USA > Iowa > The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume > Part 119
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Governor Carpenter attended a common school three or four months in a year until 1846, then taught winters and worked on a farm summers for three or four years, and with the money thus raised paid his
expenses for several months at the academy which had been established in his native town. After leav- ing this institution, in 1852, he started westward; halted at Johnstown, Licking county, Ohio; taught there a year and a half, and with his funds thus re- plenished he came to Iowa, loitering some on the way, and reaching Des Moines in June, 1854. The city then had twelve hundred inhabitants. A few days later he started on foot up the Des Moines val- ley, then just beginning to be regarded as one of the El Doradoes of the Hawkeye State. He found his way to Fort Dodge, eighty miles northwest of Des Moines, from which place the soldiers had moved the previous spring to Fort Ridgely, in Minnesota. Here he settled and soon found employment with a government surveyor, and for two years was em- ployed much of the time by persons having contracts for surveying government lands. He was thus natu- rally led into the land business, and from the autumn of 1855, when the land office was established at Fort Dodge, much of his time was devoted to surveying, selecting lands for buyers, tax-paying for foreign owners, and in short a general land agency. During this period he devoted such time as he could spare to reading law, with the view of eventually entering the profession.
Soon after the civil war commenced he entered the army, and before going into the field was com- missioned as captain in the staff department, and
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served over three years, attaining the rank of lieu- tenant-colonel and being mustered out as brevet colonel.
Governor Carpenter was elected surveyor of Web- ster county in the spring of 1856, and the next year was elected a representative to the general assembly, and served in the first session of that body held at Des Moines. He was elected register of the state land office in 1866, reelected in 1868, and held the office four years, declining to be a candidate for re- nomination.
He was elected governor of the state in 1871, and reëlected two years later, making an able and popu- lar executive. In his first inaugural address, deliv- ered on the 11th of January, 1872, he made a strong plea for the State University, and especially its nor- mal department, for the Agricultural College, and for whatever would advance the material progress and prosperity of the people, urging in particular the in- troduction of more manufactories. On this point he said :
To bring the manufactured articles required by our people and the products of their industry nearer together, in my judgment, is of paramount importance. That the producer would be materially benefited if the wagon, reaper, plow and cultivator with which he plies his industrial enterprises, and the cloth he wears, were manufactured at his market town, whither he could carry his surplus products and exchange them for these necessities, saving cost of transportation long distances both ways, is a proposition so self-evident that it needs no support by argument. But while the general gov. ernment may, as an incident of its power to collect revenue and the necessities of its treasury, be able to discriminate so as to encourage such industries as are compatible with our habits, climate and resources, and wisely exercise such dis- crimination, a state having no such authority, it may be asked, How can legislation aid us in this particular? It is answered, If we can do nothing more, it is possible, through our board of immigration, to call attention to our manufac- turing resources. The fact that Iowa is supplied with coal mines developing veins from six to eleven feet in thickness, which invite new industries to their vicinity, with lead mines, in which new lodes are daily discovered, with black walnut and other woods for manufacturing purposes, with inexhaustible gypsum beds, with limestone quarries of every variety, with clays for the production of all kinds of brick and pottery, and with other resources inviting skill and cap- ital so numerous as to forbid, now and here, the mention, might all be set forth in a pamphlet, which, distributed by the board of immigration, could not fail to attract attention and produce results.
Other questions were discussed with marked abil- ity in this inaugural address, and in his second, de- livered two years later, he thus speaks of the duty of the wise legislator :
He will not only heed the voice of the farm-producer, whose chief concern is to increase returns upon his surplus products, but, with a statesmanship looking beyond to-day and to the greater questions of to-morrow, taking knowledge of the past in other and nider states, he will, while building wisely for labor that owns farms, build with equal wisdom for labor that owns only hands - the men who do not look
for greater profits, but for bread ; who care less to keep the tax-collector than the wolf from their doors. Unless we build wisely for these as well as others, in less than two dec- ades from now there will be formidable conventions of this great and increasing class demanding, by resolution and political action, such legislation as will fix their hours of daily work and the price per day for husking corn. I say these things with the more directness and with the greater boldness because, for myself, I own no dollar of property but what is in a farm, and my heart never throbs but in sympathy with the toiling millions of my countrymen.
