USA > Iowa > The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume > Part 85
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ven with a lawyer's tact into the argument of the work, prepared in the spare hours of a large and exacting law practice, affords an important clue to the secret of the life-work and success of Mr. Cloud. He has never been idle, but, like Horace Greeley, he has waited more than twenty years for the time when he could go " a fishing," but has not yet found it. And still we should fall far short of the full measure of Mr. Cloud's character were we to ignore the passionate energy which he throws into every aim and purpose of his will. He knows no such words as discouragement or failure. He fights his battles through to a successful issue. His most sig- nal triumphs as a counselor and advocate have been won on fields where the varying chances of the day were with his opponent. Though now over sixty years of age, he still finds his greatest pleasure in the hotly contested arena of his profession, and he is never happier than on the eve of a controversy which is to put his mettle to the severest test.
As a citizen and friend, he is eminently social in his disposition, and dispenses a generous hospitality at his beautiful home overlooking Muscatine and the Mississippi river ; and he will discuss with his friends or visitors any subject from belles-lettres to the Turco-Russian war, or President Hayes' new departure. But a glance through his private library betrays his favorite fireside studies, in the well thumbed volumes of the Holy Bible, Shakespeare, Milton and Scott. These have been his class books all his life, and perhaps he owes as much to his con- stant draught upon these inexhaustible fountains of wisdom and beauty as to his mental gifts, natural in- dustry, or discipline derived from his profession.
GEORGE B. CHRISTY, M. D.,
DUNLAP.
G EORGE BROWER CHRISTY, a noted army surgeon in the late rebellion, is a native of Prince Edward county, Canada, and was born on the 30th of January, 1830, his parents being Henry and Maria Brower Christy. They belonged to the agricultural class. The Christys were from Dutch- ess county, New York.
George B. lived in Canada until twenty-five years of age, farming and merchandising in youth, with ordinary common-school privileges. When arrived at his majority he read medicine with Dr. Peter H.
Clark, in Victoria county, having previously studied medicine to a considerable extent in private. He attended lectures first in the medical department of Yale College, New Haven, Connecticut, then at Cleveland, Ohio, where he graduated in February, 1859, and practiced at Franklin Grove, Lee county, Illinois, until the civil war commenced.
In August, 1861, Dr. Christy went into the army as first assistant surgeon of the 32d Illinois Infantry, Colonel J. Logan, commander; and on the 16th of March, 1863, he was promoted to surgeon of the
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9th Illinois Cavalry. While with the 32d Infantry he was on General Grant's staff, at Fort Donelson ; immediately after that battle he was appointed post surgeon at Fort Henry ; was at the battle of Shiloh, the siege of Corinth, the battle of Hatchie, and was post surgeon when General Sherman's army was en- camped at La Grange. While with the 9th Cavalry Dr. Christy was for some time surgeon-in-chief of cavalry, with headquarters at Memphis, Tennessee. He joined General Thomas just before the battle of Nashville; acted as medical director of Wilson's cavalry in the winter of 1864-5, and was mustered out at Selma, Alabama, in November, 1865. On dif- ferent occasions he was staff surgeon for Generals Hatch, Grierson and Coon; and in a letter which we have before us the last named officer speaks of the doctor's faithfulness and efficiency in very. strong
terms. Colonel Albert G. Brackett, of the United States army, in a letter which we have seen, speaks in a similar tone of commendation of surgeon Christy for his skill and his care of the sick.
At the close of the war he practiced four years in Chicago, and after traveling a year or two at the south, for his health, he settled in Dunlap, Harrison county, Iowa, where he has been practicing for the last six or seven years with excellent success. His reputation is very high, particularly in surgery, in which he has had much experience.
In politics, Dr. Christy was originally a Douglass democrat, and still, it is understood, votes with the democracy. He is a Royal Arch Mason.
In January, 1853, he was united with Miss Diana Bowerman, of Prince Edwards county, Canada, and they have five children.
HENRY TEMPLE,
ATLANTIC.
