USA > Iowa > The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume > Part 113
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Dr. Waters was coroner of Marshall county six years, and physician and surgeon to the county in- firmary a similar period of time.
He is a Royal Arch Mason, and a charter member of the fraternity in this county. He was in early life a free-soil whig, and easily glided into the re- publican ranks. On politics and every other sub- ject, he is frank, outspoken and fearless.
Miss Eleanor Barrows, of Delaware county, Ohio,
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became his wife on the Ist of December, 1842, and has borne him four children, two sons and two daughters. His eldest son, William A., died in the army. The other son, Dwight Emmett, has a wife and is in business in Marshalltown. The two daughters, Imogen and Celia, are unmarried.
Dr. Waters is a permanent member of the Iowa State Medical Society, and also a member of the American Medical Association, and in 1874 was a delegate to the meeting of the latter body. His
standing in the medical fraternity of the state is of the highest order. His social and moral habits are also excellent.
Dr. Waters is generous hearted almost to a fault ; is very kind to the poor ; never presses a debt; has raised his family well, and is a success as a physician and surgeon. He is in comfortable circumstances pecuniarily, but owing to his liberality his accumu- lations do not equal those of some other medical men whose rides are fewer and shorter.
HENRY M. DEAN, M. D., MUSCATINE.
H ENRY MUNSON DEAN, the eldest son of Henry and Almira (Munson) Dean, was born at Canaan, Litchfield county, Connecticut, on the 8th of November, 1836, and is descended on both sides from English ancestors. His great-grandfather Dean emigrated from England and settled in Canaan soon after the revolution, where a large colony of his de- scendants still reside. His maternal ancestors emi- grated at an earlier period, and some of them fought under Washington in the revolutionary war.
Henry Munson, our subject, received his primary education in the public schools of his native village, and at thirteen he was sent to a private academy in the vicinity, where he studied the usual branches of learning, including the Latin language and the higher mathematics. At the age of eighteen years he taught a district school during the winter and spent the summer upon the farm.
He commenced the study of medicine in 1857 un- der the direction of Dr. L. H. Aiken, at Falls Village. He subsequently attended two courses of medical lec- tures at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, med- ical department of Columbia College, New York city, from which institution he graduated with honors on the 14th of March, 1861. He soon after commenced the practice of his profession at Canaan Center, some two miles from the residence of his father, where he remained until 1862, when he offered his services to the government as a volunteer medical officer. On being examined by a board of medical men, of which Dr. Valentine Mott was chairman, he was ordered to Fortress Monroe, and from thence was sent to General McClellan, at Harrison's Landing, where he was assigned to the ist regiment Massachusetts Vol- unteer Infantry, where he remained, except a short
period after the battle of Malvern Hill with the 2d New York Infantry, until after the second battle of Bull Run, when, the 3d corps hospital being organ- ized at Fort Lyons, near Alexandria, Virginia, he was assigned to duty at that institution. Here he remained until the spring of 1863, when the hospital was removed, and he was ordered to report to the medical director at Washington, District of Colum- bia, by whom he was placed on duty in the " Lincoln United States General Hospital," of that city, on the 5th of February, 1863, where he remained over two years, having charge of the barrack branch of that institution during the last six months of this period. On the 20th of February, 1865, he was, by order of the war department, appointed assistant surgeon of U. S. Veteran Volunteers, and was assigned to duty with the ist regiment, Ist brigade, and Ist (Han- cock's) Army Corps, and was with them in the field until after the close of the war, and subsequently had charge of the several military hospitals con- nected with the defenses of Baltimore, then under command of General Hancock, until he was mus- tered out of service, on the 10th of January, 1866. having served, in all, some three years and six months.
