USA > Iowa > The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume > Part 11
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In politics, he was in early life a whig. He has been attached to the republican party since its first organization, and has always supported it, though of late years he has taken no active part in politics.
Shortly after removing to Iowa, in 1857, he mar- ried Miss Mary Norman, daughter of the Rev. F. H.
Van Derveer, D.D., of Warwick, New York. This union lasted until 1867, when it was terminated by her death. One child, a son, named Ferdinand V., who survives, is the result of the union. Since then Mr. Rogers has remained a widower.
In personal appearance, he is of medium height, slender make, a frame rather delicate than robust, a pleasing countenance and well-shaped head sur- mounted with a luxuriant growth of smooth, dark brown hair.
JOHN E. GOODENOW,
MAQUOKETA.
JOHN ELLIOTT GOODENOW, "the father of J Maquoketa," as he is called by the early settlers, is a native of Vermont, and was born in Springfield, Windsor county, on the 23d of March, 1812. His parents, Timothy and Betsy White Goodenow, were hard working people of the agricultural class, and raised a family of fourteen children.
The Whites, tradition reports, were descended from Peregrine White, the first child born after the Mayflower landed at Plymouth. It is a numerous family in this country. The great-grandfather of John Elliott had sixteen children, who lived to have families. Timothy Goodenow moved to Warren county, New York, when the subject of this memoir was eight years old, and there the son remained, tilling land with his father until a little past his ma- jority, with no education except what could be had in attendance at a district school a few weeks each winter season. He bought a canal boat and ran it on the Northern canal, between Burlington, Ver- mont, and Albany, New York, until the close of navigation in 1837, and during the winter following started for the west with a four-horse team, driving it more than a thousand miles. He crossed the Mississippi on ice on the toth of March, 1838, and being delayed by high water, did not reach the spot where Maquoketa now stands until the 19th. It was then a wild open prairie, with no improvement or human habitation in sight, though there were a few families in the township. Here Mr. Goodenow "squatted " on a hundred and sixty acres of land, which did not come into market till six years later; and he was a "sovereign," so far as he was con- scious of any civil power. He put up a log cabin with the greatest possible dispatch, and that spring
planted three acres of sod corn, realizing a light crop. The next season he fenced his whole quarter section and broke forty or fifty acres of it. This being done, and not being partial to a bachelor's life in the wilderness, he returned to Warren county, New York, and on the 3d of October, 1839, received the hand, having long before had the heart, of Miss Eliza Wright, of Bolton. Before starting on their bridal tour, leading to the land of rattlesnakes and ague, Mr. Goodenow became ill, and was not able to leave eastern New York until after navigation had closed ; so, instead of bringing his young bride to her new home on the Maquoketa by water, he purchased a span of horses, and started with both sleigh and wagon, sometimes using one and sometimes the other. They had relatives on the route in western New York. Ohio, Indiana and Michigan ; made sev- eral visits; were nine weeks on the road, and had, on the whole, a pleasant wedding trip. Once they took the wrong track in Carroll county, Illinois, and found themselves on the open prairie eight or ten miles east of the Mississippi river, with no house in sight and the shades of night gathering around them. Their team was fatigued, they were at the end of a road, and, although the weather was decid- edly wintry, they concluded to camp out. They had a plenty of covering ; secured the horses ; made a couch in the wagon box, and, supperless, went to bed. Many years afterward the writer of this sketch heard Mrs. Goodenow remark that when she saw that it was impracticable to try to find a shelter that night, she had a mind "to have a good cry," but cheered up, and she still smiles at the novelty of their bridal bed. Like Mrs. Wilkins Micawber, who resolved that she never would leave her husband,
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Mrs. Goodenow never did. They reached their home in the Western Clearings in February, and for thirty-eight years have remained on this beauti- ful town site. In addition to farming, Mr. Goode- now soon found that he must accommodate travelers, and opened his log house as an inn, building a frame house in 1846, and a brick house two or three years later. Most of the time, up to a recent date, he has kept a public house, and few landlords in the State of Iowa have been longer or are more generally known, or have more friends. With money or with- out it, no person was ever turned away by Mr. Goodenow on account of the condition of his fi- nances. Kinder hearted or more hospitable people than he and his wife, it would be difficult to find in this state or any other.
