USA > Iowa > O'Brien County > Past and present of O'Brien and Osceola counties, Iowa, Vol. II > Part 19
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Edward A. Mayne was educated in the common schools of Wisconsin and engaged in farming until he came here in 1884. He came to Sanborn. Iowa. in November, 1884, and on March 1, 1885, he entered the employ of Slocum & Sweet, general merchants of Sanborn, and continued in the em-
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ploy of this firm for five years, after which he worked for W. A. Wasson in his store for the next eight years. at the expiration of which time he bought Mr. Wasson's interest in the business and continued to operate the store him- self. and has been engaged in the mercantile business from 1898 until the present time. He has the largest and best store in the city of Sanborn and carries a stock valued at eighteen thousand dollars. His store occupies a two-story brick building and is well equipped with all of the latest conven- iences for the trade. He does an annual business of over sixty thousand dol- lars and handles those goods which are usually found in department stores of towns of this size. and has a very large share of the patronage of the town and surrounding country.
Mr. Mayne was married September 8, 1887, to Clara Woolworth, and to this union have been born two children. Earl W., who is now twenty-five years of age and is assisting his father in the store, and Nellie, who gradu- ated from the high school of Sanborn in the spring of 1914.
Politically, Mr. Mayne is a Republican, but classes himself with the Pro- gressive branch of his party. He and his family are earnest members of the Presbyterian church and to this denomination contribute generously of their means and time. He is a member of the Modern Woodmen of America. He has been a busy man all of his life and none have done more to advance the material interests of his town and community, and as a citizen of the body politic no one stands higher in the esteem and confidence of the people generally.
HON. WILLIAM S. ARMSTRONG.
It is a gratification and at once a pleasure for the historian or biog- rapher to be permitted to write at some length concerning truly able and lovable characters who have unselfishly given their services in the bringing about and accomplishing of truly noble things which have made life more worth living and enjoyable for a considerable number of people in the com- munity.
Such individuals as he to whom the foregoing paragraph has reference are indeed rarely found in these advanced days of more or less personal selfishness among mankind. Their services to the community are alike unpurchasable and beyond proper estimation. To men of this class their work is indeed a labor of love, and their greatest reward in living and
Manustrong
ARTO , U -. OX
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doing things for others is to see the fruit of their handiwork expand and ripen in the fruition of the happiness of others. Primghar is fortunate in having for one of its leading citizens a man who can easily be classed among those valuable individuals to whom the preceding introduction plainly refers. In William S. Armstrong is embodied the highest and best type of citizen- ship and it is of him that the following brief epitome is inscribed for inser- tion in the pages of this memoir of O'Brien county. The people of the county owe him a debt for honest and diligent service which can never be repaid : his work since he became a resident of the county has been mainly and unselfishly in the interests of the people, who are all his friends and well wishers.
William S. Armstrong was born January 4, 1853. in Lafayette county, Wisconsin. His father, John Armstrong, was born in 1816 and died in 1888. He emigrated in 1847 from Mercer county, Pennsylvania, with his wife, Elizabeth Swan, an Ohio lady. John Armstrong was a farmer and also a contractor and builder, as likewise a lawyer, and took a prominent part in political affairs. He was a local minister in the Methodist Episcopal church, and served several terms in the Legislature of his adopted state.
The subject had two brothers, both of whom, with their mother, died from cholera morbus in 1868. In addition, William S. Armstrong had four sisters, namely: Jane Perrigo, late of Inwood, Lyon county, Iowa, where she located in 1885 and died in 1908: Lacy Gierhart, late of Argyle, Wiscon- sin, deceased : Belle Hunnell, of Finley, Wisconsin, and Margaret Close, of Fedora. South Dakota.
