USA > Iowa > The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume > Part 118
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He attended a school taught by his father two winters, and under that parent's instruction at home received knowledge sufficient to enable him to teach.
In the spring of 1846, in his nineteenth year, Mr. McCall came to Iowa, with an older brother, and tanght the first school ever kept east of Des Moines, in Polk county. Teaching and farming were his
occupations until twenty-three years of age, when he started in trade, being the pioneer merchant at Rising Sun, and subsequently following the same business at Des Moines in company with Mr. W. W. Moore. At twenty-seven he went into the real-estate business in the same city, removing to Nevada in 1858, still following the same occupation.
In 1861 Mr. McCall was elected to the lower house of the general assembly, and served in the regular and extra sessions of 1862. In the interim he enlisted in the service of his country, going to the front in the antumn of 1862 as quartermaster of the 32d Iowa Infantry, with the commission of lieu- tenant. The regiment was in the sixteenth army corps, General A. J. Smith, commander, and he was with it in the famous Meridian and Red river expe- ditions.
At the end of about eighteen months, on the 22d of March, 1864, he received from President Lincoln the appointment of assistant quartermaster of volun- teers, with the rank of captain, and in that capacity served until the 27th of November, 1865. He had millions of property pass through his hands, and
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settled with a full discharge, without the loss of a dollar to the government or himself. He went into the service not to enrich himself, but to aid in saving the country, and left a record as clean as his motives were pure.
Politically, Captain McCall is a republican, with free-soil, whig antecedents, and has usually been quite active. He has attended nearly all the con- gressional and state conventions of his party since settling in Nevada; has once been on the state cen- tral committee, and chairman of the county commit- tee twice. He is a man of much influence in politics in the central part of the state.
In Odd-Fellowship he is also prominent, and has twice been a representative to the Grand Lodge of the state.
He has been a member of the Presbyterian church for twenty-four years, and an elder of the Nevada body the last half of that period. He is a man whose purity of motives and of life secure him great respect.
Captain McCall has had three wives, the first being Miss Sarah Garrett, of Polk county; married on the Ist of March, 1849. She had four children, and died on the 19th of January, 1855. Only one of her chil- dren, John A. McCall, attorney, of Des Moines, is
now living. His second wife was Miss Mary A. Boynton, of Marion, Linn county; married on the 28th of October, 1858, and dying on the 4th of August, 1875, leaving three children, four preceding her to the land of spirits. His present wife was Miss Clara Kennedy, of Carrollton, Ohio; married on the 19th of October, 1876. She has one child.
Captain McCall came into Iowa driving an ox team, with no capital but a resolute will and a small fund of learning acquired in the home circle, and by his own application, energies and business talents has become one of the wealthiest men in the county. Two years after he came to Iowa, his father, who was not in good health, joined his sons, who had provided him a home in Polk county, where he died, and where the step-mother of Captain McCall still resides.
The subject of this sketch gave his entire earnings to the family until after he became of age, all of his accumulations having been made since he was twen- ty-three years old. He has a great deal of village property, and at least twenty-four hundred acres of land in Story county, fourteen hundred acres of it under good improvement. He has always been a fair, straightforward dealer, patient and obliging, and for integrity, no man's character in the county stands better.
HON. WILLIAM H. SEEVERS,
OSK.1LOOSA.
W TILLIAM HENRY SEEVERS, the junior member of the supreme bench of Iowa, is a native of Shenandoah county, Virginia, and dates his birth on the 8th of April, 1822. His grand- father, Henry Seevers, settled in the State of Penn- sylvania. James Seevers, the father of William H., was born in Virginia, and was a private in the war of 1812-15. He was a general business man, and is now, at the age of eighty-five years, living with his son. The Seevers family have some Huguenot blood in their veins. The wife of James Seevers was Rebecca Wilkins, who died in 1875.
The subject of this sketch spent his boyhood near Winchester, Virginia, farming, attending a common and select school, and clerking in a country store. He commenced reading law in his native state in 1843; removed to Oskaloosa, Iowa, the next year, where he finished reading; was admitted to the bar in 1846, and has since attended steadily to his pro-
fession, except when serving his constituents in some other capacity.