As early as 1844 Mr. Goodenow made up his mind that Maquoketa was a good site for a town, and the way to make a town was to build houses and hold out inducements for settlers to locate here, he donating lots for all public purposes. At that time he commenced building, and nearly every year since that date has witnessed his enterprise in that line. In this respect he has been the foremost man in the place for more than thirty years. In enterprises of every kind likely to advance the in- terests of his home, he has been a leader. He early took an interest in railroads, and has been a director for more than twenty years,- some part of the time
of roads that were never built. Two are now run- ning into the city.
Mr. Goodenow was the first postmaster of Ma- quoketa, the office at first being called Springfield, and established in 1843. Prior to that date the nearest office was at Bellevue, twenty miles distant. He was assessor of Jackson county one year; the first mayor of the city, serving at different times three years, and a member of the general assembly in the session of 1849 and 1850.
He has always been a democrat, but not a bitter partisan. He belongs to the grand lodge of Odd- Fellows.
Mr. Goodenow is the father of eight children, seven of them still living. The second child, a daughter, Carlotta, died on the 23d of October, 1863, aged twenty years. · Osceola, the eldest son, is mar- ried and lives in Maquoketa ; Mary L. is the wife of D. H. Anderson, of Maquoketa; Emma, of George B. Perham, printer, Chicago ; and Helen C., of Fred- eric S. Tinker, of Maquoketa. Alice, George and Winfield Scott, are unmarried and live at home.
Mr. Goodenow has added to his lands and other property from time to time ; is no less industrious than he was forty years ago, and he has lived to see rise around him one of the most solidly built and thriving little cities in eastern Iowa. It is al- most needless to say that no man has done as much as he to make Maquoketa what it is.
HON. WILLIAM L. JOY, SIOUX CITY.
W ILLIAM LEONARD JOY, the leading court lawyer in northwestern Iowa, is a native of Vermont, and was born in Townshend on the 17th of August, 1831. His parents were William H. and Hettie Leonard Joy. His paternal grandfather was a revolutionary soldier. The father of William L. owned two or three farms and a grist mill, and, at times, had other business on his hands, and the son aided him most of the time until twenty years of age, fitting for college meanwhile, at Leland Semi- nary in his native town. He entered at Amherst in his twenty-first year, and graduated in the class of 1855, teaching school three winters while in his college course.
Mr. Joy taught a few terms in the Leland Sem- inary while studying law with Judge Roberts; was
admitted to the bar early in the spring of 1857, and started immediately for the west, reaching Sioux City, Iowa, his present home, on the 5th of May. Here he formed a partnership with N. C. Hudson, and the firm of Hudson and Joy was continued until 1866. After practicing alone for two years Mr. Joy took a partner, C. L. Wright, and the firm of Joy and Wright is the leading law firm in Wood- bury county. These gentlemen are the local attor- neys for the Illinois Central Railroad Company, and the attorneys for the Sioux City and Pacific, the Da- kota Southwestern, the Covington, Columbus and Black Hills railroads, and for the Iowa Falls and Sioux City Land Company.
Mr. Joy has always had a heavy law business ; has managed his affairs with prudence and success,
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He was a member of the lower house in the eleventh and twelfth sessions of the general assem- bly, and probably did as important work in the service of his constituents as any member of the legislature in 1864 and 1866. He was sent especial- ly to look after the railroad interests of northwestern lowa, and succeeded in carrying through the meas- ures for which he was sent.
Mr. Joy was a member of the board of capital commissioners two years.
He has been connected with the Baptist church more than twenty years, and is one of the most prominent laymen in that denomination in the state.
Mr. Joy was formerly a whig, and is now a repub-
lican. His political friends have frequently urged him to be a candidate for judge of the district and circuit courts and the supreme court ; he has pe- culiar fitness for such a position, but is too modest to encourage such movements. Pecuniarily, he would suffer by going on the bench.
On the 10th of October, 1859, he was united in marriage with Miss Frances A. Stone, of Westmore- land, New Hampshire, and they have two children.
Mr. Joy is a fair pleader before a jury, and is still improving; but he is best known as a court lawyer, and as such has but few equals in the state. His opinions on points of law carry great weight. His moral character is solid, and Sioux City was fortu- nate in having such a man among her early settlers.
