USA > Iowa > The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume > Part 71
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In his sixteenth year he left the farm and com-
menced learning the cabinet-maker's trade, working at it twenty-six years, with a brief episode in 1833. He was in. the army one year under General Scott, being one of his " rangers," and, although in no en- gagement, he saw perilous times from other sources than the musket or tomahawk. On one occasion, while he and other soldiers were near the Red river, Arkansas, they lived sixty-four days on fif- teen days' rations, and had part of them stolen. Their mission in that part of the country was the making of a treaty with the Pawnee and Camanche Indians, which proved a failure at that time.
In 1834 Mr. Tilford moved to Johnson county, Indiana, continuing his trade there until 1851, when he located where the city of Vinton now stands, and laid out the southern part of the town. Forty
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acres, laid off earlier, in the Cedar river, has been called Fremont, and he had the name changed. There was a postoffice, four miles southeast, called Vinton, and the postmaster, James Becket, moved it to the newly platted town, and that was the rea- son why Mr. Tilford gave it the name of Vinton.
Since settling in Vinton he has been a successful farmer, much of his land, more than three hundred acres, now being in the corporation. He early added horticulture; was in the nursery business many years, and has two orchards of his own. He also, at an early day, planted a forest of various kinds of trees, half a mile south of his present home, and has in all thirty or forty acres of orchard and forest.
Mr. Tilford has been a man of great industry, and has not yet folded his hands. Slothfulness is no part of his nature, nor is stinginess. No man in Vinton has shown more public spirit or liberality. He was the original prime mover in securing the location of the Iowa College for the Blind at Vin- ton, and a generous contributor of money as well as time for the institution. Tilford Academy, a flour-
ishing school, is located on grounds donated by him. He is a man alive to every interest of Vinton, ma- terial, educational, moral and religious. He has been a member of the Presbyterian church some- thing like thirty years; is one of the pillars of the local society, and a well wisher to every genuine christian organization.
Mr. Tilford was a democrat in early life; voted, however, for General Winfield Scott, whig, for Presi- dent, in 1852, and since 1855 has acted with the republicans. He has kept out of office, except some local one of trifling importance.
On the 21st of April, 1835, Miss Margaret J. Young, daughter of Joseph Young, of Franklin, Indiana, was married to Mr. Tilford, and they have had six children, of whom only three lived to maturity. John Young, the oldest living child, has a family, and lives one and a half miles south of Vinton. Ann J. is the widow of W. W. Hanford, many years publisher of the Vinton " Eagle," and Helen A. is the widow of Job R. Tracy, who was also a resident of Vinton.
LUCIAN Q. HOGGATT, AMES.
A MONG the officers who were in the Mexican army and who now reside in Iowa is Lucian Q. Hoggatt, a native of Washington county, Indiana, born on the 21st of March, 1815, when this state was a territory. His father was William Hoggatt, a farmer by occupation, but for many years an official of Washington and Lawrence counties. His mother was Elizabeth Coffin. The Hoggatts were from North Carolina and Virginia; the Coffins from Nan- tucket, both families being Quakers or Friends. Some of them left the south early in this century, on ac- count of their anti-slavery views.
Lucian received a common English education, picking up a good deal of it by his industry, leaving school when thirteen years old. He lived on the farm until about fifteen or sixteen; from 1833 to 1853 shipped more or less produce annually on flat- boats to New Orleans, acting at first for others. Part of this time he was salesman in a store.
In 1845 he raised a company for the Mexican war, and went into the service as first lieutenant company F, 2d Indiana Volunteers, and adjutant of the regi- ment, and served exactly one year. He was at the
battle of Buena Vista, under General Taylor, the only engagement of any importance that his regi- ment participated in; and we have heard him de- clare that the official account of that battle is little better than a fiction; that the letter "V " which it is said Colonel Jefferson Davis formed with his men, thus saving the day, is a pure myth.
After his return from the Mexican war he carried on tanning and merchandising in Union county, Indiana.
In 1859 he engaged in farming in Lawrence county, in his native state ; at the end of one year, however, he removed to Iowa, settling on wild prairie adjoin- ing the present site of Ames, in April, 1860. He is now the oldest settler at the forks of Squaw creek and the Skunk river, farming having been his lead- ing business here. In August, 1861, he lost his right leg in a threshing machine, and since that time has not accomplished much himself on the farm, For about four years he was engaged on the railway now connecting Ames with Des Moines. He was one of the early and principal men in engineering this en- terprise.
