The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume, Part 105

Author: American biographical publishing company, pub
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Chicago, New York, American biographical publishing company
Number of Pages: 954

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on the 5th of January, 1847, died on the 22d of July, 1852, leaving two children, both of them since dy- ing. His second wife, Miss Mary J. McCabe, of Eaton, Ohio; married on the 21st of February, 1854, had one child, and died on the 13th of October, 1871. His present wife was Miss Amanda Baird, of Butler county, Ohio; married on the 24th of Decem- ber, 1872. She has one child. Of the two children by his first wife, a son, Samuel J., died at six years of age; the other, Marietta, was the wife of Dr. George W. Curfman, of Fairfield, Iowa, dying on the 9th of March, 1873. The child by his second wife, Anna, is the wife of William R. Sullivan, secretary of a scale company, Mount Pleasant.

Judge Drayer had a hard struggle in early life, but overcame all obstacles and pushed manfully forward until he reached his present position. Should his life be prolonged, he has more history, equally hon- orable, to make.

HON. FREDERICK MOTT,

WINTERSET.

T' HE Mott family, of which Frederick Mott is a ! descendant, was French, and the name was originally De La Mott. The progenitor of the fam- ily in this country was among the early settlers on Long Island. The subject of this sketch is a native of Susquehanna county, Pennsylvania, and was born in Montrose on the 14th of January, 1828. His father, Merritt Mott, was a woolen manufacturer and farmer, and a deacon of the Baptist church more than fifty years, dying at Montrose, Pennsylvania, in 1876, when over eighty years of age. The maiden name of Frederick's mother was Caroline Tupper, a noble christian woman, who died in 1864. During part of his youth the son labored with his father in a woolen factory in his native state. At seventeen he entered Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island; was graduated in 1851, and for three years was at the head of the Derby (Vermont) Academy, reading law at the same time. In 1854 he came as far west as Upper Sandusky, Ohio, where he had charge of the union school two years, and then pushed westward, locating in Winterset.

Mr. Mott had been admitted to the bar in Ver- mont, and on settling at the seat of justice of Mad- ison county, immediately commenced practice, pur- suing it unremittingly until after the south had risen

in arms to destroy the Union. In September, 1862, he entered the army ; was made adjutant of the 39th Iowa Infantry in the spring of 1863; was commis- sioned by President Lincoln as assistant adjutant- general in 1864, and assigned to duty with the third brigade, fourth division, fifteenth army corps, serv- ing in that position until the close of the war.

Returning to Winterset in August, 1865, he resumed the practice of law; applied himself with diligence to legal studies, and rose so rapidly at the bar that in the autumn of 1868 he was elected judge of the fifth judicial district, serving the full term of four years. The qualifications of Judge Mott for the bench may be inferred from the tenor of the resolutions passed by the Guthrie county bar, on his retiring, one of them reading as follows :

Resolved, That we recognize and appreciate the marked ability, impartiality and courtesy with which he has at all times presided over the circuit court of Guthrie county, and congratulate him on the extraordinary success which has attended his judicial labors. The fact that of four hundred and sixty-two cases determined in his court in Guthrie coun . ty during his term of office, not a single one has been ap- pealed, indicates an approbation of his decisions on the part of the litigants in this court, as exceptional and rare as it must be gratifying to the judge.

The bar of the several counties in the district passed resolutions of a similar tone, all commending

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the judge for his noble traits of character, and espe- cially for his qualifications as a jurist.

At the annual meeting of the Iowa Baptist state convention, held in Des Moines in 1870, Judge Mott was elected its president, and the same compliment was paid him at the next three annual meetings of that body. In 1873 the regents of the State Uni- versity elected him to the professorship of pleadings and practice in the law department of that institution, a position which he filled for two years, and then, under the pressure of enthusiasm created by the Bap- tist denomination in favor of their higher schools of education, in connection with the centennial year of the nation, he accepted the presidency of the Uni- versity of Des Moines. That position he held until the close of the centennial year, when, owing to the condition of his health, he resigned, and, returning to his old home, resumed law practice and banking. In 1867-68 he was cashier of the National Bank of Win- terset, and that position he again holds.

During the connection of Judge Mott with the University of Des Moines, the college building was finished ; rooms for the societies and library were provided ; the library was started, and about twenty thousand dollars were added to the endowment.

Judge Mott early embraced the tenets of the whig party ; cast his first vote for General Scott for the Presidency in 1852, and since the dissolution of that party has acted with the republicans. He is a can- did, sincere and conscientious man, cherishing his political and religious sentiments with equal honesty of purpose.