The subject of this sketch attended the district school in his home county until he was fourteen years of age. He then enjoyed the very special advantages of two years' instruction in a select school under the tutorage of Professor Parkinson, later and now engaged for many years in the State University of Wisconsin. The Hon. Robert M. LaFollette, ex-governor and now United States senator from that state, was his classmate. Mr. Armstrong then put in one year further in school at Juda, Wisconsin. He then taught school for five years in the rural schools. He was married in 1875 to Caroline Curry, who was born in Ohio in 1853, the daughter of William C. Curry, a Wisconsin farmer. Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong have two children. Earl Armstrong was married in 1906 to Hazel Andrews, and they now have three children: William Stanley Armstrong, aged six years, named for his grandfather: Paul Armstrong. aged two years, and Esther Jane. Minnie Armstrong, born in 1892. first graduated at the Primghar
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high school in 1910, after which she spent three years in special course in music at Grinnell College, Grinnell. Iowa, and now ( 1913) is attending a further course in the Minneapolis Musical Conservatory. Mrs. Armstrong passed away November 5, 1913, her death resulting from a fall.
Mr. Armstrong, immediately after his marriage, took up the occupation of dairying. Having in the meantime taken a full course, he became an expert cheese maker and opened up a cheese factory in his home county. The whole state became noted as a great cheese state and he had the advantages of at- tendance on the many cheese and dairy conventions. All this was preparing him not only as a first class judge of cheese and dairy, but also as a quick and reliable judge of all connected questions of farming and stock raising and the questions of the good qualities of all classes of the best stock, which served him so well in his large field as auctioneer in all parts of O'Brien and sur- rounding counties later on. He came to Primghar in 1885 and at once built and equipped a cheese factory, which he conducted for three years. He brought with him an expert cheese man. W. H. Morrison, who remained with him during the whole four years. This at once brought him into touch with the best farming conditions in the county. He at once announced him- self as an auctioneer. He has probably sold more in dollars of value in his twenty-eight years as an auctioneer than any other man ever in the county. His great strength as an auctioneer lies in the fact that he has been during his whole life schooled in the best practical farming and in a practical way understands the needs and surroundings of an agricultural community. He has kept himself informed to the very hour of each sale he conducts as to the trend and prospects of the times and markets and has kept such a hold on the public pulse and needs that his judgment has been accepted by the public not only as an auctioneer, but as a farmer also. He has not only talked farming, but has himself conducted a farm just south of Primghar. He is a ready talker and gives out much information in his sundry auction talks that brings many to his sales not only to buy, but to hear the general matters thus set forth.
Mr. Armstrong has taken a hand in whatever has come up in public affairs, whether in politics, church, school or town. He was chairman of the Republican county central committee at various times and has been a member of the board of education of Primghar for sixteen years of his time here. He has always been a Republican. with all that the strict meaning of that word carries with it. He was elected clerk of the district court for two suc-
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cessive terms. While filling this office he has become so proficient in the details of court matters that the court of four judges has retained him for ten successive years as referee in probate to make special examination of ali estate and orphanage proceedings that the court itself could not give atter :- tion to in detail, which position he still holds.
Mr. Armstrong took an active part in the establishment of the first lecture course in Primghar in 1886, and has developed it from a two-hun- dred-and-fifty-dollar course until now it is a twelve-hundred-dollar course. He first organized it in connection with the high school, and succeeded under difficulties. This lecture course, both under Mr. Armstrong and under the management of Fred B. Wolf and Roy King, developed until Primghar has the reputation of being one of the best lecture towns of its size west of Chicago. During Mr. Armstrong's management he put on as his first lec- turer "Eli Perkins," and later such attractions of Gen. John B. Gordon, John Temple Graves, Doctor Gunsaulus, Maud Ballington Booth and many others.
Mr. Armstrong was one of the ten men who signed the written agree- ment on the part of Primghar guaranteeing twenty-two miles of right of way to the Illinois Central railroad as Primghar's bonus to secure the road. and as a stock shipper he shipped the first load of hogs and sheep over this branch of the Illinois Central road. He also attended that railroad meeting at Sioux Falls by committees from Cherokee, Primghar. Sheldon, Rock Rapids and along the line at which it was decided to build this line as finally constructed, from Cherokee up, instead of from Fort Dodge and further east of us, which would have meant defeat to this line and the towns in O'Brien county.
Mr. Armstrong was mayor of Primghar for two years, from 1905 to 1906. He has always been one of the boosters in the old settlers and Fourth of July meetings and other big days and occasions. He is a member and official in the Congregational church and Sunday school superintendent.