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While living in Lawrence county, Indiana, Mr. ! Hoggatt was sheriff four years, and member of the legislature one term ; has also served a similar period as sheriff of Story county, and was a member of the fifteenth general assembly.
In politics, he was a democrat until 1854; then changing his views, became a republican, but is now known as an independent politician, with powerful greenback convictions.
He has been a Freemason nearly forty years, and has taken the royal-arch and council degrees.
He has a wife and nine children, and has lost two children. Three daughters and one son are married : Clorinda E. is the wife of Thomas Grayson, of Ames ; Iris M., of Douglass McAffee, of Lawrence county, Indiana; and Rebecca S., of George D. Loud, of Dubuque, Iowa. J. Brown Hoggatt, the only son who has a family, resides at Nevada, eight miles east of Ames. The wife of Lucian Q. was Abigail Brown, of Indiana, their union taking place on the 16th of March, 1841.
Mr. Hoggatt has had a liberal share of backwoods and frontier life. Born in the territory of Indiana, where school-houses, "like angels' visits," were "few and far between," he had to forage on Pike and Dil- worth just where he happened to find them, bidding
a final adieu to the school-house in his fourteenth year, and aiding to run a flat-boat to the Crescent City before he was seventeen. In those early days from 1833 to 1850 or later, there were many rough people on the Mississippi river and on some of its islands. Sometimes parties landing with well loaded boats at Islands Nos. 66 or 67 would be robbed of their provisions. Now and then a man, and in one or two cases a whole crew, would be missing. There being no law to reach these robbers and murderers, the boatmen themselves took the matter in hand, and the population of the two islands mentioned be- came suddenly very much decimated. Mr. Hoggatt is familiar with the minutest parts of that episode in flat-boating life.
Before leaving Indiana he formed the acquaint- ance of more than one horse thief and counterfeiter belonging to a branch of the Reno family, of Brown county ; and once or twice he was chosen captain or leader of a band who drove the scoundrels out of that part of the state. He is evidently a stranger to fear, and is just the man to lead in a serious trial of " roughing it."
Mr. Hoggatt has a strong mind, is well posted on current events, and in talking has probably no rival, male or female, in Story county.
CHARLES McALLISTER, M. D.,
SPENCER.
C HARLES MCALLISTER, who represents the seventy-fifth assembly district in the state leg- islature, is a native of Lee, Berkshire county, Massa- chusetts, dating his birth on the ist of February, 1840. His parents were John and Cynthia Heath McAllister. He is of Scotch-Irish descent on his father's side, his grandfather, Alexander McAllister, coming from Ireland in the latter part of the last century, and settling in eastern New York. John McAllister was a farmer, and died in 1873. His wife was of Puritan stock.
The subject of this sketch prepared for college at Williams Academy, Stockbridge, in his native county ; entered the freshman class of Williams College in 1859, and, his health failing, left near the close of the sophomore year. He read medicine with an uncle, Charles McAllister, M.D .; attended lectures in the Berkshire Medical College, Pittsfield; gradu- ated in the spring of 1865; practiced three years in
Stockbridge, when, his health again failing, he started for the west, reaching Dixon, Illinois, in the spring of 1869. At length, with his health partially restored, he spent the autumn of 1871 and the following win- ter in traveling through the states of Iowa, Minne- sota, Nebraska, Kansas and Colorado, and the fol- lowing March located in Spencer, the seat of justice of Clay county. Here he has steadily followed his profession, his rides extending over Clay county and into O'Brien, Dickinson, Buena Vista, Emmett, Osce- ola, Cherokee and Palo Alto counties. When first settling in Iowa he purchased land at Spencer; has opened a farm, which he works by proxy, and has dealt more or less in real estate, success attending all his operations.
In the autumn of 1877 Dr. McAllister was elected to the general assembly, representing Clay, Dickin- son, Osceola and O'Brien counties. He received all but about two hundred votes, having the largest
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majority ever given in the district, and the largest received by any member of the house in the seven- teenth general assembly. He was made chairman of a special committee on the practice of medicine, and placed on the committees on railroads, hospital for the insane, asylum for the deaf and dumb, sup- pression of intemperance, and judicial districts. He is a new member, and says very little, but shirks no duties in the committee rooms.
