in 1900, when the family re- turned to Washington for a visit, another reunion was held in his honor, on which occasion three hundred and fifty graduates were present.
In both Muscatine and in Washington Professor Lewis was a Good Templar and was also a member of the Iowa Legion of Honor in Washing- ton, but is not identified with any secret societies at the present time. In politics he has been an abolitionist and free soiler, a free democrat and a republican. When he was young he read and listened and later talked and wrote upon political questions. After he became a voter he made many political speeches and while teaching would frequently speak at school houses and public halls on Friday or Saturday evenings, advocating protective tariff and other prominent issues of the party. In 1896 he took an active part in opposition to the free coinage of silver, not waiting for the action of the national convention upon that question. He is a prohibitionist in principle,
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but does not vote with the prohibition party, believing that every citizen should have an opportunity to vote his principles on the temperance question without having his other political principles involved therein. He was reared a strict Friend, or Quaker. His parents inherited and believed the principles and doctrines of the Society of Friends and taught them diligently to their chil- dren. For many years Professor Lewis affiliated with the Methodist church, but is now a member of the First Friends church, in Pasadena, in which he is serving as an elder and Sunday school teacher. He is a man of broad views, unbiased by a narrow sectarianism, and rejoices at the increasing friendly feeling among members of the Christian churches.
The home life of Professor Lewis has been largely of an ideal character. His marriage to Miss Mary Jane Hamilton was celebrated at her family home, two and a half miles from Washington, Iowa, July 26, 1871. Her parents were Scotch-Irish Presbyterians from Virginia. The family, in- cluding two sons and two daughters, removed from Menard county, Illinois. to Louisa county, Iowa, in the fall of 1853 and to Washington the following spring. The father and mother died only a few weeks apart in 1881. John C. Hamilton, the eldest son, now lives in Pasadena, California, his son, Arthur L .. Hamilton, being superintendent of the city schools there, while his daughter, Kate Hamilton, is a teacher. The husband of another sister, Myrtle Owen, is a professor in the Pasadena high school. Mrs. Mary H. Lewis and her sister, Sarah M. Hamilton, were graduates of the normal department of the Iowa State University. Sarah and her brother, William R. Hamilton, stil! live in Washington, Iowa. John C. Hamilton's second daughter, Sarah E., is a bookkeeper in a wholesale house in Los Angeles. The second son. Fred Hamilton, died a few years ago in Arkansas. The third son, William Bur- rell Hamilton, is in Pasadena. Besides teaching in Washington and Win- nebago, Iowa, Mrs. Lewis taught several terms in country schools and a year in low a City. She also taught a young ladies' class in Sunday school and for several years was an instructor in the Washington County Teachers Institute, her teaching at all times being very satisfactory. In Pasadena, after being a member for one year of the Washington Heights Club, she was elected vice president and served for about half a year as president. She was then elected president and reelected the next year. Her last paper and address in 1907 were on the subject of peace and she handled the question so instructively and entertainingly that she was requested in 1908 to prepare another paper on the progress of peace. This was praised by every person who heard it. After her retirement from the presidency of the club Mrs. Lewis was made a member of the new program committee-an arduous service well performed. On the evening of December 5. 1908. she was ap- parently as well as usual but about seven o'clock on Sunday morning was attacked with angina pectoris. While medical help was immediately summoned. at eight o'clock she had breathed her last. Her remains were in- terred in Mountain View cemetery. The only child of that marriage, Miss Pauline Lewis, is acting as her father's housekeeper. She was born in Washington, Iowa. August 13, 1880, carred school in due time. passed through consecutive grades and was in the eighth grade work at the time of
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the removal to Pasadena. Here she rested for a time and in 1894 reentered school, being graduated from the high school in 1900. She has studied piano in both Washington and Pasadena and has been a member of the Sym- phony Club and the Ensemble Class. She has taken part in dramatic and musical entertainments with good success and is now a teacher of the piano in a young ladies classical school, but most of her thirty pupils in the winter of 1908-09 were private ones. She joined the Washington Heights Club before her mother became a member and is still an honorary member thereof. She is also an active member of the Shakespeare Club of five hundred mem- bers and is on the program committee. She belongs to the Presbyterian church and to the Young Woman's Christian Association, acting as pianist of the latter.
Professor Lewis while in California attended many teachers associations, taught in many teachers institutes and for several years in succession was conductor in the Washington County Normal Institute. Following his re- moval to Pasadena he took care of his fruit farm for several years. In Jan- uary, 1897, he was elected a director of the North Pasadena Land & Water Company and in April of the same year was chosen its secretary to fill a vacancy, beginning his work on the Ist of May. He voluntarily retired from the directorship at the end of ten years, but is still acting as secretary, although he is now nearly seventy-four years of age. He has disposed of his ranch and its equipments and makes his home in Pasadena. His has been an active life and one of great usefulness, winning him the honor, confidence and respect of all who know him.
JUDGE J. R. LEWIS.
Joseph R. Lewis was a noted man here in the late '50s and early 'Gos. He was a strong lawyer and a man of courage and incorruptible honesty ; the people had implicit faith in him, and he was entrusted with several very im- portant county commissions. In social and religious life, too, he was a notable character. He was for several years superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal Sunday school and started its library. His activities ranged over divers fields. He was appointed federal judge in Idaho, I believe, and was transferred to the federal bench in Washington Territory. The sharp fel- lows out there interested in timbe: and mining claims, could not budge, bribe or intimidate him, so they resolved to get rid of him. They forged his resignation and sent it in to the department of justice and it was accepted and his successor appointed, before he knew a thing about it. It perhaps bored him for awhile : I have even suspected that he swore about it above his breath ; but it was a blessing in disguise. He turned to business and became a very rich man. He was an exceptional financier and owned opera houses in Seattle and other real estate, but the wet winters gave him rheumatism and he went to San Jose, California. and accumulated fruit ranches galore and bank stock, but earthquakes terrified him, and a two weeks' visit in Los
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Angeles with his wife sent them into raptures, and three or four years ago they moved there, and he is leading a life of well earned leisure in a beautiful home. The old Pressman remembers vividly a two days' visit in his Seattle home and a call at his Los Angeles home three years ago.
