USA > Iowa > The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume > Part 96
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He was married to Nancy Smith, of Mercer county, Pennsylvania, in May, 1822. His health failing from over-study while at school, he was not expected to live, and retired to his farm in Neshannock township, Lawrence county, Pennsylvania, where his health was comparatively restored; and after about nine years, having studied theology under the charge of Rev. William Wood, pastor of Neshannock Church, and for about two years under care of Beaver pres- bytery, he was licensed to preach by the presbytery of Beaver, and about the year 1834 was sent as a missionary to Ohio, where he was settled as pastor of Waynesburg, Still Fork and Bethlehem churches at a salary of four hundred dollars per year, which at that early day was all that they could pay. As the churches grew stronger, and his labors increased, he gave up Bethlehem and Still Fork by consent of the presbytery, at about the year 1845, and retained Waynesburg alone of the three original churches, and for nine years preached at Waynesburg and New Harrisburg until the year 1856, when he removed to Scotch Grove, Jones county, Iowa.
At the time he first preached in Ohio within the bounds of the Still Fork congregation there was an organization of infidels under the lead of one Per- marr and Zach. Wathy, who were followers of Hume, Bolingbroke and Thomas Paine. This leader gave him an opportunity for a public discussion, and the question was as to the credibility of the religion of Christ. He completely and forever demolished the society, which never met after the discussion.
As a debater, he had hardly an equal in logic and strength of argument. He lectured on temperance and slavery, and persistently fought every foe of man and of the country. For years during the winter months he preached in school-houses and private
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dwellings, all over his county and beyond. Nearly every church from the Ohio river west in the Steu- benville presbytery was privileged to hear his faith- ful exhortations and pungent logic. The disease of his throat so increased upon him that, at the age of sixty years, he was compelled to give up the pastor- ate in Ohio and remove to Iowa. Here for several years he preached one-half his time to the church of Wayne.
He died on the Ist of September, 1876, at Scotch Grove, Iowa, and was buried in the cemetery of the Presbyterian Church. A man of inflexible courage and great will power, he had naturally what is called an iron constitution, was of great activity and strength, and when in the army could throw any man in his company and regiment.
He had eight children, as follows: Jane McKean, who died and was buried at Bethlehem, Ohio; Rev. James W. Mckean, president of Lenox Collegiate Institute and captain of company C, 44th Iowa Infantry Volunteers, who died at Memphis, Ten- nessee, in officers' hospital, on the 9th of July, 1864; Dr. Hugh C. McKean, the beloved physician of Scotch Grove, where his name and memory are still held sacred in the minds of many to whose health he had contributed,-he died in November, 1865; F. S. McKean, attorney-at-law, Anamosa, Iowa, for
many years auditor of Carroll county, Ohio, and county treasurer of Jones county, Iowa, who died on the 25th of December, 1867 ; Francis C. Mc. Kean, captain of company D, of the 9th regiment of Iowa Infantry Veteran Volunteers, and attorney and counselor-at-law, who died at Evans, Colorado, on the 5th of May, 1874; Dr. Alexander McKean, of Scotch Grove; C. B. McKean, of Scotch Grove, and John McKean, of Anamosa, judge of the cir- cuit court, eighth judicial circuit.
Father McKean was a jovial, good natured, good humored man ; had a great fund of Irish wit, which amused his friends and overcame his opponents, bright as the light and fresh as the dew of the morning. Still he had a great admiration for drill, and every son was a good scholar in Latin and mathematics, and several were proficient in Greek; two were graduates of Jefferson College, Pennsyl- vania (James W. and John). James W. was one of the "honor " men of his class of about sixty men, class of 1859. He was a great teacher; he taught his children, taught his churches, taught all within the reach of his influence, the true granite principles of government, logic, religion and moral- ity. He died on the 1st of September, 1876, in the joyful expression and profession of an uncom- promising faith.
HON. JOHN McKEAN,
ANAMOSA.
JOHN McKEAN, judge of the eighth judicial cir- cuit, is a native of Lawrence county, Pennsylva- nia, and was born on the 19th of July, 1835, his parents being James and Nancy (Smith) Mckean. The McKeans are of Scotch-Irish pedigree, and came from the parish of Balymena, Antrim county, Ireland, and settled in Lawrence county, Pennsyl- vania. Hugh Mckean, the pioneer, and the grand- father of the subject of this sketch, came over at the close of the American revolution. James Mc- Kean was a soldier in the second war with England, and was stationed for some time at Erie, Pennsylva- nia. He studied at the Mercer Academy, became a Presbyterian minister, and preached for nearly forty years, dying in Scotch Grove, Jones county, Iowa, in September, 1876.
