The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume, Part 106

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

USA > Iowa > The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume > Part 106

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He joined a temperance or total-abstinence society when only fourteen years old, kept his pledge in boyhood "like a man," and has long been a cham- pion of the good cause. He had no money in youth

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to waste on liquor or tobacco; put all his earnings to better use, every dollar ever expended in education being the fruit of his own industry. What God did not do for him he has done for himself, being a self- made man in the usual understanding of the term, and possessed of great vigor and elasticity both of body and mind. There is wonderful power in his gesture as well as his rhetoric. It seems to be no hard task for him to obey the scriptural injunction to do with his might whatever his hands find to do.

On the 7th of April, 1852, Miss Sophronia M. Lyon, of Cassadaga, Chautauqua county, New York, became the wife of Mr. Thickstun, and they have

three children living, and have lost two. Hattie E. is the wife of Professor O. M. De Kay, of Council Bluffs. Carrie L. M. is seventeen, and William L. J. is ten years of age. The former is now about to graduate from the high school of Council Bluffs.

Mrs. Thickstun is a niece of the late Mary Lyon, founder of the celebrated seminary at Holyoke, Mas- sachusetts, and like her aunt is a zealous, energetic, self-sacrificing worker in more than one good cause. On her mother's side she is a direct descendant from John Alden, of the Mayflower. The best chris- ian blood flows in her veins, and is not likely to stagnate from inactivity.

MILO P. SMITH,

MARENGO.

T THE subject of this sketch is a descendant of an English Quaker family which made an early settlement in Pennsylvania. With their peculiar views of war, none of them participated in the strng- gle for independence or in the second war with the mother country. The father of Milo, Samnel W. Smith, was a carpenter by trade, which calling he pursued in early life, and later was a farmer. In 1822 he accompanied the Rev. J. B. Finley to the Wyandot mission, in northwestern Ohio, and built a mission church. His wife was Elizabeth Bair, a native of Ohio, and of German ancestry.

Milo was born in Delaware county, Ohio, on the 16th of July, 1836. The family moved to Washing- ton county, in the same state, when the son was three years old, and there he spent his childhood. He was the sixth child in a family of eleven chil- dren, and his father being in moderate circumstances Milo worked out by the month, sometimes on a farm, sometimes in a tobacco house, but always ready for any kind of work required of him. Until he reached the age of sixteen years he had, on an average, about three months' schooling annually. He then spent a couple of terms at academies in Athens county ; taught school during the winter of 1854-5 ; started with the family the following spring for Iowa; drove a two-horse wagon all the way, two brothers driving two other teams; crossed the Mis- sissippi river at Davenport on the 9th of June, and settled on a farm eight miles east of Marion, Linn county.

For two or three seasons Milo aided in opening

and improving the farm, teaching school meanwhile during the winters, and thus assisting to pay for the land and stock the farm. In the autumn of 1858 he entered Cornell College, at Mount Vernon, in the same county ; taught school the following winter; pushed on with his college studies and graduated in the class of 1861.

During the next twelve months he read law a short time with Hon. William Smyth, of Marion ; as- sisted his father on the farm, and taught the graded school in the village of Tipton, Cedar county. On the 16th of August, 1862, he enlisted as a private in the 31st Iowa Infantry, Colonel Smyth, commander ; was immediately made sergeant-major of the regi- ment ; subsequently became second lieutenant of company C; was promoted to captain, serving in the latter position until after the capture of Atlanta, Georgia, all the while with General Sherman in the fifteenth army corps. His father's declining health now compelled him to resign and hasten northward, but his father died before the captain reached home.

In a few days he went to Ann Arbor, Michigan, matriculated in the law department of the State University, and graduated in March, 1866, spending the previous summer in the law office of Colonel Smyth, at Marion. From Ann Arbor Captain Smith came directly to Marengo, possessed of a respectable suit of clothes and a few law books, and one dollar in his pocket. Here he was in general and successful practice until January, 1875, when he became dis- trict attorney for the eighth judicial district, which office he holds at the present time.

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Captain Smith has a great amount of corporeity ; is five feet nine and a half inches tall, weighs two hundred and forty-five pounds, and ordinarily moves with moderate pace only, but when he gets thor- oughly aroused he exhibits great intellectual strength and power. He is a good judge of law: has much practical sagacity ; he is wary, watchful and keen- sighted, and is usually very successful with a jury. He has been city recorder and school director of Marengo, and works nobly for the interests of the place.