His "cute," sly marriage in Mrs. Dr. Chilcote's home, now the city library, to Mrs. Dr. J. R. Richards, tickled everybody in Washington when they learned of the climax, the courtship and denouement were conducted so diplo- matically. The result was especially pleasing to the Hon. C. H. Wilson. Ask him about it.
We rate Judge Lewis one of the great men of Washington county. It may be of interest to state that he once lived in the small house, minus the east addition, just across the road from the old Keck residence, which is now a sanitarium.
GENERAL HIRAM SCOFIELD.
The Scofield family comes of good old Revolutionary stock, the grand- father of our sketch, Neazer Scofield, having served in the Revolutionary war and for many years his services were recognized by the government with a substantial pension. Neazer Scofield lived in Connecticut as did also his wife, Patience ; and their son William was born in Stamford in 1793. In 1800 the family moved to Saratoga county, New York, where the grand- father and grandmother died at a very advanced age. William Scofield married Susan Bishop and they had three sons and two daughters: Hiram, Eunice B., Darius, William and Rhoda E. (Mills). William Scofield was strongly anti-slavery and his house was a station on the underground rail- road. In politics he became a republican upon the organization of that party, and in religion he and his wife were both members of the Presbyterian church. He died in 1873, and she in 1862.
Hiram Scofield, the eldest of the children, was reared on the farm and his early education was received in the common schools of Saratoga county and an academy. It was General Scofield's good fortune to have attended Union College. Schenectady, at the time good old Dr. Nott was president of it. Upon leaving school in 1853, he removed to Little Rock, Arkansas, where he taught school and read law. He then attended the Albany law school, gradti- ating in 1856. Shortly thereafter, he came to Washington county, forming a partnership with Antis H. Patterson, where he continued in the practice until 1861. He was one of the first to respond to the call of Abraham Lincoln, but for some reason, did not get into the only regiment accepted from Iowa under that call. Under the second call, he became a member of Company H. Second Iowa Volunteer Infantry, which was the first regiment to leave the state. He was mustered into the service May 22, 1861. He enlisted as a private, but was soon promoted to second and then to first lieutenant and at Fort Donelson commanded his company. The capture of Fort Donelson by Colonel Tuttle's regiment, the Second Iowa was one of the most brilliant
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charges of the war of the Rebellion and Lieutenant Scofield and Company H did their full part. Immediately upon entering the fort, he was appointed A. A. G., with the rank of captain and detailed on the staff of General Lau- man. His picture shown among the officers of the Rebellion represents him at this period of his military life. He was wounded at Pittsburg Landing but reported again for duty within four weeks. He was in the battles preceding the capture of Corinth and was with Sherman in his movement to the Talla- hatchie river. At Oxford, Mississippi, he was transferred to the staff of General McArthur and served with him, until he was assigned to the Forty- seventh United States Colored Infantry, and became its colonel. At New Orleans, Colonel Scofield was assigned to the command of a brigade. From there his command was sent to Pensacola, Florida and against Mobile. In the assault on Fort Blakesley, in the absence of a general officer, he led the assault, which resulted soon afterward in the surrender of Mobile.
His brigade then operated around Selma and Montgomery, and then returned to Mobile, where the news of the assassination of President Lincoln was received. For his services before Mobile, he received a commission as brevet brigadier general. From Mobile his brigade was sent by steamer to New Orleans and afterward up the Red river to Alexandria. Peace having been declared. General Scofield was mustered out of the service at Baton Rouge, on January 6, 1866. In short, General Scofield was a soldier, always kind and attentive to the wants of officers and men under him ; a strict disci- plinarian ; a man of excellent judgement when on the field of action and abso- lutely fearless. It is difficult to give a full statement of his military service because of the General's reticence when talking of the part he played in that great drama, but it is entirely safe to say that a braver and better soldier never wore the uniform of his country.
Upon his return to private life, General Scofield reentered the practice of law at Washington with his brother, William, and continued until his death in Seattle, Washington, December 30, 1906. As a lawyer General Scofield was a safe and conservative counselor, a bold and able advocate, and in the trial of a cause his candor to the court and his earnestness in his advocacy before the jury made him a dangerous antagonist. He was methodical and painstaking in the preparation of his cases, both as to the law and the facts applicable thereto, and these qualities combined with a broad academic and legal education, placed him among the foremost lawyers of Iowa.
If the writer of this sketch was required to say what quality of mind and heart had endeared the General to the members of the bar, he would say that it was his kindly sympathy, ready and invaluable assistance always given to the young lawyer. His library was at their disposal and the General was never so busy but that he found time to counsel and advise the perplexed and worried beginner. Painstaking ability, candor, honesty marked the General's professional career. from its commencement to the close, and no one ever en- joyed in a large. degree the confidence of the court and the respect of the bar.
As a citizen he took a deep interest in all public affairs and had pro- nounced views on all matters of general interest. He served on the board of the Washington Academy and as a member of the trustees of the Chilcote
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Library for a great many years, holding both positions at the time of his death. He was a large owner of both town property and farm land which he had acquired as a result of industry and wise investment.
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