USA > Iowa > The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume > Part 114
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He was a man of rather striking appearance, being over six feet high and of remarkable physical strength and endurance; was one of the pioneers of Iowa, and, like most men of that period, he began life low down, and by his own energy and industry accumu- lated a competence.
His wife was a niece of Hon. Robert Lucas, ex- governor of Ohio, subsequently governor of Iowa, and a brigadier-general in the war of 1812. Both of her grandfathers also fought through the revolu- tionary war. They have a family of five children, three sons and two daughters. all living: Joanna, Margaret Levisa, Charles S., William Miller and Warren Ellsworth. Joanna is the wife of Mr. George Magoon, of Muscatine.
Colonel Kincaid was for many years a member of the Methodist church, and attested the sincerity of his profession and his love for his Divine Redeemer by his consistent and exemplary walk in life.
As a husband and father, he was affectionate and indulgent, and was beloved and revered by his fam- ily. He died at Muscatine on the 19th of October, 1876, in his sixty-fifth year.
JOHN MEHLHOP,
DUBUQUE.
JOHN MEHLHOP, one of the successful whole- sale merchants in Dubuque, is a native of Ger- many, and was born near Bremen on the 26th of January, 1817. His parents were Albert Henry Mehlhop, farmer, and Mary S. Behrns. The fam- ily is a hardy, long-lived race. The grandfather of into the country a few miles and engaged to work John lived to be nearly ninety years of age, and his grandmother ninety-seven. In his boyhood the 1 subject of this sketch read much about the United
States, and particularly the young and growing west, and made up his mind to cross the ocean. He left his home, alone, on the 26th of September, 1832, and reached New Orleans on New-Year's Day following. He proceeded northward as far as Saint Louis, went for a farmer at thirty-six dollars a year and board. He remained two years, receiving seventy-two dol- lars the second year. He then went into Saint Louis
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and worked in a coffee house four years, saving money enough to be able to enter a piece of land in Saint Louis county, twenty-eight miles from the city. This land he improved, by putting up a house and a store, in which he kept a small assortment of goods, serving, meantime, as deputy postmaster. By signing for other parties he was unfortunate, disposed of his farm, and in 1843 returned to Saint Louis. There he clerked for Leach and Gorin until 1850, when he removed to Dubuque; farmed two years in Dubuque county, and in the autumn of 1853 went into the mercantile business in the city, in the firm of Kline, Meyer and Co., continuing in the wholesale and re- tail traffic until early in 1857, when the firm dissolved and he visited his native country. Returning the same year, he built a store on Iowa street, north of Twelfth, and there the new firm of Mehlhop and Meyer was in trade until 1860, when, dissolving, Mr. Mehlhop continued the business alone at the old stand until 1865. On the ist of January of that year he opened a store on the corner of Main and Fourth streets, where he has been in the wholesale grocery business exclusively, working his trade up steadily from a little more than two hundred thousand dol- lars, a dozen years ago, to an average of more than four hundred thousand dollars annually during the
last few years. He has always operated on straight- forward, correct business principles ; has gained friends and customers from year to year, and retained them, hence the growth of his trade and his marked success.
With the exception of one year in the city council Mr. Mehlhop has managed to keep out of office, he making his business his study and giving it his un- divided, closest attention.
Mr. Mehlhop was a democrat until the formation of the republican party, and has since acted with the latter.
In religious belief and membership he is a Uni- versalist.
He has passed all the chairs in Odd-Fellowship, and has taken the thirty-second degree in the con- sistory.
He has a second wife. He was first married in 1840, to Miss Benson, of Saint Louis county. She had three children, and mother and children all died of the cholera in 1849. The next year he married Miss Bruening, who was born near Bremen. She has had eight children, and seven are living.
Mr. Mehlhop is a man of excellent character, a valuable citizen, and one of the merchants who have given Dubuque its high commercial standing.
PROF. RICHARD A. HARKNESS, A. M.,
GARDEN GROVE.