Representative McAllister is a Master Mason, was made so in Massachusetts, and is a member of the Spencer Lodge.
He is a communicant in the Congregational church,
superintendent of the Sunday-school, and an active and true christian man. He is president of the Clay County Bible Society, and has been for years.
On the Ist of January, 1869, he was united in mar- riage with Miss Laura McAllister, an adopted daugh- ter of his uncle, Dr. McAllister, and they have one child, a son.
Representative McAllister is about the average height, being five feet and eight inches tall, and weighs one hundred and forty-five pounds. He is polished alike in mind and manners; is courteous and cordial, frank and communicative, an easy con- verser, and has all the elements of a true gentleman.
LYMAN H. WASHBURN,
MUSCATINE.
T HE man who, in the battle of life against the odds of poverty and adversity, rises to a posi- tion of honor, usefulness and independence by his own unaided energy and talents, illustrates a life story worthy of emulation. Such a man is the sub- ject of this sketch.
Lyman H. Washburn was born at Morristown, St. Lawrence county, New York, on the Ist of July, 1832, and is the son of Zephaniah Washburn and Phebe née Parsons. His father removed to Worth- ington, Franklin county, Ohio, in 1834, where he remained till 1840, when he removed still farther west, and settled in Muscatine, Iowa. About this period he embraced the principles of total absti- nence, and devoted the next four years of his life to the advocacy of temperance in public lectures in Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin. He afterward built the Nevada Flouring Mills of Muscatine; was for many years a justice of the peace, and was the first mayor of Muscatine after its incorporation as a city in 1851.
Our subject received a common-school education in Muscatine, and as soon as able was put to manual labor to aid in support of the family. In 1852, at twenty years of age, he followed the tide of emigra- tion to the Pacific slope, and there engaged in min- ing for three years, when the premature discharge of a blast brought his career as miner to a sudden termination, and came near ending his life. He es- caped, however, with the loss of his right hand some four inches below the elbow. The expenses inci- dent to this disaster involved his previous earnings, so that he returned to his home poorer than when
he left it, with the irreparable loss of his right arm. In 1858 he was elected by his fellow-citizens to the office of justice of the peace, which he retained five years, during which period he was an industrious law student, and in 1862 was admitted to the bar of Muscatine, and since then has been engaged more or less actively in the practice of his profession with very fair pecuniary results.
Mr. Washburn has always been a man of great pub- lic spirit, giving his best thoughts and energies to the public welfare, in the broadest sense of that term. In 1872 he took a deep interest in the cause of the Muscatine Western Railroad Company, a new high- way seeking to extend its lines across Iowa. Be- lieving the enterprise to be for the public good and the especial benefit of his city, he gave three years of his time to it, with but very slight compensation a small part of the time; but at this period the panic of 1873 being succeeded by a persistent “ granger crusade " against all railroads, the company became involved and the work on the line was suspended after thirty-two miles had been built.
He served as alderman of the city of Muscatine from 1865 to 1869, and during that period, owing mainly to his energy and influence, the city was re- graded and all the principal streets macadamized. He is also a member of the school board of the city, and has left the impress of his vigorous char- acter upon every, department of the city's interest with which he has been connected.
In politics, he has always been a radical republi- can, and for some time edited a party paper.
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He was raised under Methodist influence, but on making a public profession of faith in his Redeem- er, united with the Baptist church, on the question of immersion. He is president of the Young Men's Christian Association of Muscatine, and a leading spirit in the temperance organizations of his city, and devotes as much time to the advancement of the cause of religion and morality as any other lay- man in the community.
On the 4th of July, 1858, he married Miss Lonisa A. Lloyd, at Norwalk, Ohio, a lady of English pa- rentage. They have three children, namely, Jessie M., Frank L. and Charles L.