The judge has a second wife. His first was Miss Emma E. Dean, of Grayton, Vermont ; married in 1856. She died in August, 1868. His present wife was Miss Mary J. Best, a native of Morrow county, Ohio; married in July, 1861 ; they have three chil- dren.

An old neighbor of Judge Mott, and an associate of his at the bar, thus speaks of him as a man, and a lawyer and jurist :

He is pleasant in his manner, kind-hearted and charita- ble, ever ready with a kind word when a kind word will do good. He is an earnest christian worker, public-spirited, and an invaluable citizen. As captain and assistant adjutant- general in the army, he was prompt, courteous, efficient and gallant.

As a judge, he was pleasant in his treatment of the bar and litigants, ever jealous to see that fair play and justice were accorded to all. He was a close student, keeping up with the adjudications with higher courts, and so correct that few of his rulings were ever reversed by the supreme court of the state. He could have received a renomination for judge had he expressed a desire for it, but he declined.

HON. THOMAS R. STOCKTON,

SIDNEY.

T HOMAS RICHARD STOCKTON, late cir- cuit judge of the thirteenth judicial district, is a son of Rev. James M. Stockton, a Cumberland Presbyterian minister, and Susan E. Kirkpatrick ; and was born in Adams county, Illinois, on the 16th of August, 1834. This branch of the Stocktons sprung from the old New Jersey family. Samuel Stockton, the grandfather of Thomas, was a soldier in 1812-1815, and lived in Tennessee. Samuel Kirk- patrick, his maternal grandsire, came from Georgia to Illinois, bringing his slaves with him and freeing them. He aided as a member of the constitutional convention of Illinois, to form the first constitution of that state. Rev. James M. Stockton left Tennes- see because of his hatred of the system of human servitude.

Thomas spent the first nineteen years of his life in his native state, having only a common-school educa- tion. His father was a country minister, and always owned a farm, on which the son was reared. In

1853 the family removed to Taylor county, Iowa, where Thomas aided in opening a farm, working very hard and giving the little leisure time which he could command to the study of certain English branches. When about twenty years old he taught a winter school, and continued to teach at intervals for five or six years. He commenced reading law at Clarinda, Page county, while teaching in 1859, and was admitted to the bar at Frankfort, then the seat of justice of Montgomery county, on the 16th of May, 1861, and practiced in Clarinda for five years, occupying different positions during this period. He edited the Page county "Herald " for about fifteen months, commencing in September, 1862, while the proprietor, Major C. B. Shoemaker, was in the army ; was deputy provost-marshal between one and two years after leaving the editorial chair, and was judge of Page county from January, 1864, to January, 1866. Mr. Stockton regards his brief experience as a jour- nalist as one of the most important epochs in his

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life, it furnishing him a good opportunity for mental improvement.

In May, 1866, Mr. Stockton moved to Sidney, and here practiced steadily until January, 1873, when he went on the bench, as already indicated, serving four years. During the greater part of this time, for con- venience, he resided in Council Bluffs, returning to Fremont county on leaving the bench. He made a conscientious and impartial judge. The judge spent the summer and autumn of 1877 in the Black Hills,

practicing law and speculating in the mines. He is a close student, and has a good standing at the bar in his district.

In politics, he is a republican. In religion, a Presbyterian, and a man of excellent character. He is a Master Mason, and a fifth-degree member of the Odd-Fellows order.

Miss Lizzie Pierce, of Page county, Iowa, became the wife of Judge Stockton on the 20th of August, 1863, and they have three promising children.

JOHN TEESDALE,

MOUNT PLEASANT.

O NE of the oldest representatives of the press living in Iowa is John Teesdale, who, like Dennis A. Mahoney, of Dubuque, Wesley Bailey, of Decorah, and a few others in this state, spent thirty or forty years in a printing office. Mr. Teesdale is a native of York, England, is a son of Robert and Elizabeth (Overton) Teesdale, and was born on the 25th of November, 1816. His parents emigrated to this country when he was two years old and set- tled in Philadelphia, where his father was a merchant, who died when the son was about ten years old. Two or three years later John entered the office of " The Casket," Philadelphia, doing various kinds of work, but not much at the case. He partly learned the printer's trade in the same city, in the office of the "American Sentinel," finishing it at Beavertown, Pennsylvania, whither his mother, now married again, removed when he was about sixteen. Two years afterward he spent a short time at the Steubenville Academy, and then went to Wheeling, West Virginia, where he remained for several years, working at his trade part of the time, and also editing the Wheeling "Gazette " and a little later the Wheeling "Times." During this period he spent a short time at Cadiz, setting type and aiding an editor, and six months at Mount Vernon, as one of the editors and proprietors of the "Western Watchman," suddenly leaving the paper because his associate was too timid on the slavery question and they could not agree.