He is a Master Mason, and an earnest worker in the ranks of the great party of freedom. He was early taught to hate slavery and every form of op-

pression. When he was a lad his father, who lived only fifteen miles from the Ohio river, the boundary line between freedom and slavery, kept a depot on the " underground railway," and as soon as he was old enough to ride a horse Milo aided in running off the negroes. The writer once heard him state that on one occasion over fifty fugitives spent the night in his father's house, their pursuers passing by not half a mile away. Just before daylight the ne- groes were secreted in a wood, and all were saved from the clutches of the heartless hunters.

On the 16th of November, 1866, Captain Smith was united in marriage with Miss Mildred E. Hall, of Tipton, Iowa, and they have three children.

JOSEPH EIBOECK,

DES MOINES.

A" MONG the very few Hungarian journalists in the great northwest is Joseph Eiboeck, who was educated in English in a printing-office, and is an accurate, strong and accomplished writer. He dates his birth at Szelskut (Breitenbrunn), on the 22d of February, 1838. His father was killed in a duel when the son was quite young. At six years of age Joseph was taken to Vienna and educated in German. After the revolution there of 1848-9, his step-father, Paul Kiene, who participated in it, was compelled to leave Vienna, and he came to this country in 1849, settling in Dubuque, Iowa. Joseph was soon put in the office of the " Miners' Express," now the " Herald," as an apprentice, and since that time, with the exception of two years when engaged in teaching, he has been in the printing business. Thirteen years he was editor and proprietor of the Elkader, Clayton county, " Journal," and nearly four years he has been in the same position on the Ger- man "Staats Anzeiger," and the " Herald of Liber- ty," the latter printed in the English language, and both published at Des Moines. While a resident of Clayton county he was also the founder and for a short time conductor of the Elkader "Nord-Iowa Herold," a German weekly.

Mr. Eiboeck was never in a school-house in the United States until he went in as a teacher, all his acquirements for that office having been secured while printer and editor, he devoting his spare hours and fragments of hours to the different branches necessary to be taught.

While teaching he wrote a series of lectures, the principal ones being on "Hungary," "Rise and Progress of Literature," and " Benjamin Franklin." These he delivered many times in Iowa and Wiscon- sin. Since that time, partly for health, and partly to see the country and enlarge his stock of knowl- edge, he has traveled through nearly all the states and territories, spending a good deal of time in Cal- ifornia, Oregon and Washington territory.

In 1873 Mr. Eiboeck was sent by Governor Car- penter as a commissioner to the World's Fair at Vienna, after which he made a tour of the conti- nent, visiting most of the principal cities of Europe. Upon his return from these various travels he de- livered in many Iowa towns very instructive lectures, largely the fruits of his observation.

In 1871 Mr. Eiboeck founded at Elkader a se- cret organization, with the name of the "August Order of Ethologists," with a ritual similar to the Masonic, with scenic initiations. One of its tenets was the abolition of the pernicious custom of "treat- ing," so fruitful a source of intemperance in the United States.

In 1872, after disposing of the "Clayton County Journal," he completed the history of that county, a work on which he had been engaged for some years. It was on his return from Europe that he located at Des Moines, and on establishing his two papers here he infused into them much of the tenets and spirit of personal liberty, he being a very prominent ex- ponent, if not the leader, of that cause in this part

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of the country. At the democratic state conven- tion in August, 1877, Mr. Eiboeck was tendered the nomination for lieutenant-governor, to represent the German element, but he declined, one of his doc- trines being that newspaper conductors should not run for office. He was a republican until 1872 ; since then he has acted with the opposition.

He belongs to more than a dozen societies, in- cluding the Masonic up to the commandery and the Turn-Verein.

He was born of Catholic parents, but is liberal in his religious views, having no connection with any church.

Mr. Eiboeck married his wife at Cedar Falls, Iowa: Miss Fannie, daughter of E. R. Garrison, formerly of Detroit. They were united on the 15th of September, 1863, and have one child.