O NE of the settlers in Iowa in its infancy as a state, and a man of much prominence in Cass county, is Henry Temple, who has held a variety of offices, and was faithful in the discharge of his du- ties in all of them. He is a native of Franklin county, Massachusetts; was the son of Benjamin and Rebena Christie Temple, and was born in the town of Heath, near the Vermont line, on the 20th of August, 1816. His grandsires on both sides of the family came over in General Burgoyne's army ; were taken prisoners and never returned to England. Both died in Heath. Benjamin Temple was in the second war with Great Britain, and was stationed at Boston harbor.
Henry, thrown on his own resources, went to Hat- field, Hampshire county, when twelve years old, and engaged in farming until nineteen, when in 1835, with five dollars in his pocket, he reached Marietta, Ohio, and attended the academic department of the college there most of the time for four years, teach- ing two winters in the interim and doing some farm labor, thus furnishing himself with the means for schooling.
In the spring of 1840 Mr. Temple immigrated to southern Iowa, settling at first at Fairfield, Jefferson county, where he read law with Judge Cyrus Olney, and was admitted to the bar in 1842. The follow- ing year he removed to Mahaska county, and after
working on a farm one season opened a law office in Oskaloosa, the county seat, and was in practice there until the autumn of 1858, when he removed to Lewis, at that time the seat of justice of Cass coun- ty. There he remained until 1869, when he settled in Atlantic, the present county seat, still continuing his practice and standing well, especially as a court lawyer, and very high as a citizen.
While in Mahaska county Mr. Temple was treas- urer during one term, and justice of the peace ten or eleven years. At Lewis he was postmaster for four years, also, while living there, county judge one term ; deputy provost-marshal for Cass and Adair counties during the civil war, and county recorder from 1864 to 1870. A truer man has never held an official position in the county. He has always had the un- limited confidence of the people.
Judge Temple was a whig until the party disband- ed. He aided in state convention to form the re- publican party, to which he firmly adheres. He has been one of its leaders in Cass county for years, and still occasionally takes the stump.
Judge Temple has been a member of the Congre- gational church for thirty-five years, and lives con- sistently with his christian profession.
He is a blue lodge member of the Masonic frater- nity.
On the 18th of January, 1846, he was joined in
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the bonds of matrimony with Miss Anne E. Wright, of Oskaloosa, and they have had ten children, nine yet living. Mary R. is the wife of Romie Lawrence, of Atlantic. and Jennie is the wife of William Calvey, of Exira, Audubon county. The other children are unmarried.
Judge Temple has seen Cass county grow up from one thousand eight hundred inhabitants to twelve thousand or fourteen thousand, and is one of the public-spirited men who have aided in making it what it is, one of the leading counties in agricultural wealth and enterprise in this part of the state.
HON. JOHN Q. TUFTS, WILTON.
JOHN QUINCY TUFTS, farmer and ex-mem- ber of congress, was born at Aurora, Indiana, on the 12th of July, 1840, and is the son of Servitus Tufts and Emily née Dudley. His father was born at Wilton, Maine; came to Ohio in 1830, and was for a number of years a professor in the high school at Aurora, Indiana ; and during the administration of President Fillmore held a lucrative clerkship in the postoffice department.
He subsequently removed to Muscatine county, lowa, where he entered largely into business and became wealthy. During these years he had in- dorsed largely for his friends, and when the crash of 1857 came it required almost his entire fortune to pay these debts, and he died at Wilton, Iowa, com- paratively poor, in 1862.
He had been a member of the Methodist Epis- copal church and a radical temperance advocate all his lifetime. He was, moreover, held in high es- teem by all who knew him.
The mother of our subject was a daughter of Moses Dudley, Esq., formerly of Wilton, Maine, a most excellent woman, intellectual and highly edu- cated. She was a devout member of the Methodist church, and died in the faith at Wilton, Iowa, in the year 1863. They had a family of four children, three sons and one daughter, the latter died in in- fancy. The sons lived to maturity, but one of them, John M., died in 1855, while a student at Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa, leaving our subject and his brother, Benjamin Franklin, sole survivors. The latter is now chief clerk in the postal service between Davenport and Chicago.
The great-great-grandfather of our subject, Will- iam Tufts, emigrated from the north of Ireland early in the eighteenth century and settled near Boston, Massachusetts, where a large colony of his descend- ants still reside. The Tufts College at Medford, in that state, was founded and endowed to the amount
of over a million dollars by members of the lineage, and is a monument to their wisdom and public spirit.