Mr. Armstrong has been a large shipper of all kinds of stock, but es- pecially of sheep from the ranges in the states west and of fine stock from many places, when the demand seemed to call for same. He has also been active in the fraternal societies, especially in his connections with the An- cient Free and Accepted Masons, including the chapter and commandery. and the Mystic Shriners. His twenty-eight years in O'Brien county has in- deed been a varied and active career.
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THEODORE ZIMMERMAN.
The many revolutions which Germany suffered from 1800 to 1850 were a great hardship on the people of that nation, but a blessing to this coun- try. Thousands and tens of thousands of the best citizens of Germany came to this country after the revolutions of 1820 and 1848 in Germany, and among those was E. A. Zimmerman, the father of Theodore Zimmerman, whose his- tory is here presented. E. A. Zimmerman was a man of excellent education, and it was because of his education that he left his native land for America. He received his education in the best universities of Germany and because he wanted to have freedom of thought, speech and action, and could not se- cure it in Germany he left his native land and came to America in March, 1854. He secured a position as a teacher at once and sent back for his fam- ily. By the time the family reached this country, in the summer of 1854, he was dead.
Theodore Zimmerman, the secretary of the Farmers Mutual Insurance Association of O'Brien County, was born in Germany on April 7. 1854, the son of E. A. and Caroline (Gleasman ) Zimmerman. He came to this coun- try with his mother and two sisters, Minnie and Louise, in September, 1854, and upon their arrival in the new country they were met with the sad news that the husband and father was dead. The mother and her children re- mained in New York and Theodore received his education in that city. He was twenty years old when he left his mother's home and came to Butler county, Iowa, locating on a farm in Shellrock township, where he farmed for seven years. In 1882 he came to O'Brien county, locating on a farm in Franklin township, where he lived until 1902. He was a very successful farmer and at the time he removed to Sanborn he was the owner of six hun- dred and forty acres of fine farming land in one tract. He is also the owner of four hundred acres of land in Murray county and in the state of Minne- sota. He has been interested in the buying and selling of farms for several years. For the past seventeen years he has been a director of the Farmers Mutual Insurance Association of O'Brien County and was elected secretary of that organization in 1909. He has been connected with the Sanborn State Bank for the past three years as director and is now president of a bank in Currie, Minnesota, which is near his landed interests in that state.
Mr. Zimmerman was married to Lou E. Mullen, of Butler county, Iowa. and to this union have been born five children: Olive, deceased; Roy, de- ceased : Mrs. Minnie Dummett, of Currie, Minnesota ; Lelah L. and Zola L., who are still at home with their parents.
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Politically, Mr. Zimmerman is a Republican and has allied himself with the Progressive wing of that party. He has served one term from 1904 to 1907 as county supervisor, but has never asked for any public office at the hands of his party. Religiously, he and the members of his family are ear- nest and devoted members of the Methodist Episcopal church. Fraternally. he is a member of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons and the Modern Woodmen of America. Mr. Zimmerman is intensely optimistic and far- sighted and has entered heart and soul into the life of this community. He is strictly a self-made man and in his business affairs he lias been strict, and yet kindly and just in all his dealings. He is broad-minded and generous and in his private life has performed many acts of charity known only to himself and the beneficiary. He has worked hard and honorably earned the enviable reputation which he enjoys as one of the leading public spirited citizens of this locality, and it is needless to add that he is held in high regard and es- teem by all with whom he has come into contact.
IRA SOOP.
The two most strongly marked characteristics of both the East and the West are combined in the residents of the section of country of which this volume treats. The enthusiastic enterprise which overleaps all obstacles and makes possible almost any undertaking in the comparatively new and vigor- ous Western states is here tempered by the stable and more careful policy that we have borrowed from our Eastern neighbors, and the combination is one of peculiar force and power. It has been the means of placing this section of the country on a par with the older East, at the same time pro- ducing a reliability and certainty in business which is frequently lacking in the West. This happy combination of characteristics is possessed by the subject of this brief sketch.