The wife of James McKean was also of Irish de- scent. She was a native of Westmoreland county,
Pennsylvania, and a very pious and worthy woman, the mother of eight children, of whom John was the fifth child.
James McKean moved with his family to Carroll county, Ohio, when John was an infant, and the father having a farm, the son, when arrived at a suitable age, spent his summers in agricultural and his winters in intellectual pursuits, attending a com- mon school until sixteen, and then spending one year at the New Hagerstown Academy. A little later he studied at New Richmond College, Jeffer- son county, for eight months.
In October, 1854, John and an elder brother, James W. Mckean, came to Jones county, lowa, with a two-horse wagon, pitched their tent in Scotch Grove township; camped in the woods on section three in the winter and spring, and during that pe- riod fenced forty acres of prairie land and built a
John mckean
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small frame house, nearly all of it with material of their own getting out. The remainder of the family reached Scotch Grove the ensuing June. The next winter John taught a select school, he having been similarly employed two seasons before leaving Ohio.
In May, 1856, James and John returned to the east, entered Jefferson College, Cannonsburg, Pennsylva- nia, and graduated in August, 1859. In March of that year John McKean was Franklin debater, and received the award of honor in a logical contest held that month, five learned men acting as judges.
On leaving college Mr. McKean returned to Jones county, Iowa, located at Anamosa, the county seat, where he read law with Thomas S. Pierce, and was admitted to practice in 1861, and has ever since been a member of the Jones county bar.
During the last ten or twelve years he has spent no inconsiderable part of his time in the service of the state. He was a member of the lower house of the general assembly in 1866 and 1868, and was in the senate in the regular sessions of 1870 and 1872. Being nominated for circuit judge in the summer of 1872, he resigned his seat in the senate and did not attend the adjourned session. While in the house he was chairman of the committee on constitutional amendments, a very important committee in that juncture of our national history, and in the senate was always on the committees of ways and means and the judiciary. While in the house he intro- duced the bill, which became a law, allowing town- ships, towns and cities to levy a five-per-cent tax to aid in constructing railroads.
As a legislator, he showed himself an ardent friend of the State University, the Agricultural College, and of educational matters generally. He served for six years as regent of the State University. He had great influence in the legislative body, and while in the senate he originated the measure and secured the passage of a bill for a second penitentiary, located at Anamosa, Jones county, and the whole state owe him a debt of gratitude for his services rendered in the legislature.
Judge McKean took his seat on the bench in Jan- uary, 1873; was reëlected at the end of four years, and his present term will expire in January, 1881. He is one of the best equity lawyers in the state; is noted for his honesty, and carries all the best traits of his character to the bench, being above bribery or corruption.
He was a democrat until the civil war burst upon the land, and shortly afterward from a war democrat became an out-and-out republican, to which party he owes his repeated political honors.
The judge is a Freemason, a member of the com- mandery, and an Odd-Fellow.
He is a member of the Presbyterian church, an elder in the same, and a man of the purest christian character. He was for some time a trustee of the Lenox Collegiate Institute, a Presbyterian school, located at Hopkinton, Delaware county, Iowa.
The wife of Judge Mckean was Mrs. Nancy A. Carr, of Jones county. They were joined in wed- lock on the 16th of November, 1865, and have six children.
WILLIAM L. CULBERTSON,
CARROLL.
W ILLIAM LINN CULBERTSON, son of David Culbertson, farmer, merchant and stockdealer, and Mary G. Linn, is a native of Perry county, Pennsylvania, and was born on the 3d of December, 1844. The Culbertsons, from which branch he descended, are an old Pennsylvania fam- ily. His maternal grandfather, William Linn, was in the second war with the mother country.
William L. spent his boyhood in Philadelphia, where his father was a merchant for several years, the son giving his time mainly to studies in the public schools. In 1860 he came to Iowa with his father, locating at Princeton, Scott county, on the
Mississippi river, here attending a private school and clerking. In 1862, while civil war was raging in the south, he enlisted as a private in company G, 20th Iowa Volunteer Infantry, and served three years ; was in many engagements, but received no wounds, and was never off duty except while a pris- oner four months in 1864, at Tyler, Texas.