R ICHARD A. HARKNESS, one of the best educators of Iowa, is a native of Delaware county, New York, where he was born on the 25th of November, 1839. His parents were Robert and Lydia Leal Harkness, his father being of Irish and his mother of Scotch descent, though both were born in this country. Robert Harkness was a farmer, and reared his son until sixteen years of age in agricultural pursuits; the son then prepared for college at Delhi, Delaware county; entered the junior class of Union College, Schenectady, in 1861, and graduated in 1863. After teaching one year at Cherry Valley in his native state, Mr. Harkness came to Iowa, locating at Garden Grove, Decatur county, in the spring of 1864, and has been a teacher here since that date, building up one of the best graded schools in the state. A high-school depart- ment was added at the start, and Professor Hark- ness pays especial attention to the fitting of students
for the State University and other higher institutions of learning. One of his students is now in Yale College; and go where they will his students find no trouble in entering. He has the happy faculty of drawing out students, making them self-reliant and inspiring them with enthusiasm in their studies. He is a man of indomitable energy and perseverance, as well as mental force, and his students seem to im- bibe his spirit.
While Professor Harkness has made teaching his main work, he has done something at farming, and especially horticulture. He is cultivating eight or ten acres of land, five or six of it being devoted to fruit-raising. He has grapes and the smaller fruits, and his orchard is in a fine state of improvement, like everything else to which he puts his hand.
He is very successful as a conductor of teachers' institutes, and often has more applications for such work to be done during vacations than he can fill.
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Professor Harkness is a republican in politics, and is a member of the county central committee. His name has been before the republican state conven- tions as a candidate for state superintendent of pub- lic instruction, a position for which people who best know him think he has peculiar fitness. He is, however, no office-seeker, and would be the last man to ask for any position other than the one he now holds. He is active in educational matters, and some of the ablest and best papers read at state teachers' institutes were prepared by him.
The professor is an elder in the Presbyterian church, and a trustee of Parsons College, which is
located at Fairfield, Jefferson county, and is the leading Presbyterian school in Iowa.
He is an Odd-Fellow, but there is no lodge at Garden Grove, and latterly he has paid but little at- tention to the meetings of the order.
His wife was Miss Susie Humeston, formerly of Portage county, Ohio. They were married on the 9th of August, 1865, and have two daughters: Mary L., aged eleven, and Susie A., aged four years. Mrs. Harkness' father is the Hon. A. Humeston, late member of the general assembly from Wayne coun- ty, Iowa. Humeston Station, near Garden Grove, was named for him.
HON. WARREN S. DUNGAN,
CHARITON.
W ARREN S. DUNGAN is the leading lawyer of Lucas county, and is a gentleman univer- sally esteemed for his probity and good nature, for his solid acquirements and spotless integrity. He is one whom the bar delights to honor, and to whom his fellow-citizens point with pride and admiration ; a man whose wisdom is courted and whose reputa -. tion is unsullied. His is an exemplary character throughout ; a patriot who, holding the position of state senator, elected for four years, responds to the call of his state for volunteers during the first year of his official duties, sets himself to work to raise a company, and in one month presents the same to his governor at the state capital at Des Moines; and as lieutenant-colonel, and subsequently breveted col- onel, follows the fortunes of war almost from the incipiency of the rebellion to its close, and returns to the practice of his profession in the city of his adoption.
Colonel Dungan was born at Frankfort Springs, Beaver county, Pennsylvania, on the 12th of Sep- tember, 1822. His father's name was David Davis Dungan, who was born in the same place on the 16th of April, 1787, where he still resides, at the ripe old age of ninety. His mother's maiden name was Isabel McFerran, who was born at Northampton county, Pennsylvania, and who died in 1831, when the sub- ject of this sketch was but eight years of age.
His grandfather had settled in Beaver county, Pennsylvania, as early as 1773.
Warren S. attended a school near home until 1840, when he entered the Frankfort Springs Academy. 80
He worked upon the farm in the summer months, and walked three miles a day in the winter months to and from this academy. He had a great desire to study law, and after finishing the course at the academy he taught school in the winters until he was twenty-eight.
In order to obtain the means to enable him to continuously study law, he taught school at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and at Panolla, Mississippi, for three years, reading law in the office of Colonel Cal- vin Miller, of Panolla.
