USA > Iowa > The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume > Part 87
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When Charles L. was twelve years old his father moved to Dayton, Ohio, and subsequently to Xenia. With the exception of a short time in a drug store 61
at Dayton, the son spent most of his youth in pro- curing a literary education. He read medicine with his father at Xenia; attended lectures at Louisville, Kentucky; practiced a short time in the Scioto val- ley; came to Muscatine county, Iowa, in 1847, and was in practice there until the spring of 1850, when he removed to Tipton. Two years later he attended a course of lectures at Starling Medical College, Columbus, Ohio, and took his degree of M.D.
The year after the civil war burst upon the na- tion -August, 1862,-Dr. Chambers went into the service as surgeon of the 35th Iowa Infantry, and in September, 1863, was obliged to resign on ac- count of ill-health. As soon as he had sufficiently recovered he resumed practice in Tipton, and has a very extensive ride. His practice is general, and extends into adjoining counties. The doctor's char- acter as a man is as elevated as it is in a professional sense.
He is a member of the Presbyterian church, an elder of the same, and a gentleman of fine feelings, as well as pure principles and excellent habits.
To the bedside of the sick he carries a sympa-
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thizing heart, together with words often fitly chosen, which " are like apples of gold in pictures of silver."
Dr. Chambers is a republican in politics. In ear- lier life he was a whig. He has never sought office. In all the walks and relations of life he is modest and unassuming.
On the 11th of November, 1847, Miss Ann Hud- son, of Muscatine, was married to Dr. Chambers, and the fruit of this union has been eight children, only five of them now living. The eldest daughter, Elizabeth B., is the wife of A. M. Kirk, druggist, of Tipton.
ADGATE W. COLLINS,
KNOXVILLE.
DGATE WARD COLLINS, one of the earliest A
merchants in Knoxville, and one of its best business men, was born in Richland county, Ohio, and is the son of Isaac and Elizabeth Adgate Col- lins, plain farming people. His paternal grandfather was a lieutenant in the northern army in the revo- lutionary war. Young Collins lived on a farm two miles north of Belleville, in his native county, until nineteen, spending more time in tilling land than in cultivating his mind, his opportunities for education being very limited. About 1841 he went to Mus- kingum county, worked four years at the manufac- turing of stoneware; went thence to Newcastle, Coshocton county, and sold dry goods until 1852, when he removed to Knoxville, which has since been his home, and where, for twenty-five years, he has been among the leading business men. He con- tinued in the dry-goods business until two or three years ago, dealing also, at times, to some extent, in land, and achieving success as a general dealer, whether in merchandise or real estate.
When the Knoxville National Bank was organized in 1871 he was chosen vice-president, and, two or three years later, president. The latter position he
now holds. He is a practical, efficient business man, with high notions of honor and integrity.
He was a whig in early life, and is now a republi- can, but is not an office seeker. He served some years on the local school board, was its president at one time, and that is about the only office of the kind he would ever accept. He is deeply interested in educational matters and the general interests of the community.
In religious sentiment, he is a Methodist, and is a man of irreproachable character.
He was first married in June, 1845, to Miss Susan M. Olive, of Muskingum county, Ohio; she left five children. Charles L. Collins, her eldest son, has a family, and is a lawyer in Bay City, Michigan; Mina E. is the wife of John Reed, of Knoxville; Emma J. is the wife of Dr. W. K. Sloan, of Eddyville, Iowa; David O. is reading law with Stone and Ayres, in Knoxville, and Susan M. is with her brother in Bay City. The last two are single. Mr. Collins' second wife was Miss Sarah J. Lewis, of Jefferson, Ohio. About seven years ago she became insane, and is now in the asylum at Mount Pleasant. She has had four children, of whom three are living.
AARON D. WETHERELL, M. D.,
KNOXVILLE.
A ARON DELANO WETHERELL, one of the oldest and best medical practitioners in Marion county, Iowa, is a native of Burlington, Vermont, a son of Seth D. and Anne Northway Wetherell, and first saw the light of this world on the 21st of July, 1818. His progenitor on his father's side was from England, on his mother's side from Scotland. Both great-grandfathers were participants in the war for independence, the Wetherell being a captain of ran-
gers. His maternal grandfather was a lieutenant in the war of 1812-15. In 1833 Seth D. Wetherell removed with his family to Licking county, Ohio, settling on a farm near Granville. Up to this date Aaron D). had only common-school instruction. He now spent a few terms in the preparatory depart- ment of Granville College, now called Dennison University, aiding his father more or less each year in tilling land.