He was elected district attorney in 1848 and served one term ; was elected judge of the third judicial dis- trict in 1852 ; served nearly five years in all, and then resigned; was a member of the lower house of the general assembly at the session in 1858, the first ses- sion held at Des Moines, and again in the session of 1876, and resigned in February of the latter year to accept an appointment to the supreme bench, serv- ing as chief justice the rest of that year. In the autumn of the same year he was elected by the peo- ple, and hence is now the junior member of the su- preme bench. Before he went on the bench he was regarded as one of the most adroit and best read practitioners in the state. His knowledge of the practice of the law is immense. He was the editor of the code in 1873. His opinions are very high authority with the bar of Iowa.
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Politically, Judge Seevers is a republican, strong and unwavering. He was formerly a whig. He was a delegate to the national convention which renom- inated President Grant in 1872.
His wife was Miss Caroline M. Lee, a native of Ohio, who was married in Oskaloosa on the 20th of February, 1849. They have lost one daughter, and have six children living. Virginia, the eldest daugh- ter, is the wife of Henry L. Briggs, druggist, of Os-
kaloosa; Carrie is the wife of James C. Fletcher, merchant at Wall Lake, Wright county, Iowa ; Harry W. is a student at Cornell College, Mount Vernon : Grace is at school in Davenport; and Nellie and William H. are at home.
Mrs. Seevers is a christian mother, a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, where the family worship, and a woman of strong mental faculties, and active and benevolent in all good causes.
GEORGE H. MAISH, DES MOINES.
G EORGE H. MAISH, a native of York county, Pennsylvania, was born on the 30th of Sep- tember, 1835, and is the son of David Maish and Sarah née Neiman. His paternal ancestors settled in Chester county, Pennsylvania, about one hundred and fifty years ago, having emigrated thither from Bavaria, while his maternal ancestors came from Germany more than a hundred years ago. His grandparents were David and Mary Maish, and George and Mary née Rupert.
Our subject is the eldest of three sons. His brother, Levi Maish, born on the 22d of November, 1837, received a common-school education, and af- terward served an apprenticeship of two years un- der a machinist. During the war of the rebellion he was lieutenant-colonel, and also colonel of the 130th regiment Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, and was wounded at the battle of Antietam, and also at Chancellorsville.
After the close of his military service he pursued a course of study in the law department of the Uni- versity of Pennsylvania, and in 1864 was admitted to the bar.
In 1867 he was elected to the general assembly of Pennsylvania for a term of two years, and in 1872 was appointed by the legislature as one of a com- mittee to reëxamine and reaudit the accounts of cer- tain public officers of York county, Pennsylvania, and elected to the forty-fourth congress on the dem- ocratic ticket in the fall of 1874.
His youngest brother, Lewis Maish, was born on the 2d of July, 1840. He also served as an appren- tice and worked as a machinist for several years. At the opening of the rebellion he enlisted in the 87th regiment of Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, com- manded by Colonel George Hay, of York, Pennsyl-
vania. He became second lieutenant, and for three years served as captain of company D. Being taken prisoner, he was confined in rebel prisons about six months. He resumed his trade, after the close of the war, and in 1867 removed to his present home in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
George had the advantage of a common-school education, and after closing his studies was for sev- eral years engaged with his father. At the age of seventeen he placed himself in the employ of Messrs. P. A. and S. Small, machinists, of York, Pennsylva- nia, and after remaining with them a period of nine years formed a partnership with Mr. John M. Brown, and during the next four years was engaged in the coal business with good success.
During that time he became well known as a thorough and competent business man, and at the earnest solicitation of the board of directors of the old York Bank, accepted the position of teller in that institution. After four and a half years of most satisfactory service he relinquished his position, and, removing to Iowa, settled at Des Moines, where, with his brother-in-law, Charles A. Weaver, under the firm name of Weaver and Maish, he engaged in the drug business.
To this business he gave his close attention until the fall of 1875, when, with other gentlemen, he or- ganized the Iowa National Bank of Des Moines, and was elected to his present position of cashier of the same.
As a business man, Mr. Maish has from the first been eminently successful. Beginning without cap- ital, other than his own native abilities, and prompt- ed by the ambition to become known as an upright, honorable and influential man, he has by his own effort gradually risen to his present commanding po-
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sition ; and his life-history furnishes a worthy exam- ple to young men who aspire to dignity and noble- ness of character.
