USA > Iowa > The United States biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of eminent and self made men, Iowa volume > Part 99
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Mr. Garrison was the first mayor of Iowa Falls, and has done much valuable work in the school board in different capacities. His hands, as well as pen, are busy in advancing the interests of the city and county. He has recently completed a seven thousand dollar brick residence, with pleasant sur- roundings, for his own occupancy. Since the first year that he was in this city he has prospered in his business, thrift having attended his industry.
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Mr. Garrison has always been a republican, and occasionally takes the stump during an exciting cam- paign. He is thoroughly posted on political matters and makes a strong canvasser.
He belongs to the blue lodge in the Masonic fra- ternity.
Mr. Garrison is a member of the Baptist church,
and superintendent of the Sunday school, a work in which he takes great delight and in which he makes himself very useful.
On the 6th of September, 1860, he married Miss Mary A. Mix, daughter of Dr. W. J. Mix and niece of Hon. H. A. Mix, of Oregon, Illinois. They have three sons and lost a daughter in infancy.
HON. DANIEL P. STUBBS,
FAIRFIELD.
D ANIEL P. STUBBS is of pure English stock. The progenitor of the family in this country, Thomas Stubbs, a Quaker, settled in Pennsylvania about 1700, immigrating thence to Georgia, the family spreading into Ohio and other states.
Daniel P. was born in Preble county, Ohio, on the 7th of July, 1829, his parents having moved from Georgia to that state in 1805, and settled in the beech woods thirty miles north of Cincinnati. The maiden name of his mother was Delilah Parham, whose remote ancestors were Welsh. Her father was a revolutionary soldier, was in several battles, and at the surrender of General Cornwallis.
The subject of this brief memoir spent his minor- ity in his native county aiding his father in tilling the soil, and devoting what time he could command to cultivating his mind, supplementing the facilities of the district school, with a few months' attendance at the Union County Academy, at Liberty, Indiana, 1852. He taught district schools in 1853 and 1854, and in 1855 was principal of the Academy one term where he had been a student.
Before commencing to teach he had obtained the funds for purchasing a copy of Blackstone's Com- mentary by working in a saw-mill at fifty cents a day. That copy he still retains. He read law while conducting his different schools.
From teaching in the academy Mr. Stubbs went to Greencastle, Putnam county, Indiana; connected himself with the law department of Asbury Univer- sity ; studied with the greatest avidity, and graduated in February, 1856. On receiving his diploma he re- turned to Liberty with some law in his head but no money in his pocket.
Simultaneously with the hanging out of his shin- gle he became editor of the "Union County Her- ald," now called the "Liberty Herald," a paper es- tablished in 1852.
In 1857 Mr. Stubbs abandoned the editorial chair, and the Buckeye State, concluding that the west must have a better field for a young attorney. He visited Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa, and thought he saw the finest opening in Fairfield, which, since October of that year, has been his home, and where he has had about as much legal business as any one man could reasonably desire. He is a very hard worker ; prepares his cases with the greatest care; is thoroughly posted on the points of law; is an earnest and impressive pleader, and is first class, both as a jury and court lawyer. In criminal cases especially he has gained a high and wide reputation. While we write he is engaged in a trial for murder in the court of Knox county, Illinois.
Mr. Stubbs was mayor of Fairfield in 1859 and 1860 ; draft commissioner in 1862, and member of the state senate from 1864 to 1868. He was at dif- ferent times on the committees on federal relations, railroads, and charitable institutions; was on the judiciary committee during the entire time he was a member of that body, and president pro tem. the last session. He was the author of the following joint resolution, which passed the general assembly, and was ratified and approved on the 24th of January, 1864:
SECTION 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
SEC. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Mr. Stubbs likewise penned the following resolu- tion in regard to Jefferson Davis, and the secretary of state of Iowa was empowered and requested to send a certified copy of it to the President of the United States :
Resolved, By the general assembly of the State of Iowa, that Jefferson Davis is not a proper subject for executive clemency, and that it is the duty of the President of the
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United States to cause the said Davis to be brought to a tair and impartial, but speedy, trial before the proper tribu- nal, and that if he be found guilty of the crime of treason, that he suffer the penalty provided by law.