In the winter of 1866-67 Mr. Culbertson attended Dun's Commercial College in Pittsburgh, Pennsyl- vania ; returned to Princeton, where he had enlisted, and remained there until the summer of 1868, when he settled in Carroll county, where he has since re- sided. Opening a farm near Glidden, in the eastern
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part of the county. he cultivated it two seasons; was appointed codaty auditor in 1870; elected to the same offer the years i r. and beld it, in all, four year -. At the ospffalch of this time he became fourty treasurer. limone term. During these six years tot he was in cooney offices, his residence was at the county seat. stovky le Tras since made his home.
In April. 1976, Mr. Culbertson purchased the Bank of Carrad. of Orlando H. Manning, and is its sole proprietor. It is a substantial institution. Since residing at the county seat Mr. Culbertson has dealt largely in real estate; has done more or less insurance business, and has succeeded in his operations generally. He is a member of the board of supervisors ; an eminently practical business man,
and one of the most trustworthy and reliable citizens of the county.
In politics, Mr. Culbertson is a republican, unwa- vering, active and influential. In Odd-Fellowship, he is a past chief patriarch, and a member of the grand lodge.
On the 5th of May, 1873, Miss Ruth O. Johnson, of Carroll, became the wife of Mr. Culbertson, and they have one child, a daughter.
Mr. Culbertson has a light complexion, gray hazel eyes and a very pleasant expression of the counte- nance. He is five feet eight and a half inches in height, and weighs one hundred and thirty pounds. His manners are easy, courteous and winning, and he is just the person to make and retain friends.
ASA C. AND AMBROSE A. CALL,
ALGONA.
T' THE pioneer settlers in Kossuth county, Iowa, and the plotters of Algona, the county seat, were Asa C. and Ambrose A. Call, brothers by the ties of nature and in enterprise. Their parents were Asa Call and Mary Metcalf. Their grandfather, Asa Call, was in the first war with England, and their father was in the second. Asa C. was born in Geau- ga county, Ohio, on the 26th of September, 1825 ; Ambrose A. in Huron county, on the 9th of June, 1833. Their father died before the younger son was two years old, and in 1835 their mother moved to Cattaraugus county, New York, and five years later returned to the west, settling at South Bend, Indiana. An elder brother, Joseph Call, was at the head of the family during these years.
When about eighteen, Asa (. took a district school, and fortwo or three year- alternated between teach- ing and attending school at Oberlin, Ohio. In 1850 die: went to California and Oregon, acting, part of the time while there. as a commissioner, treating with the northern tribes of Indians. While in the far west he built and ran a ferry on Snake river, near old Fort Bois, in eastern Oregon. He returned early in 1854, married Miss Sarah Heckart, of Elkhart, In- diana ; went to lowa city in June of the same year, invested in government linds near that place, and on the 9th of the following month, with his brother Ambrose, pitched his tent on the present site of VI- gona. Here he took hpgovernment chims, the Fuld being unsurveyed, and, with his brother, tuck down
stakes for life. Their location is on an open prairie, on the east branch of the Des Moines river, and they were then the only white settlers north of Fort Dodge and west of the Cedar until you reach the Missouri river.
The two brothers laid out the town in the spring of 1856, at which time several families had settled in or near "Call's Grove," the name by which this immediate section was known for some time. A few families settled here in the autumn of 1854.
At the organization of Kossuth county, in the autumn of 1855, Mr. Call was elected judge. About this time he commenced reading law, and a year or two later was admitted to the bar, but he has prac- ticed very little. He has held several offices by ap- pointment, but is not a very decided politician. He has, however, been a delegate to one or two repub- lican national conventions, and aided in nominating the present President of the United States.
Judge C'all is a member of the blue lodge in the Masonic order.
Ilis wife died in June, 1876, leaving seven children.
Since laying out and naming the town of Algona in 1856, the judge has laid out one or two other towns farther west, and has devoted his great ener- gies largely to the development of the agricultural resources of the upper Des Moines valley. He is an enterprise projector and town builder, one of the men who have aided essentially in making lowa what it is, the empire state of the west.
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AMBROSE A. CALL left home at fifteen, taught a district school occasionally before coming to Iowa. reached Algona the month after he was of age, im- proved his claims, and in 1860 started the Algona " Pioneer Press," the first paper in the county. The writer of this sketch was then editing a daily paper in Dubuque, and well recollects the little hebdomadal sheet which used to reach his office when it was nearly a week old. Now Algona has two large weekly papers, and they reach Dubuque by rail in the short space of fifteen hours. He was a journalist for about four years.
