Memorial and biographical record of Iowa, Part 163

Author:
Publication date: 1896
Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1360

USA > Iowa > Memorial and biographical record of Iowa > Part 163

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

P. EVANS .- The life of this gentle- man has been one of ceaseless and successful activity in business and to him the enterprising little city of Bedford, Iowa, owes much of its prosperity. We often look to the past for encouraging ex- amples, finding in the lives of our forefathers much that inspires one for abler efforts, but the essential conditions of human life are ever the same, and the present furnishes examples as well worthy of emulation as the past. The business record of Mr. Evans demonstrates what can be accomplished by perseverance and energy, by making the most of the oppor- tunities that surround us and by honorable, straightforward dealing that is never called in question. He is to-day one of the leading farmers of Taylor and the vice-president of the Citizens' Bank, of Bedford.

Mr. Evans was born in Shelby county, Illi- nois, March 6, 1840. His paternal grand- father, Jesse Evans, was a Virginian by birth, and followed the occupation of farming. The father of our subject also bore the name of Jesse Evans, and was born in Virginia in 1804. He was a typical pioneer, and after residing in Indiana for some time during its frontier

days he removed in 1839 to Illinois, thence in 1840 to Davis county, Iowa Territory, and in 1855 to Taylor county, Iowa. Being soon recognized as a prominent and influential citi- zen, he was elected County and Probate Judge on the first Republican ticket voted in the county, re-elected in 1859, and appointed Postmaster of Bedford by President Lincoln in 1862. For twenty-four years he resided in Iowa, but the spirit of emigration again be- came strong in him and he removed to north- ern California. A short time afterward he took up his residence in southern Oregon, and died in Jackson county, that State, in 1888. He was a man of stout build, of great physical vigor, successful in business and honorable in all the relations of life. His wife bore the maiden name of Priscilla Cade, was born in Delaware, and is now living in Jackson county, Oregon, at the advanced age of eighty-eight years.

The subject of this review is the youngest of their family of five children. The common schools afforded him his educational privileges, and when he laid aside his text-books he en- tered at once upon his business career. Not long after, however, he joined the Fourth Iowa Regimental Band, and was in the service for nine months, when on account of lung trouble he was discharged. He then made a trip across the plains with the hope of benefit- ing his health, and the hope was realized. Re- turning to Bedford, Iowa, in 1867, he became identified with its mercantile interests, securing a clerkship in the store of C. C. Hess, of Bed- ford. He had previously had some experience in this line, having aided his father in a little dry-goods and grocery store, which the latter owned in Bedford. Mr. Evans proved a most capable salesman, possessing the ready tact which enabled him to deal successfully with the various temperaments and without which one cannot do well as a merchant. In 1871, with the capital he had acquired through in- dustry and frugality, he began business for himself, the firm of Evans, Goodsill & Com- pany being organized as hardware and furni-

1028

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL

ture dealers. From the beginning their trade increased, and the business rapidly assumed extensive proportions, until they were recog- nized as the leading mercantile firm in Bed- ford.

Mr. Evans continued his connection with this house until 1887, when he withdrew and located upon his fine farm, comprising 400 acres of valuable land, adjoining the city limits. He is now making a specialty of the raising of cattle and hogs, and the same suc- cess that attended his merchandising efforts is with him in his new undertaking. He now possesses an ample fortune, acquired by his own efforts, and his prosperity is well de- served.

Our subject has also been connected with the banking interests of Bedford, and is a ca- pable financier. A local publication said of him: "A. P. Evans, the vice-president of the Citizens' Bank, is a man who has obtained the confidence of our people to an extent rarely enjoyed by any man in the community who makes as much as a fortune as Mr. Evans has done; and the pleasant feature about it is that no man is heard to say that he ever wronged him out of a dollar. His fortune has been se- cured as the legitimate profits of a large busi- ness, built up by his tact and fair dealing. He takes no active part in the business transac- tions of the bank, yet is consulted on all im- portant matters; and if the Citizens' Bank of Bedford needed strength beyond what Mr. Dunning's well known financial standing gives it, the fact that such a man as A. P. Evans stands responsible for all its transactions should remove the last doubt, if any doubts exist, regarding the bank's responsibility."