HON. JOHN F. DUNCOMBE,
FORT DODGE.
T HE pioneer lawyer in Webster county, as it now stands; the first notary public, the first journalist in the county, and the first citizen to be made a Mason, was John Francis Duncombe, now and for a long time one of the leading attorneys in the eleventh judicial district. Mr. Duncombe was born in Erie county, Pennsylvania, on the 22d of October, 1831. His father, Eli Duncombe, and his mother, Selina Champlin Duncombe, are still living. His great-grandfather was a soldier in the revolu- tionary war, and his grandfather in the war of 1812. John F. Duncombe is of the fifth generation from Sir Charles Duncombe, of England, a family long and still connected with the British parliament.
Eli Duncombe was a farmer, and his son spent the first sixteen years of his life at home, tilling the soil and attending a district school a few months each year. He prepared for college at Meadville, Pennsylvania, and attended Allegheny College, there located, three years. The senior year he went to C'enter College, Danville, Kentucky; studied six weeks, stood the full examination in the four years' curriculum and returned the same week to Allegheny College, where he graduated.
Mr. Duncombe commenced studying law with H. 1 .. Richmond, of Meadville, concluding his studies with James C. Marshall and Hon. J. P. Vincent, of Erie. IIc was admitted to the bar at Erie when twenty-two years of age. After practicing there one year he became interested in the opening fields of
the west and removed to Iowa, settling at Fort Dodge, in April, 1855. Here he has practiced law for twenty-two years, securing a larger practice than any other attorney in the upper Des Moines valley. Meanwhile he has usually been engaged in other branches of business, and which, though unaided, he has prosecuted successfully. Although his legal practice has always been large, yet at one time he was managing seven farms; at two periods he was conducting a weekly newspaper, one of them, the " Fort Dodge Sentinel," the first paper ever printed in northwestern Iowa; and at one time he was the sole local director of the lowa Falls and Sioux City railroad, now the western part of the lowa branch of the Illinois Central road. He has been engaged, at different times, in building the Iowa and Minne- sota and lowa Pacific railways, and has built one or two short railroads to coal mines, in connection with C. B. Richards, Esq., of Fort Dodge, and is at this time operating four mines in which he has a two-thirds interest. He is also attorney for the Illi- nois Central Railroad Company for seventeen coun- ties of the Iowa division.
When the Indian massacre occurred at Spirit Lake, ninety miles northwest of Fort Dodge, early in the year 1857, Mr. Duncombe commanded one of the two companies organized at Fort Dodge, suf- fering everything but death in that perilous march through three fect of snow. Captain Johnson, of company C, from Webster City, and Private W. Burk-
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holder, of company B, were frozen to death, all others barely escaping. On their return march, when in Pocahontas county, they had to halt for forty-eight hours by the side of a body of water, without food or tents, while the water froze stiff enough to bear up loaded wagons. The troops were out eighteen days, returning on the 5th of April, all of them thoroughly exhausted, and some of them suffering for a long time after. Governor Grimes complimented these volunteers in the strong- est terms for their bravery and their heroic endur- ance of the hardships of the campaign.
As early as 1860 Mr. Duncombe was a member of the general assembly ; has since been a member of both houses, attending in all six sessions, regular and special. Physically and intellectually, he stood among the tallest members. He was a powerful debater, a wise counselor, and a very earnest worker for the good of the commonwealth. While in the upper house in 1860 he drew the bill, and secured its passage, by which the land grant was transferred to the Cedar Rapids and Missouri River Railway Company, which act enabled that road first to cross the State of Iowa, thereby causing the main line of the Union Pacific railroad to make its eastern point at Council Bluffs. At the last session which he at- tended in the lower house he drew the bill for the Iowa railroad tax law, and carried it through in op- position to a number of the leading men in the gen- eral assembly.
Mr. Duncombe has been twice a candidate for congress, once for lieutenant-governor, and once for judge of the supreme court; but the democratic
party, to which he has always belonged, has been in the minority for more than twenty years both in the state and his congressional district : hence, although he has usually run far ahead of the party ticket, he was unable to secure a majority, though he has the ability to fill any position in the state. In 1872 he was chairman of the democratic national conven- tion, and as such cast the vote of the delegation for Horace Greeley for President.