Mr. Teesdale was the editor of the "Ohio Whig Standard," of McConnellsville, seven or eight years, and went thence to Columbus in 1843; took charge of the "Ohio State Journal," and conducted it four or five years. He was private secretary of Governor Bartley a short time ; in 1848 purchased the Akron

"Beacon," and was its conductor for eight years, selling out and removing to Iowa City, then the cap- ital of the state, in the summer of 1856.

Mr. Teesdale became the proprietor of the Iowa City " Republican," which he published until elected state printer, in the winter of 1856-57, and his re- moval to Des Moines, which was made the capital in 1858. . He was state printer four years. On reaching Des Moines he purchased "The Citizen," soon changed its name to "Iowa State Register," and sold it to Frank W. Palmer, the incoming state printer, in 1861.

At that time Mr. Teesdale was appointed post- master by Mr. Lincoln, and he held the office until turned out by President Johnson.

In November, 1868, Mr. Teesdale removed to Mount Pleasant, which has since been his home, though he himself has had brief sojourns in other places. He spent seven months on a daily paper at Omaha, Nebraska, in 1870, and had charge of the "Daily Chronicle," Washington, District of Colum- bia, during the second campaign (1872) of General Grant for the Presidency.

Since locating in Mount Pleasant Mr. Teesdale was a short time on the " Mount Pleasant Journal," and a short time in trade with his son-in-law, George P. Okell. Latterly he has engaged in no business.

Mr. Teesdale was originally a whig, and was a delegate to the national convention which nominated General Taylor in 1848. From the birth of the re- publican party he has acted with it, and his pen has wielded a powerful influence in promulgating its prin- ciples. Probably no journalist now living in the state has done more to advance the cause of his party.

Mr. Teesdale has been a member of the Congre-

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gational church for many years, much of the time an official member. He has been prominent among the laymen of the state, attending congregational state conventions as a delegate and participating in their deliberations.

The wife of Mr. Teesdale was Miss Mary Dulty, of Wheeling, West Virginia; married in June, 1837. They have had seven children and have lost four ;

one of them is buried at Akron, Ohio, one at Colum- bus and two at Des Moines. The two buried in this state were married ; Addie was the wife of John M. Clark, of Des Moines; John, junior, who died in Bos- ton in November, 1877, was buried in Des Moines. Of the three living, Mary is the wife of George B. Okell, of Chicago, Robert lives at home and George Dulty is a merchant at Crete, Nebraska.

JOHN H. DRAKE,

ALBIA.

JOHN HAMILTON DRAKE, for many years a merchant in Iowa, and now a banker in Albia, received in early life a good business education ; commenced merchandising at eighteen, and has been very successful in his business operations. This is owing, no doubt, in part to his innate shrewdness, and in part to the care and assiduity with which he attended to his business, its minutest details receiving his closest attention.

Mr. Drake is the son of John A. Drake, one of the oldest merchants in Iowa, and now a banker at Cen- terville, Appanoose county. The Drakes were origi- nally from England, this branch of the family settling in North Carolina, where John Hamilton was born on the 5th of July, 1828. The maiden name of his mother was Harriet J. O'Neal, who was of Irish de- scent. A great many members of the Drake family were merchants and physicians, and the present gen- eration still follow these pursuits.

John A. Drake moved with his family to Rushville, Schuyler county, Illinois, in 1830, and seven years later to Fort Madison, Lee county, Iowa. There the subject of this brief sketch remained until 1846, at-

tending to his education in the graded school at that place. At this date his father removed to Davis county ; started the town of Drakeville, and assisted his son in trade. The latter merchandized there until 1867, when he removed to Albia; continued in trade until 1870, when, in company with B. F. Elbert, he organized a private bank. The next year they and others started the First National Bank of Albia, of which Mr. Drake is president, and Mr. Elbert cashier. It is a stable and prosperous institution. Banking is the exclusive business of Mr. Drake, and he gives to it the same care and oversight that he did to his foriner business. Though a strong politician, a firm republican, he never lets politics have the pre- cedence over his legitimate calling. He is a Blue Lodge Mason, a member of the Christian church, and a man of the highest integrity of character. In benevolent movements he is one of the foremost cit- izens of Albia.