Mr. Eiboeck is a short, compactly built man, with dark complexion and robust appearance. He has had a little sickness at times, but his health is now perfect and his endurance very great. He has good business talent and untiring application, and evi- dently believes that work is no very severe affliction. Few men apply themselves so closely as he does. Financially, like most printers, he has had some re- verses, but industry in his case is finally winning.

MASTON H. JONES,

BLOOMFIELD.

M ASTON HUNTER JONES, for twenty- seven years an attorney in Davis county, Iowa, is a native of Putnam county, Indiana; is a son of Benjamin and Esther (Alexander) Jones, and was born in a farm-house one and one-half miles from Greencastle, on the 7th of January, 1828. The grandfather of Benjamin Jones, whose name was also Benjamin Jones, came from Wales, and settled on the eastern shore of Maryland, and some of his sons participated in the struggle for independence. The Alexanders were from Scotland, the branch from which Esther Alexander sprung having settled in Rockbridge county, Virginia.

After he was old enough to work, the subject of this sketch farmed, being master of his own situa- tion after he was sixteen years old. When he had earned a little money he spent two years in the pre- paratory department of Asbury University, Green- castle ; then taught and studied by himself for a year or two; at twenty-two commenced reading law with Delaney R. Eckles, of Greencastle, and finished with Judge Kenny, of Terre Haute, where he was admitted to practice in March, 1851.

Anticipating the advice of Horace Greeley, Mr. Jones came immediately west, reaching the young village of Bloomfield in the month of March, 1851, with six dollars in money in his pocket, his law library in his carpet sack, and a small silver watch which began to run about the time that Jackson did for the Presidency. Here Mr. Jones has been in steady practice since he pitched his tent in Davis county, enlarging his library from time to time, de-

termined to know the law, and to know it well and thoroughly. He has never dealt in real estate, ex- cept to purchase and hold it for his own use; has been the loser once or twice by meddling with rail- road stock, and with the exception of serving one term in the county board of supervisors, has kept out of every office not connected with his profession. He served as district attorney from 1870 to 1874,- and then refused peremptorily a renomination. The law is his delight : he is a man of one profession, and in that he is a grand success. In law, he takes a common-sense view of every question that rises ; has a judgment of extraordinary soundness, and es- pousing a just cause, he never fails to win. He is an extensive reader, and has a large fund of knowl- edge outside his profession. In humor, he is pro- lific, rich and highly entertaining.

In 1864 Mr. Jones went into the one-hundred- days service as lieutenant of company D, 45th Iowa Infantry, which regiment did patrol duty on the Memphis and Charleston railroad, West Tennessee.

In politics, Mr. Jones has been in succession a whig, an American and a republican, and he now calls himself a " greenbacker." He has no politics from policy, is an aspirant to no office, and votes as his judgment and conscience dictate. He is most emphatically an independent thinker and act- or, no trammels of party or creed binding him. He believes in serving God and man, but neither in any slavish sense. . He pays more to support religious institutions than most people, and makes the least pretensions to goodness of any. As a citizen, he is

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attentive to his general duties and is generous to the needy.

Mr. Jones is a Knight Templar of the Red Cross in the Masonic order, and is up to the patriarch de- gree in Odd-Fellowship.

On the 17th of June, 1852, he was united in mar- riage with Miss Emmeline Spencer, of Bloomfield,

and they have four children. Mrs. Jones is a chris- tian woman and a devoted mother.

Mr. Jones has a solid build, being five feet and ten inches tall, and weighing two hundred and five pounds. His eyes are hazel, with a merry twinkle, and woe to the man who undertakes to joke with him.

JOSIAH R. MCCLELLAND, M.D.,

LEON.

JOSIAH ROBINSON MCCLELLAND twenty-

five years a physician in Decatur county, Iowa, was born in Monroe county, Kentucky, on the 15th of December, 1823. His paternal ancestors were Scotch-Irish. His great-grandfather settled in North Carolina, and his grandfather lived in Scott county, Virginia, where the father of the doctor, Josiah Mc- Clelland, was born. The maiden name of the doc- tor's mother was Rhoda Condra, of whose pedigree nothing is known.