Few young men returning to the home of their parents as Mr. Washburn did, at the age of twenty- three, from a California mine, with nothing to show for it but an amputated right arm, would have known what they were still good for, or that they were good for anything. It was a dreary outlook for one whose young heart was thus left to beat itself against the
bars so cruelly closed and locked npon it. To con- vert the left hand into the right was an immediate religious duty with Mr. Washburn. By dint of the closest practice and the severest discipline this al- most unnatural feat was accomplished, and the odds against him were greatly reduced. True he had but one hand, was an unlettered young miner and pos- sessed not a dollar in the world, but the education of his left hand had wronght the same result for his hitherto left-handed mind-brought it into use in the study of men as well as books, of cause and effect in the world of enterprise and industry around him. He saw that opportunities do not grow by the way- side, but in hot-houses, under constant cultivation ; that cities as well as men make their own circum- stances; that the secret of success in every depart- ment of life is action. There are few in Muscatine to-day who think of Mr. Washburn as a one-handed man : he is rather Briarens of the hundred hands, and doing the thinking of the god's fifty heads.
WILLIAM H. STIVERS,
TOLEDO.
O NE of the best examples of a self-made man, in the State of Iowa, is William H. Stivers, who never went to school ten weeks after twelve years of age, who worked at the blacksmith trade until twenty-six years old, and who is now a leading man at the bar of Tama county. He is the son of a blacksmith, Benjamin Stivers, a resident of Attica, then Genesee, now Wyoming county, New York, and was born on the 18th of May, 1830. His grand- father, Daniel Stivers, a German, who settled in New Jersey, was a pensioner of the revolutionary war. The mother of William was Sophronia Strong, and her mother was also from Germany.
In the spring of 1836 Benjamin Stivers moved to Nyesville, Meigs county, Ohio, reaching there the day his son was six years old. The place is now called Pomeroy. There William learned his father's trade, and worked at it steadily until 1850, when he immigrated to Iowa, working at blacksmithing in Jones county.
In 185t he removed to Linn county, and in com- pany with David Zeikenfuse built the first black- smith shop in the embryotic town of Lisbon. He carried on the business five years, studying law dur- ing the latter part of this period, being encouraged
to so do by Hon. Isaac M. Preston, who is still liv- ing at Marion, in that county.
In 1856 Mr. Stivers moved to his present home, read law, and in March of the next year returned to Linn county, and was admitted to the bar at Marion, then and now the county seat.
For nearly twenty-one years Mr. Stivers has been in practice at Toledo. For eight years during this period he was in company with J. G. Safley, the firm name being Stivers and Safley. He is now of the firm of Stivers and Leland.
During the eight years he and Mr. Safley were together they were the attorneys for Tama county, the only political office of the least importance with which Mr. Stivers has had any connection. Though a republican, and living in a republican county, dis- trict and state, and interested in the welfare of his party, he has given his study, his time and his in- domitable energies exclusively to the law. Begin- ning legal studies late in life, he seems to have come to the conclusion that to succeed in his profession he must make it his sole pursuit. His great strength is before a jury, he being a powerful advocate. Like General Taylor in battle, Mr. Stivers, with his case in court, never knows when he is beaten. He holds
myls tives
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on with bull-dog tenacity, and usually wins. He is five feet and eleven inches tall, is solidly built, has strong lungs, and knows nothing of physical ex- haustion.
Mr. Stivers has passed all the chairs in the sub- ordinate lodges of Odd-Fellowship, and belongs to the grand lodge of the state.
He was a member of the first free-soil convention held in Jones county, and has acted heartily with the republican party since it was formed.
Miss Emily Baugh, of Jones county, Iowa, became his wife on the 22d of August, 1852, and they have four children, two girls and two boys. Emma, the
eldest child, is the wife of Michael J. Boyle, of To- ledo; Seward J. is married, and lives upon a farm near town; George Sumner is also a farmer, living at home, and Lilly, the youngest child, is a student at the Rockford (Illinois) Seminary.
Like the Rev. Robert Collyer, of Chicago, Mr. Stivers can still shoe a horse, and do it well. Dur- ing the past year a journeyman blacksmith, of To- ledo, in attempting to put the shoes on one of Mr. Stivers' horses made a failure with one shoe, and Mr. Stivers did the little job for him neatly and hastily, to the surprise and admiration of those who were present.
DE WITT C. RICHMAN,
MUSCATINE.