Dr. Cotton Tufts, a descendant of the original William Tufts, graduated at Harvard College, was a man of great learning and influence; practiced his profession for many years at Weymouth. He was state counselor and a senator for many years; was a member of the convention for ratifying the federal constitution, and was one of the founders of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the Massachusetts Medical Society, of which he was president for ten years.
He married a daughter of Colonel John Quincy, who was a near relative of John Quincy Adams ; hence the baptismal name of our subject.
The grandfather of our subject, Hon. John Tufts, was for many years a member of the upper branch of the Massachusetts legislature. He afterward re- moved to Wilton, Maine, and later in life emigrated to Indiana, where he died.
John Quincy Tufts was raised at Muscatine, lowa, and in early life imbibed a taste for agricultural pur- suits. After passing through the curriculum of the common schools of the city he spent two years at Cornell College, Mount Vernon, Iowa, which institu- tion he left in 1858.
He immediately commenced to improve the farm on which he now lives, in Cedar county, Iowa, three miles northeast of Wilton. In 1872 he built a beau- tiful villa, one of the most ornate and commodious residences in the state.
He has always been a man of high moral char- acter, and an earnest advocate of the temperance cause. From the outset he took a leading position in his community, and has rarely been without some local office of trust and responsibility, his educa- tion and natural gifts seeming to fit him especially for the position of a leader.
In 1869 he was elected to the lower branch of the
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thirteenth general assembly of Iowa, and served as chairman of the committee on suppression of intem- perance.
In 1871 he was reëlected and was made chairman of the committee on claims against the state, and in- stituted a system by which all claims having been once passed on by the legislature are placed on rec- ord, indexed, and the result indicated for future ref- erence. This has been the means of saving time of the legislature and money to the state.
In 1873 he was a member of the extra session which made and passed what is known as the "New Code" of statutes of the state. In 1873 he was again elected and served as chairman of the com- mittee on railroads, then the most important com- mittee in the body, and is one of the authors of the present railroad law of the state regulating freight and passenger tariffs. He was among the most in- telligent and useful members of the house, and left behind a record of integrity and wisdom.
In 1874 he was nominated by the republicans of the second congressional district of Iowa, and elect- ed to the forty-fourth congress. During the canvass he was challenged by his democratic opponent, Hon. J. L. Sheehan, a leading lawyer of the state, to a joint discussion, which Mr. Tufts promptly accepted, and met his competitor at all the towns and cities in the district, and though the district had polled a democratic majority the previous year, running con- siderably ahead of his ticket.
In congress he had but little opportunity to dis- tinguish himself. He was a member of the commit- tee on Indian affairs, and also a member of the spe- cial committee to inquire into the management of Indian affairs.
Although he has had much experience in public
life, yet he is somewhat diffident as a public speaker, and consequently is not obtrusive in public assem- blies, but when occasion requires can express his thoughts freely and even eloquently. He has strong convictions of duty, and the courage to stand by them in the face of opposition. He is a firm tem- perance man in principle as well as practice, and favors prohibition in preference to license.
Mr. Tufts is a member. of the Masonic order. In religious sentiment, he adheres to Protestantism.
On the 10th of October, 1861, he married Miss Susan Shaw Cooke, daughter of Henry Cooke, Esq., of Williamsburg, Iowa, formerly of Mainville, Ohio. Mrs. Tufts was educated at Leigh University, is an amiable and accomplished lady, and was in early life a teacher; she is a fine conversationalist, and is well versed in the literature of the day. They have had nine children : Annie Dudly, Emily, Edward Ben- jamin, John Quincy, Eva, William Allison, Maud, Martha, and George Washington. The last named, who was twin to Martha, died at the age of nine months, August, 1877.
Mr. Tufts is somewhat above middle size, of full form and fine personal appearance; his complexion being florid, and his hair and beard of a sandy hue. He has a large head and high forehead, indicating a strong intellect ; he possesses, in fact, a well-balanced mind. He is a great reader, and owns one of the best libraries of the state.
As a friend, he is true and steadfast, but it re- quires a strong effort to forget an injury ; generous and tender-hearted to the poor, and held in the highest esteem by all who know him.