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In 1840 he commenced reading medicine with Dr. W. W. Bancroft, of Granville; attended lectures at the Ohio Medical College, Cincinnati ; graduated in 1844, and after practicing nearly thirteen years in Licking county, in October, 1856, settled in Knox- ville, where he continues to practice with marked success. Though doing a general business, he has made an especial study of surgery, and has a wide range of practice in this branch. He not unfre- quently goes into adjoining counties on professional business, and enjoys an excellent reputation where- ever he is known.
During the early part of the civil war Dr. Wether- ell acted as examining surgeon at Knoxville. He was offered the position of surgeon of one of the Iowa regiments, and but for disability at the time would have gone into the service.
The doctor was originally a whig, of late years has been a republican, but has shunned political preferment.
He is a Sir Knight among the Freemasons, and has been grand scribe of the Grand Chapter.
Dr. Wetherell has a second wife: his first was Miss Harriet Avery, of Granville, Ohio, chosen in October, 1843; she had five children, and died on the 31st of December, 1860; one of her children preceded her to the world of spirits, and another, the eldest child, Marian, the wife of J. N. Davis, of Knoxville, died in 1876; of the three living children, Maria is the wife of Thomas Cathcart, of Knoxville, and Lizzie and Frank are single. His second wife was Miss Mary Walters, of Knoxville; married No- vember, 1861.
Dr. Wetherell is quite fleshy ; is six feet and one inch tall, and weighs two hundred and fifty pounds. Like many other men bordering on the Falstaff build, he has a jovial turn of mind, is quick at rep- artee, and does not believe in the suppression of humor, even at the sick-bed, when it will act as a cathartic.
HON. MORRIS J. WILLIAMS,
OTTUMWA.
T HE subject of this sketch was born in Brook- ville, Franklin county, Indiana, on the 14th of November, 1825. His father, John P. Williams, was a large farmer, and his mother's maiden name was Nancy Morris, a sister of the late Judge William R. Morris, of Cincinnati, Ohio, who for many years was one of the few leading lawyers of that city.
From early youth to manhood Morris J. Williams toiled faithfully upon his father's farm, attending in the winter season the excellent public schools of Brookville, where he completed his education.
He read law in the office of Judge George Hol- land, a prominent lawyer of Franklin county ; was admitted to the bar at Brookville, and removed from thence to Greensburg, Indiana, where he first com- menced the practice of his profession in 185 1.
In 1852 he was elected on the whig ticket prose- cuting attorney of Rush and Decatur counties, win- ning in the discharge of the duties of this office well deserved fame as a lawyer for so young an attorney. While at Greensburg, Indiana, he was for some years a partner of the Hon. John S. Scoby, a lawyer of much eminence in that state.
In November, 1854, he removed to Ottumwa, Iowa, where he now resides. In Ottumwa he soon
entered into copartnership with A. H. Hamilton, Esq., a young lawyer who had preceded him to the place some two months, and this copartnership con- tinued most successfully and amicably save an in- terruption during the year 1858, up to the time Mr. Hamilton entered the army, in 1862, when the judge succeeded to the large practice the firm had ac- quired.
In 1870 Mr. Williams was elected upon the re- publican ticket judge of the second judicial district, comprising seven counties, and this office he filled for four years with marked ability, and upon retiring from the bench he again resumed the practice of the law in which he is still engaged.
Judge Williams is eminently a self-made man. His early life developed and matured upon the farm a sound, strong physique, habits of industry, self- reliance, and above all a knowledge gained by ex- perience of how the battle of life is only success- fully fought. He commenced his professional career almost wholly dependent upon his own exertions, and so building from the foundation upward, built well. The practice of the law in Wapello county twenty odd years ago, afforded only a scanty re- muneration at best; and though the judge early
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took high rank in his new home in Iowa, his in- come for many years did very little more than pro- vide for himself and his increasing family.
