USA > Iowa > The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume > Part 111
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Dr. Findley spent a year in his native town; in 1859 came to Indianola, Iowa; in the autumn of 1861 removed to Grove City, Cass county, and the next year to Lewis, in the same county, then the seat of justice, where he practiced ten or eleven years. During the progress of the civil war, physicians in this part of the state were scarce; Dr. Findley's skill became well known, and it was no uncommon oc- currence for him to have calls thirty miles away in every direction. His rides extended not only all over Cass county, but into Pottawattamie, Shelby,
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Audubon, Adair, Adams and Montgomery counties, occasionally forty miles from Lewis.
In September, 1873, Dr. Findley removed to At- lantic, the new county seat, where he was already well known, and where he has had from the outset all the practice he could desire. His rides he now limits to the county, except in difficult cases, and his main practice is in the city of Atlantic. He has a large drug store here, and two farms in the county which he cultivates by renters. Pecuniarily, as well as professionally, he has been quite successful.
Dr. Findley is a republican, strong in his convic- tions of right and wrong, fearless and outspoken, yet no wire-puller and not active in politics. He is a past grand in Odd-Fellowship.
Dr. Findley is a man of very pure character; a
warm-hearted, active christian ; an elder in the Pres- byterian church, and belongs to a family of eminent preachers in that denomination. His brother, W. F. Findley, D.D., is pastor of the Central Church, New- ark, New Jersey; his brother, Samuel Findley, ju- nior, D.D., is pastor at Carlisle, Ohio, and his brother, J. R. Findley, is pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Rock Island, Illinois. He is also a broth- er of Colonel R. D. Findley, editor and publisher of the Xenia (Ohio) "Gazette."
The wife of Dr. Findley, married on the 19th of August, 1856, was Miss Martha Jane Barr, of Mo- nongahela City, Pennsylvania, and daughter of Col- onel James Barr, who lost his life in the Florida war while she was in her early infancy. She has had seven children, all now living but one.
COLONEL WILLIAM H. MERRITT,
DES MOINES.
W ILLIAM HILTON MERRITT is a native of New York city, and was born on the 12th of September, 1820. His parents were Jesse Merritt, a physician, and Harriet Hilton. His maternal great- grandfather was from England. The Merritts were early settlers in Connecticut. Jesse Merritt moved to Ithaca, New York, when William H. was between two and three years old, there merchandising and studying and practicing medicine. The subject of this brief memoir was educated at the Genesee Wes- leyan Seminary, Lima, New York; went thence to Rock Island, Illinois, and clerked a few months for Naylor and Myers, who sent him to Ivanhoe, Linn county, Iowa, about the year 1839, to manage a branch store. He operated it for two years, with Sac and Fox Indians for his principal customers, a few white men coming forty and fifty miles to trade with him. He was one of the first men who ever sold goods in the interior of Iowa, except the licensed traders.
In those early days, in the Territory of Iowa, horse thieves and other marauders were abundant and bold, there being no local laws for their punishment. White men took the matter in hand, and on one occasion Mr. Merritt was in his saddle almost constantly for several weeks, driving horse thieves out of the terri- tory. His recollections of those days are very vivid. He remembers, also, of being in New York city in his boyhood, in 1835 and 1836; of seeing Aaron Burr;
the great fire on the 16th of December, 1835 ; and the bread riots.
On leaving Ivanhoe Mr. Merritt was purposing to engage as clerk on a Mississippi river steamboat, and was on the steamer John Shaw when she was sunk in the rapids between Montrose and Keokuk late in the autumn of 1840. The winter following he re- ceived the appointment of enrolling clerk in the ter- ritorial council, whose session was held in the old Methodist church at Burlington. Meanwhile his father had removed to Buffalo, New York, and at the close of the session the son joined him there, and went into the mercantile trade alone.
In 1847 Mr. Merritt returned to Iowa ; took charge of the " Miners' Express," Dubuque, and ran it nearly two years; sold out and went on a government sur- vey in the northern part of the state. On the Ist of January, 1849, when the first news of gold discoveries in the new El Dorado reached Iowa, he started for California by the Isthmus ; returned in March, 1851, having had fair success ; the same year, in connection with William Ashley Jones, became once more pro- prietor of the " Miners' Express," and at the end of two years united it with the "Herald." While con- ducting the newspaper, about 1852, he was appointed surveyor of the port of Dubuque, the first officer of the kind there.