In political sentiment, Mr. Maish has been identi- fied with the republican party since the organization of that body.
In his religious communion, he is associated as a member of the Evangelical English Lutheran church.
He was married on the Ist of October, 1857, to Charlotte E. Weaver, daughter of Jeremiah Weaver
and Charlotte M. née Haugham, both of whom were of German descent.
Of the seven children who have been born to them, six are now living. Charles Edward died when two and a half years old. William Weaver was born on the 27th of April, 1861; Harriet Jane was born on the 14th of June, 1866; Albert George was born on the 13th of October, 1867; Mary Martha was born on the 4th of October, 1870, and Georgia Elizabeth was born on the 3d of July, 1873.
LEWIS TODHUNTER,
INDIANOLA.
O NE of the most prominent citizens of Warren county is Lewis Todhunter, twenty-eight years a resident of Iowa. He was a son of Jurey and Je- rusha (Johnson) Todhunter, and was born in Fay- ette county, Ohio, on the 6th of April, 1817. The Todhunters were Quakers from Wales, and settled in Tennessee. This branch of the Johnson family settled in Campbell county, Virginia, and spread thence into Ohio and other states.
Lewis had very limited means for school educa- tion, and was, in fact, mainly self-taught. In early life he learned the carpenter's trade, worked at it a few years; subsequently sold goods four or five years; then read law, and was admitted to the bar in Highland county in 1848.
In 1850 Mr. Todhunter came to lowa, settled on the Des Moines river, in Polk county, started with others a village named Lafayette, and there engaged in farming and sold goods.
In the spring of 1854 Mr. Todhunter moved into the then small village of Indianola. The river, mean- time, gradually took possession of the village of La- fayette, eating into its own banks, carrying off from eighty to one hundred rods of "bottom," and not a house stands there to-day !
Since settling in Indianola Mr. Todhunter has de- voted himself assiduously to the legal practice and real estate, success attending him in both branches. He is president of the Indianola Hotel Company, which has recently erected the Central House. He is also vice-president and director of the Warren County Bank, which company has erected a large brick block on one corner of the public square.
Mr. Todhunter was elected prosecuting attorney soon after locating in Indianola, and served two
years. He was county recorder and treasurer one term, and a member of the constitutional convention which met at Iowa City in January, 1857, he repre- senting Warren, Madison, Adair and Cass counties in that body, and has the honor of assisting in mak- ing the laws under which the people of Iowa live.
In 1863 he volunteered as a private, but was im- mediately appointed assistant quartermaster, with rank of captain. After Lee's surrender he was post- quartermaster at Richmond, Virginia, serving in that capacity until September, 1865.
He has seen Indianola expand from its beginning as a village to a city of three thousand inhabitants, and for two terms was at the head of its municipal- ity. He has served the corporation in other capac- ities, and is one of its most useful as well as most respected citizens.
He is a member of the Methodist church, and high in degrees in the Independent Order of Odd- Fellows.
In politics, Mr. Todhunter was originally a whig, and when that body disbanded he joined the repub- licans. He is widest known, however, as a temper- ance man and earnest worker. He joined the great army of teetotalers in 1840, or about the time of the Washingtonian movement, and has been active in the cause since that epoch in the temperance reformation. He has been a delegate to two or three national conventions held in the interests of this cause; is now president of the State Temper- ance Association, and is very active in the State Temperance Alliance.
On the roth of May, 1842, Miss Elizabeth Hull, of Highland county, Ohio, became the wife of Mr. Todhunter, and they have six children, and have lost
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two. Three of them are married : Ann is the wife of David Johnson, and Amy J. is the wife of Sylvester Barnes, both living in Indianola; John Jurey has a family, and is deputy auditor of Warren county, liv- ing here at the county seat.
Mr. Todhunter has some few enemies among the
liquor venders and topers, and possibly a few others who would sacrifice principle for policy, but he fights right on with the same zeal which he exhibited nearly forty years ago, spending his well-husbanded strength in trying to suppress the greatest curse of the nation since slavery was destroyed,
HON. STEPHEN HEMPSTEAD,
DUBUQUE.