As a military surgeon, the record of Dr. Dean is second to that of no other man in the service. His fame as a successful operator was spread far and wide, and wherever a critical and peculiarly delicate operation in surgery was to be performed. Dr. Dean's services were brought into requisition, if at all avail- able. He was transferred from ward to ward in the Lincoln Hospital as the exigencies of the service seemed to require, and his skill and success became so noted that he was ultimately placed over the
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wards appropriated to disabled officers. He served as medical inspector of Lincoln Hospital, as superin- tendent of the dead-house and pathological depart- ment of the hospital, as president of the board of officers for the examination of men recommended for furlough, veteran reserve corps, for duty or for discharge from the service, and as a leading member of the council of the board of administration of the hospital. He was the most prominent and distin- guished surgeon of his years and experience in the institution. In addition to his official duties in the hospital, which were of the most onerous and exact- ing nature, he prepared and furnished to the United States Army Medical Museum as large a number of rare and valuable specimens as any other contributor. Among the many items bearing his name in the great catalogue of the museum are the smallest and the largest hearts, respectively, in the museum, the small- est weighing only five and a half ounces, and the largest seventeen and a quarter ounces. The body from which the smallest was taken weighed one hundred and sixty pounds, and that from which the largest was taken, one hundred and fifty-five. pounds. Both men had been perfectly healthy and died of injuries received in the army. He is also credited with having contributed to the museum the only speci- men of hernia of the stomach through the diaphragm into the left thoracic cavity. He has performed successfully nearly every operation hitherto known to surgery. The testimonials as to his efficiency, skill and professional qualifications contained in |
"general orders " and in private letters from those in the highest ranks are both numerous and flatter- ing, and may well be a source of just pride and grati- fication to himself.
On retiring from the army he located at Sand- wich, Illinois, where he remained in practice for nine months, and on the 30th of February, 1867, he moved to the city of Muscatine, which has since been his home, and where he has built up a large and lucrative practice. Soon after locating in Mus- catine he was appointed surgeon to the encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic located there, which position he retained as long as the organiza- tion lasted.
He has been a member of the Congregational church since 1858. He is secretary and treasurer of the County Medical Society, of the Eastern Iowa District Medical Society, and a member of the State Medical Society, also of the United States Medical Association.
He was married on the 20th of June, 1866, to Miss Emma Johnson, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They have three boys, Harry Johnson, Lee Wallace and Ray Elbert.
To the most thorough qualifications as a physician Dr. Dean adds promptness and energy in profes- sional duty, ever ready, regardless of distance or of weather, to render immediate attention to calls.
As a citizen, he enjoys the confidence of the com- munity as an honest, upright man, fearless of censure and strong in the right. As a friend, true.
HON. LE ROY G. PALMER, MOUNT PLE.ISANT.
E ROY GRIFFIN PALMER, a son of Louis I). and Ann H. (Tutt) Palmer, is a native of Christian county, Kentucky, and dates his birth on the 3d of November, 1821. The Palmers are Eng- lish, four brothers coming over, three of them set- tling in the eastern states, and one of them near Jamestown, Virginia. From this one sprung the branch of the family of which Le Roy and his brother, General John M. Palmer, late governor of Illinois, are members. Louis D. Palmer was born in Spottsylvania county, Virginia, in 1781, near the close of the revolutionary war, in which his father, Isaac Palmer, participated for a short time. Le Roy had six brothers, one sister, two half-brothers and
one half-sister, all yet living but three own brothers, Frank, Charles and George. The family moved from Kentucky to Madison county, Illinois, ten miles from Alton, in 1831, and there the subject of this sketch worked on a farm until after he became of age, with quite limited means for education.
He read law with his brother, John M., at Carlin- ville; received his certificate at Hillsboro, Mont- gomery county, early in 1846, and had just com- menced practice at Carlinville when the Mexican war broke out. In May of that year he enlisted as a private in company B, Captain Elkin, 4th Illinois Infantry Volunteers; was in the service one year; returned to Carlinville, and in the autumn of 1847
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started for Iowa, intending to locate in Monroe City, Jasper county, where it was then supposed the cap- ital of the state would be. Reaching Mount Pleas- ant in November, then a village of perhap's four hundred inhabitants, and being pleased with the place, he halted for the winter. The location of the capital was changed to Iowa City, and Mr. Palmer concluded to remain at Mount Pleasant. Here he has been in the exclusive practice of law for thirty years, serving his constituents at times in different capacities.