In 1855 Mr. Merritt was appointed register of the newly created district land office at Fort Dodge ; held
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that office two years, selling about two million acres of land, and in 1857 resigned in order to go into the banking business, at Cedar Rapids, with George and William Greene. That business he followed until the President's first call for troops to suppress the rebellion, when he went into the field as lieutenant- colonel ist Iowa Infantry. Owing to the illness of Colonel Bates, Colonel Merritt led that gallant regi- ment at the hotly contested battle of Wilson's creek, Missouri, showing much coolness and bravery on that occasion, and standing within a few feet of General Lyon when that heroic officer fell mortally wounded. When the regiment was mustered out, at the end of nearly four months, Colonel Merritt was appointed on the staff of General Mcclellan, with the rank of colonel of cavalry; was stationed awhile at Fort Leavenworth, and late in the year 1863 left the ser- vice and returned to Iowa. Locating at Des Moines, the colonel purchased the "Statesman," and con- ducted it until 1867, when he sold out. The next year he joined William Irving and Co. in building the Rockford, Rock Island and Saint Louis railroad, and since that date has been a railroad contractor, part of the time in Illinois and part in Ohio, and is still pursuing that business.
In politics, Colonel Merritt has always been a democrat. In 1862 his party nominated him for lieutenant-governor, but he did not agree with its anti-war policy, and refused to run. Subsequently, in the same year, Judge Mason, whom the democrats
had placed at the head of the state ticket, withdrew, and Colonel Merritt finally consented to run on a union ticket for governor. The republican party had a strong majority in the state, and the colonel was defeated, though not by the usual majority.
In 1866 he was appointed by President Johnson collector of internal revenue in the Des Moines dis- trict ; but party spirit ran high in those days; the President's appointments were not acceptable to the republican congress, and the senate refused to con- firm Colonel Merritt, hence he held the office but a few months.
On the 6th of January, 1846, Miss Marcia Maria Sutherland, of Buffalo, New York, a distant relative of Judge Sutherland, of the supreme bench, became the colonel's wife, and seven children were the fruit of this union, only three of them now living. The other four died in Dubuque. Edward Sutherland is in Colorado, William Hilton is a clerk in Des Moines, and Douglas Dodge is about to graduate from the high school in Des Moines.
Colonel Merritt has a fine physique. He stands firmly on his feet; has a slightly military step and bearing ; is five feet and eight and a half inches tall, and weighs two hundred and ten pounds. His eyes are blue, his complexion is light, and his face has the smoothness of the hither side of fifty. He is a man of pure habits; has taken superb care of him- self, and no stranger would imagine he was nearing his threescore years.
HON. JEREMIAH PERKINS, ADEL.
JUDGE PERKINS, the title by which he is best known in Dallas county, is a native of North Carolina, and was born in Wayne county, near Goldsboro, on the 7th of January, 1816. His father, who had the same name, was a millwright by trade and a mill owner, whose father came from England. The maiden name of Judge Perkins' mother was Susannah Tyson, but at the time of her marriage with Mr. Perkins she was the widow Loving. She became a widow the second time on the 20th of March, 1823. About 1830 she moved northward into Wayne county, Indiana, where the subject of this notice, after obtaining what knowledge he could in a country school, learned the carpenter and cab- inet-maker's trade, and worked at it much of the
time for ten or eleven years, leaving Wayne for La Porte county in 1833. He early imbibed a taste for legal studies, and for some time gave his leisure moments in the busy season and his entire winters to such mental pursuits, and was admitted to prac- tice at La Porte about 1850.
In 1854 Mr. Perkins came to Iowa, and after tar- rying a while at Newton, Jasper county, located at Adel in June, 1855, here continuing his profession until the present time. In 1863 he was admitted at Des Moines to practice in the United States circuit court. As an attorney, he has done well. Latterly he has given a good deal of attention to the abstract business, making it, in fact, a specialty. He has an abstract of all lands and town lots in the county.