A MONG those who have been prominently iden- tified in the history of Iowa none deserve more honorable mention than Stephen Hempstead. He was born at New London, Connecticut, on the 1st of October, 1812, and lived in that state until the spring of 1828, when his father's family came west and settled on a farm a few miles from Saint Louis, Missouri. Here he remained until 1830, when he entered as clerk in a commission house in Galena, Illinois, and during the Black Hawk war he was an officer in an artillery company organized for the protection of that place.
At the close of the war he entered as a student of the Illinois College at Jacksonville, remaining about two years, leaving to commence the study of law, which he finished under Charles S. Hempstead, Esq., then a prominent lawyer at Galena. In 1836 lie was admitted to practice his profession in the courts of the Territory of Wisconsin, then embracing Iowa, and in the same year located in Dubuque, being the first lawyer who practiced in the place. At the or- ganization of the territorial legislature in 1838 he
was elected to represent the northern portion of the territory in the legislative council, of which he was chairman of the committee on judiciary, one of the important committees of the council. At the second session of that body he was elected president there- of; was again elected a member of the council in 1845, which was held in Iowa City, and was again president of the same. In 1844 he was elected one of the delegates to the first constitutional conven- tion of the State of Iowa, and was chairman of the committee of incorporations. In 1848, in connec- tion with Hon. Charles Mason and W. G. Woodward, he was appointed commissioner by the legislature to revise the laws of the State of Iowa, and which revision, with a few amendments, was adopted as the code of Iowa in 1851. In 1850 he was elected gov- ernor of the State of Iowa, and served four years in that office, being second governor of the state. In 1855 was elected county judge of Dubuque county, and held that office for twelve years ending in 1867, since which time, on account of impaired health, he has retired from public life.
JAMES DAVIS,
EXIRA.
AMES DAVIS, for twelve years sheriff of Clay- J ton county, Iowa, and now a member of the board of supervisors of Audubon county, is a good representative of the energetic, enterprising farmers of the state. He dates his birth in Knox county, Ohio, on the 6th of October, 1819, his parents being Nathaniel and Martha Doty Davis. His maternal grandfather, Peter Doty, was in the battle of Mon- mouth and other revolutionary contests with the mother country, serving four years. He died in Knox county, aged one hundred and two years. 83
Nathaniel Davis, a native of Hardin county, Vir- ginia, was at the battle of Fort Meigs and with Gen- eral Hull when he surrendered.
James received only a common-school education ; after reaching the age of twenty-two he spent three years as assistant keeper of the Ohio Penitentiary, Columbus; went to Jefferson City, Missouri, and ran a lumber yard for.Saint Louis parties about two years ; spent the autumn and winter of 1846 in Du- buque City and Clayton county, Iowa; in the spring of 1847 went to Moline, Illinois, and run a saw-mill
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one season, and in 1848 returned to Clayton county. There he took up land and improved it, his home being at Garnavillo, and he also dealt in cattle until 1855, when he became sheriff, holding the office by reëlections four years. After an interim of six years, during which period he was engaged in various speculations, he found himself again in the office of sheriff, holding it four more terms consecutively. The writer of this sketch knew Mr. Davis in those days, and has no hesitation in saying that Clayton county never had a more efficient officer of any kind during the period when he was acting. As a detective, he had marked success. He held other offices while in that county, and was among its most useful and influential citizens.
In the spring of 1874 Mr. Davis removed to Au- dubon county, buying and settling on a farm of three
hundred and twenty acres. One third of it is tim- ber; the other two thirds are under superb culti- vation, and well stocked. Being merciful to beast as well as man, he has one of the best barns in the county. He is a hard-working, thrifty agriculturist, and especially useful in the county board of super- visors.
Mr. Davis was a whig in his younger years; at- tended the first republican convention ever held in Clayton county, and has trained in that party since that date. He is a sincere, conscientious man, be- lieving he serves his county best while proving true to his political instincts. He is a third-degree Mason.
On the 10th of March, 1853, Mr. Davis married Miss Elizabeth, McLelland, of Garnavillo, and they have five children, all living at home, learning the art of being industrious and useful.
HON. JAMES F. WILSON,
FAIRFIELD.
J AMES FALCONER WILSON is a native of
Newark, Ohio, and was born on the 19th of Oc- tober, 1828; son of David Scott Wilson and Kitty Ann Bramble; was educated in the common schools of Newark, with some additional instruction by a pri- vate teacher. He learned the trade of a harness- maker; read law with King and Woods, of Newark ; practiced one year in his native town, and in 1853 moved to Fairfield, which has since been his home, the law being his profession until recently, although for a while after locating here he paid some atten- tion to journalism, editing, with marked ability, the local republican newspaper.