Mr. Evans was united in marriage, in Taylor county, in 1869, with Miss Jennie Fordyce, daughter of Albert Fordyce, of Penn- sylvania. To them have been born two chil- dren, -Edna V. and George R. Mr. Evans is a very genial, companionable gentleman, always approachable, and the high regard in which he is held is shown by his large circle of friends.

LEXANDER B. MCCLURE is one of the native sons of Iowa, his birth having occurred in Des Moines county on the 18th of April, 1848. His father, James McClure, was born in Fayette county, Ohio, July 7, 1824, and on the 14th of March, 1845, wedded Prudence Bryan, who was born in Knox county, Ohio, November 13, 1822, and died November 11, 1895, and was buried at Kossuth, Des Moines county. By the above marriage there were six children, of whom four are yet living. Mr. James Mc- Clure, on coming to Iowa, located in Des Moines county, where in 1864 he enlisted in Company K, Fourteenth Iowa Infantry; was with General Banks on the Red river expedi- tion, wounded by a shell and taken to a hos- pital boat, where he died, May 1I, 1864, and was buried with others in an unknown grave, opposite Alexandria.

The paternal grandparents of our subject were John McClure, born July 1, 1788, and died February 25, 1849, and Susanna (Ross) McClure, born August 24, 1786, and died in 1864. The great-grandparents on the father's side were William McClure, born March 31, 1759, and died October 1, 1823, and Nancy, nee McKeehan, born July 25, 1765, and died March 14, 1798.

Mr. McClure's paternal grandparents were natives of Pennsylvania, who at a very early day became residents of Ohio, but their last days were passed in Des Moines county, Iowa. His maternal grandparents, John and Hannah (Kirkpatrick) Bryan, were also natives of the Keystone State, born near Pittsburg. They were married in 1800 and the same year emigrated to Ohio, locating in Knox county, where the former died at the age of seventy-eight, and the latter at the age of seventy-seven. They reared a family of twelve children of which Mrs. Mc- Clure is now the only survivor. The ances- tors of our subject have long been residents of this country and were of German and Scotch descent. His great-great-grandmother, Mc- Cammon, with one of her sons, was taken prisoner by the Indians during the Revolution-

1029

RECORD OF IOWA.

ary war, and was held by them for four years. At last while on a march she gave out, sinking exhausted by a stream, when an Indian kicked her into the river and left her for dead. Soon after a straggling Indian rescued her and she succeeded in reaching her friends, where her death occurred at a very advanced age.

The primary education of Alexander B. McClure was acquired in the district schools, and this was supplemented by a nine-months attendance at a local college. At the age of twenty-two he left home, starting out in life for himself without a dollar, so that his entire possessions have been acquired through his persistent efforts and strict attention to his business interests. In 1870 he went to Ox- ford Junction, arriving there when there was but one house on the present site of the town. He engaged in the stock business and later ran a hotel.

Mr. McClure was married on the 10th of March, 1874, the lady of his choice being Miss Nettie Overholt, a native of Medina county, Ohio, and a daughter of Jonas and Sarah (Means) Overholt, the former born in Ohio in 1828 and the latter in Pennsylvania. Her parents settled in Jones county, Iowa, in 1853, where they both died, the father at the age of sixty-one, and the mother when only thirty-three years of age. Of their family of five children, four are still living. Mrs. Mc- Clure's paternal grandparents were Joseph and Anna (Tintsman) Overholt, the former born in 1803 and the latter in 1808. The lat- ter died at Monmouth, Iowa, December I, 1895, aged eighty-seven years. Three chil- dren grace the union of our subject and his wife. The eldest, Sarah Maud, who is a graduate of the Dallas Center high school, is very proficient in music and is now studying under the best musical professors in the coun- try. The younger children are Harry B. and Elsa P.