And here is the gist of my argument : What we need and must have for the producer, for the laborer, for the middle- man and for the state is a greater diversification of industry. We need this not only to employ surplus labor and to fur- nish a market for home products, but we need it also to build up here local marts of trade and manufactures, instead of pouring all our accumulations into the lap of great cen- tral cities, a folly which has proved the ruin of more than one nation now gone to decay. An eminent English agri- culturist wrote but a short time since : "It is precisely be- cause British farmers have their customers, the British manufacturers, almost at their doors, and that other corn- producing countries have not such manufacturers, that Brit- ish agriculture is rich and thriving." It is said by historians that the act for which the first Napoleon will be best known one hundred years from now is the fact that he encouraged the introduction and naturalization of beet-sugar culture as a new industry of the French people.
In June, 1873, Governor Carpenter delivered a long and masterly address before the Patrons of Husbandry of Iowa. It was full of happy sugges- tions like the following :
In order to increase in knowledge as we ought we must make the most of time, and to this end we must improve our machinery, improve our stock and cheapen our processes of transportation. One important feature in this transporta- tion problem I have passed over, and that is a wise con- densation of marketable commodities. To-day our canned fruits, tomatoes and sweet corn, bottled pickles, dried beef, and many of our sugar-cured hams are brought from an eastern market. We go from our rich soils to states where it is necessary to use from one hundred to one hundred and fifty dollars' worth of fertilizers to an acre of ground to buy the luxuries which grow here on natural soil. The grange must teach a wisdom which will doom such nonsense. The grange must teach, also, that the prodigality of the rich does not conduce to the benefit of the poor. It is often said if the rich squander money, somebody gets it ; it is distributed and does somebody good. This is not true. Suppose a rich man should hire labor to raise corn and then gratify his caprice by burning the corn; somebody would probably go hungry for this profligacy, notwithstanding money may have been distributed to pay the labor required to raise the corn. This principle holds good in respect to all capital squandered in gratification of vanity or passion.
At the expiration of his second term as governor Mr. Carpenter was appointed, without his knowledge of the design to do so, second comptroller of the Unit- ed States treasury, and resigned åfter holding that office about fifteen months. He was influenced to take this step at that time because another bureau officer was to be dismissed, as the head of the depart- ment held that Iowa had more heads of bureaus than she was entitled to, and his resigning an office of a higher grade saved a man who deserved to remain in government employ. He had, however, we believe,
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determined not to remain much longer in the public service under any circumstances.
Governor Carpenter has done a little toward im- proving a farm, and has been connected with other enterprises, but it is doubtful if he regards himself as a brilliant success in accumulating money, and having devoted his whole time to the duties of such offices as he has held from time to time, he has had but little opportunity to either originate or manage private material enterprises.
He has been a republican since the party was organized; is orthodox in his religious views, but regards himself as liberal in such views. He is a member of the Library Associations of Fort Dodge and Des Moines.
He was married in March, 1864, to Miss Susan C. Burkholder, of Fort Dodge. They have no children of their own, but a niece of Mrs. Carpenter, Miss Fannie Burkholder, has lived with them from child- hood. .
Governor Carpenter has led a pure, true and up- right life. Of the many men who served as he did in the commissary department, some managed to save tens of thousands of dollars out of a salary of two thousand or three thousand dollars per annum. Men who "made something out of the army " are known to every reader of mature years. Governor Carpenter came out about as poor as he entered the army. While in it he was associated with men like Generals Dodge, Logan, Noyes and Thomas, and enjoyed their fullest confidence, and he retains the warm friendship of all of them who are yet living.
He has always been a diligent and careful reader and student. It is doubtful if he ever sat down to
seriously consider the subject of money making, but, on the contrary, has always been ready to divide his last dollar with the destitute.
