USA > Iowa > The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume > Part 66
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Dr. Chase aided in organizing the Mitchell Coun- ty Medical Association in 1861, and was its first president. He also helped organize the Upper Cedar Valley Medical Association, which embraces nine counties, and was its first president also. He is also a member of the State Medical Society and the American Medical Association. The Mitchell County Society holds a semi-annual meeting, which the wives of the physicians attend.
Dr. Chase has a pretty little farm of fifty or sixty acres near the city, and raises his own grain and other produce. He owns and lives in the largest
Yours truly S. B. Chase
د
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and perhaps the best brick house in the county, with brick barn and pleasant surroundings, the re- ward of skill in his profession and industry that never remits.
In politics, he is a democrat. In religion, a Con- gregationalist, and a member of the Osage church.
On the 3d of September, 1846, Miss Almira B. Cobb, of Limington, Maine, became his wife, and she has been the mother of five children, four of them, two daughters and two sons, yet living. Ada M. is the wife of Dr. John L. Whitley, partner of Dr. Chase ; Mary A. is unmarried; Frank W. is a grad- uate of Rush Medical College, Chicago, and is prac- ticing at Shenandoah, Iowa, and Charles S., a gradu- ate of the Iowa State Agricultural College, is a law- yer. All the children have graduated from the Ce- dar Valley Seminary.
Dr. Chase is a very warm friend of this seminary, located at Osage, and has been its secretary from its organization. It is annually sending out a class of young men and young women to different colleges in the east as well as the west, and they show a high grade of scholarship.
No enterprise in the city or county which is cal- culated to benefit the people, either in a pecuniary, literary or moral sense, fails to receive the doctor's earnest support ; usually he is among the originators of such projects.
He was a director of the old Cedar Valley rail- road, surveyed as early as 1858, and which came through, under the management of another com- pany, about ten years later.
For years he has been accustomed to report cases and write essays to be read before medical socie- ties. One of these essays, read before the Iowa State Medical Association in 1876, has been pub- lished in the proceedings of that body. It is on the subject of alcohol and tobacco, taking strong ground against the use of either, and it would be well if it could have yet wider circulation.
Dr. Chase has gray eyes, a nervous-sanguine tem- perament and a compact body, is five feet eight and a half inches tall, and weighs one hundred and sixty pounds. He wears gold glasses, dresses very neatly, usually in black, and would be taken by a stranger for a college professor or a presiding elder.
THOMAS J. ROSS,
NEVADA.
L IKE most members of the Ross family, the sub- ject of this notice is of Scotch descent. His great-grandfather came from the "auld " country prior to the American revolution, settled in New Jersey, and with a brother fought valiantly for freedom from British rule and taxation. Thomas Johns Ross sprung from the industrial class, is the son of an Ohio farmer, Samuel Ross, and was born in Knox county, on the 14th of September, 1832. His mother was Charity Montgomery, whose older relatives were Marylanders. Thomas J. was reared to agricultural pursuits, and had, in addition to a common school education, two years' discipline at the Martinsburg Academy. He remained in his na- tive county until twenty-three years of age, leaving there in the autumn of 1855, and coming directly to Story county, Iowa, where he remained. During the first year that Mr. Ross was in the county he sold goods at Iowa Center, in the southern part of the county, farmed the second and taught school the third; the last of these three years being di- rectly after the financial tornado of 1857, when all
money seemed to be swept out of the country. Central lowa, then very sparsely settled, was about as destitute of it as a sand-bank is of clover. The year 1858 was especially hard in this part of the state, and Mr. Ross was glad "to teach the young ideas how to shoot " at twenty-eight dollars a month, the highest wages, with one exception, paid to any teacher in the county.
In 1859 he was elected recorder and treasurer of the county; removed to Nevada, the county-seat, just before the close of that year; assumed the du- ties of his office on the Ist of January, 1860, and held it by reëlections six years, the longest term of anyone in that office in the county. He discharged its duties to the thorough satisfaction of his constit- nents.
Since 1866 Mr. Ross has been in the real-estate business, and for the last three years has dealt quite largely in live stock. He has a farm adjoining the town, on which he has lived since he came to Ne- vada, and another farm in the county, both under good improvement. He has made a success in real
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estate and in his ventures generally. He is a very | Mrs. Ross has been the mother of four children, shrewd, reliable business man, with capacities far above the average.