For three years after his marriage Mr. Mc- Clure continued to conduct his hotel in Ox- ford Junction, at the end of which period he sold out and returned to Des Moines county,

and on the old family homestead lived for about a year, when he came to Dallas county. Here he purchased eighty acres of raw prairie land, which he improved, but before locating thereon he operated 1, 000 acres of rented land for five years. On account of failing health he then removed to Dallas Center, where he pur- chased and carried on a hardware store for the following two years. On selling out he began the cultivation and improvement of his farm of eighty acres, being engaged in its development for the next seven years. He later disposed of that property, for which he received $100 per acre, it being the first farm in Dallas county to sell for that price. He is now living retired in the village of Dallas Center, but still owns 200 acres of fine land about one and a half miles from the city limits. This property he runs as a stock farm. Mr. McClure is a nat- ural veterinary surgeon, having educated him- self in that profession, which he has followed for the past twenty-five years. He stanchly supported the principles of the Republican party and cast his first vote for General Grant. Religiously, he and his family hold member- ship with the Presbyterian Church. He has traveled quite extensively over this country, and at the age of only twenty years made an extended tour, visiting all points of interest. Mr. McClure takes quite a prominent part in advancing the interests of his county and State and no man in the community stands higher in the estimation of his fellow citizens.

R ICHARD MORTIMER SLITOR, proprietor of the Slitor House, Wau- kon, Iowa, was born in Geauga county, Ohio, August 29, 1834, and is a son of Truman Gillette and Jane Smith (Van Zant) Slitor.

The paternal grandfather of our subject was born in Germany, but was brought to this country by his parents when but seven years of age. The family first located in Columbia county, New York, but later moved to Herki- mer county. He served throughout the Rev-

1030

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL

olutionary war as a fifer, having entered the service while quite young. The maternal an- cestry of our subject is Dutch. Great-grand- father Van Zant (the name was originally spelled Van Zandt) emigrated from Holland and located in New Jersey, thus becoming one of that industrious and prosperous class known as the Jersey Dutch.

Mr. R. M. Slitor accompanied his parents to Yates county, New York, from Ohio, in 1839; in the fall of 1855 they moved to Mo . nona, Clayton county, Iowa, and located on a farm. Later Mr. Slitor, associated with Page P. Umstead, built a sawmill in Clayton county, which they operated for a time, and then our subject bought out his partner. He disposed of this mill property, moved to Le Roy, Mower county, Minnesota, and purchased the Le Roy House, a hotel. Later he bought the Coswell House, and concentrated the business of the two hotels in one, with headquarters at the Coswell House. In the fall of 1888 Mr. Slitor disposed of his property at Le Roy and purchased the Mason House at Waukon, Iowa. In 1891 he replaced the old frame building with the present fine brick structure, which comprises three stories and a basement. It is the finest hotel building in the county. .

Mr. Slitor was married October 3, 1860, to Miss Sarah Climenia Winters, a daughter of Ira Preston and Nancy Maria (Heiman) Win- ters. She is a native of Cattaraugus county, New York, and accompanied her parents to Iowa at an early age. The children of Mr. and Mrs. Slitor are: May Virginia, born August 31, 1865; and Ray Frank, born De- cember 15, 1878, both of whom are at home with their parents.

Politically, Mr. Slitor is a Republican. He served for a number of terms as Justice of the. Peace at both Monona and Le Roy. For six years he served as Mayor of Le Roy.

Mr. Slitor is a man of good education, and is well posted on the current events of the day. He began teaching in his nineteenth year, his first school having been taught in New York State. After coming to Iowa he continued to

teach for a number of years, during the winter months. He has one of the best paying hotel properties in northeastern Iowa, and the fact that he is unable to accommodate his guests will lead to the building of an addition to his hotel in the near future.

YRUS A. MOSIER .- No one but a pioneer of the Northwestern Territory can fully appreciate the features of the life history of Mr. Mosier; and, besides, his experiences have been too intense for description, The best outline we can give is necessarily cold and bleak compared with the realities in his life's career. A large vol- ume, consisting of one great mountain of po- etic climaxes, would be required to give even this outline. In this work we simply do the best we can in the limited space allotted.

A poet is born, not made; and he is nearly always born in the country, receiving as he grows up his inspiration from scenes of wild- ness and from experiences in the simplicity of country life. A poet, however, is not neces- sarily a rhymester. Colonel Ingersoll, for ex- ample, is a great poet in fact, though not in- dulging in either rhyme or verse. Mr. Mosier has the soul of a poet, and such a training as only the spiritual gymnastics of the great West can give. Not the man who has capacity only, nor the man who has training only, can be a great or well finished man; but he who has both the capacity and the training: the latter, however, may consist only of an extraordinary environment.