From 1860 his business became handsomely re- munerative, especially during the rebellion, and in a few years he acquired a good foundation for that fine competence which has placed him well up among the wealthy men of the county. He has for many years stood well abreast with the best lawyers of southern lowa, and has ever been recognized as a gentleman of the highest integrity.
He was married on the 29th of May, 1851, to a most estimable lady, Miss Mary E. Stoops, of Brook- ville, Indiana. She died in the fall of 1877. This union was a most happy one, and a large and inter- esting family of children are growing up to promis- ing manhood and womanhood.
His early farm life begot in him a love for agri- cultural pursuits which still clings to him, and hence he now owns, cultivates and resides upon a splendid farm of some three hundred acres about one mile from Ottumwa.
THOMAS B. KNAPP,
IOWA FALLS.
PROBABLY the first man who ever saw the site of Iowa Falls, and now resides here, is Thomas Bracy Knapp, who located in the valley of the Iowa river five miles southeast of this city in 1854. That was the year before Iowa Falls was laid out, and when there was nothing here except the grist-mill and saw-mill of B. I. Talbot and Captain Samuel White. Thomas B. Knapp is a son of Thomas Bracy Knapp, senior, and Mercy Seger, and was born in Danbury, Connecticut, on the 9th of July, 1822. The Knapps were originally from England, and settled in Connecticut at an early day. The grandfather of our subject, Bracy Knapp, was a paymaster in the revolutionary army, and lost his house when Dan- bury was burned by the British. His maternal grand- father was also in the revolutionary strife. The Se- gers were of Welsh extraction. When our subject was twelve or thirteen years old the family moved to Sheldon, Wyoming county, New York, and three years later to Clarksfield, Huron county, Ohio, young Thomas spending most of his time at this period at the Norwalk Institute in the same county.
In 1840 he went to Alabama; clerked in a store a few years at Montgomery, and in 1846 was elected lieutenant of a company which offered its services for the Mexican war, but was not called out. He went into business for himself about that time, and followed it until the fever for gold began to rage all over the country, and early in 1849 went to Califor- nia. There he mined and traded between three and four years, arriving in New York city on his return in December, 1853. Proceeding to Alabama, he spent the winter there, and in April, 1854, came to llardin county, Iowa, purchasing a farm which
" lay on both sides of the Iowa river. That season, in his peregrinations up and down the valley, he looked over the grounds where Iowa Falls now stands, and was smitten with the beauty of the site, the two millers already mentioned being the only parties located there.
Mr. Knapp continued to improve his lands, visit- ing lowa Falls now and then, until after the civil war had commenced. In 1862 he was elected sutler of the 32d Iowa Infantry, and served in that capacity between two and three years, resigning in the winter of 1864.
On returning from the south Mr. Knapp sold his farm and settled in Iowa Falls. He was in general merchandise until 1870, when he closed this branch of trade awhile, settled up his business, and in 1873 opened a hardware store, of which he is still the proprietor. He is among the substantial class of merchants in Iowa Falls.
Mr. Knapp was a member of the lower house of the general assembly in 1866 and 1868, taking an active part in both sessions. During one of them he was chairman of the committee on public build- ings; during the other, of the committee on public lands; and he served also on the committees on rail- roads, and on two or three others. He did much more work than talking in that body, and proved himself a considerate and judicious legislator. In 1868 he was one of the committee appointed to visit the Soldiers' Orphans' Home at Cedar Falls.
Mr. Knapp has been in the local council or on the school board nearly all the time for the last ten years, and labors assiduously for the general inter- ests of the place.
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He aided in organizing the republican party in Hardin county ; was a delegate to the first repub- lican state convention, and still acts as one of the local leaders of the party. He glories in its history, and looks for its continned usefulness to the country.
He joined the church in youth, and has an abid- ing faith in the power and importance of the chris- tian religion. His original connection was with the Baptist church in Selden, New York, and he is the treasurer of the church of the same name.where he resides. In integrity he is "true as steel."
His wife was Mrs. Louisa L. Hoover, of Mount
Vernon, Iowa, a graduate of Cornell College located at that place. They were united in marriage on the 9th of November, 1864, and have one child, Henry Hamlin, a student in the graded school. The maid- en name of Mrs. Knapp was Lamb, born in Wayne county, Indiana, in 1839. She married Henry H. Hoover in 1856, moved to Mount Vernon, Iowa; became a widow at nineteen, and afterward went through college, graduating in 1864. She taught school before leaving Indiana, and afterward in Iowa and Missouri, and is a woman of fine literary taste, much mental culture and large christian zeal.