In concluding this sketch it may not be improper to state that when Governor Carpenter first reached Fort Dodge he had but a single half-dollar in his pocket. He frankly told the landlord of his straight- ened circumstances, offering to do any kind of labor until something should " turn up." On the evening of his arrival he heard a government contractor state that his chief surveyor had left him and that he was going out to find another. Young Carpenter's cir- cumstances were so desperate that he at once offered his services to the gentleman. To the inquiry whether he was a surveyor, he answered that he understood the theory of surveying but had had no experience in the field. His services were promptly accepted, with a promise of steady employment if he were found competent. The next morning he met the party and took command. When the first week's work was done he went to Fort Dodge to replenish his wardrobe. As he left, some of the men remarked that that was the last that would be seen of him. He was then of a slight build, jaded and torn by hard work, and, when he left the camp, so utterly tired out it is not surprising that the men who were inured to out-door life thought him completely used up. But they did not know their man. With the few dollars which he had earned he supplied himself with com- fortable clothing, went back to his work on Monday morning and continued it until the contract was completed. The next winter he taught the first school opened in Fort Dodge, and from that date his general success was assured.
HON. DENNIS A. MAHONY, DUBUQUE.
D ENNIS AUSTIN MAHONY is a native of Ireland, and was born at Ross Carberry, coun- ty of Cork, on the 21st of January, 1821, and emi- grated to this country with the family in 1831. His parents were Cornelius and Margaret Crolly Ma- hony.
Dennis commenced going to school before he was five years old, and soon after reaching this country, at the age of nine years, he attended a grammar school in Philadelphia, remaining in it about six years. Whatever additional studying he did, was
done at home until he entered the law office of Hon, Charles J. Ingersoll. He read law three years, and then came to Dubuque, Iowa, in June, 1843, con- tinuing his law studies with Davis and Crawford. Not designing to remain in the legal profession, he did not then ask to be admitted to the bar.
Mr. Mahony spent the spring and summer of 1844 in Butler township, Jackson county, returning to Du- buque late in the autumn to teach a winter school. In 1845 he established an academy in Jackson coun- ty, in what is now called Garry Owen. While in
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that county he was part of the time postmaster, and much of the time justice of the peace. In 1847, having concluded to make Iowa his permanent home, he applied to the supreme court at Iowa City and was admitted to the bar, and commenced practice in the United States district court.
In 1848 he represented the district of Jackson and Jones counties in the general assembly ; was chair- man of the house committee on schools, and of the joint committee on schools of both houses, and drafted the bill which became the public school law of Iowa during that session.
In the autumn of 1849 he became the editor of the " Miners' Express." Three years later, in con- nection with Messrs. H. Holt, A. A. White and W. A. Adams, he established the Dubuque "Herald," weekly and tri-weekly. It became a daily on the
4th of July of the same year (1852), the first daily paper in Iowa. In 1854 Mr. Mahony was appointed state printer to fill a vacancy. During the following year, owing to ill health, he sold his interest in the " Herald."
He was elected to the general assembly from Du- buque county in 1858. The next year he was elected treasurer of Dubuque county to fill a vacancy. In 1860 he resumed his journalistic labors, purchasing the " Herald " and conducting it, with associates, for four years. In 1863 he was elected sheriff of Du- buque county, and reelected in 1865. In 1866 he aided in establishing the Saint Louis "Times," and was its chief editor about one year ; he then returned to Dubuque, and is now editing the "Daily Tele- graph."
In politics, Mr. Mahony is a democrat.
MAJOR WILLIAM WILLIAMS,
FORT DODGE.
A MONG the pioneer settlers in western Iowa was Major Williams, who gave Fort Dodge its name, laid its foundation, and worked twenty-four years on its superstructure. 15 him the present city owes not only its start, but very much of its growth and prosperity, and his memory is held in most grateful remembrance.