Mr. Stubbs was originally a liberty party man, and voted for John P. Hale for President in 1852. Since 1856, until recently, he has acted with the republi- can party, and has been one of its leaders in the state. He helped renominate Mr. Lincoln, at Balti- more, in 1864; was a member of the national exec- utive committee the next four years, and was acting on that committee when General Grant was nomi- nated, at Chicago, in 1868. He is now an independ- ent, and was the so-called "greenback " candidate for governor in 1877, receiving about thirty-four thousand votes. He is one of the ablest advocates of what is known as the "soft money " system in the state. He made thirty-five speeches in advocacy of that doctrine in the canvass of 1877, and they are characterized by great cogency of logic, as well as strength of language.
In 1871 Mr. Stubbs was a candidate on the re- publican ticket for member of the general assembly, and was defeated by a third candidate taking the field and dividing the republican vote.
About that time there was a great fight between certain property holders in Jefferson county and the Chicago and Southwestern Railroad Company. Mr. Stubbs accepted a retainer fee of one thousand dol- lars from the railroad company, and the hue and cry was raised that he had " sold out " to the company, and enough republicans voted for the independent candidate to defeat the democratic candidate.
When the railroad was built to Marshfield, Massa- chusetts, one of the first roads of the kind in the United States, Daniel Webster accepted a retainer fee of five hundred dollars; the fact is stated in his history, and is no discredit to him. The fact that Mr. Stubbs had an opportunity to accept such a fee from a railroad company is simply a compliment to his abilities as an attorney. It has been done by hundreds of the ablest lawyers in the United States, and a few voters in Jefferson county, Iowa, seem to have been the first persons in the country to discover that such an act is disparaging to one's character.
On the 4th of July, 1877, Mr. Stubbs was the ora-' tor of the day at Riverton, Iowa, and we here give the concluding part of his speech, made on that oc- casion, as a specimen of his oratory, and to show in part his political sentiments at this time :
Our government has passed through an ordeal the most severe and trying to which a republic could possibly be sub-
jected. It arose from a disregard of the principles laid down in our declaration of rights, from a practice in opposition to the doctrine that all men are created equal, that every man under the jurisdiction of our flag has equal rights before the law.
With more than four millions of people in servitude, de- prived of all rights, treated as chattels, disposed of as the caprice and avarice of masters might dictate, our boast of the equality of all men becomes an absurdity, standing out in such bold relief that nations scoffed at our exultations. With the theory of universal freedom on the one hand and the practice of slavery on the other, an "irrepressible con- flict" was, sooner or later, but the natural result. It was the oppressed crying to be free in a land where liberty had been made the chief stone of the corner. How the institu- tion got a foot-hold upon our soil we need not recount, surely none living at the time of our trouble were culpable with instituting it. When the declaration was penned slavery was upon our soil ; when the articles of confederation were formed it was here, and when the constitution was adopted and ratified it was fastened upon us so that it appeared to be one of the institutions of the country ; it seemed to have found a resting place in the laws of the land, and it claimed the protection of the government, though the voice of free- dom and humanity continually cried out against it, and yet there appeared to be no way to free our land from the foul, the disgraceful stain. Philanthropy was not wanting, ab- horrence for the institution was not lacking, but how to rid ourselves of it was the problem that vexed philanthro- pists, statesmen and philosophers.
