USA > Illinois > A history of southern Illinois; a narrative account of its historical progress, its people, and its principal interests > Part 54
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Montreville Heard was born in Hamilton county, Illinois, October 3, 1852, and is the son of Charles M. and Kizzie (Varner) Heard. Charles Heard was the son of Stephen Heard, who in turn was the son of Charles Ileard, with whom the authentie history of the American branch of the family begins. He, Charles Heard, was born in Abbeville county, South Carolina, in 1750, and in 1776 enlisted in the Continental army as a captain, and he served thus for eight years, giving valiant and heroic service in the eanse of the struggling colonies. At one time the captain and his men were taken prisoners and erowded into a small prison where a number of his men were smothered to death. Captain Heard, who was a member of the Masonie fraternity, made himself known to the British officer in command who was a brother Mason, who released the captain on his honor. Captain Heard was convinced that the British officer was in sympathy with the Continental army, and he approached him with a proposal to warm the key to the prison and make an impres- sion of the key in wax and give it to him. The officer proved himself to be a man with a price, and for the consideration of the sum of five
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dollars agreed to the arrangement suggested by Captain Heard. The captain was a silversmith of no small ability, and with a wax impress of the key he had no difficulty in finding a way into the prison. On the following morning all the Continental prisoners were free.
When the war was over Captain Heard settled down to civilian life again. Hle married, and among his children was Stephen, who became the father of Charles M. and was the grandfather of the subject of this review. Stephen Heard was born in Tennessee in 1780 and when a young man he located in Nashville. In 1803 he married Delia Wilcox and moved to Walpole, Hamilton county, Illinois, in 1820, where he set- tled on a farm, there continuing engaged in agricultural pursuits for the remainder of his life, his earlier years of business activity having been devoted to the blacksmithing business. Ile died during the Civil war. His son, Charles M., was born in Nashville in 1829, at a time when his parents were visiting in that city, and he was reared on the Hamilton county farm in Illinois. In later years, when he had reached years of independence, he acquired a farm of his own and worked it until his retirement, when he and his wife went to make their home with their son, Montreville. Charles M. Heard was supervisor and justice of the peace of Flannagin township for many years, and was prominently identified with the Democratic party for a long period, but he is now connected with the Prohibitionists. Peter Varner, who was the maternal grand- father of Montreville Heard, was also a pioneer settler of Illinois, to which state he came from Virginia in early life and where the remainder of his life was spent actively engaged in tilling the soil and doing all in his power as an agriculturist to settle the then wilderness regions, and pave the way for advancing settlement and progress.
Montreville Heard was educated in the schools of Hamilton county and was reared to agricultural life. Tilling the soil, however, did not appeal to him sufficiently strong to keep him on the farm, and in 1891 he decided to enter the mercantile field. and accordingly established him- self in business in Thompsonville, Illinois. Ile is now the proprietor of the leading hardware establishments in this place, and carries a com- prehensive stock of hardware, furniture, implements of all kinds, wagons and carriages, and also eonduets an undertaking establishment. He has by the exercise of his splendid business faculties and the application of strictly business methods, combined with his sterling character, sue- ceeded in building up a highly representative business in this vicinity, and has long been known for one of the most progressive. able and worthy business men and citizens of the city or county. Mr. Heard has become interested in matters of a financial import in the city. and is vice-president of the Thompsonville Bank, in which he is a stockholder. He is also identified with the banking interests of Hanaford. Illinois. and in that thriving place is the owner and proprietor of a department store as well. Ilis activity during the twenty years in which he has been engaged in business in Thompsonville have been of a nature cal- enlated to develop the best resources of the community, and he has clone much for the upbuilding of the city in a financial, commercial and industrial way. His integrity and ability have been further recognized by his fellow men by his election to various positions of public trust, and his reputation as a business man of sterling worth is equalled by his value as a publie-spirited citizen and an able official. Mr. Heard is a staunch prohibitionist. in his political views, and everywhere recognized as a man of high moral character and courage. He served the eity for some time as its mayor, and for many years he has aeted in the capacity of a police magistrate. With his family, Mr. Heard attends the Mission-
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ary Baptist church, of which they are members. Mr. Heard also is a member of the Masonie order.