He was chosen a member of the convention which, in the winter of 1856-7, drafted the present consti- tution of Iowa, being one of the youngest members of that body, and proving a wise and judicious leg- islator. In 1857 he was appointed assistant commis- sioner of the Des Moines river improvement.
He was a member of the lower house of the gen- eral assembly in 1858, and of the senate in 1860 and 1861, being president of the senate in the extra ses- sion of 1861. That year he was elected to fill a vacancy in the thirty-seventh congress, and was re- elected three times, serving in the thirty-seventh, thirty-eighth, thirty-ninth and fortieth congresses. It was the most important period in the history of the country since Iowa became a state.
Mr. Wilson was in the house during the period of the civil war, and while the reconstruction measures were being matured and becoming a law, and the amendments to the constitution were under consid- eration and being passed ; and no member of the lower house from Iowa took a more prominent part or held a more honorable position than Mr. Wilson. He was chairman of the judiciary committee during the last six years that he was in that body. He in- troduced the joint resolution for an amendment of the constitution, abolishing slavery, and on the 19th of March, 1864, on that subject, made one of his very ablest and most effective speeches. He also introduced the joint resolution proposing an amend- ment to prohibit the payment of any portion of the rebel debt.
It was he who, in the thirty-ninth congress, re- ported the bill extending the right of suffrage in the District of Columbia. In the same congress he was an earnest advocate of the civil rights bill, and his speeches made before the veto of that bill were among the best made in the house. The debate on this bill, before it went to the President, was closed by Mr. Wilson, chairman of the judiciary committee. He took the ground that the federal government, rather than the United States, is bound to protect the citizens of the United States in certain rights.
He figured very prominently in the impeachment
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trial of President Johnson, a trial under contempla- tion in the thirty-ninth congress, and referred to the judiciary committee. At first Mr. Wilson made a minority report against impeachment, comprising in his report a succinct review of all important cases of impeachment in the British parliament, and of every case brought before the United States senate, with an elucidation of the law and practice under both governments. His report forms an exceedingly val- nable treatise, alike for the historian and the jurist.
Subsequently, when new charges, based upon al- leged criminal acts of the President, were made against him, and the subject came again before the house, Mr. Wilson supported the impeachment of the President, and was made one of the managers, appointed by the house, to carry on the trial.
During the last term or two that Mr. Wilson was in congress he was chairman of the committee on unfinished business, and he also did important work on some other committees. He aided, essentially, in shaping the measures for the reorganization of the rebel states.
Mr. Wilson was originally an anti-slavery whig; has been a republican since the party was formed; aided in organizing it, and has wielded great influ- ence in the politics of the state and the nation. He was a delegate to the national convention which nominated Mr. Lincoln in 1860, and to the conven- tion which nominated Mr. Hayes in 1876.
The wife of Mr. Wilson was Miss Mary A. K. Jewett, of Newark, Ohio; married on the 25th of November, 1852. They have three children.
HON. CYRUS C. CARPENTER, FORT DODGE.
C YRUS C. CARPENTER is a native of Sus- quehanna county, Pennsylvania, and was born on the 24th of November, 1829. His parents were Asahel and Amanda M. (Thayer) Carpenter, both of whom died before he was twelve years old. His grandfather. John Carpenter, was one of nine young men who, in 1789, left Attleborough, Massachusetts, for the purpose of finding a home in the " new coun- try," where they hoped to be able to purchase cheap lands. After various vicissitudes they located upon the spot which they called Harford, in northeastern Pennsylvania, the township in which Cyrus was born. This location a hundred years ago was far from any other settlement, Wilkesbarre, in Wyoming valley, near the scene of the celebrated Indian massacre, being among the nearest, though fifty miles away. The place where these young Bay State men bought lands and settled was known for years as the " Nine Partners' Settlement." Here these hardy pioneers maintained their families and hewed themselves farms out of the wilderness, established schools, churches and homes, with all the indices of civilized and chris- tian life. Aaron Thayer, the maternal grandfather of our subject, moved to this settlement some years later from Medway, Massachusetts.
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