In the course of time he returned to Pennsylvania and renewed his study of law in the office of Rob- erts and Quay, at Beaver, and was admitted to the bar at that place on the 8th of March, 1856. He then determined to seek his fortune in the young and growing state of Iowa, and came to Chariton and immediately commenced the practice of law.
In the year 1861 he was elected on the republican ticket as state senator for a term of four years. In the fall of the same year Colonel Dungan assisted in raising the first company of volunteers from Chari- ton. This company elected Daniel D. Iseminger its captain, and became company B, of the 6th Iowa regiment.
In May, 1862, a second company was raised at Chariton, and elected James Baker its captain, be- coming company C, of the 13th Iowa regiment. This company left Chariton on the 4th of July, on which occasion Colonel Dungan, in a farewell speech to the boys, assured them that he would take immediate steps to raise a third company, which promise he put into
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immediate effect, and was elected captain by accla- mation, but was never mustered in as such. Colonel Dungan took his company to Des Moines on the en- suing 9th of August. While here with his company an extra session of the legislature was called, which he attended.
Two more companies were subsequently recruit- ed at Chariton, which joined those at Des Moines, and then the line officers of commands in Warren, Lucas, Decatur and Wayne counties came in with their forces and joined the Chariton force, complet- ing the regiment. They then proceeded to elect officers, with the following results: G. W. Clark, of Warren county, colonel; Warren S. Dungan, of Lu- cas county, lieutenant-colonel, and Hon. Racine D. Kellogg, of Decatur, major, together with a full complement of field and staff officers.
Lieutenant-Colonel Dungan was then appointed to wait upon the governor with a request that he confirm the organization, which was done, and the regiment was styled the 34th regiment of Iowa. Pro- ceeding to Burlington, and pitching their tents at Camp Langman, they were regularly mustered into the service by Lieutenant Ball, of the regular army, on the 15th of October, 1862.
In December the regiment was ordered to Vicks- burg, resting for a week or so at Helena, Arkansas, from whence they marched to join General Sher-
man's command, in the investment of that place ; after which the regiment was ordered to Arkansas Post, which post was invested and carried, leaving in our hands some five thousand rebel prisoners.
At the close of the war they were mustered out of the service at Houston, Texas, from whence they proceeded to Davenport, Iowa, where they were paid off and disbanded in 1865.
Colonel Dungan then returned to Chariton and resumed the practice of law. He has always taken an active interest in educational matters ; was for a long time a member of the school board, and has been city solicitor of Chariton. In 1872 he was a delegate to the republican national convention which renominated General Grant, and the same year was made Presidential elector of his district, the seventh of Iowa.
Colonel Dungan married on the 3d of April, 1859, Miss Abby K. Procter, of Massachusetts. He has had born to him one son and six daughters, all of whom, save the eldest daughter, are now living.
He has always been a strong temperance man, and belongs to the Temple of Honor. He is also a mem- ber of the Grand Army of the Republic, and was Iowa's delegate to the national council at Philadel- phia in 1872. He united with the Presbyterian church in Pennsylvania in 1855, and is at present a ruling elder in the church at Chariton.
EBER L. MANSFIELD, M. D.,
CEDAR RAPIDS.
T HE first physician to locate in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was Dr. Eber Lewis Mansfield, a man still in active life. He was born on the 26th of Jan- uary, 1821, in the town of Canaan, Athens county, Ohio, and is the son of Martin and Margaret Durham Mansfield. His father settled in Athens county, when Ohio was a territory; built the second brick house in the county, and was justice of the peace in Canaan twenty-one years. The father of Martin Mansfield served seven full years in the revolution- ary army, receiving a wound in the leg at the battle of Brandywine, which wound produced a fever sore, and finally caused his death. Margaret Durham was a native of Delaware.
Eber aided his father on a farm until of age; then packed up and left without money or education, but not too late to secure both. He spent three years
at the Ohio University at Athens, paying his way largely by working moonlight nights and during va- cations. He read medicine with Dr. William Black- stone, of Athens; attended lectures at the Cleveland Medical College ; practiced a short tinie at Harri- sonville, Meigs county, and in the spring of 1847 bade adieu to his native state, crossed the great "Father of Waters," and stuck down his stakes for life in the embryo town of Cedar Rapids. Here, for a round thirty years, he has been one of the most stirring, wide-awake men in the place.