D E WITT CLINTON RICHMAN, attorney and counselor at law, named after Governor DeWitt Clinton, an intimate friend of his father's, who was visiting at the home of his parents about the time of his birth, was born at Somerset, Perry coun- ty, Ohio, on the Ist of September, 1826, and is the seventh child of Evert and Mary (Scott) Richman,* natives of Pennsylvania, and brother of Hon. J. Scott Richman (elsewhere sketched in this volume).
The father of our subject was a Methodist minis- ter, and died when the latter was but three years of age, leaving the care of a family of seven children upon his excellent mother, who seems to have been one of the noblest of her sex. Her genealogy has not been preserved beyond the fact that she was de- scended of Scotch ancestors, and that she exhibited many of the traits of character for which that utili- tarian race are noted. Her watchful care for her children was unceasing, and her widowed life was apparently planned and lived for the main purpose of so rearing her offspring as that they might be pre- pared for honorable and useful lives. And after they had grown up and gone out into the world she often expressed great satisfaction that her care and watchfulness had been so richly rewarded. Wise judgment and an affectionate heart enabled her to so manage and control her family that they were constrained to obedience ; and while they respected her authority they never ceased to love her, and " our mother " with them had no peer in the world.
* For genealogy of the Richman family, see sketch of J. S. Richman.
Her memory is precious to her surviving children. She was made perfect through suffering, and died among her loved ones at a good old age.
DeWitt C. was educated at the primitive public schools of Bucks county, Pennsylvania, to which place his mother had removed soon after the death of his father; there he studied the usual branches taught in such institutions, and from which he grad- uated at the age of twelve years; and he was always fond of books, and an incessant reader, brief histo- ries of Greece and Rome being among his earliest studies. Scott's poetical and prose writings were his favorite works of fiction; one of these, entitled "Guy Mannering," he almost committed to mem- ory; while the Bible was his constant companion, his vade mecum, with the sacred teachings of which he became enriched. He was of a thoughtful and contemplative turn of mind, and while at school was addicted to the composition of crude poems and essays on topics suggested by his associations ; one of these juvenile effusions fell into the hands of the teacher, or master, as the pedagogue was then called, which he read aloud to the school, criticising and turning it into ridicule as he pro- gressed, to the no small shame and mortification of the young aspirant to literary fame. The propen- sity was not quenced, however; and although cast down by the rebuff of his teacher, the boy was by no means discouraged. He was also fond of reading in company, and it was his daily practice to read aloud to his grandmother from the family Bible, much to the edification of the good old lady. He
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was also fond of the prevalent juvenile sports and plays, and was an expert skater. He was likewise something of a mechanical genius, and exhibited some skill in the construction of his own sleds and other playthings. He was fond of music, for which he had an excellent ear, and sometimes indulged in the singing of ballads and sentimental songs for the edification of his companions or the family circle.
He was naturally sensitive and keenly alive to neglect or discourtesy. His feelings were dread- fully lacerated on one occasion by the putting of a small switch in his Christmas stockings. This sym- bolic implication of deserved chastisement tortured him more than the most severe reproof or even castigation could have done, and from the emotion with which he sometimes refers to the incident, it would seem that he has not yet entirely recovered from the effects of the shock to his then ardent and susceptible feelings.
How carefully should parents try to discern the temperaments of their children and studiously avoid wounding their sensibilities. Especially should this rule be observed on festive or joyous occasions. Many a happy and promising lad has been thus wantonly bruised, and its after life soured and blighted by just such indiscretion.
From the age of twelve to sixteen years our sub- ject worked on a farm in Bucks county, Pennsylva- nia, except a few months spent in a store in Phila- delphia, Pennsylvania. He served about a year as clerk in a store at Trenton, New Jersey.
At the age of eighteen he removed to Muscatine, Iowa, where his eldest brother, John W. Richman, lived and kept a grocery house .* Here he remained two years in his brother's employ, when he returned to Trenton, New Jersey, resumed his clerkship, and remained there till 1853, when, at the request of his brother J. Scott, he returned to Muscatine to pursue the study of law in his office. He had pre- viously read a little of Blackstone and Kent, but now he set about the work in real earnest, and in the year following was admitted to the bar, having just recovered from an eight weeks' siege of typhoid fever, the result of overwork as a student.
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