WILLIAM H. STEWART,
MUSCATINE.
W ILLIAM HENRY STEWART, retired mer- chant, was born at Cairo, Green county, New York, on the 12th of March, 1813, and is the son of James H. Stewart and Betsy née Osborne. His father was of Scotch-Irish descent; in his younger days a school teacher, but in later life a farmer on a small scale. He was a man of more than ordinary intelli- gence, of sterling moral principles, and deep religious convictions, and a member of the Methodist church. He died in Meigs county, Ohio, in the year 1865, in the ninety-third year of his age. The mother of our subject was of English origin, a woman of very considerable intellectual endowments, active and energetic, of robust constitution. She devoted all her life and powers to the education and training of her children. She still lives in Ohio, being now (1877) in the ninety-fourth year of her age. James H. Stewart had a family of seven children, of whom our subject was the fifth, and three of whom are still living.
William Henry was raised upon his father's small farm in the Catskill mountains, which barely yielded a subsistence to the family, and as soon as able to drive an ox team or ride a horse he was hired out, during the summer seasons, to the neighboring farm- ers, and for several seasons after the age of ten years his compensation was at the rate of six and a quar- ter cents per day, and he esteemed himself quite a man when his wages were increased to twelve and a half cents per day. During the winter months he attended the district school, and became a good penman and a fair mathematician, and in later years increased his stock of knowledge by reading and
observation, until he is now regarded as one of the best informed men of the day.
At the age of thirteen years he was apprenticed to a man named John Sayle, to learn the bricklay- ing and plastering trade, but after a year's tuition his master failed in business and young Stewart abandoned the brick and mortar craft, and in the year following he was indentured to learn the boot and shoe trade, which proved to be more congenial to his tastes, as well as more profitable. After master- ing the trade he emigrated to Ohio, where for several years he worked as a journeyman, and, in 1836, opened a store in Marietta, Ohio, and commenced . business on his own account, which he conducted with reasonable success at that point until 1854, when he removed to Muscatine, Iowa, which has since been his home. Here he continued the shoe trade with very considerable success until January, 1875, when having accumulated a competence he retired from business.
Though always an industrious and diligent busi- ness man, yet he found time to keep himself informed on the current political issues of the day, in which he took a deep interest, believing it to. be his boun- den duty, no less than his privilege, to employ what- ever influence he might be possessed of for what he considered the benefit of his country and the best interests of his fellow-citizens. He was always an opponent of slavery, and was accordingly a whig in politics until the formation of the republican party, with which he has since been identified. He has never, however, sought any office, though for several years he served in the city council of Marietta,
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Ohio, and after his removal to Muscatine was elected to the board of supervisors of the county, on which he served with distinction for a period of eight years ending in 1872, being chairman of the board during the last three years. He was one of the original organizers of the Merchants' Exchange National Bank of Muscatine, and has been a member of its board of directors since its inception in 1865. He is a prominent member of the Independent Order of Odd-Fellows, having filled all the chairs and posi- tions in the society.
He was raised in the principles of the Methodist church, was always in theory a Methodist, and has been for many years in communion with that church, to the institutions of which he is a liberal contributor.
On the 15th of November, 1838, he married Miss Cynthia Morton, at Marietta, Ohio. She is of Scotch descent, and endowed with the high moral and in- dustrial principles of the race from which she sprang. They have had six children, five sons. and one daughter, all living, married, and comfortably set- tled in life : William M., Sylvester N., Marcus, Theo- dore S., Edward C., and Rita. William M. is the purchasing agent of the Saint Paul and Milwaukee Railroad Company ; Sylvester N. is a resident of the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he is en- gaged in the patenting and sale of mechanical inven- tions of his own devising, he having a remarkable
talent in that direction; Marcus is engaged in the shoe trade at Tipton, Iowa; Theodore succeeds his father in business in Muscatine; Edward is in the same trade at Creston, Iowa, and Rita is the wife of Mr. E. H. Betts, one of the proprietors of the Musca- tine "Daily Tribune."