As a husband and father, he is devoted to his family, holding it as his first duty to minister to their comfort and happiness.
THOMAS J. DOUGLASS, M. D.,
OTTUMWA.
AM MONG the physicians of longest practice and best standing in Ottumwa is Thomas Jefferson Douglass, who seems to eschew every other branch of science and to make medicine his life study as well as life pursuit. By attending entirely and closely to his profession he has built up an extensive business, and by his skill has secured the confidence of the community. He is a native of Pennsylvania, and was born in Mercer county on the 3d of July, 1829. 60
His parents were Archibald A. and Maria Parks Douglass. His paternal ancestors were from Scot- land, and were early settlers in Pennsylvania and Virginia, his great-grandfather being an officer in the American revolution. The Parks family were among the pioneers in Pennsylvania.
The subject of this sketch spent his minority in his native state, devoting it mainly to literary pur- suits, finishing his education at the Mercer Academy.
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He read medicine with Dr. Rodrigue, of Hollidays- burg, attended lectures at the University of Penn- sylvania, Philadelphia, and the medical department of the Western Reserve College, Cleveland, Ohio ; graduating from the former institution in 1853, and from the latter in 1854.
After practicing one year at Hollidaysburg he left his native state and located permanently in Ottumwa. He is a first-class surgeon as well as physician, and his rides not unfrequently extend beyond Wapello county. Wherever he is best known his services are best appreciated.
The doctor is a member of the Wapello County Medical Society, of the Des Moines Valley Medical Association, and of the State Medical Society, and has been president of the first two organizations.
Politically, the doctor has been a life-long demo- crat, but has never sought office. To achieve suc-
cess in any one of the learned professions, he evi- dently believes that one's whole time must be given to it. He owes his high standing in the profession to his careful and undivided attention to it.
Dr. Douglass has a second wife. His first was Miss Caroline Whaley, of Marshall, Clark county, Illinois; married on the 22d of October, 1857. She died on the 27th of June, 1859, leaving an infant child, who followed her the same year. His present wife was Miss Lizzie J. Wheeler, of Fairfield, Iowa; married on the ist of January, 1862. She has had four children, only two of whom are living. Stella C. is fifteen and Edna D. is ten years of age.
Dr. Douglass has a partner in the profession, A. O. Williams, M.D., a graduate of the literary and medical departments of the State University of Iowa; a young man of fine culture, excellent moral charac- ter and much promise.
HON. MATT. PARROTT,
WATERLOO.
M ATT. PARROTT, as everybody in Iowa calls him, the newly elected state binder, is a na- tive of Schoharie, Schoharie county, New York, and was born on the 11th of May, 1837. He is a son of William and Maria (Beck) Parrott, who were natives of England; came to this country in 1833, locating in Albany, New York, where they remained two years, and then settled in Schoharie. William Parrott was a baker by trade, with quite as many children as he could supply with bread, there being ten in all, our subject standing third from the head. All these children the father gave a fair education, all the for- tune he had to bestow.
Matt. attended a district school until ten years of age, then the Schoharie Academy about three years, paying his way by building fires and sweeping the school-rooms for his tuition, thus acquiring a fair English education. He had no especial relish for hard study, and exhibited no signs of superior genius by keeping uniformly at the head of his classes. The writer once heard him declare that he was a dull scholar at that early age.
At thirteen, in the autumn of 1850, Matt. entered the office of the Schoharie "Patriot," then published by Peter Mix, and received his first lessons in the art of printing. He liked the business from the start, because there were always plenty of newspapers to
read in the office, while there had been a dearth at home, his father receiving only a county paper, a church monthly and an anti-slavery monthly. In the " Patriot " office Matt. was compositor, job printer, pressman, mailing clerk, and almost everything else.
In 1854 he left this office, a full-blown journeyman printer, and took his first " tramp." Obtaining a situ- ation in the job department of the Troy, New York, " Traveler," he remained a few months; returned to his native town and worked in the "Republican " office until early in 1855 ; went to Utica, and obtained a situation on the " Morning Herald "; in July, 1856, started for the west; spent a few weeks on the Chi- cago " Democrat," published by John Wentworth ; went to Davenport, Iowa, in August, and worked in the "Evening News " office until about the Ist of February, 1857, when he connected himself with the office of Luse, Lane and Co., who were then printing the debates on the new constitution.