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In 1855 he was appointed prosecuting attorney, and the next year was elected by the people; was county judge for nine consecutive years, commenc- ing on the Ist of January, 1861; during the same period was county recorder four years, and after going out of the latter office was county auditor three years. Few men in Dallas county have held more offices than Judge Perkins, and none have dis- charged their duties better or to the more complete satisfaction of their constituents.
The judge was originally a whig, imbibing anti- slavery sentiments from his father, who was a Quaker. Naturally, on the demise of the whig party, he joined the republican. He has been the recipient of all his official honors at the hands of the latter party, but the vote he received was not always limited to his party. He is very much respected in the county.
The religious views of the judge are liberal. He is a Royal Arch Mason.
His wife, who was Miss Eliza Kennedy, a native of Richmond, Indiana, became such on the 4th of February, 1841. She died on the 6th of April, 1876, leaving seven children, and five had preceded her into the other world. Mary Lorette is the wife of Dr. Lee Kenworthy, a dentist, of Saint Helena, Cali- fornia; Jeremiah A. has a family, and lives in Fre- mont, Nebraska. The others are single.
Judge Perkins has a commanding appearance. He stands six feet in his stockings, and weighs two hundred and forty pounds. He has brown hazel eyes, a florid complexion, easy and graceful man- ners, a cordial address, a cheerful disposition, and good social qualities. He has, in every respect, the polish of a gentleman.
HON. NAPOLEON B. MOORE,
CLARINDA.
W 'E claim for this biography the careful perusal of every young man into whose hands this volume may fall. In the career of Mr. Moore may be learned as great a lesson in energy, tact and dis- crimination as has, perhaps, fallen to the lot of any of the many self-made men whose biographies we have published. He was born on the 7th of Sep- tember, 1832, at London, Madison county, Ohio. His father's name was Stephen Moore, who was born in Virginia and settled in London in 1808 with his brother John, and Stephen built and opened the first storehouse in Madison county, so that he was, indeed, an original settler in that part of Ohio.
He married Miss Hester Dungan, who was born in Pennsylvania, but moved with her parents to Ohio at a very early day.
Mr. Stephen Moore continued in commercial busi- ness most of the time he resided in Ohio, during which time he filled the office of sheriff and county treasurer.
Napoleon Bonaparte Moore, from the age of eight years, was brought up in his father's dry-goods store until he was fourteen years of age, when he went to school at the Wesleyan University at Delaware, Ohio, where he remained till he was eighteen, when his health began to fail him, and he went upon a farm near London, where he became interested in stock raising, and remained till about twenty-one.
When nineteen years old he married Miss B. W. Webster, daughter of a prominent Methodist minis- ter of the Cincinnati conference.
Partially restored to health, he left the farm and went into mercantile pursuits at Charleston, Ohio, where he remained in business until the fall of 1855. Here he had prospered in business, but through financial aid extended to others he became greatly involved, to an extent of at least ten thousand dol- lars; so again failing in health and ruined in finances he came to Iowa and settled at Eddyville, on the Des Moines river, where he and his wife taught the district school, and he began the study of law, and in two years was admitted to the bar, when he left Ed- dyville and settled at Bedford, Taylor county, Iowa.
Teaching school at Eddyville simply produced enough of an income to supply a most frugal subsist- ence for himself and family, so that when he had determined to remove to Bedford he prospected the place before removal of his family. He owned no horse, could get no conveyance and had to walk the three hundred miles there and back. Having deter- mined upon the removal, a wagon was obtained, into which he put all his worldly effects, including his wife and one child, and commending himself to the care of an all-wise Providence, he commenced the journey of one hundred and fifty miles. The little girl of four years was ailing when they started, and
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died when they were seven days out, but the mother kept it until they reached Bedford, where Mr. Moore and his father dug a grave and gave it burial.
He remained in Bedford, practicing law, until Sep- tember, 1860, with great success, commencing life as it were anew. He had two dollars and a half in money and owed ten thousand dollars.
Our subject removed to Clarinda in 1860, continu- ing the practice of law. In the fall of 1861 he was elected county judge, which office he filled for four years. In the fall of 1865 he established the first banking house in southwestern Iowa. In 1866 he was elected state senator, and while serving on the judiciary committee framed the bill relative to the present circuit court system, and was among the most earnest supporters of the plan for the erection of the present state capitol building at Des Moines, which justly ranks among the grandest architectural piles on this continent. In 1871 he established the First National Bank of Clarinda. In 1867 he com- pleted the payment of the ten thousand dollars in- debtedness imposed upon him in Ohio. In 1872 he established the banking house of Moore and Web- ster, at Shenandoah, which is now known as the First National Bank of that place, and also established the banking house of Crum, Moore and Van Fleet, at Bedford, in January, 1873, now succeeded by the Bedford Bank.