Ira Soop, insurance man of Sanborn, Iowa, was born in New York state September 1, 1864, and is the son of Alexander and Rachel (Wiltsey) Soop, both of whom are natives of the same state. The Soop family orig- inally came from Germany. Rachel Wiltsey was the daughter of Isaac Wilt- sey, who also was a native of Germany. Alexander Soop and family left New York in 1866 and settled in Hamilton county, Iowa, near Webster City, on a farm, where he lived until 1892, when he moved to O'Brien county and lived with his children until his death in 1896. Alexander Soop and wife
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were the parents of four children: Rose, who is the wife of Charles Murrey, an early settler of this county, but now living in Medford, Oregon; Ira, whose sketch is here presented: Mary, the wife of John Sawin, of Webster City, lowa; Tolman, of Webster City, Iowa.
Ira Soop was educated in the schools of Webster City, Iowa, and came to O'Brien county in 1881, when he was about seventeen years of age. He worked by the month in order to secure money to attend school at Webster City. He would work out by the month during the summer seasons and go to school during the winter months. In 1886 he taught his first term of school in O'Brien county, and followed the vocation of teaching for the next five years, farming between terms. In 1887 he purchased his first farm of eighty acres in Lincoln township, for which he paid eleven dollars an acre. In 1893 he sold this tract for thirty-one and a quarter dollars an acre. Since then he has purchased three different farms and sold them, making a hand- soine profit on each transaction. He has one hundred and sixty acres now in Lincoln township, this county, although he formerly owned four hundred acres in that township. For the past seventeen years he has been handling the fire insurance business in Sanborn. He represents the Hawkeye Insur- ance Company, the Des Moines department of Firemen's Fund and other companies.
Mr. Soop was married in 1885 to Anna Moon, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Moon, who were homesteaders of Iowa and settled in O'Brien county in 1871 in Center township. The "grasshopper" years drove him back to Illinois, where he remained. Mr. and Mrs. Soop are the parents of four children : Florence and Sadie, who are both teachers, and Fred and Marie, who are in attendance at the common schools of their home city. The two oldest daughters graduated from the Sanborn high school, from the Teachers' College at Cedar Falls, while the oldest daughter, Florence, gradu- ated from the college at Des Moines.
Politically, Mr. Soop is a Republican and has filled various offices in the city of Sanborn. He has been a member of the city council and a member of the Sanborn school board for six years, during part of which time he was the president of the board. Fraternally, he is a member of the Modern Woodmen of America and is consul of the camp at Sanborn.
Mr. Soop is a good example of the successful O'Brien county citizens. who have started in with practically nothing and have risen to a position of affluence. In order to get money with which to come to O'Brien county from Webster City when a young man, he sold his favorite hunting dog, and when he arrived here he had twenty-five cents in his pocket, and with this slender
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capital he started in to secure his education in order to prepare himself for a teacher. He taught his way through school and saved money while teaching in order to apply on the purchase price of his first farm. He has worked hard to gain a competency for his declining years, and while he has been success- ful in a material way, he has not neglected to assist in the general welfare of his community. He and his wife are justly proud of their daughters and have given them the advantage of the best colleges in the state, and they have benefited from their educational training so as to take high rank among the teachers of the county.
WILLIAM BONNER.
Among the enterprising and progressive citizens of O'Brien county, lowa, none stands higher in the esteem of his fellow citizens than the gentle- man whose name forms the caption of this brief review. He has long been actively engaged in agricultural pursuits in this county and the years of his residence here have but served to strengthen the feeling of admiration on the part of his fellow men owing to the honorable life he has led and the worthy example he has set the younger generation, consequently the publishers of this work are glad to give such worthy character representation in this work.