In 1861 he was elected state senator to fill a va- cancy occasioned by the resignation of Alvin Saun- ders, now a United States senator from Nebraska. He was placed on the judiciary committee. He de- clined a renomination. In 1862 he was elected judge of Henry county, serving one term. Other offices which he has held are of minor importance, but their duties have been well performed. In 1874 he was the democratic candidate for congress, and carried Henry, usually a strongly republican county.
With the exception of 1856, when Judge Palmer voted for John C. Fremont for President, and 1860
and 1864, when he voted for Mr. Lincoln, he has acted with the democratic party, returning to it be- cause slavery was abolished and the question taken out of politics. He wants to have the past forgotten and the nation consolidated.
On the 7th of August, 1850, Judge Palmer and Miss Orphia L. Bowen, of Mount Pleasant, were joined in marriage, and of seven children, the fruit of this union, five are living. The eldest son, Le Roy A. Palmer, is in practice with his father in the firm of Palmer, Jeffries and Palmer, a young man whose capacities indicate strength and fondness in the di- rection of art, and a disposition to follow socially, and in religion and politics, the extreme rational school.
During the long period in which the judge has been practicing in Iowa, he has had a large number of students, some of whom have become quite prom- inent. Among them are General T. M. Bowen, who was one of the supreme judges of Arkansas, then governor of Idaho, and now judge of one of the courts in Colorado, and the Hon. Geo. H. Green, who died while in the Missouri senate.
WILLIAM D. LUCAS, AMES
W ILLIAM DENNIS LUCAS, banker, and one of the leading business men of Ames, is a native of Wyoming county, New York, dating his birth at Gainesville on the 5th of June, 1838, being, therefore, now in his fortieth year. His parents were Almon D. Lucas, farmer, and Cornelia Broughton. His maternal grandfather, William Broughton, was a colonel in the New York state militia, and his great- grandfather on the same side went into the revolu- tionary army when a mere lad, and became of age only a short time before the close of that seven years' struggle for independence. The business of William D. until of age, and past, was farming, clerking and practicing dentistry, learning the profession at Rush- ford, Allegheny county, and there following it two years. In addition to the district school he acquired his education by attending the academies at Rush- ford and Weathersfield Springs.
When the civil war burst upon the nation, in the spring of 1861, he was prompt to respond to the President's call for seventy-five thousand men. He enlisted as a private in April, in company F, Captain
Clinton, 2Ist regiment New York Infantry, Colonel Rogers, commander. He was soon taken sick, and was discharged from the hospital at Washington, District of Columbia, in the month of July following. Two months later, having recovered, he assisted Cap- tain W. W. Wheeler in recruiting a company for the 5th New York Cavalry known as the " Ira Harris Guards "; was made second lieutenant of company F in the summer of 1862, and was promoted to first lieutenant, and in January, 1863, to captain, of the company.
On the 6th of July, 1863, Captain Lucas was cap- tured between Hagerstown and Williamsport, Mary- land; spent ten months in Libby prison and three at Danville, Virginia, and Macon, Georgia. He escaped on the 4th of August, 1864, en route from Macon to Charleston, South Carolina ; he was recaptured with dogs, taken to Augusta, Georgia, and confined ten days in jail; thence returned to Macon and was sub- sequently taken to Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina, and Charlotte, Goldsborough and Raleigh, North Carolina, and came into our lines by exchange
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at Wilmington, North Carolina, on the ist of March, 1865, having spent, in all, about twenty months in southern prisons.
While a prisoner at Richmond, Captain Lucas was selected, with Lieutenant-Colonel Sanderson, of North Carolina, and Major Henry, of Ohio, to dis- tribute the supplies furnished by the United States government to our prisoners on Belle Island.
On coming into our lines Captain Lucas returned to his regiment, then at Stanton, Virginia, and was mustered out with the regiment in July, 1865. Of the one hundred and nine men who went out with him in the first enlistment, company F, 5th New York Cavalry, only seven returned with him.
Captain Lucas was in business one year at East Gainesville, and in September, 1866, made his first push westward, spending a few months in mercan-
tile trade at Bristol, Kendall county, Illinois, then crossing the Mississippi river and settling at Ames, in April, 1867. Here he engaged in the general mer- cantile business one year, then opened an exchange bank, which he still manages, and which has been a marked success. He is the only banker in Ames.