The career of William H. Stewart has been both honorable and successful, and he has always enjoyed the confidence and respect of the community in which he has resided. Since his removal to Musca- tine he has taken a deep interest in everything per- taining to the growth and prosperity of his adopted city, and his services as a member of the board of supervisors of the county have been of great and permanent value to his constituents. His social qualities are well developed; he enjoys the society of friends and neighbors, and loves to dispense that hospitality for which the race from which he springs are so noted. He is modest and unassuming in his habits, manners and bearing, kind and liberal to the poor and needy, an upright citizen, a straightforward business man, a christian gentleman, who would do honor to any community in which his lot might be cast. He is now prominently named by his friends, and they are numerous, for the position of repre- sentative of Muscatine county in the next general assembly, a position for which his experience and talents eminently fit him.
ZELOTES T. FISHER,
RED OAK.
Z ELOTES T. FISHER was born on the 13th of December, 1819, in Franklin county, Ohio. His father was Josiah Fisher, a Carmelite preacher of repute. His mother was a woman of most ster- ling qualities of mind, and a devoted christian. Jo- siah Fisher and his wife had born unto them six sons and four daughters, four sons and two daughters having died. These people emigrated to the State of Iowa in 1856, converting a large tract of wild land into farms. Seven years after settling in Iowa his mother died, and two years later his father passed away.
From the age of twelve Zelotes was at work up- on his father's farm, attending during the winter months an inferior school held in a log hut. At the age of sixteen he learned the cooper's trade, in which he became very proficient.
On the 4th of July, 1837, while engaged in cele- brating the great day, he lost his right arm in the accidental discharge of an old-fashioned cast-iron gun. At the time of this misfortune he had never been able to more than read printed matter indif- ferently, but he continued to acquire knowledge by virtue of the severest personal application. He learned to write and to readily read manuscript, and subsequently had the benefit of one year's tuition at the high school at Worthington, Ohio, boarding at home and walking five miles a day, from home to the school.
At the close of this year of schooling his father moved to Delaware county, Ohio. Here Zelotes commenced the study of medicine under his uncle, William Fisher, continuing for a year and a half, dur- ing which time he had been upon the jury on sev-
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eral occasions. Life in a court-room had for him special attraction, and he determined to abandon Esculapius for Blackstone, and forthwith made an arrangement to read law in the office of the Hon. Thomas W. Powell, at the town of Delaware. He continued reading law and teaching school mean- while, as a means of self-subsistence. In Septem- ber, 1842, he was admitted to the bar at Mount Vernon, Ohio.
In January, 1843, with but six dollars in cash as his financial assets, he opened a law office in Lon- don, Madison county, Ohio. It was his good for- tune to find at this time and place a warm friend in the person of W. H. Squires, at whose hotel he boarded, subject to his convenience as to pay. Here our young lawyer applied himself to vigorous study. In the course of a year and a half he was elected prosecuting attorney of Madison county, which po- sition he held for four successive terms. During the holding of this office he had frequently to com- bat defense set up by such brilliant lights of the bar as Noah H. Swain, now justice of the supreme court of the United States; Sampson Masom, James Bates, W. Denison, subsequently the great war gov- ernor of Ohio, and others of equal note. After serving in this office for seven years he accepted a nomination for the assembly, resigning his attorney- ship. He was elected to sit in the first session of the Ohio legislature after the adoption of the new constitution in 1851, taking rank as the first parlia- mentarian in the house, often occupying the speaker's chair pro tempore. He remained in the house for two terms. During this stay of twelve years at London he had acquired two farms and a town resi- dence.
In September, 1844, Mr. Fisher had married Je- mimah Jones, of Madison county, Ohio, daughter of R. B. Jones. Her mother's maiden name was Eliza McCormick ; both these parents are still living. In 1855 Mr. Fisher converted his farms and residence into cash, determining to go farther west. With his wife and three children he came to Oskaloosa, Ma- haska county, Iowa, having purchased in that and other counties nineteen hundred acres of wild land, his intention then being to practice law for a few years and subsequently to establish a large stock farm. With this in view, Mr. Fisher imported the first shorthorn cattle ever brought to Mahaska coun- ty. Here he commenced a very profitable practice of law. His sons were coming to manhood; but evincing an utter indisposition for agriculture, he
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