In 1867, his health again failing him, the result of too close confinement to sedentary labor, he sought relaxation in a diversion of body and mind, and con- ceived the idea of a stock farm in lieu of stock banks, and he bought a farm of one thousand acres situated ten miles south of Clarinda. This farm seems to have been a favorite matter of concern to him, for
he has continuously developed it, feeding from one to three hundred cattle annually thereon. From 1865 to 1870 he bought cheap lands in southern Iowa, and owns now about nine thousand acres, two thousand of which are improved.
Amid all this busy business life Mr. Moore has ever been a strong devotee to his church. Since 1862 he has had charge of the Sabbath school, ex- cepting only two years of absence. He has to-day one hundred and twenty-eight young men and women in his class. He was a member of the general con- ference of the Methodist church which met at Balti- more in May, 1876.
He has been an active Mason ; has taken thirty- two degrees since 1859, and is now prelate to the commandery here.
Since the age of nineteen he has had the aid and solace of an intelligent and devoted wife, self-sacrific- ing in the extreme in their hours of deepest trouble, and worthily wearing the mantle of her husband's ultimate financial prosperity. A devoted christian woman, she has lived a life of benevolence, of service to her church and to humanity. Mrs. Moore, too, has taken deep interest in the cause of temperance, and is at present president of the Woman's Church Temperance Association of Iowa. The lady, at her personal expense, employed the famous temperance orator, Francis Murphy, for a three months' cam- paign in Iowa. Mr. and Mrs. Moore have had born to them two boys and four girls. The two boys and two of the girls have been taken away.
Mr. N. B. Moore may be summed up in all truth- fulness as a thorough business man, governed in his every action toward his fellow-men by all the graces of a practical christian gentleman.
HARVEY POTTER,
JEFFERSON.
H ARVEY POTTER, a native of Lewis county, New York, was born at Turin on the 17th of July, 1834. His father, Chester Potter, was a stone- mason in early life, and a farmer in his later years. His mother was Dinah Miller, of English and Irish pedigree. The Potters were wholly English. The paternal grandfather of Harvey was in the first war with the mother country ; his father in the second.
Chester Potter moved with his family to Illinois when Harvey was four years old, settling on a farm
near Somonauk, De Kalb county, where the son as- sisted his father until twenty years of age. He then lepaired to Wheaton, twenty-five miles west of Chi- cago; spent six years in preparing for and going through the college at that place, graduating on the 4th of July, 1860. He attended the law department of the University of Chicago, and graduated in 1862 with the degree of LI .. B. In 1864 he received the degree of A.M. from his Alma Mater.
When Mr. Potter graduated from the law school
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the civil war was at its height, and the year 1862 was a critical period in the history of the country. He felt that he owed his first duty to her, and be- fore entering on legal practice, in August of the year just mentioned, he enlisted as a private in company H, 105th Illinois Volunteer Infantry ; was promoted from time to time, finally to first lieutenant in 1863 ; commanded company F in the same regiment, part of the time in the Atlanta campaign, that being the company which captured the colors of the 12th Lou- isiana in the battle of Peach Tree creek; was struck with a piece of shell at Resaca, the only time hit in two years' service, and left the army in August, 1864, on account of the dangerous illness of his wife.
Returning from the south, Lieutenant Potter taught select schools the following autumn and winter, and in May, 1865, settled in Jefferson. Here he entered on the duties of his profession, and the law has since been his main work. He practices in the United States courts of Iowa, as well as in the district and
circuit courts of the state. He served as United States assistant assessor of Greene, Calhoun and Sac counties in 1866 and 1867, and was county judge in 1868 and 1869, being also ex-officio auditor the lat- ter year.
He has always acted with the republican party. He belongs to the Blue Lodge in the Masonic order.
The religious connection of Judge Potter is with the Methodists, and has been an official member of the Jefferson church since taking up his abode here. He is president of the Greene county Sunday School Association.