Mr. Duncombe is one of the regents of the State University, and takes much interest in educational matters. He has taken the highest orders of the Masonic fraternity.
Though an attendant on church services, Mr. Duncombe is not a member of any religious society.
He has been twice married : first, on the 29th of December, 1852, to Miss Carrie Perkins, of Erie, Pennsylvania, she dying without issue two years later; and the second time, on the 11th of May, 1859, to Miss Mary A. Williams, daughter of Major Williams, of Fort Dodge. She has had six children, and five are living. The family home is one of the most stately and elegant mansions in Iowa, situated on a high bluff overlooking a wide stretch of the Des Moines valley.
At the outset of his settlement at Fort Dodge, Mr. Duncombe made its interests his own, and has al- ways been one of the foremost men in every move- ment calculated to encourage its growth and increase its prosperity. His efforts in this direction have been untiring and successful. He is a man of irre- proachable character, and is held in high esteem by a very wide circle of acquaintance.
CHARLES C. PARRY, M.D.,
DAVENPORT.
C' HARLES CHRISTOPHER PARRY, M.D., botanist and naturalist, was born in Worcester- shire, England, on the 28th of August, 1823, and is- the second son of Joseph and Eliza (Elliott) Parry, who with their family emigrated to America in 1832, landing in New York on the ninth birthday of our subject. They settled soon after in Sandy Hill, Washington county, New York, where the boyhood of young Parry was spent, attending school, at dif- ferent periods, in several neighboring towns, includ- ing, besides his regular place of residence, Benning- ton, Vermont, and Union Village, New York. He 8
entered Union College, Schenectady (then under the presidency of the celebrated Eliphalet Nott, D.D.), in 1840, and graduated in 1842. After leav- ing college he commenced the study of medicine, including, for the purpose of recreation, the practi- cal pursuit of botany ; attended medical lectures at Albany and New York city, graduating at the Col- lege of Physicians and Surgeons in the latter place in the spring of 1846; moved west in the fall of the same year and settled in Davenport, Iowa, where he commenced the practice of his profession. But, although thoroughly educated, skillful and success-
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ful as a physician, yet his tastes and enthusiasm ran altogether in the line of botany, for the study of which he had contracted an uncontrollable passion in early life, and since 1847 his labors have been mainly devoted to that science. Accordingly in that year he accompanied, in the capacity of botan- ist, a public land-surveying party, under the direc- tion of Lieutenant J. Morehead, in the interior of Iowa, including the present location of the state capital, Des Moines; and in the following year he was connected with D. D. Owens' geological survey of the northwest, in Minnesota and Wisconsin, in the same capacity, and prepared a classified list of plants of the region embraced in the survey, includ- ing previous observations in Iowa, published in Dr. Owens' final report. In the spring of 1849 he left for California, by way of the isthmus of Panama, and was connected with the Mexican boundary sur- vey, under command of Major W. H. Emory, as botanist and geologist, the expedition being absent four years. His report on the same is included in the volumes of the "Mexican Boundary Survey," published in 1857-9. After this he continued to reside in Davenport, giving his attention mainly to business matters connected with the improvement of his property in that town, until 1867, making sum- mer botanical excursions as far as the Rocky Mount- ains in the years 1861, 1862 and 1864. In the spring of the year 1867 he accompanied a Pacific railroad surveying party across the continent on the line of the thirty-fifth parallel, returning to Davenport a year later. In the spring of 1869 he accepted the appointment of botanist to the United States agri- cultural department in Washington, District of Co- lumbia, remaining in this position till 1871. During this period he made a short trip to Europe in the spring of 1870, revisiting, after an absence of thirty- eight years, the scenes of his early life, spending most of the time at the world-renowned Kew Gar- dens, then, as now, under the direction of the dis- tinguished botanist and explorer, Dr. J. 1). Hooker. In the early part of 1871 he accompanied the Santo Domingo commission to that island in the interest of the "Agricultural Department," and made a report on the botanical resources of that district, which constitutes one of the public documents of that period.