When treason fired upon the flag the forces of the nation were marshaled, not for the purpose of interfering with slav- ery, but to defend the flag and to uphold the supremacy of the laws. No one believed or thought that the conflict between slavery and freedom was culminating in a deadly strife, the one to live and the other to go down. When the fathers resolved to oppose the odious stamp act and the duties im- posed on their tea, they had no idea that the struggle would end in the establishment of their independence and of self- government, yet they did achieve a far more glorious tri- umph than their dreams had pictured. They found that their cause had become one of life and death, and defiantly it was proclaimed, " give me liberty or give me death," and they each made this their watchword, their shiboleth. So, with our contest in the late struggle, we accomplished more than we anticipated. A wise and philanthropic President saw in our constitution that a way was opened, the sea of opposition had given way, and the road to deliverance for more than four millions of human beings was made plain ; a way made by the madness of the very people who fain would have riveted tighter and tighter the manacles upon the oppressed. This blow, stricken by the oppressors against the government, was like the impious feast of Belshazzar when he assembled his people, and his thousand lords drank wine from the golden vessels taken from the temple, and bowed themselves down to Baal. At the uprising of slav- ery for better guaranties, when in high carnival it fired upon our country's flag, then, too, the hand-writing ap- peared upon the wall, proclaiming, as it did at the idolatrous revelings of Babylon, "Thy days are numbered." The one overthrew an irreverent king and gave his land to the Medes and Persians, and the other abolished slavery and gave to America universal freedom.
It was indeed a fearful struggle; it cost the shedding of the most precious blood of the country, that of our young men; it filled the land with mourning widows and father- less children, and mothers who refused to be comforted because their sons were not, and entailed upon us a debt of vast proportions that we are in honor bound to pay, though it weighs heavily upon the industry of the country. The struggle is over and our banner shows with new luster ; it no longer floats in mockery over the land of the slave; it is now truly the emblem of liberty; wherever it floats is the home of the free. Our constitution is nobler and bet- ter; neither slaverv nor involuntary servitude shall exist
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within the United States, or any place subject to their ju- risdiction, is now one of its broad guaranties; our age has made good the principle declared by our fathers, but which they failed to establish as a practical self-evident truth.
Great revolutions are never accomplished without leav- ing behind them traces of distrust and heart-burnings and animosities, which time alone can banish. To heal up wounds and mollify the lacerations made in this struggle is the great work of the day committed to our hands; it can- not be too speedily accomplished. We should not withhold the olive branch, nor should the oil and wine of consola- tion be spared. All suffered, and none more than those who precipitated the contest upon the country. We should remember that men are not always responsible for their edu- cation; we receive our impressions from the circumstances in which we move. The whole south, for forty years pre- ceding the war of the rebellion had been. taught in the family and from the sacred desk, that slavery was not only per- missible but a divine institution ; that the constitution and laws of the country not only allowed it, but actually guar- antied it. Some of the best statesmen the country ever produced practiced it. Nearly all acquiesced in it, and few condemned it. Its existence appeared to be quite as well settled under our national administrative system as any- thing could be. Should we not have more charity than to censure and upbraid men for believing what they have al- ways been taught? To tantalize the people with former faults when they acknowledge them to be faults is unchari- table, unkind; no glory can be drawn from such a course; you never will and never can make a family feud look grand, magnify it as you will; generally all parties are to blame, if not in the contest itself, they are in the cause that brought it on. It may excite the baser passions to hear re- counted family dissensions and conflicts, but cannot appeal to the better feelings of our nature. The great, the good, the immortal Lincoln, who died a martyr to freedom's cause, who died that men might be free, when the south was just ready to strike the fatal blow that engulfed us in the bloody war, said to them, " we are not enemies, but friends."
"The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriotic grave to every living heart and hearth-stone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
Has not the time come when those chords should be
again touched by the better angels? His sentiment never changed. In his last state paper, a document that will live while literature and the English language live, and only a few days before the occurrence of that awful tragedy that filled the land with mourning, and when the great work he had been called on to perform was nearly completed, he said, " with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firm- ness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the na- tion's wounds, and do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all na- tions." These words, coming from a heart filled with pa- triotic devotion and an unbounded love for all under the circumstances that prompted them, and in the light of what had transpired, in significance fall but little short of those olher living words uttered when the rocks were rent asun- der and the sun veiled his face from the scenes of Calvary : " Father forgive them, for they know not what they do."