His wife was Miss Caroline Lockman, of Drake- ville, Iowa; married on the 29th of August, 1850. Like her husband, she is active in all religious and charitable organizations.

JAMES H. KNOX,

INDIANOLA.

A MONG the many men in Iowa educated in a printing office, and who are prominent in the politics of the state, is James Hayes Knox, postmas- ' ter at Indianola. He is a native of Baltimore, Mary- land, dating his birth on the 11th of August, 1821. His father, James Knox, was born in the north of Ireland, and was brought to this country by his par- ents when three years old, following, when grown to .

manhood, the trade of a chairmaker. He was in the war of 1812-15. The wife of James Knox was Sarah Hayes. The family moved from Baltimore to Cadiz, Ohio, when James H. was four years old. There the son entered a printing office at the early age of four- teen years, and such an office, as already intimated, proved to be his intellectual training school. '

In his nineteenth year he removed to Knox coun-

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ty, in the same state, settling near Mount Vernon,. alternating between farming and printing for a few years. In 1852 he published a paper in Mount Ver- non in company with E. A. Higgins, but returned to the farm again in less than two years.

In November, 1854, Mr. Knox came to Iowa, and halted a short time in Jasper county ; in January fol- lowing he became a partner of the late Lieutenant- Governor Needham in the Oskaloosa " Herald "; re- moved, early in 1857, to Indianola, and on the 2d of April of that year published the first number of the "Weekly Iowa Visitor," conducting it until some time after the civil war had commenced.

In 1861 he was appointed postmaster, and resigned the office in August, 1862, to go into the service. He raised a company and went south as captain of com- pany D, 34th Infantry, and at the end of eight months was obliged to.resign on account of ill health.

During the campaign of 1864 Mr. Knox was a writer on the Burlington "Hawkeye," and the two following winters he held a clerkship in the city of Washington.

In 1866 Mr. Knox repurchased the Indianola "Banner," a new name for the old " Visitor," changed it to the original name and conducted it until 1868,

when he went out of journalism for four or five years. In 1873 he repurchased a half interest in the paper, now called the "Herald," in company with A. J. Graham, the senior publisher, a neatly printed and ably edited weekly, devoted to the interests of War- ren county and the republican party.

On the 27th of April, 1875, Mr. Knox became postmaster once more. He was a whig in early life and for twenty years has been a very active worker in the interests of the republican party, being a leader in the county organization and prominent in the state conventions. He adheres to his political sentiments with the same sincerity that he does his religious. He is a communicant in the Baptist church, is generous-hearted and liberal and an ar- dent well-wisher to the human race.

The wife of Mr. Knox was Miss Harriett M. Mil- ler, of Miller township, Knox county, Ohio, a town named for her father, who was a pioneer in that part of the state. They were joined in wedlock on the 17th of May, 1847, and have had four children. Only two of them, Ella Augusta and James Miller, are liv- ing. The former is the wife of Lorenzo W. Billingsley, an attorney of Lincoln, Nebraska; the latter is a stu- dent in the Iowa State University.

CLAIBORN LEA,

KEOSAUQUA.

C LAIBORN LEA, one of the early enterers of Iowa land, and a highly successful business man, was a native of Campbell county, Virginia, and was born on the 4th of May, 1799. He was of Eng- lish descent, the pioneer in this country settling in Virginia. The Leas there have been a family of planters. The father of Claiborn was Gideon Lea, his mother, Ann Cavel, a Quakeress preacher, and a woman of strong intellectual power and great chris- tian zeal, who died in her eighty-fourth year.

Claiborn Lea moved from Virginia to Highland county, Ohio, about 1820, where he worked indus- triously at cabinet-making, and subsequently became a merchant. About 1838 he visited the Territory of Iowa, entered lands as soon as they came into mar- ket, mainly in Van Buren, Clark and Polk counties ; continued to visit this country once in two or three years, increasing his lands here and looking after them, until 1855, when he brought his family to Fair- field, Jefferson county. The next year he made a

permanent settlement in Keosauqua, dying in No- vember, 1871.