Mr. Call was elected county supervisor the first year of the existence of that officer. He was assist- ant assessor of internal revenue four or five years, resigning in 1868. He has been a mail contractor since 1860, the heaviest single contractor in Iowa, and
that is his chief business at the present time. Like his brother, he has had his ups and downs, his re- verses in land speculations, but both have enough lands and houses, barns and cattle on the prairies to make them independent.
In politics, Mr. Call has always been a republican. He belongs to one secret order, the Masonic.
In October, 1859, Miss Nancy E. Henderson, of Oskaloosa, Iowa, became his wife, and she has been the mother of six children, five of them yet living.
During the early part of the centennial year Mr. C'all wrote a series of letters historical of the county, and by invitation, on the Centennial Fourth of July, read an epitome of those letters. His writings in this line will increase in value, and will be quoted as historical authority by the generations to come. He has the annals of Kossuth county by heart.
WILLIAM WATSON, M. D., DUBUQUE.
W YILLIAM WATSON, for nearly a quarter of a century a practicing physician in Dubuque, is a native of Leeds, England, and is the son of Joseph and Ann (Metcalf ) Watson, and was born on the 14th of May, 1826. When he was a year old his parents emigrated to the United States; spent four years in Middletown, Connecticut, and then set- tled in Onondaga county, New York, where Joseph Watson engaged in the manufacture of woolen goods. In 1844 William came as far west as Ohio, where he taught a district school, and the next spring came to Beloit, Wisconsin. Two years later his father fol- lowed, and settled on a farm sixteen miles west of Beloit. After working two years at the carpenter's trade, which he had partly learned at the east, Will- iam supplemented the privileges of the common school enjoyed in New York State with one year's attendance at a seminary in Beloit, paying his way by working at his trade mornings and evenings and Saturday afternoons, thus acquiring a good educa- tion and much experience that was of great service to him in after-life.
He commenced reading medicine in the country in 1849; a year later went to Beloit and read with Dr. Asahel Clark ; attended a course of lectures in Rush Medical College, Chicago, in the winter of 1851-2; practiced eighteen months in McGregor, Iowa,- the first physician to locate there ; attended
a second course of lectures at Rush Medical Col- lege ; graduated in February, 1854, and two months later he made a permanent settlement in Dubuque. Only one physician, Dr. Asa Horr, still remains here who was in practice at that time. In November, 1854, Dr. Watson formed a partnership with Dr. R. S. Lewis, and that partnership was not dissolved un- til the demise of Dr. Lewis, on the 9th of September, 1869. Since that date Dr. Watson has been alone in the practice, and is doing now, as he always has done, a thrifty business. Medicine and surgery have been his sole occupation, and no man in Dubuque has ever been more assiduous in the duties of his profession. In boyhood he was a great reader and has since been a diligent student, and is now reaping the reward of his assiduity.
On the 20th of October, 1861, Dr. Watson entered the army as surgeon of the 11th Iowa Infantry, state service ; resigned on the 4th of March, 1863, to ac- cept the position of assistant surgeon, United States Volunteers, under an appointment of President Lin- coln, being commissioned by the secretary of war, and was assigned to hospital duties at Memphis, Tennessee. In August, 1863, he was placed in charge of the Jackson Hospital ; the next month was pro- moted to surgeon of volunteers; was ordered to Louisville, Kentucky, in February, 1864, and placed in charge of Crittenden Hospital, and the next month
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was ordered to Rock Island, Illinois, to take charge of the post and prison hospitals located there. He remained at that post until mustered out, on the 24th of October, 1865. On returning to Dubuque he re- ceived a brevet commission of lieutenant-colonel. While in the service he was thoroughly devoted to his duties, and untiring in his efforts to relieve the sick and wounded. He left the army with an un- tarnished and truly bright record.
In politics, Dr. Watson was a democrat until the republican party was organized ; he changed his views and is still adhering to the latter party. He has never sought office.
The doctor is an Odd-Fellow, and has been a rep- resentative to the grand lodge two or three times; but, owing to a press of business, rarely attends the meetings of the local lodge.