Is it not fitting and proper, standing as we do upon the beginning of our second century, still full of the vigor of national youth, to ask ourselves if the time has not fully come when these sentiments should take hold of the hearts of the people, and the chords of our natures be touched by the hand of benevolence and peace, so that America may stand as the master-piece of national greatness, and self- government be reëstablished with newness of life, and upon a basis, sure and steadfast, that can never be shaken.
In religious sentiment, Mr. Stubbs is quite liberal. On the 11th of October, 1855, he was married to Miss Carrie Hollingsworth, a native of Union county, Indiana, and they have four children, two girls and two boys.
Mr. Stubbs is a man of rather striking build and physique ; is six feet and two inches tall, and weighs about two hundred pounds. He has sufficient brain power, being quite as tall intellectually as he is phys- ically. He is an independent actor and thinker, and would do his duty if it brought the heavens down on his head.
FRANCIS M. EVERETT, M. D.,
CORYDON.
F RANCIS M. EVERETT, the leading surgeon in Wayne county, Iowa, and a gentleman of thorough professional polish, is a native of Mason county, Virginia, where he was born, on the 14th of October, 1840. His father, Warren D. Everett, a native of New York state, was a physician, who re- moved to Iowa in 1848, and died at Corydon on the 7th of October, 1864. The maiden name of Francis' mother was Partha J. Morris. This branch of the Everett family are remotely related to Alexander H. and Edward Everett. In the infancy of the subject of this sketch the family moved to Monitor county, Missouri, and five or six years later to Knoxville, Marion county, Iowa.
Francis received an academic education in the preparatory department of the Iowa Central Univer- sity at Pella; commenced reading medicine with his father at Peoria, Wayne county, in 1860; attended lectures at Keokuk, and graduated in 1863. practic- ing in Corydon since that date. During this period he has attended .two more courses of lectures at Keokuk, and during the latter course, held four years ago, he was assistant demonstrator of anatomy. It is almost needless to say that the opportunities thus enjoyed at Keokuk have been of incalculable benefit to him, and given him a high and wide reputation, especially in surgery, which he makes a specialty. His rides extend all over Wayne county, and into
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the adjoining counties of Decatur, Lucas and Appa- noose, in this state, and into Putnam county, Mis- souri, the line of which state is twelve miles from Corydon. His acquaintance is very extensive, and he is much respected both as a professional man and private citizen.
Dr. Everett has been on the local school board at different times-the only civil office which he would accept, he giving his time exclusively to the study and practice of medicine and surgery. The secret of his success lies in his untiring industry. He is as diligent in his studies as was Dr. Richard Rush.
Politically, the doctor is a democrat ; religiously, a Baptist. He is a deacon of the Corydon church, and the purity of his life has never been questioned.
He venerates the christian as well as the medical profession.
He is a Master Mason, but devotes very little time to the order.
On the 2 1st of October, 1861, Miss Fidelia C. Bar- low, of Wayne county, Iowa, was joined in wedlock with Dr. Everett, and they have had five children, four of them yet living, and all are being educated in the Corydon graded school.
Dr. Everett has quite a taste for agriculture and horticulture, and has a pleasant homestead of one hundred and fifty acres adjoining the town on the south, with a fine orchard. He has a competency, and while comfortable himself likes to make other people so.
HON. JOHN T. STONEMAN,
MC GREGOR.
JOHN THOMPSON STONEMAN, state senator from Clayton county, is a native of Chautauqua county, New York, and was born in the town of Ellery, on the 24th of February, 1831, his parents be- ing George and Catherine Cheney Stoneman. The Stonemans are of English pedigree, and were among the early settlers in Chenango county, New York. The Cheneys were an early Rhode Island family. George Stoneman moved with his family to Busti when the son was in his infancy, and there, on a farm four miles from Jamestown, the subject of this sketch lived until sixteen years of age. He was the fourth child in a family of eight children, four sons and four daughters, of whom General George Stoneman, the gallant cavalry officer in the late civil war, was the eldest child.