On January 13, 1876, Mr. Heard was united in marriage with Miss America Hall, the daughter of Wilson II. Hall, an early settler of Saline county, who served as justice of the peace for more than twenty-five years, at Galatia, Saline county. One child was born of their union,- Alice, who is the wife of Art M. Stone and lives at Harrisburg, Illinois, where Mr. Stone is the manager of the O'Gara Supply Company of that city. Mrs. Heard died on June 13, 1877. and Mr. Ileard in 1879 married Miss Catherine Plaster, daughter of Joseph Plaster, also an early settler and a farmer who lived in Hamilton county for many years. Mr. Plaster was one of the most successful men in his business in the county, being widely known as a stock raiser. Eight children were born to this latter union : Charles G. is cashier of the HIanaford Bank at Hanaford, Illi- nois; William B. is associated with his father in the business of M. lleard & Sons; Griffie B. is clerk in a dry goods store; Claudia, is a bookkeeper for the Hanaford Bank; Larkin B., is assistant cashier of the Thompsonville State Bank ; Lura and Lulu reside with their parents. and Ross, who is engaged in the poultry business at Thompsonville. Illinois.
ENOCHI ELLERY NEWLIN. In the life of Judge Enoch E. Newlin the young men and boys of his community onght to find the inspiration to meet and overcome all obstacles, for in knowing what he has accom- plished they may say to themselves, "What this man has accomplished I also can." It will, however, take a boy who is above the average to make as complete a success of his life as has Judge Newlin. He placed his goal high, and started out in the race with lofty resolves. Ile has never lowered his ideals for a moment, and all the disillusionment that has come to him since, as a mere school-hoy, he began the battle of life, has never caused him to feel that the greatest things in the world were aught but faith, hope, charity and love. As a lawyer he is noted for the thorough way in which he prepares his cases. He never neglected a case however trifling it might have been, and this, together with his integrity and honesty, have brought him many clients who might have gone elsewhere. He is one of the best known judges of the circuit court. and lawyers are always glad to try cases before him because they are certain of obtaining a full measure of justice. His early struggles for an education make him extremely sympathetic with young men who are beginning life, though but few have the difficulties to overcome that he had. This warm and sympathetic side of his nature adds to his sue- cess as a judge, for though he is strict in the enforcement of the law, yet he is merciful, and from his long experience in judging human nature, he seldom errs in his conelnsions.
The father of Enoch Ellery Newlin was Thomas Newlin, who was born in Crawford county, Illinois, in 1821. His father was Eli Newlin, who was a native of North Carolina and came to Illinois about. 1814. He settled on government land in Ilutsonville township and here he con- tinued to reside until his death. He was the father of eight children. as follows: Mahala, who married Alfred Correll; Jonathan ; Sarah. who became Mrs. William Patten; Enoch ; Mary, who married William Sutherland : Thomas; Frederic and Kelly. All of these children are now dead, but since all of them married and raised families the de- seendants of Eli Newlin are numerous. Thomas Newlin followed in his father's steps and engaged in farming. Ile was married to Mary E. Ruelle, a daughter of George and Susan Ruelle, who were both natives of Lieking county, Ohio. Four sons were born to Mr. and Mrs. Newlin, of whom Enoch E. was the second. The eklest born. George A., died
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at the age of fifteen. The other two sons are Doctor LeRoy Newlin. who is a prominent physician in Robinson, and Thomas J., who is a lawyer of considerable repute in the same city. Thomas Newlin man- aged his farm until the war clouds began to gather and then he dropped the plough and shouldered the gun. He enlisted on the Ist of April, 1860, in Company I of the Seventy-ninth Illinois Volunteer Regiment. He bade his family a cheerful farewell and marched bravely away like so many others never to see his home again. He died in the hospital at Murphysboro, Tennessee, in April, 1862. In the regiment with him were his brother Kelly and his two nephews, Cyrus Patten and Luther Newlin. All of them were killed on the battle-fields of the southland or died in Confederate hospitals or prisons.