During the first few years of his practice here physicians were scarce, and his rides were very ex- tensive, often thirty or forty and sometimes a hun- dred miles from home. He once went to Cerro Gordo county, near where Clear Lake now stands, to amputate a limb, going with a span of horses and
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a buggy, and making a six days' trip through a | and Northern Railroad Company for five or six country much of the way without roads and across years, resigning in the spring of 1876. bridgeless streams. For years nearly all the sur- gical cases in this part of the state tested his skill.
On locating in Cedar Rapids Dr. Mansfield en- tered lands, and has always dealt more or less in real estate. He has been successful in every enter- prise in which he has engaged, whatever he touched seeming to turn to gold. In 1850 he crossed the plains, went to the state whose golden gates open to the Pacific, and returned the next year with marked increase of wealth. His motto seems to be : " Be satisfied with small but sure profits, and never en- gage in dishonest speculations." He has been a liberal donor to church, school and other enter- prises; is full of public spirit, working for the inter- ests of the city as well as for himself. Both have prospered.
He has been in the council and school board re- peatedly ; has been a director of the City National Bank since its organization, and was at the head of the Farmers' Insurance Company for a long time. He was surgeon for the Burlington, Cedar Rapids
Dr. Mansfield was a democrat until the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill ; acted with the repub- lican party from 1856 to 1872, and then returned to his original political faith. He is not an active pol- itician, and eschews office if he can consistently with his duties as a citizen.
In religious sentiment, he is a Universalist.
He was first married on the 6th of April, 1852, to Miss Lucy A. Warriner, of Greensburg, Indiana. She had five children, and died in 1868, leaving three of them in this world. Her eldest surviving child is the wife of Charles J. Deacon, an attorney, and one of the firm of Hubbard, Clark and Deacon, Cedar Rapids; the other two, a son and daughter, are single, living at home. The doctor's present wife was Mary E. Warriner, of Jefferson county, New York, a very distant relative of his first wife.
Dr. Mansfield has never used tobacco or intoxi- cating liquors ; is as active as ordinary men in middle life, and by persons not knowing him would be mis- taken for a person under fifty years of age.
JAMES DAWSON,
WASHINGTON.
TAMES DAWSON was born near Newcastle, Lawrence county, Pennsylvania, on the 24th of October, 1808, his parents being Joseph Dawson and Barbara née Galey. His grandfather, Robert Dawson, was a native of the north of Ireland, and emigrated to America in the year 1774, bringing with him a wife and two children, both older than Joseph, who was subsequently born in Cumberland county, Pennsylvania, where the family first located. They soon after moved to Washington county, Penn- sylvania, where Robert died in 1792. Joseph, the father of our subject, married in the last-named county Miss Galey, a lady of Scotch lineage. She died, at the age of forty years, in 1824, and is buried in Richland county, Ohio. Soon after his marriage Joseph Dawson removed to Lawrence county, Penn- sylvania, where he remained about eight years, when he emigrated to Richland county, then an unbroken wilderness. He built a cabin in the woods, cleared a large farm of land, and remained there until 1844, when he removed to Washington county, Iowa, where he died in 1852. He had a family of six sons and
three daughters, of whom our subject was the fourth child. All of the brothers and one sister are buried in the Washington (Iowa) cemetery.
James Dawson was raised in his native state and on his father's farm till the age of twenty-one, his schooling being bounded by the log-cabin subscrip- tion schools of his day, which he attended some four winters. After he attained his majority he attended a common school for three months in Ligonier val- ley, Pennsylvania. This completed his education.