Mr. Ross is a Master Mason. In politics, he is a republican. In religion, a liberal.
He has been a married man since the 24th of Oc- tober, 1854, his wife being Miss Julia A. McCreary, of Martinsburg, Ohio, daughter of William Mc- Creary, at one time a member of the Ohio legis- lature, and an associate judge for several years.
only two of them, both girls, now living. Ida is a graduate of the agricultural college located in the western part of Story county, and Carrie is attend- ing the graded school in Nevada.
Mr. Ross is above the medium height, compactly built, and has a very robust appearance. His hair is light, his whiskers are sandy, his eyes blue and his expression that of a matter-of-fact, intelligent citi- zen, in whom it would be perfectly safe to confide.
BENJAMIN HERSHEY,
MUSCATINE.
B ENJAMIN HERSHEY, merchant and farmer, was born in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, on the roth of April, 1813, and is the son of Joseph and Hester (Hostetter) Hershey. His father was a large .and prosperous farmer of that county; a strict and exemplary member of the Mennonite faith, in which he died in the year 1830, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. He had a taste for fine stock, es- pecially horses, and owned some of the best animals in the state. At the time of his death he was worth about one hundred thousand dollars-quite a large fortune at that period. He had a family of three sons and two daughters: Joseph, Benjamin, John, Magdalen and Catherine. Joseph became a farmer in his native county, and accumulated considerable wealth ; he died in 1865. John still resides on the old homestead, but has long since retired from busi- ness on a competence. Magdalen is the widow of the late Jacob Huber, Esq., of York county, Penn- sylvania. Catherine remains a maiden.
The great-grandfather of our subject was a native of Switzerland, born near Lake Geneva, and emi- grated to America about the close of the seven- teenth century, being driven out of his fatherland by religious persecution. He sought the western continent, where he might worship the God of his fathers according to the dictates of his conscience, and the creed (Mennonite) which he inherited from his ancestors. The descendants are not numerous, and are still mostly residents of the Keystone State.
Benjamin Hershey was raised on the farm, where he acquired a taste for agricultural pursuits, and especially for the raising and training of fine horses. He attended the common schools of the period, or rather what was then termed subscription schools,
the teacher renting a room or cabin, where he could procure one, and teaching at so much per pupil. His attainments, as derived from this primitive in- stitution of learning, hardly carried him beyond the three R's, " 'Readin', 'Ritin' and 'Rithmetic," but he was a man of large natural gifts, which he has never since ceased to cultivate, so that he is now among the best informed men of the age.
From an early period he had a strong desire for travel, and always contemplated settling in the west. In the year 1832, at the age of nineteen, he made what was considered at that day quite an extensive tour in the western states. Starting from Lancaster in the spring, he traveled to Pittsburgh in a "Yankee wagon," with wooden springs, thence by steamboat to Wheeling, Virginia, and thence by stage to Saint Clairsville, Ohio, where he bought a horse, saddle and bridle, on which he rode to Cincinnati and Dayton, thence westward through Indiana by way of the National Road, just blazed out as far as the eastern border of Illinois, visiting many of the farmers on his route, and gathering information of the country and the prospects of the west as he progressed. After a period of three months spent in this way he returned to Pennsylvania in company with a drover, who was driving a herd of cattle to the eastern market.
In 1833 he commenced farming on the home- stead, of which he became possessed soon after his father's death, which he carried on for eighteen years with very satisfactory results, raising and own- ing, during that period, some of the finest blooded horses in the state.
In 1851 he disposed of his farm to his brother John, and in pursuance of his long cherished scheme
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moved west, and settled in Muscatine, Iowa, where, in May, 1853, he rented a saw-mill, on what was then known as the Muscatine Slough, now as South Muscatine, bought raft-timber on the river, and in this unpretentious way laid the foundation of what has since grown into one of the largest and most prosperous concerns on the Mississippi river.