In 1873 he accompanied the northwestern Wyo- ming expedition, under command of Captain W. S. Jones, United States engineer corps, to the head of the Yellowstone and the National Park. In 1874 he
made a private botanical tour into southern Utah; and in the years 1875 and 1876 he made an ex- tended botanical collecting tour in Utah, Nevada and California, returning to Davenport in the fall of the last-named year. His reports on these several expeditions have been published in various scien - tific journals, the last being contained in volume one of "Proceedings of the Davenport Academy of Science," of which important institution he was one of the original founders, and president thereof from 1868 to 1875.
In politics, the doctor affiliates with the repub- lican party, though inclining more to its liberal than its strict party alliance.
In religious profession, he is an Episcopalian, and in his philosophic views, an evolutionist.
Dr. Parry, like most eminent scholars and scien- tists, is extremely modest and retiring. So unob- trusive and entirely undemonstrative has been his whole career that it is only the comparatively few in the small circle of the devotees of science that are able to form any estimate of his worth in the life he has chosen and to which he has devoted his brilliant talents. He is essentially a student ; his time and ability are in continuous exercise in the interests of science, and he has enjoyed the con- fidence and esteem of some of the foremost men in the scientific world. The late lamented Agassiz was one of his constant correspondents, among whom are also such well-known names as Professor Asa Gray, the late Dr. J. Torrey, Professor Eaton, of Yale College, Professors Henry and Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, District of Columbia, Dr. Engelmann, of St. Louis, etc., in this country, and Hooker, Bentham and De Candolle in the old world.
It is as a botanist that Dr. Parry will be chiefly remembered. During his several expeditions to the Rocky Mountains and Pacific-slope territories his researches have resulted in large and very valuable contributions to the classified flora of the United States. By his numerous reports and articles to the various scientific periodicals he has rendered service of the utmost importance to the interests of science throughout the world.
Dr. Parry is also a gentleman of the very highest literary attainments and of refined tastes, and his occasional deviations from the beaten track of his pursuits, in the way of public addresses to his fel- low-citizens, have been productive of the most bene- ficial results ; especially noteworthy among these
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was his lecture on the history of the Mississippi valley, delivered by request in 1872, and published by the Young Men's Christian Association of Dav- enport.
Despite his proverbial reticence and retiring hab- its, Dr. Parry is a gentleman of fine social qualities, and when he " unbends " himself is one of the most genial of companions.
In all the phases of a strong moral character, he
is beyond reproach, and deservedly enjoys the high- est esteem of all who know him.
In 1854 he was married in Davenport, Iowa, to Miss Sarah M. Dalzell, who died in 1858, leaving one child (Eliza), who survived her mother seven years. In 1859 he married his present wife, Mrs. Emily R. Preston, of Westford, Connecticut. Being without other family, he is enabled to devote the later years of his life to his congenial pursuits.
GENERAL JAMES M. TUTTLE, DES MOINES.
JAMES MADISON TUTTLE, a native of Sum- merfield, Monroe county (now Noble county), Ohio, was born on the 24th of September, 1823, the son of James Tuttle and Esther née Crow. He traces his paternal ancestry back to the earliest settlement of Maine, his great-grandfather being Burrell Tuttle and his grandparents being James Tuttle and Martha née Moore. His maternal ances- tors were natives of Pennsylvania, his grandfather being Martin Crow.
Prior to his tenth year our subject attended school in Fayette county, Indiana, and afterward, until he attained his twentieth year, when he began life for himself, his time was employed in assisting his father.
Removing to the west in the spring of 1846, he settled at Farmington, in Van Buren county, Iowa, and there engaged in the mercantile trade and farm- ing. As a business man, he soon won the confidence of his fellow-citizens and disclosed those qualities which eminently fitted him for official positions. Accordingly, in 1855, he was elected sheriff of the county.
Two years later he was elected county treasurer, and in 1859 was reelected to the same office.
At the opening of the civil war his sympathies became deeply engaged in the Union cause, and raising a company of volunteers, he was elected captain of the same. Such, however, was the ra- pidity with which the call for troops was filled, that this company was not called into the service until the 27th of May, 1861, when it was assigned to the 2d regiment Iowa Infantry Volunteers. While quartered at Keokuk, Iowa, Captain Tuttle was elected lieutenant-colonel, and on the 6th of Sep- tember, 1861, succeeded Colonel Curtis to the rank
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