The first paternal ancestors of Mr. Mosier who came to America were from Germany, landing on the shores of the Chesapeake, in Maryland, early in 1700. In the maternal line his first American ancestors were from the British Isles, having English, Irish, Scotch and Welsh blood in their strain. Mr. Mosier's maternal grandfather, Giles H. Swan, gradu- ated at Yale College in 1815, and soon after- ward married Jane Rockwell, an innkeeper's daughter, at Stonington, Connecticut. The

1031

RECORD OF IOWA.

next year he moved with his bride to Richland county, Ohio, where, in the depths of the wil- derness, he cleared the ground and established a home, near what is now Plymouth Station, on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. In the upper story of that cabin the first Masonic lodge of that region was organized, of which Mr. Swan was the Master. In that small cabin Mr. Mosier's mother, Maria, nce Swan, was born, the eldest child in the family, and learned to spin wool and flax, and weave the thread into cloth, the only source of clothing and bedding for the family. Eli Mosier, our subject's father, was a native of Pennsylvania, born July 4, 1812, and when five years of age was taken by his parents in their emigration to a point near Crestline Crossing, Ohio, where he aided in clearing a tract of heavily beech- covered land, and also learned the trades of carpentry and cabinet-making. After attain- ing the maturity of manhood he married Miss Maria Swan, as already mentioned, at Paris, Richland county, that State, January 11, 1837; and on October 13 following the subject of this sketch was born there.

In the autumn of 1839 the family moved to Platte county, Missouri, settling at a point seventeen miles from Fort Leavenworth, then only a United States garrison. The country was then an unbroken wilderness, inhabited by Indians and wild beasts. Here the father took a claim, built a cabin and joined others in the hard struggle for the development of what is now one of the foremost States of the Union.

Here young Cyrus was taught to read by his mother, who had been a teacher in Ohio; but as early as four and a half years of age he was sent to school; and he still remembers vividly the first noon hour, when the pupils began to eat their dinners. Before beginning on his bread and butter he cast side glances about the room-for he was too bashful to turn his head-to see to what extent he might be a spectacle for the older critics. The school- house was of the uniform type of the period and place, so often described. The school was sustained by subscription, for as yet the

free-school system had not been introduced. The teacher was the same gray-haired Irish gentleman of the old school who had been his father's teacher in Ohio. He mended the goose-quill pens and set the copies in a beau- tiful round hand as plain as print. He had two daughters, who took kind care of young Cyrus, as the latter still wore dresses like a girl. On one occasion they took him to a grave a short distance from the schoolhouse. It was surrounded with a rough wooden fence, which was covered with wild roses full of buds and bloom and forming a magnificent bower. This is the first grave and these the first roses in Mr. Mosier's memory. The perfume of the roses was entrancingly delicious, and the beauty and loveliness of that rose-covered grave will ever remain a pleasant reminiscence with our subject as long as life shall last.

In this and similar school-houses young Mosier got Webster's Elementary Spelling- Book "by heart," and made considerable ad- vancement in all the English branches ex- cepting grammar, which indeed was not taught, or even thought to be of practical use. His deficiency in the last mentioned branch, how- ever, was fully made up by the precepts and example of his kind and judicious mother, and in a manner, too, far more agreeable and effi- cient than that exhibited by the schoolmaster of those days. During the six years he at- tended school in Missouri he now remembers but two students whom he ever heard reciting grammar lessons. Another feature of the times worth recalling is the fact that some of the wealthy slaveholders sent their children to school on horseback, sometimes two on the same animal, and generally attended by a negro body servant.

When the head of the family was absent the Indians often visited the house; and Mr. Mosier remembers standing when a child by his mother, while she held in her arms his baby brother, and looking at the window panes against which the wild people of the forest pressed their noses and painted faces, peering in to see what they could. On leaving they

1032

HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL

would take everything eatable, -meat, flour and meal, -leaving no food whatever for the family.

But it was in these wilds that Mr. Mosier's love for nature, inherited through generations from the first settlements on the American continent, was sharpened by contact with al- most everything belonging to the wildest pio- neer life. He was able to ride a horse at the age of four, and when six years of age he went for the cows in the thickest tangles of vines and shrubs along the brooks and streams, often returning with them in the dusk of the even- ing, greeted with the yells of panthers and howls of wolves and other strange and inde- scribable noises made by creatures of the for- est; but these solitary trips were even a pleas- ure to him rather than a task.