In 1855 he bought out the property he had pre- viously rented, and in the year following commenced the erection of the Monmouth establishment, since known as the Hershey Saw-mill, then one of the largest, if not the largest, on the Mississippi river. At that time the enterprise was regarded by many as wild, reckless and visionary, and certain to entail ruin and disaster upon its projector (the whole state of Iowa, it was thought, could not consume lumber enough to keep it profitably employed); a few years, however, amply vindicated his wisdom, and demon- strated the soundness of his judgment. The original cost of the structure, which was put in operation in the spring of 1857, was seventy thousand dollars, and its capacity was fifty thousand feet of lumber in twenty-four hours. This was the first gang saw-mill put in operation on the "Father of Waters," and it was then the largest in the country. Since then it has been several times enlarged and improved, pro- vided with the best machinery, and at this juncture it is the best and most economical mill on the river, capable of producing one hundred thousand feet of lumber in eleven hours, giving steady employment to about two hundred hands, its annual sales amount- ing to almost half a million dollars, while its pro- prietor has become one of the wealthy men of the valley of the Mississippi.
In 1872 the institution was furnished with what is known as the Sumner dry-house apparatus, one of the most important and valuable auxiliaries of the establishment, by means of which green lumber is put through a process of drying, which fits it for house-building purposes in seven days, as thorough- ly as the old system of weather-drying was wont to do in six months.
In 1876, the lumber business still increasing, and Mr. Hershey having become the owner of a large farm which required much of his time, in order to gain some relief from the responsibility incident to so large a concern, turned his lumber business into a stock company, taking some five of his principal employés and four outside gentlemen into partner- ship, but retaining three-fourths of the interest in his own hands; since that date the business has
been conducted under the style of the Hershey Lumber Company. The company cut down their own logs in the Wisconsin pineries, and tow the rafts down stream by their own tow-boat, the Ben. Hershey ; own their own rolling stock or freight cars, on which they distribute the products of their mill to their customers as far west as the base of the Rocky Mountains.
Mr. Hershey is also a member of the Mississippi Logging Company, of the Beef-slough Boom Com- pany, of Wisconsin, and various other corporations. He was a member of the constructing committee for the building of the Muscatine Western railroad, of which he was also one of the largest stockholders. He served as mayor of Muscatine two terms, during the years 1862 and 1863, but this was the extent of his office holding, his own business furnishing as much work as he could conveniently attend to.
In politics, he was first a member of the whig party, and in early life voted what was known as the "Anti-mason " ticket, expressive of the strong prejudice then existing against the Masonic frater- nity, arising from the supposed murder on their part of the man (Morgan) who had revealed the secrets of the order. Since 1856 he has been an uncom- promising supporter of the republican party.
In 1866 he purchased the beautiful farm alluded to above, consisting of eight hundred acres, situated partly on the bluff and partly on the bottom skirt- ing Muscatine Island, some two miles from town, on which, in 1870, he built a stately mansion, said to be the finest farm-house in the state, designed on the Swiss model, by I. P. Walton, of Muscatine, to- gether with barns, stabling, and all the appurtenances of a model agricultural establishment. Here he has collected the finest stud of blooded horses in the state, together with Shetland ponies and draught horses to the number of one hundred and fifty, besides splendid short-horns, Alderneys, sheep and hogs of the best varieties ; while his barn-yards are overrun with domestic fowls of every feather. His trotting stud comprises representatives of the Henry Clay, Royal George, and Mambrino breeds. His young horse, Envoy, is one of the handsomest and most symmetrical specimens of the equine race in the country, while his mare, Fleta, is among the fleetest in the west. The catalogue of this cele- brated stud contains many other names well known on the turf; while among his Shetlands are found such names as Huckebery, a pibald stallion, forty- four inches high, and weighing three hundred and
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fifty pounds, imported from Gibralter. Anna Dick- inson and Fanny Fern, mares of the same breed, of still smaller dimensions, besides many others. At this beautiful retreat, and in the care and training of those animals, most of the mornings and even- ings of Mr. Hershey are passed, while the remainder of the day is devoted to his other business.
His efforts to improve the various breeds of farm stock has had a most salutary effect upon the farmers generally, to whom he has been ever ready and anx- ious to extend every courtesy they may ask or re- quire.
He has always had in his employment a large force of hands, to whom he has invariably given the largest wages and the kindest and most con- siderate treatment. If all employers were like him, strikes, and discontent would be unknown. Sys- tematic in his business, each man knows his place, and is promptly at his post of duty, and, as a con- sequence, everything moves on smoothly and har- moniously, without one jarring exception. He has ever been ready to extend a helping hand to those in his service who have shown themselves worthy and deserving, and many of them are now the own- ers of handsome and pleasant homes, which they chiefly owe to his generosity.