Captain Lucas served here as justice of the peace ; has been active and serviceable in the local school board; was the first mayor of the city, holding the office two or three terms, and has been treasurer of the Agricultural College since 1873. As a business man, he is very efficient and eminently trustworthy. He is a Knight Templar among the Masonic brother- hood, and a republican among politicians.
Captain Lucas has a wife and three children. The former was Miss Flora C. Barber, of Warsaw, New York ; married in November, 1866.
LEWIS A. RILEY,
WAPELLO.
T HE marked success which attends the career of a young man should be an incentive to others to employ unceasingly the qualities of mind which are vouchsafed to the average of mankind. The point is to know what peculiar faculty of mind for business one is possessed of, and to seize upon the operation of this faculty to its utmost tension, and then if one's actions are governed by a high sense of honor the way to practical usefulness and often to personal gain is an assured fact to almost every man in the United States.
The readers of this volume will do well to ponder over the biography of the subject of this sketch, and to note the persistent efforts he has always made to succeed in life. After gaining all the instruction his limited means would permit, he becomes a school- teacher as a means of self-support, but he has higher aspirations and believes he can master the intricacies of the law, and during his other advanced studies he includes that of law, which he prosecutes until he is admitted to the bar, and then labors at his profes- sion with continued assiduity until he acquires, in his thirty-third year, an enviable reputation and a wide practice.
Mr. Lewis A. Riley was born in Holmes county, Ohio, on the ist of March, 1845. His father, James Riley, was born in Fayette county, Pennsylvania, on the 26th of March, 1805. He came to Ohio in 1839,
was married on the 24th of January, 1827, and had born to him ten children, four sons and six daugh- ters, of which one son and two daughters have de- mised.
Lewis A. Riley commenced his schooling when he was but seven years of age. He remained at the district school until he was twelve years of age, at which time he entered the high school at Columbus City, Iowa, his father having removed to Iowa in 1853, settling in Louisa county, where he died on the 2d of April, 1855. His mother also died in the same county in 1868. Lewis remained at this high school for four years, when he returned to his father's farm and remained there for two years, working and superintending its business, at the end of which time he went to the public school at Mount Pleasant, Iowa, for a short time, and from here he proceeded to Poughkeepsie, New York, where he attended a commercial college. From here he came to Gales- burg, Illinois, and entered Knox College, and then returned to Iowa and commenced teaching school, which he continued to do until January, 1870, giv- ing also much of his time to the private study of law.
About this time he was elected superintendent of the public schools of Louisa county, which position he held for two years. He concluded the study of law in the office of D. N. Sprague, of Wapello, and was admitted to the bar in April, 1871. He formed
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a copartnerslup with his tutor under the firm name Sprague and Riley, which connection is still main- tained. The firm of Sprague and Riley is one of the best known in Louisa county, and enjoys a large practice in all the courts of the state and in the fed- eral courts. Both gentlemen are able lawyers. Mr. Riley, being much the younger, is capable of great mental and physical endurance, and in the absence
of his partner, who, as district attorney of the state, resides at Keokuk, discharges all the business of the Wapello office.
On the 24th of April, 1872, Mr. Riley was married to Miss Carrie Newill, of Fredonia, Louisa county. They have one son, Robert Le Roy, aged five years.
Mr. Riley is a staunch republican in politics, and an equally staunch Universalist in religion.
COLONEL GEORGE W. KINCAID, MUSCATINE.