The latter years of Mr. Lea's life were spent en- tirely in looking after his lands and in making pro- vision for his family. He was fortunate in all his business operations, leaving his widow and children, financially speaking, in independent circumstances. He was an able financier, and a man of fine natural abilities. He educated himself, and became con- versant with the mathematics and several branches of the physical sciences. He was a critical thinker. a great bible student, and a firm adherent to the church of his mother. He was strongly anti-slavery, like the Quakers generally, and had no patience with the apologist of oppression, he being a humani- tarian in the broadest sense of the term. A man of purer character it would be difficult to find in the De Moines valley. The citizens of Keosauqua hold him in tender remembrance.

Mr. Lea held some offices in Ohio, but none in

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Iowa. He led a quiet, private, yet busy life. He was the widow's friend, and a prompt almoner where occasion required.

His widow was Sarah H. Roads, of Ohio; married on the 8th of December, 1829. The Roads were from Rockbridge county, Virginia. Mrs. Lea has had seven children, five are living and all of them married : Mary Ann is the wife of E. G. Wilson, of Van Buren county, Iowa; Amy E., of A. J. Wright,

of Bellefontaine, Ohio; Henrietta S., of R. S. Beck, of Carlisle, Kentucky, and Helena F., of J. B. Bleak- more, of Keosauqua. Rutledge, the only son living, is a leading attorney at the Van Buren county bar, his residence being at Keosauqua. The widow of Mr. Lea, now in her sixty-ninth year, is quite active and in the enjoyment of good health. She is a com- municant in the Congregational church, and a highly exemplary christian mother.

REV. THOMAS F. THICKSTUN, COUNCIL BLUFFS.

T HE Thickstuns are traced back to the days of the English Commonwealth, two centuries and a quarter ago. The first man of that name was a gen- eral in Cromwell's army, and was a trusted and firm adherent to the interests of the great Protector. On the accession of Charles II to the throne his generals were obliged to flee the country to save their lives. The ancestor of the family came to this country, changing his name to Thickstun. What his name was originally no one of the descendants knows. Thomas Freeman Thickstun is the son of William and Rachel Freeman Thickstun, and was born in Cussewago, Crawford county, Pennsylvania, on the 3d of July, 1824. His grandfather moved from New Jersey into northwestern Pennsylvania in 1802, while William was in infancy, and settled there when the country was an unbroken wilderness. The Freeman family followed a few years later. They were all christian people, and tried to be governed by the scriptures in rearing their children.

Thomas F. was educated in the common schools of his native county and at the Kingsville Academy, Ohio; his studies, in addition to the ordinary English branches, being Greek, Latin, logic, chemistry, philos- ophy and the higher mathematics. Several branches he mastered outside of a school-room and without any assistance. In early youth, for a short time his favorite compositions were metrical, but the rhyming fever abated before he had fairly ripened into man- hood.

At one period of his life he intended to be a phy- sician ; read medicine with Dr. Hiram Boyd, of Craw- ford county, and attended one course of medical lectures at Cleveland, but afterward concluded to be a school-teacher instead of a medical practitioner. He entered that noble profession with characteristic

earnestness, and pursued it vigorously for twenty- three years, the schools in which he taught being the Kingsville Academy, the Geauga Seminary, both in Ohio, the Meadville, Pennsylvania, Academy, and the Baptist institution at Hastings, Minnesota. He was seven years at the head of the Meadville Acad- emy, and a good share of that time had two hundred and fifty pupils, one hundred and sixty of them in the normal department General Garfield was one of his pupils at Geauga. He was an enthusiast in that calling, and very popular. His period of teach- ing ended with four years as principal of the Minne- sota school.

Mr. Thickstun was licensed to preach at Kings- ville, Ohio, in 1851, ordained in 1861, and com- menced his first pastorate at Waverly, Bremer county, Iowa, in 1865. He remained there three years, build- ing a fine house of worship during that time, and then removed to Council Bluffs ; became the pastor of the newly organized Baptist Church, and from a very small beginning, in a hard field for his denomination, he has built up a church of fair strength, having an elegant house of worship erected very largely through his untiring efforts. Since coming to Council Bluffs he has acted for two years as secretary and agent of the Iowa Baptist state convention, a work into which he flung great energy, and which was attended with a marked degree of success. Mr. Thickstun was originally a Presbyterian, being introduced into that church at the age of fifteen, by the Rev. Dr. Nathaniel West, but embraced the sentiments of the Baptists after careful examination, in 1849.

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The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume, Part 105

Author: American biographical publishing company, pub Publication date: 1878 Publisher: Chicago, New York, American biographical publishing company Number of Pages: 954

Author: American biographical publishing company, pub
Publication date: 1878
Publisher: Chicago, New York, American biographical publishing company
Number of Pages: 954