From what has been said it will readily be inferred that Mr. Hershey is a man of broad and capacious mind and of remarkable sagacity and foresight. All his undertakings of any considerable magnitude have had strict reference to the enlargement of business and broader and more extended fields for the em- ployment of capital, and he has so arranged his business as to adapt it to all the changes and de- mands of after years. He is also a man of large public spirit, ready at all times to give of his means to every enterprise of real public utility, while his private benefactions are given freely, and have been the means of relieving and cheering many a needy and suffering household ; but these deeds are done so quietly and unostentatiously that they become known only by means of the recipients themselves. He is, moreover, a man of great frankness and hon- esty of speech, never attempting to conceal his views or opinions, and what he has to say is generally said without any regard to person or place.
On the 6th of February, 1836, he married Miss Elizabeth, daughter of Daniel Wittmer, of Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, also of Swiss origin, a lady of rare mental and moral gifts and attainments, who has since been his companion and helpmeet. They
have had four children : Sarah J., Mary Amanda, Elizabeth and Elmira. Elizabeth died in early maidenhood in Muscatine, Iowa, on the 7th of Octo- ber, 1856, and Amanda died in Munich, Bavaria, whither she had gone to complete her studies, on the 24th of December, 1876. Her remains were brought home for interment, and were buried in Muscatine, on the 13th of February, 1877, amid the tears and regrets of a large circle of friends and acquaintances.
From the very earliest dawn of reason the children gave evidence of the possession of the rarest talents and gifts, which were fostered and encouraged by their affluent and indulgent father. Their early education was conducted under the parental roof by the best private tutors and governesses then to be found; and having passed through the full cur- riculum of studies in all the branches of art and literature afforded by the schools of America, they were sent to Europe to be perfected.
Sarah J., the eldest, developed an extraordinary tal- ent for music. She studied under the best mæstros in London, Berlin and Milan for five years, and is now perhaps the most perfect mistress of harmony in the United States. She is also an accomplished linguist, speaking the German, Italian and French languages only less fluently than the English. Nor is she less cultured in the fine arts, to which she also gave much attention ; her extensive study and travel having made her quite a critic in sculpture and painting. She is, withal, a queenly woman ; majestic in appearance, graceful and elegant in all her motions, and peerless in every noble and ami- able quality. She was married on the 2d of Sep- tember, 1857, to Hon. William F. Brannan, of Musca- tine, Iowa; one daughter, Miss Bessie, a young lady destined to equal if not excel her mother in the line of art and elocution, is the fruit of this union. In 1876 Mr. Hershey built the large and magnificent conservatory of music in Chicago, known as the Hershey Music Hall-the finest institution of the kind in the country, and destined to add much to the fame of that city - over which Mrs. Brannan is now presiding with a success commensurate with her great talents. She has recently appeared in operas in New York, London, and several cities of the con- tinent of Europe, where she has been regarded as a "star" of the first magnitude, and is destined to a career of fame and success second to no artist of the century.
The younger sister, Miss Elmira, is following close-
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ly in the same line and is learned in all the sciences, no less than in the more ornamental accomplishments. She has been for a number of years a student of the old masters of Berlin and Munich, where she is still a sojourner ; at present making a specialty of painting and music. She is a lady of towering talents, has drank largely of the purest founts of literature, and has stored her mind with the best thoughts of the best authors of the world in all ages and in all lan- guages. She is, moreover, of a cheerful and breezy disposition, dispensing gladness and sunshine where- ever she goes.