The following summer Mr. Parrott visited several new Iowa counties, hoping to find an opening for a newspaper in some destitute yet ambitious town, but failing to find such a place he found a situation on the Burlington "Hawkeye." In December of the same year he went to Anamosa, Jones county, and entered into partnership with C. L. D. Crockwell in the publication of the " Eureka," a paper then in its
Matt. Parrott.
Fry ",HE.E. N . C . 13 Barclay& NY
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first year. A year or two later Edmund Booth bought the interest of Mr. Crockwell in the paper, and Mr. Parrott continued one of the publishers until Decem- ber, 1862, when, having received flattering promises from citizens of Morris, Grundy county, Illinois, he sold out and started the Morris "Advocate " early in 1863. The help promised never came, and after a few months' hard struggle, occasioned by the lack of sufficient working capital, the paper "breathed its last," and the unfortunate publisher returned to Iowa a poorer and perhaps a wiser man. He learned that promises are not the most reliable assets on which to found business.
In the autumn of 1863 we find Mr. Parrott once more in the office of Luse, Lane and Co. (this time in the position of foreman), then the largest job- printing and publishing house in the state. He re- mained in that situation until 1869, perfecting him- self in book-work, and giving unqualified satisfaction.
In February of the year just mentioned, in com- pany with J. J. Smart, he purchased the office of the " Iowa State Reporter " at Waterloo, Black Hawk county, a paper originated as a democratic organ, and which had died of the political measles at the end of about eight months. Two months later the " Reporter " was revived as a republican paper ; a bindery was added in June, and the business of man- ufacturing blank books for counties actively com- menced. The prospects were good at the start ; bus- iness has grown rapidly, and hardly a county in the northern half of the state but has books with the imprint of this house on them. Their work is hon- estly, substantially done, and gives the best satisfac- tion. The "Reporter," too, has thrived. It has increased in size and beauty as well as circulation, and is a credit to the newspaper press of Iowa, which is noted for its many first-class journals.
In 1872 James L. Girton became a member of the firm, and the name was changed to Smart, Parrott and Co. In January, 1876, Mr. Smart retired, and J. P. Sherman took an interest, and the firm name was changed to Parrott, Girton and Sherman. The "Reporter " has a spacious and inviting home of its own, forty by eighty feet, built by Smart and Parrott. It has all the necessary facilities for business,-steam, gas, power-presses,- its outfit being perfect. No office in the interior of the state is better equipped.
Mr. Parrott has been in the council of Waterloo two or three years ; was president of the school board of East Waterloo independent district in 1873 and 1874, and is now mayor of Waterloo, being elected
in March, 1877, and reëlected on the 4th of March, 1878, after a unanimous nomination and an almost unanimous vote, receiving all but seventeen in a poll of eight hundred and eleven. These positions all came to him unsought, and were accepted only after repeated solicitations from his neighbors and townsmen.
In January, 1878, Mr. Parrott was a candidate for state binder before the general assembly, and after a lively canvass, with two competitors in the field, he was nominated on the first ballot. His official term will not commence until the Ist of May, 1879. After it was known that he was to be a candidate for this office before the seventeenth general assembly the Iowa press gave him a very strong indorsement, nearly every leading paper on the republican side speaking in the highest terms of his peculiar fitness for the office. From a score of notices of this char- acter which might be given we select the following from the "State Register," Des Moines :
Mr. Parrott has every qualification of fitness and every merit to entitle him to such a position. First, and most im- portant, he is himself skilled practically in binding, is now proprietor of one of the largest binderies in the state, and understands the whole business from beginning to end. To this, in a business sense, he adds superior executive ability and a high sense of honor and pride which would lead him to perform all his duties in the best possible manner. There could be no man found better qualified in all respects for the state bindership. As to his standing and merits as a republican, he is equally strong. The "Reporter " as a paper well represents both his business ability, his mechan- ical skill and his working republicanism. It is a paper cred- itable to the journalism of a state which is proud, and has reason to be proud, of its newspapers. In his own profession Mr. Parrott is very popular, both on account of his genial and sterling qualities as a man and his merits as a journalist.
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