John T. prepared for college at the Jamestown Academy, devoting his summers at this period to la- bor on the farm ; at twenty, went to Covington, Ken- tucky, and taught school one year; he then entered Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, and graduated in 1856.
While in Kentucky Mr. Stoneman commenced reading law with Judge R. B. Carpenter, now of Charleston, South Carolina ; and during his college course he spent his vacations at the Albany (New York) Law School. He was there admitted to the bar in January, 1855, and on graduating from college came to the west, settling in McGregor in October, 1856. Here he has been in the steady practice of
his profession since that date, part of the time alone and part in connection with other parties. He is now of the firm of Stoneman and Chapin, his part- ner being Asahel Chapin, junior, who has recently married his partner's adopted daughter. As a lawyer, Mr. Stoneman has devoted his talents and energies to his profession with unwearied industry. Dignified before the court, and respectful to the jury, he com- mands respect and wins the confidence of his hear- ers. He is an easy, fluent speaker, a man of strong sympathy and deep convictions, and disdains to stoop to any of the shallow artifices of the profession. Powerful and courteous in argument, resolute in the defense of what he believes is right, he has won among his associates a high and honorable place, and has fair promise of a long life of public usefulness in his profession. He practices in all the courts, state and federal.
Mr. Stoneman was the first recorder of the town of McGregor, he being elected in 1857. He was mayor of the city in 1863, and was elected to the state senate in 1875, his term of office expiring on the 31st of December, 1879. He is on the judiciary committee, and three or four others, and one of the ablest men on the democratic side.
Mr. Stoneman was originally a whig, and for the last seventeen or eighteen years has acted with the democrats, he being one of the leading members of his party in northern Iowa. He has been a candi- date for different offices, but being on the minority
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side in politics, has usually been defeated. He was the democratic nominee for congress once ; two years later the democratic and liberal candidate, and when Mr. Harlan was reelected the second time for the United States senate, and Hon. J. B. Howell was elected, Mr. Stoneman received, on both occasions,
the votes of the democratic members of the general assembly. He has abilities to fill any position in which his party, if in the majority, could place him.
In March, 1858, Miss Caroline Southland, of Busti, New York, became his wife, and they have one child, Carrie, who is attending the high school in McGregor.
CASTANUS B. PARK, M. D., GRAND JUNCTION.
C ASTANUS BLAKE PARK, son of Castanus B. Park, senior, deceased in 1869, and Elzina Tenney, was born in Grafton, Windham county, Ver- mont, on the 14th of December, 1834. The branch of the Park family from which he descended early settled in Connecticut, his grandfather moving thence to Vermont when its forests were but slightly denud- ed. His great-grandfather was in the continental army. Castanus B. Park, senior, was a merchant and farmer, but the son in early life showed no taste for either pursuit. Having a strong desire for knowl- edge, he spent most of his youth in school, finishing his literary education at Chester Academy, in his native state. He prepared for college, but abandoned the notion of entering. Commencing to read medi- cine with Dr. L. G. Whiting, of Chester, Vermont, he finished with Professor James H. Armsby, of Al- bany; attended three courses of lectures there and one course in the University of New York, and grad- uated in the spring of 1856.
Dr. Park commenced practice without much delay in Darlington, La Fayette county, Wisconsin; the next year crossed the Mississippi river; invested in real estate in Mitchell county, Iowa; practiced a little at Saint Ansgar, in that county; returned to Grafton, Vermont, in 1859, and there followed his profession until after the civil war had commenced.
In the summer of 1862 Dr. Park entered the ser- vice as surgeon of the 16th Vermont Infantry, a nine- months regiment; returned to Brattleboro at the expiration of that period, and at the solicitation of Governor Holbrook accepted the position of surgeon of the 11th regiment. Before returning to the south he became the recipient of a splendid token of the esteem in which he was held by the 16th regiment. He received a complete silver service, sixteen pieces in all, accompanied by the following letter from the pen of Captain I .. E. Knapp, of company I of that regiment :
TOWNSHEND, VERMONT, September 24. 1863.
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