When the subject of this notice was about two years old the family moved to Jackson county, Ten- nessee, and in 1841 to Mercer county, Missouri, the son being raised on his father's farm. He had the usual education of farmers' sons, such as a subscrip- tion school affords. He spent two years in a mer- cantile house at Princeton, Mercer county, and then, in July, 1848, commenced reading medicine at the same place with Dr. J. B. Bell, attending lectures in Saint Louis. In 1851 he commenced practice with his preceptor at Princeton; at the end of two years moved to Decatur county, where he has since been in constant practice. Being a close student, and making his profession his life-work, he could not

avoid making good progress, and has an excellent standing for attentiveness and skill. He possesses those amenities which make his presence especially acceptable in the sick room. Though making all departments of medical science his study, physiology has been a favorite branch, and in it he has made marked advancement. He has long been a member of the Decatur County Medical Society, and is its president.

Dr. McClelland was originally a whig, but of late years has voted with the democrats, though he has not taken so active a part in politics as to interfere in the least with his profession.

He is a Chapter Mason, and has passed all the chairs in the subordinate lodge of Odd-Fellowship.

The doctor has been a member of the Christian church since boyhood ; has lived a consistent, irre- proachable life, and is a noble specimen of the chris- tian gentleman.

His wife was Miss Amanda M. Rhea, of Mercer county, Missouri; married on the 18th of March, 1851. They have three children : Etta M., the wife of J. P. Hall, of Leon, and Edgar B and Emma G., who are pursuing their studies in the local school.

ALBERT PHIPPS,

CHEROKEE.

A LBERT PHIPPS, one of the early settlers of Cherokee county, and a leading spirit in the county agricultural society, was a son of Aaron and Polly Healy Phipps, both parents before their mar- riage being of the same name. His maternal grand- father, Jason Phipps, was in the revolutionary army, going in when a young man. The length of his service is unknown. Albert was born in Milford,

Worcester county, Massachusetts, on the 7th of Oc- tober, 1820, and is a descendant of a very old New England family, of which Sir William Phipps, one of the colonial governors of Massachusetts, formed one branch.

The subject of this sketch lost his mother when he was six years old, and lived a few years with an uncle in Connecticut. He was reared on a farm

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mainly until sixteen or seventeen years old, with a very ordinary common-school education. At nine- teen or twenty years of age he went to sea, spend- ing two years as a fisherman, mainly on the Grand Bank. Prior to this date he had commenced the bootmaker's trade, and on closing his brief career as a mariner resumed his trade, working at it off and on, in Milford, Massachusetts, for a dozen years or more, farming also, more or less, during the same period.

In 1856 Mr. Phipps came to Iowa as a member of the Milford Emigration Society, bought land in Cherokee county, and has continued to improve it up to this date. He has a farm a mile or two from the city of Cherokee, the county seat, and has other lands in Cherokee county. He is industrious, eco- nomical and thrifty, but, like other men in the coun- ty, has had some reverses during the last three or four years on account of the invasion and depredations of grasshoppers. He was one of the foremost men in forming an agricultural society in the county, and has been its treasurer. He is the life of the organ- ization and awake to every interest of the county.

In 1864 Mr. Phipps enlisted as a private in the 15th Iowa Infantry, and served until the rebellion terminated and the regiment was mustered out.

He has been a county supervisor most of the time since locating here; is chairman of the board, and at an early period, for two years, was the board, managing the business entirely alone, the county being only one township. He has held nearly every town office, and has been and still is a very useful citizen. His integrity was never doubted.

In politics, he was originally a democrat, but has acted with the republican party since 1860.

The wife of Mr. Phipps was Miss Martha Little- field, of Hopkinton, Massachusetts; married in 1842. They have had six sons and two daughters, all yet living. Luther, John A. and Henry I .. are married ; the other sons, Frank, Arthur and Nathan are single. Addie is the wife of N. T. Burroughs, banker, of Cherokee, and Mattie Eliza, the younger daughter, is unmarried. They are a family of well-reared, excellent children, and their general good demeanor and correct habits are a comfort to their parents.

Considering his limited education and the conse- quent disadvantages under which he has labored, Mr. Phipps has made a truly praiseworthy record. With great prudence and industry he has combined unswerving honesty, and hence has always claimed the highest respect of his fellow-citizens. A good name is a glittering factor in his wealth.

SAMUEL H. WATSON,

VINTON.