William Williams was born at Huntingdon, Penn- sylvania, on the 6th of December, 1796. His early education was such as could be had in a common school, he entering into business when quite young. His tastes were decidedly military, and he early as- sociated and became largely identified with the sol- diery of his native state.
Major Williams was the eldest child of a large family, and his father dying in middle life, his ener- gies in early manhood were mainly devoted to the support and education of the younger children. He made noble sacrifices for their benefit. He was always generous, sympathetic and kindly in disposi- tion, always simple in his habits and refined in his tastes and manners, and was regarded, later in life, as a gentleman of the old school.
At different periods of his earlier life, Major Will- iams was a merchant in his native state, and was among the first persons to manufacture salt on the Kiskiminitas river. Later in life he was connected with the Exchange Bank of Pittsburgh, and was a
cashier of one of its branches when, in March, 1849, he moved to Iowa. He halted a short time at Mus- catine, but finding no opening that pleased him, he was induced by his friends in the regular army, then on their way westward to establish frontier posts, to accompany them as sutler. This was early in 1850. He set out with the United States troops to establish the post of Fort Clark, now Fort Dodge, which point was reached in February of that year. His son, James B. Williams, then but a mere lad, accompanied him. The Fort was named in honor of General Dodge, of Wisconsin. After the troops were removed, Major Williams remained, purchased the site of the town, and with the aid of his son laid out the village and gave it the name it still retains. Through his cor- respondence with newspapers and his great influence exerted in other ways, many persons were induced to settle in Webster county. By his exertions the United States land office was established here, and this movement naturally aided in developing the whole northwestern part of the state.
When the Indian massacre occurred at Spirit Lake, Dickinson county, early in the year 1857, Major Will- iams commanded the three companies which went from Fort Dodge and Webster City, and was subse- quently appointed by Governor Kirkwood to pro- tect the frontier of the state.
Having lived to see the rewards of his industry,
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Major Williams died of general debility on the 26th of February, 1874, in his seventy-eighth year.
He was twice married, his first wife being Judith Lloyd McConnell, to whom he was united on the 19th of August, 1830, and who died in 1843. She had five children, only two of whom are living. One of them, whose name has already been mentioned, and who accompanied his father into these prairie wilds twenty-seven years ago, is engaged in the ab- stract title and loan business at Fort Dodge, and is a successful operator in that line. The other sur- viving child is the wife of Hon. J. F. Duncombe, the leading attorney of Webster county. She is a very accomplished lady. The second wife was Jeanette J. Quinian, to whom he was united on the 12th of February, 1844. She has had three chil- dren, only one of whom, William H. Williams, sur-
vives. The widow Williams resides in Fort Dodge. Major Williams was a Mason and Odd-Fellow.
Early in life he joined the Presbyterian church, and held his connection there until his demise.
In politics, he was a life-long democrat.
He was of slender build, dark complexion, nerv- ous temperament, and five feet and six inches in height. Of body and mind he had an unusual de- gree of elasticity ; was very social and companion- able; fluent and racy in conversation, and always ready with a repartee. In the early days in lowa, his lively chat and jeu d'esprit aided very much in breaking up the monotony of frontier life. He lived to see the home of his planting and nurturing grow into a beautiful city of four thousand inhabitants, and to participate for years in all its enlarged social refinements.
GENERAL GEORGE W. JONES, DUBUQUE.
M ANY years before the Black Hawk war of 1832 the successful lead miners and Indian traders looked with anxiety to the time when they might take possession of the lead mines which had been opened and worked by Julien Dubuque over forty years before. Among such men was George Wallace Jones. He was born at Vincennes, Indiana, on the 12th of April, 1804, and was a son of Hon. John Rice Jones, a native of Merionethshire, Wales. Mr. Jones was educated at the Transylvania Uni- versity, in Lexington, Kentucky, and on graduating chose the legal profession, which he studied with a relative, Hon. John Scott, at Saint Genevieve, Mis- souri. He was soon appointed clerk of Judge Peck's court, in which he discharged his duties with com- mendation. At this time failing health required a more active life, and being of a very enterprising spirit, he determined to seek his fortune in the upper Mississippi lead region. He accordingly removed to the new territory of Michigan, and made a home at Sinsinawa Mound, only six miles from Dubuque. This was in the early part of 1827.