He is a member of the Dubuque County Medical Society and of the State Medical Society, and has
been president of both. He was president of the State Medical Society in 1868, when it held its first annual meeting at Des Moines. Three times he has been a delegate to the American Medical Associa- tion, and was a delegate to the international medical congress which met at Philadelphia in 1876. No man in the state is in better standing with the med- ical profession.
Dr. Watson was first married in Portland, Maine, in November, 1860, to Miss Lucy Giddings, who died on the 13th of March, 1862, leaving one child, Fred, a student in the Dubuque High School. He was married a second time, on the 14th of Septem- ber, 1868, to Miss Lucy F. Conkey, of Dubuque.
The parents of Dr. Watson came from Wisconsin to Iowa in 1866, and his mother died in December, 1872, aged seventy years. His father is still living, in his eightieth year -a hale old gentleman, with mental faculties impaired only in the slightest degree.
HON. WILLIAM H. GALLUP,
NEVADA.
T HE present member of the general assembly from the forty-fifth senatorial district, William Harrison Gallup, has been an Iowa journalist fifteen or sixteen years, and is well known throughout the state. He is a native of Schoharie county, New York; is the son of Nathan and Permelia Baird Gallup, and was born in the town of Summit, on the 17th of May, 1840. The Gallups were originally from Scotland, and settled in Connecticut, where the father of Will- iam H. was born. His grandfather was a revolu- tionary pensioner, dying at an advanced age - up- ward of ninety-in Schoharie county, New York.
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Nathan Gallup was a farmer, and to that occupa- tion his son was raised, giving, however, in youth, much more attention to books than to bucolics. He attended the Charlotteville Seminary in his native town, three or four years; at nineteen entered the New York State and National Law School at Pough- keepsie, and was admitted to the bar at Newburgh, in 1860. He came to lowa the next spring, and after practicing a short time at Marshalltown bought the " Times," of that place, and conducted it, except for a few months, about three years ; at the close of 1864 removed to Boonesboro, fifty miles farther west ; there published the "Standard " one year, and then moved it to the new town of Boone, continuing to
conduct it until 1869, making it a very influential journal.
In 1870 Mr. Gallup located at Nevada, the seat of justice of Story county, and has since been the edi- tor and proprietor of the "Nevada Representative," a strong paper devoted to the interests of the county, and politically, of the republican party.
At short periods, between the publication of dif- ferent newspapers, Mr. Gallup has done a little at the law business, and now is of the firm of Dyer and Gallup, but he does nothing in the legal line while in the editorial chair. He evidently believes in do- ing one thing at a time, and doing it well.
In the autumn of 1875 Mr. Gallup was elected by his republican friends to the state senate, and in the session of 1876 was chairman of the committee on agricultural college, which is located in Story county, and was a member of four other committees. He was the author of the bill allowing townships and cities to vote a five per cent tax in aid of railroads, and is a valuable member of the legislature. His sena- torial term will expire on the 31st of December, 1879.
Mr. Gallup is a member of no church organization, and is liberal in his religious views.
On the 26th of August, 1862, he was joined in wed- lock with Miss Albina Dyer, of his native town, and
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she has been the mother of five children, only two of them now living. feet nine and a half inches tall, weighs two hundred pounds ; has an abundant, cheerful and cheering flow Mr. Gallup is a man of prepossessing manners and of animal spirits, and the magnetic power of a cul- physique ; is very approachable and cordial ; is five , tured mind and good conversational gifts.
JOSIAH P. WALTON,
MUSCATINE.
JOSIAH PROCTOR WALTON, scientist, was born at New Ipswich, Hillsboro county, New Hampshire, on the 26th of February, 1826, and is the eldest son of Amos Walton, who built, owned and operated a saw-mill in a suburb of that town, known as "Tophet Swamp," so called from its sup- posed resemblance to the valley of the same name in Holy Writ.
The tradition respecting the genealogy of the Wal- ton family is that two brothers of that name emi- grated from England about the year 1660, one of whom settled near Boston, Massachusetts, and the other in New York. Our subject claims descent from the former. The records on file in the family show that Josiah Walton, great-grandfather of our subject, was born in Rindge, Massachusetts, in 1734; that he was first a colonial soldier and was wounded in a battle with the French and Indians near Lake George, in the old French and Indian war of 1755 ; that he was subsequently in the revolutionary army and fought at the battle of Bunker Hill, in 1775, and was severely wounded. He died at New Ipswich, New Hampshire, in June, 1828, in the ninety-fifth year of his age.
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