G EORGE WASHINGTON KINCAID was ' sided. He was a member of the first constitutional I born at West Union, Adams county, Ohio, convention of Iowa, and was also the first commis- sioner of the state school fund, and was one of the trustees having charge of the erection of the Iowa Insane Asylum at Mount Pleasant during 1860-62. and held many other offices of trust and responsi- bility during his long and eventful career. He was not only a pioneer citizen of Muscatine, to whose interest and prosperity he was always devoted, but he was emphatically a patriot and loved his whole country. He felt in every muscle and fiber of his frame the sentiment of Sir Walter Scott, as expressed in those beautiful lines : on the 24th of April, 1812, and was the son of Thomas Kincaid and Margaret née Hanna, natives of Pennsylvania and Martinsburg, Virginia, and de- scended of revolutionary stock. Both of the grand- fathers of our subject fought throughout the war of independence. His paternal grandfather was at the battle of Lexington, while both grandfathers fought side by side at the battle of Bunker Hill, and were again together at the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia, where they held the rank of captain and major. The father of our subject, Thomas Kincaid, was an aide-de-camp to General " Breathes there a man with soul so dead Who never to himself hath said This is my own. my native land! * Ludwick in the war of 1812-15, and took part in the battle of the Thames about the date of the birth of his son
George W. spent most of his boyhood in West Union, his father having been sheriff of the county , for twelve years, where he enjoyed the benefit of such public schools as the western country in that early day afforded, and at the age of fourteen was apprenticed to learn the tanning business at Pike- ton, Ohio, where, after serving his time, he was en- gaged in business for some years.
On the 16th of January, 1838, he married Miss Lavisa Steenbergen, daughter of Charles Steenber- gen, and moved to Lafayette, Indiana, in October of the same year, where he was engaged as a contractor on the public works for about a year, and in 1839 removed to Iowa and settled in Muscatine county, which was his home during the balance of his life. Here he engaged in farming.
Notwithstanding the educational disadvantages under which he labored, he was a man of great in- telligence and sound judgment, and soon took a leading position in the community in which he re-
* If such there breathe, go, mark him well; For him no minstrel raptures swell; High though his titles, proud his name, Boundless his wealth as wish can claim, Despite those titles, power and pelf, The wretch, concentrated all in self, Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust from whence he sprung. Unwept, unhonored, and unsung."
At the outbreak of the slavery rebellion he es- poused the Union cause with all his heart, and on every suitable occasion spoke out with the fervor of a deep devotion to the cause of his country. An inci- dent published in the local papers at the time shows how he seized every opportunity to inspire enthusi- asm and good humor in his patriotic work. A pub- lic meeting was held at which a number of speeches were made expressing the strongest allegiance to the " old flag." One polished orator, with glowing and rounded periods, said he "was born under the 'Stars and Stripes,' and expected to die under them." Colonel Kincaid followed this speaker, and said : "I. too, was born under stars and stripes: I was
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born in a little log-cabin in Ohio; the stars shone on me through the chinks between the logs, and there was a striped quilt over me." This speech " brought down the house " in uproarious applause, and tended to add to his popularity and influence. But he was not satisfied with speaking; he wanted to do as well as say, and he conceived the idea of raising a regiment of " graybeards," to be composed of men who, like himself, were past the legal age for military duty. Accordingly, in 1862, he recruited what was afterward known as the 37th Iowa or "graybeard " regiment, the recruits for which were mainly drawn from the Hawkeye State, but many of them were citizens of Illinois and other adjacent states, which he commanded till the close of the war in 1865. The regiment was mainly engaged on garrison or guard duty, and in this capacity ren- dered important service in taking the place of able- bodied troops, who were thereby placed at the front. The regiment was first ordered to Saint Louis, and thence on the line of the Pacific railroad, where it did guard duty for several months. From thence it was transferred to Alton, Illinois, and placed on guard over the rebel prisoners incarcerated at that place, where it remained for about a year. From thence the command was transferred to Rock Isl. and, where, for several months, it did garrison duty. In the spring of 1864 the colonel, with his "gray- beards," was transferred to Memphis, Tennessee, where, in command of the second brigade, district of West Tennessee, he took part in the battle on the 23d of August, 1864. From Memphis the regiment was transferred to Indianapolis, and thence to Cin- cinnati, where the colonel and his brave "gray- beards " were mustered out on the 22d of May, 1865.
As a soldier, Colonel Kincaid was a stranger to
fear: no braver man ever wore the uniform of his country. As a commander, he was kind and in- dulgent to men whom he saw willing to do their duty, but stern and severe to refractory subordi- nates. It is remarkable that he was able to do so much good for the cause of freedom with a regiment composed of men supposed to be past the time of life for effective military duty.
In politics, he had been originally a whig, and was a radical republican from the organization of that party. He was, through life, a total abstainer, and an indefatigable advocate of the cause of tem- perance.
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