William Bonner, a distinguished veteran of the Civil War, and now liv- ing a retired life in Sanborn, was born in 1834. in Yorkshire, England, the son of Robert and Mary Bonner. He was educated in his native land and when twenty-five years of age came to America and located in Ingersoll, Canada. Here he worked on a farm for two years and in 1861 moved to Illinois, where he worked at the lead mines for a short time, after which he went to Benton, Wisconsin, and followed farming and lead mining. In 1865 he enlisted in Company C, Fiftieth Regiment Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, and served for the Union until the close of the war. He was mustered in the service at Madison, Wisconsin, and served in the Southwest. After the close of the war he returned to Wisconsin, where he continued to follow agricul- tural pursuits. In 1884 he came to O'Brien county, Iowa, where he pur- chased one hundred and sixty acres of land in Franklin township. He has prospered since coming to this county and is now the owner of three hun- dred and twenty acres of fine farming land in Franklin township and one hundred and thirteen and a half acres in Lincoln township.
Mr. Bonner was married in 1860 to Helen White, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. David White. She was a native of England and came to America
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with her father when she was four years of age. Mr. and Mrs. Willian Bonner are the parents of seven children: William L., of Sanborn; John E., of Montana; Robert A., of Max, North Dakota; Thomas G., of Shekin, Minnesota ; Mrs. Nora M. Dodson, of Waterloo, Iowa; Mrs. Mary E. Miller, of Sanborn; Mrs. Anna B. Hansen, of Sanborn. Mr. and Mrs. Bonner have five grandchildren: Dorothy, the daughter of Thomas Bonner; Ruth, the daughter of Nora: Esther, Elinor and Robert, the children of their daugh- ter, Anna.
The Republican party has always claimed the vote of Mr. Bonner, and although interested in political affairs, he has never been a candidate for any office. He and his family are loyal and earnest members of the Methodist Episcopal church and are interested in its various activities. Mr. Bonner has spent thirty years of his life in this county, and in that time his fellow men have come to know him as a man who desires to do the right thing at all times. As a citizen he stands high in the esteem and confidence of his fellow men, and as a man of family he has given his children every possible ad- vantage. There are not many of the old veterans of the Civil War left, and it is a pleasure to accord them a position of honor in this biographical volume.
JAMES BRUCE LINSDAY AND SPENCER A. PHELPS.
The members of the legal profession who are in O'Brien county at the present time are the equal in ability to any of the attorneys of the younger counties of the state. Among the legal firms of Sheldon which are rapidly forcing to the front is the firm of Linsday & Phelps, two brilliant young lawyers who came to this city immediately after their graduation from the University of Michigan in 1911. These young barristers have already made their impress upon the community, and from the ability which they have already shown they promise to be heard from in the years to come.
James Bruce Linsday, the son of E. C. and Ada (Allen) Linsday, was born May 11, 1889, in Litchfield, Michigan. His father is deceased and his mother is still residing in Michigan. Mr. Linsday was educated in the public schools of Litchfield and graduated from the University of Michigan in 19II, with the degree of Bachelor of Laws, being admitted to the practice of law in Michigan and Iowa. Immediately upon his graduation he came here with his classmate, Spencer A. Phelps, and in the following April was elected attorney of the city of Sheldon. He is a Republican and a member of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons.
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Spencer A. Phelps, who is the son of Dr. D. I. and Elizabeth (Spencer) Phelps, was born in Faribault, Minnesota, May 27, 1889. His father is a practicing dentist at Faribault, and has been following that pro- fession for the past thirty years. Doctor Phelps' wife was a native of Rhode Island, and came with her parents from that state to Minnesota in 1868.
Mr. Phelps was educated in the public schools of Faribault and Shattuck Military Academy, which is located at that place, and later attended the University of Minnesota. Having decided to enter the legal profession, he entered the University of Michigan, it being one of the best law schools of the country, and became a classmate of his present partner, James B. Lins- day, graduating with him in the class of 1911. He was at once admitted to the bar in Michigan and in the same month came to Sheldon, passed the state examination of Iowa and was admitted to the bar in this state. He is the first lieutenant of Company E, Fifty-sixth Regiment of Iowa National Guard. In January, 1912, the United States district judge, Henry T. Reed, appointed Mr. Phelps as referee in bankrupty for the district of O'Brien, Clay, Osceola, Lyon, Dickinson and Sioux counties. This appointment was certainly a tribute to the recognized ability of Mr. Phelps. He is a Repub- lican in politics, a member of the Congregational church, and a member of the Masonic lodge.
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