At the close of the Black Hawk war he was elected judge of the court of the western district of Michi- gan, now the State of Wisconsin. It may be said to his credit in the administration of justice that no appeal was taken from any of his decisions.
Upon the organization of Wisconsin territory, then
including Iowa, Minnesota, and even the whole re- gion west to the Pacific, in 1836, he was triumph- antly elected over two formidable competitors as a delegate to congress. He then commenced that brilliant political career of civil service and national legislation which continued for more than thirty years, and when a government land office was re- quired for Wisconsin and Iowa he was appointed surveyor-general. This measure had been earnestly advocated by delegate Jones while in congress, and it was mainly through his personal influence that the office was located at Dubuque. He accordingly re- moved to the city and territory of his adoption, and has remained one of its most distinguished citizens ever since. In the next two years political partisan- ship became so strong, under a change of Presidential administration, that he was removed from office, but was reappointed under the new political policy of President Polk in 1845. He then discharged the duties of surveyor-general until 1848, when he was selected by the general assembly as one of the two United States senators. Upon the expiration of his first term as senator he was reelected for another term of six years, terminating in 1859.
Under the administration of President Buchanan General Jones was appointed minister to New Gren- ada. He made his official residence in Bogota for three years, and returned during the first year of the
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war of the rebellion. Under some misapprehension of facts, involving, also, partisan malice, incident to that lamentable period of our history, he was arrested and imprisoned several months in Fort La Fayette, and discharged without specific charges having been made against him. On reaching Dubuque, he was given the honor of a public reception.
For the last fifteen years General Jones has lived a partially retired life. His present family consists of his wife, whose maiden name was Miss Josephine Gregoire, whom he married at Saint Genevieve, Mis- souri, in 1829. She was a member of a highly re- spected French family, a lady of high attainments
and distinguished for a marked excellence of wo- manly and christian virtues. Of his children, there are surviving three sons and two daughters.
In every position which, in his eventful life, he has been called to fill, General Jones has been success- ful in the highest degree. Few men have more de- voted friends. None excel him in unselfish devotion and unswerving fidelity to the worthy recipients of his confidence and friendship. In public enterprises and benevolent societies, and in all the social and business relations of life, few men of Dubuque or Iowa will leave a brighter record of public service or private character than General George W. Jones.
HON. JOHN LEONARD,
WINTERSET.
JOHN LEONARD, judge of the fifth judicial dis- trict, is a native of Knox county, Ohio, and was born on the 20th of August, 1825, his parents being Byram and Abigail Lewis Leonard. He was reared as a farmer, with a common-school education, sup- plemented with a few terms at Granville College, now Dennison University. At twenty-three years of age he was elected surveyor of Morrow county, then recently formed from parts of Knox, Richland, Ma- rion and Delaware counties. While holding this office he had access to a law library, and having considerable spare time he devoted it entirely to legal studies, and in the spring of 1852 was admitted to the bar at Wooster, Wayne county.
After practicing one short year at Mount Gilead he finally left his native state, settling in Winterset in the summer of 1853. Here he opened an office and gradually built up a remunerative practice. He is an inveterate reader, having, perhaps, the largest library of any lawyer in the southwestern quarter of the state.
Mr. Leonard was elected district attorney in 1862, and resigned in 1864. In January, 1874, he was placed on the bench, and there he is still found. As a jurist, he comprehends the theory underlying a
case very readily, is prompt in his rulings, and full and very clear in his instructions to a jury. His dis- trict embraces the city of Des Moines, where he spends nearly one-half of his time, and where the most important civil and criminal cases are tried. He is equal to any emergency.
In his earlier years, Judge Leonard was a dem- ocrat. For more than twenty years he has been a staunch republican, and among the leading and most influential members of the party in this part of the state.
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