In the year 1829 he made a tour through eastern Pennsylvania, and was employed as a day-laborer upon the Pennsylvania canal, then being constructed from Pittsburg to Johnstown. In this capacity he learned the stonemason trade, at which he soon be- came quite an expert, and was employed as foreman at a salary of one dollar and fifty cents a day, while other mechanics were receiving but one dollar. He was subsequently engaged in constructing the first railroad built across the Alleghanies, connecting transportation between the eastern and western di- visions of the canal. The Pennsylvania Central,
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which now owns the track, runs over a bridge, the abutments of which our subject helped to construct over the Little Conemaugh river. He remained on the public works about seven years, after which he joined his father and family in Ohio, where he re- mained till 1839, when he removed to Washington county, Iowa. Here he bought a "claim," on which a squatter had built a cabin sixteen by sixteen feet, some four miles southeast of where the city of Wash- ington now stands, on which he remained some four years, when he sold out and moved to another farm nearer town, on which he remained some four years.
In the winter of 1847-8 he concluded to try his fortune as a trader, and accordingly commenced his career in this line, in partnership with Mr. Alexander Lee, by purchasing some five hundred head of hogs at an average price of one dollar and seventy-five cents per hundredweight, net weight. After driv- ing their purchase to Burlington, a distance of fifty miles, they were able to dispose of it, with some dif- ficulty, at two dollars per hundredweight, net weight, receiving in payment one third cash, one third in notes to mature at six months, and one third in dry goods at wholesale prices. On returning to Wash- ington they found their stock of dry goods an ele- phant on their hands. There were but two small stores of this description in the city, neither of which would purchase their goods, but one of the mer- chants, John Dougherty, proposed to sell out to them at cost and ten per cent added. They found themselves obliged to accept the terms, and in this way they drifted into "store-keeping." The stock of Mr. Dougherty, all told, amounted to six hundred dollars, and the new firm of James Dawson and Co. commenced business in the spring of 1848. They took in a new partner with some capital, a Mr. Bick- ford; recruited their stock, paying cash for all new purchases, and soon established a good credit in Saint Louis, where they were able to buy goods on very advantageous terms. They began to prosper at once, and soon were the leading merchants of the city. In about a year and a half Messrs. Lee and Bickford both retired from the firm, leaving Mr. Dawson in sole possession. For the next ten years he devoted himself exclusively to business, with very satisfactory results. During this period he erected a number of business houses around the square, sev- eral of which are still standing. In the spring of 1858 he sold out his establishment to his brother, Mr. John Dawson, and in the autumn of the same year became the local agent of the Mississippi and
Missouri Railroad Company, which had just com- pleted its line to Washington. He held this position for over two years, and in 1860 he built the large grain elevator known as the Blair Mills and Eleva- tor Company of Washington, at a cost of eight thou- sand dollars, operated by a steam engine, the first elevator of any kind completed in the State of Iowa. After this he embarked largely in the wheat and grain business generally. In the winter of 1861-2 he bought forty thousand bushels of wheat at an av- erage price of forty-seven cents per bushel, which proved to be a most profitable speculation. During the continuance of the war his transactions in grain were large and satisfactory.
In 1864 he became connected with the extensive commission and forwarding house of George M. Howe and Co., of Chicago, and spent most of his time in that city until 1869. In the last-named year Mr. Dawson retired from the Chicago firm and resumed business in Washington.
In 1859 he was one of the originators of the State Bank branch at Washington, which, in 1863, became the First National Bank of Washington, of which he continued a director until the 31st of December, 1876, and during the preceding two years was vice- president and acting president of the institution. Early in 1877 he sold out his bank stock, together with all his other interests, and is now retired from business altogether.
In the year 1832 he became an uncompromising abolitionist, and afterward was identified with the free-soilers. During the late war he was the staunch friend of the government, and gave liberally of his means toward encouraging enlistments and for the support of the families of those who entered the military service.
In 1870 he was one of the commissioners ap- pointed by the legislature to adopt plans for a new state capitol, and served on the commission for two years. In 1877 he was a delegate to the state repub- lican convention which nominated state officers, and represented the temperance element of the party.
He has never been a member of any secret society.
He was brought up in the Associate Presbyterian church, since merged into the United Presbyterian church, of which he has been a member since the junction of the bodies. He was one of the original organizers of the first congregation of the United Presbyterian church in Washington in 1841. He has been a ruling elder of the congregation since the commencement, and has frequently represented
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his congregation in the presbytery, in the synod and the general assembly of the church. He is, more- over, one of the most liberal contributors to the ex- penses of the congregation and the missionary enter- prises of the denomination in the west.
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