As he grew up and the " abolitionism" of his parents became known, the pro-slavery ele- ment made it more and more disagreeable for them, so that in the year 1847 the father made a trip to Iowa in search of a more favored lo- cality, finding a suitable place about two miles from Fort Des Moines (now within the city); and when the land came into market soon aft- erward he entered the tract with land war- rants, at the rate of 62 to 873 cents an acre. During the ensuing autumn and spring he moved his household effects and all his family to the new home, following the military trail between Council Bluffs and Fort Des Moines. Cyrus, then ten years of age, having had his imaginations raised to a high pitch by descrip- tions of the magnificence of steamboats, and having learned that such wondrous structures ran up the river to Raccoon Forks, ran ahead of the teams by which the family were moving to a high bluff now known as Van Hill and looked down to the junction of the rivers to see one of the monsters, if perchance one should be there in motion; but sad was his disappoint- ment when he found that the water was too low for steam navigation, though considerably higher than it is generally at the present day. The town of Des Moines consisted of two rows of double log houses and a few scattered cab-

ins, of poor construction. The soldiers had evacuated the cabins, and part of them were occupied by settlers.

At their new Iowa home young Mosier aided in fencing the land and cultivating it. He helped to break the ground where now stands the city hall. Also he learned practi- cal mechanics to a considerable extent, of his father. At this point also, he enjoyed far bet- ter school privileges than in Missouri, attend- ing district school three to five months each year until 1855-6, when he was sent to a select school at Des Moines where, under pri- vate teachers, he also studied algebra, survey- ing, Latin, German and botany. In the sum- mer of 1857 he prepared himself for the pro- fession of school-teaching, which he followed in winter for five years thereafter. During the year 1860-I he taught the highest-grade pub- lic school in East Des Moines. In 1866 he was elected to the office of County Superin- tendent of Schools of Polk county, which then included also the superintendency of the city schools.

During the summer and autumn of 1859, with four other young teachers, he read and recited Blackstone and Chitty, and he was acting clerk of the moot court that had been organized for the benefit of young lawyers and students at the capital. He soon decided, however, that the legal profession was not to his taste; but the training thus obtained, in connection with the knowledge he had ac- quired of the higher branches already men- tioned, was all utilized in the profession he did choose for life, namely, that of Law Reporter. Meanwhile he qualified himself for verbatim reporting by making himself proficient in pho- nographic short-hand, attaining ultimately a speed of 225 words to the minute, which is about up to the highest notch. Many stories are told of stenographers surpassing this, but they are either exaggerations or in some other way misleading. In 1864 Mr. Mosier was ap- pointed short-hand reporter for the district court at Des Moines, presided over by Hon. J. H. Gray,-thus being the first one appointed

1033

RECORD OF IOWA.

to such a position in the State of Iowa, and this was before there was any law requiring such an appointment. Then, accepting the position of Law Reporter, in 1866, he con- tinued therein for twenty years, resigning in 1886, by which time he had a corps of sixteen phonographers and type-writers. In 1889, on the day before he left with his family for the far West, he was surprised with the present of a fine gold watch, suitably and most beauti- fully engraved, from the bench and bar of Polk county.

During his term as Law Reporter he also had a large amount of work in the United States courts here. He was special commis- sioner of the United States Court of Claims to take testimony in the matter of alleged frauds in the Mississippi river improvement at Rock Island, and served at intervals for two years.

In 1866-8 he was Senate reporter for the Iowa State Register.

While on the subject of public positions filled by Mr. Mosier, let us continue with them to the present time, regardless of the chronol- ogy of other matters.

In April, 1889, Mr. Mosier moved with his family to Washington Territory, where he had many adventures in the deep, wild forests. Soon after his arrival he took his family in Indian canoes, manned by Indians, and as- cended the Snohomish river for three days. After disembarking they had to walk on a mountain trail for sixteen miles, making six miles of the trail themselves, and camping without tent. On the second day (fifth day out) they reached a small cabin. They spent the summer in the Cascade mountains, and early in December descended the river to the town of Snohomish on tide water.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

Memorial and biographical record of Iowa, Part 163

Author: Publication date: 1896 Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1360

Author:
Publication date: 1896
Publisher: Chicago : Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1360