It remains only to add a brief memorial of the recently deceased Mary Amanda, who was among the most gifted, noble and beautiful of her sex. Prominent among her characteristics was her great strength of purpose to attain a high standard or aim in her pursuit of art, science, or whatever branch of knowledge she might be in pursuit of; with anything short of perfection she was never satisfied, and to a broad, deep culture of mind she added the more substantial ornaments of a meek and virtuous spirit. joined to strong independent opinions and actions, when occasion required, were the more tender and lovable ways : sympathy for those who needed con- solation, confidence in her friends, without a trace of suspicion, and an indescribable charm of character which surrounded her always with a loving circle of friends, in whose hearts must remain a void for- ever. Her friends have often thought that could her
talents have been distributed among others, many might have been richly dowered with those which she possessed alone. Her acquirements in music, art, science, language, rhetoric, coupled with refine- ment of thought and manner, seemed to make her a meet illustration of the character in the gospel to whom was intrusted "ten talents," all of which she had improved; and although carried to an early grave, she had brought much fruit to perfection. That one so gifted, so precious, so endeared to all who knew her, should be called from a busy and use- ful life here, the dew of youth still freshly resting on her brow, while the indolent, vicious and ignorant remain behind, is one of those inscrutable mysteries of Divine Providence which are past finding out. Doubtless the Supreme Governor of the Universe had a mission for her in another and more exalted sphere, whence she will be restored to her friends hereafter inexpressibly improved in every noble and endearing accomplishment. While she was abroad she was the recipient of many sincere expressions of encouragement and praise for her great and varied attainments, and of commendation for her adherence to what she esteemed christian principle, as at vari- ance with Old World customs, and by her beauty of person and mind, and her consistency of conduct, drew to herself many noble hearts, who not less sin- cerely lament her untimely death than do those who were more closely connected by ties of blood and early association.
SIMON G. STEIN,
MUSCATINE.
SIMON G. STEIN, one of the most sagacious and successful business men of Muscatine, was born in East Hanover, Lebanon county, Pennsyl- vania, on the 17th of March, 1817.
His father, Captain Abraham Stein, was born in the same county on the 11th of January, 1788, and was a soldier in the war of 1812, after which he returned to his farm, where he remained during the balance of his life. He was a man of considerable influence and popularity in his community, serving constantly in the various civil positions in the gift of his fellow-citizens for a period of over forty years. He died in 1858, in the seventy-first year of his age. He was married to Miss Anna Barbara Ger- berich, of the same place, on the 2d of April, 1811,
who survived him about eighteen months. They had four sons and one daughter, of whom our sub- ject was the youngest, and of whom only two are now living: S. G. and his brother, A. G., residing in Philadelphia.
From a genealogical record of the family, running back some five generations, we learn that the great- great-grandfather of our subject, Sebastian Stein, was born in Germany in the year 1696; the great- grandfather, Abraham Stein, was born in Krum- bach, "Aus der Rheinrömischen," Germany, on the Ist of October, 1724; was married to Anna Maria Rohrer in the year 1750, and soon afterward emi- grated to America and settled in Berks county, Pennsylvania, where they raised a family of five
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sons and eight daughters, among whom was John Philip Stein, born on the 2d of December, 1760, who was married to Susanna Wilt in 1787 ; removed to East Hanover, Lebanon county, Pennsylvania, where they raised a family of eight sons and five daughters, of whom Abraham, the father of our sub- ject, was the eldest of the sons.
After receiving a common-school education Simon G. Stein launched out for himself at the age of sev- enteen; served an apprenticeship to the milling bus- iness, which he subsequently followed in Berks and Chester counties, Pennsylvania, for about two years. But having heard of the greater possibilities of the west and the inducements which the country beyond the Alleghanies offered, he removed to Ohio in the year 1836, and continued his trade in the cities of Springfield and Hamilton, of that state, for several years. Meantime " The West," as then located, had removed to the valley of the Mississippi, whither the tide of empire was then setting, and our subject, to keep abreast of the movement, resolved to follow. Accordingly having made a short visit to the pater- nal homestead and seen the "old folks " again, in 1839 he removed to Illinois, and followed his trade in Putnam, Peoria and Rock Island counties, of that state, until 1846, when he engaged with D. Over- myer, under the firm name of Stein and Overmyer, in the manufacture of lumber and flour, in Moline, Illinois, which they carried on successfully for three years. In 1849 he crossed the river to Muscatine, Iowa, which has since been his home, and has con- tinued in the lumber business there ever since. In 1875 he became connected with the Hershey Lum- ber Manufacturing Company, one of the largest and most successful lumber companies in the west, and of which he has been vice-president since his con- nection. In 1854 he engaged with Philip Stein, a cousin, in the furniture business, under the style of S. G. and P. Stein, and has since conducted one of the largest wholesale and retail establishments of this kind in the valley of the Mississippi.
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