TINTON, the seat of justice of Benton county, was fortunate in the class of its earlier busi- ness men. They were solid in character, and in the end, by prudence and industry, have become solid in means. The four banking institutions of the place, some of whose managers are mentioned on other pages of this work, are under the direction of highly honorable and enterprising men. They are town- builders, men whose public spirit crops out promi- nently in more than one direction. Among this class is Samuel Humes Watson, who started the second bank in Vinton, who is well known as a business man throughout Iowa, and whose name is a synonym for promptness, integrity, and every business virtue. We know nothing about the pedigree of either branch of Mr. Watson's family. He was the son of Joshua P. Watson, a cooper at first, then a merchant, and finally a banker, residing at the time of Samuel's birth, on the 3d of July, 1828, in Ohio county, Virginia, His

mother's maiden name was Martha Humes. When he was five years old the family moved to Harrisville, Harrison county, Ohio, where at eighteen, with only such education as a district school could furnish, he entered his father's store, acting as clerk till twenty- one. At that age his father gave him an interest in the business ; he was in the firm six years, and then concluded to push farther west. On the Ist of May, 1856, he crossed the Mississippi and reached Iowa City.

After prospecting awhile, looking for the best open- ing, he concluded to locate in Vinton, and reached here with his family on the 14th of October follow- ing. He immediately opened a bank in company with Judge Samuel Douglass, they remaining in busi- ness together until the judge moved to Chicago in 1861. Continuing the bank alone until 1865, in that year Mr. Watson organized the First National Bank of Vinton ; after managing it for four years, the char-

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ter was surrendered and he returned to private bank- ing. For the last six years his two eldest sons, Will- iam P. and Peter W., enterprising young men, have been with their father, the firm name being S. H. Watson and Sons.

During the earlier years of his residence in Vinton Mr. Watson dealt largely in lands, mainly in Benton county, and was very successful in his investments. Latterly banking has been almost exclusively his bus- iness. He has, however, built extensively nearly ev- ery year. Watson's Hall, put up by him four years ago, is one of the finest buildings of the kind in the interior of the state. His own bank building, erect- ed two years ago, is a solid and elegant structure. Other buildings in the city are the work of his hands. The house in which he lives, put up eighteen years ago, is very comfortable, but he is improving a ten- acre lot, adjoining the city, and preparing to build a house of much larger dimensions and more modern and much richer finish.

Since residing in Iowa Mr. Watson has lived a rather quiet and retired life, so far as office-holding

is concerned. He has done some good work on the local school board, having served in it, off and on, many years, and has been a trustee and the treasurer of the Iowa College for the Blind, located at Vinton, for the last ten years, but has never sought political preferment. He was at first a Douglas democrat ; since 1860 has been a republican. He has never been very active in politics.

Mr. Watson ordinarily attends the Presbyterian church, where his wife, who was Emmeline Perrine, of Harrisville, Ohio, belongs. They were married on the 20th of November, 1849, and have seven chil- dren. The two eldest, already mentioned, are mar- ried ; the others are single.

Mr. Watson has always been a careful and method- ical business man, close in his calculations, untiring in his application, and suffering no ends to get loose ; hence his eminent success. He is public-spirited, going for substantial improvements and for whatever else will advance home interests. Vinton abounds in useful citizens, of whom Mr. Watson stands in the foremost rank.

TIMOTHY WHITING,

MOUNT PLEASANT.

A MONG the eminently successful merchants and bankers residing in Henry county, Iowa, is Timothy Whiting, a son of John and Nancy Carter Whiting, and born on the 7th of February, 1809, in the town of Brewer, Hancock county, Maine. Both the Whitings and Carters were early Massachusetts families, spreading from thence, at an early day, into Maine, New Hampshire, and other New England States.

Colonel John Whiting removed with his family to Bath, Steuben county, New York, when Timothy was six years old, and where he was reared on a farm till fifteen, finishing his education at that age in the Prattsburg Academy. He then became a clerk in a store at Bath ; two years later went to Painted Post, in the same county; clerked there between two and three years, and at the age of twenty went into busi- ness for himself in company with another young man.

At the end of ten years Mr. Whiting moved from Painted Post to Tyrone, in the same county, con- tinuing in trade there four years, then returned to Bath, carrying on the mercantile business until 1857> when he made a permanent settlement in Mount

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The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume, Part 106

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