His wife, who was Miss Mary L. Price, of Sand- wich, Illinois, married on the 22d of August, 1862, is a well-educated woman, with an excellent mind and a warm christian heart, and, like her husband, thoroughly devoted to Sunday-school and other re- ligious work. Both graduated from the so-called Chautauqua Sunday School Assembly, held at Clear Lake, Iowa, in the summer of 1877.
GEORGE H. PARKER, DAVENPORT.
G EORGE HENRY PARKER, attorney-at-law, was born at Paris, Oneida county, New York, on the 14th of May, 1830, and is the son of Calvin Parker and Rhoda née Curtis. His father, when but a youth, served in the war of 1812, where he acquired a great fondness for military tactics, and afterward rose to the rank of colonel in a militia regiment re- cruited mainly by himself. He was also a promi- nent Freemason in his neighborhood, and throughout his whole life was a man of high standing and con- siderable influence. In 1834 he moved to Syracuse, New York, where he remained two years. In 1836 he immigrated to Huron county, Ohio, and resided in Fitchville during the remainder of his life. He died in 1839. His widow survived until 1872, when she died at Geneseo, Illinois, in the eightieth year of her age. The Parker family is of Puritan origin, and for several generations sojourned in the New England states.
The father of George H. Parker was what is termed a good liver, social in his manners and somewhat extravagant in his habits, so that his death left his family but poorly provided for. Our subject was therefore early thrown upon his own resources, and his youth was passed under difficulties. Up to the
age of sixteen he attended the proverbial log school- house during three months of winter, while the bal- ance of the year was passed as a farm hand and at such other work as could be procured. Having attained a fair knowledge of the common English branches and of mathematics, he entered, in the summer of 1846, a printing office at Lower Sandusky, now Fremont, Ohio, where he remained but a short time; moved thence to Tiffin, Ohio, and entered the office of the "Seneca Advertiser," where he remained till the age of twenty, reading law meantime under the direction of the Hon. Cooper K. Watson, now judge of one of the courts of Sandusky, Ohio.
At the age of twenty-one years he married Miss Margaret Doran, of Ashland, Ohio, and settled at that place, where he was admitted to the bar in 1852. Here he continued the practice of his profession with moderate success for two years; but in 1854 he was induced to remove to Davenport, Iowa, which has since been his home, and where he has long since taken a high social and professional rank. During the first years of his practice in Davenport he was associated with John Johns, Esq., son of the late Bishop Johns, of Virginia, and afterward with Alfred Edwards, Esq., now a resident of New York city.
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From an early period in his history he took a deep interest in political affairs, acting with the democratic party, his political creed having descended to him in a direct line from his ancestors, who were always strenuously opposed to the doctrines of federalism. His ability as an orator and his skill as an organizer and leader soon gained recognition from his party, and he was advanced to the first rank in the organiza- tion, and received the highest compliments which his political friends could confer. In 1857 he received the democratic nomination for the state legislature, but was not elected. In 1860 he was one of the Breckenridge Presidential electors for the State of Iowa, and made a very earnest effort to bring about a fusion of the Breckenridge and Douglas wings of the party, failing in which he made an able campaign against Douglas. In 1864 he was the candidate of his party for congress in the second district of Iowa, against Hon. Hiram Price, but was defeated, In 1866 he was a delegate to the national union (or peace) convention, at Philadelphia, and was the lowa mem- ber of the executive committee of the same. In 1867 he was tendered the nomination of his party in con- vention for the position of governor of his state, but declined the compliment. In the same year he was one of the organizers of the people's party, the prin- ciples of which were, opposition to protective tariffs and prohibitory liquor laws, and favoring free trade and espousing the cause of labor as against capital, which for two years succeeded in carrying Davenport and Scott counties.
From an early period in the administration of President Johnson, Mr. Parker was a most cordial supporter of his policy, and was on the most inti- mate terms with the administration. In 1867 he was appointed by the President to the position of revenue agent for the northwest, and in less than two weeks after assuming the duties the internal revenue from taxation was quadrupled in his district. He was also instrumental in securing the appointment of General John M. Corse as collecter of Chicago. After an incumbency of four months he resigned, for reasons satisfactory to the administration and honorable to himself.
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