Mrs. Newlin was now left a widow with four small boys, Enoch he- ing only four at the time of his father's death. Ilis mother had searcely any ready money, and even the farm upon which they lived was rented. With a horse to help in the plowing and a cow to supply the milk, which was often the only supper the boys had, she managed to struggle along. Her efforts were directed simply toward keeping her little family together and bringing up her boys to be noble, upright. men. As soon as the boys were old enough to attend school she sent them to the district school in the winter, and during the summer they worked at whatever they could find to help make a living. After the
day's work was over, and supper had been eaten, Mrs. Newlin would gather her little floek about her, and from six until eight they would be busily engaged with school books. Then the mother leading them they would kneel in prayer before going to bed. Her rule was a firm, but gentle one, and her high ideals were so firmly planted in the minds of her sons that they have never been lost. With such a mother it is easy to understand the characters of the sons. At the age of fifteen her eldest son died, and with this additional burden to bear she still faced the world cheerily and bravely. Enoch, now being the eldest, was hired ont at the age of thirteen to work on a neighboring farm. Until he was seventeen this was the way he spent the summers, in the winter time con- tinning to attend school. At the age of seventeen he secured a position as teacher of a distriet school, and for eight successive terms he taught school in Crawford county. All of his salary he turned over to his mother, but so frugal was she, and so careful was the young school teacher with the money that he was supposed to use for his personal expenses, that in time he and she together had saved enough money to permit him to continue his education. What a story of self-sacrifice is written in those few words! What energy and industry and perseverance! It was in 1879 that he left his home county for the first time and, going to Terre Haute, Indiana, entered the State Normal School. He remained there a year and on his return home carried out the determination that he had formed of studying law in the office of Callahan and Jones. To obtain the money for his board and his law books he taught school dur- ing the winter, and during the summer studied law in Robinson, un- der the tutelage of the above well known lawyers. In 1882 he was admitted to the bar, and, paying almost his last dollar for the rent of his office and a few chairs, he hung ont his sign and sat down to wait for elients. He knew that if they did not come speedily he would have to go back to teaching school again. Ile had not realized that in his work as a farmer boy and as a school teacher he had made many and warm friends, and these friends were not slow in seeing that he had clients. His practice soon began to increase and it was not long before he was firmly established as a lawyer.
In 1883 he was appointed city attorney for the city of Robinson, and
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served in this capacity one term, to the satisfaction of all concerned. Ile was heart and soul in his work, and after being admitted to the bar he kept on with his studies, adding daily to his knowledge of the law. Today he is one of the best informed lawyers in this section. In 1884 he was elected state's attorney for Crawford county, and in 1888 he was re-elected without opposition. In 1892 he was again proposed for the office, but he declined to accept the nomination. As a state's at- torney he was extremely careful and vigilant. He won the confidenee of the juries through his honesty and sincerity, and it was practically impossible for a guilty man to evade the penalty of the law while he was in office. During the eight years in which he served as state's at- torney he collected annually enough money from fines and forfeitures to pay his fees and even then had a surplus to turn over to the county. Ile was admired and respected by the judges in whose courts he tried his cases and it was well known that they need not expect trickery or evasion in any of his prosecutions. His reputation spread to other sections of the state where he happened to be ealled through the de- mands of his profession; therefore it was far from unexpected when in 1897 he was elected to the office of judge of the circuit court in the second judicial circuit of Illinois. During the years intervening he served two years as master in chancery, and the remainder of the time was devoted to his law practice. He formed a partnership with J. C. Olwin and under the name of Olwin and Newlin the firm did a large business until the death of Mr. Olwin in 1890. During the next year Judge Newlin formed a partnership with Judge William C. Jones, which lasted until the former was called to the bench.
The second judicial eireuit over which Judge Newlin was elected to preside consists of twelve counties, and nowhere in all this section is there a man more respected. He is popular with both the lawyers and their clients. His care in weighing testimony and his skill in judg- ing human nature make him particularly fitted for the judicial office. That the people realized this was proved when in 1903 he was re-elected and again in 1909. He still holds the office, and he is one member of the bench who has nothing to fear if a law permitting the recall of judges should be passed, for his popularity is based on the solid foun- dation of true merit.
Judge Newlin has always been a Demoerat, and has been a promi- nent leader in his party, giving valuable assistance, both as an organizer and as a speaker. For eight years he was chairman of the county een- tral committee, and during this time showed his splendid powers of organization, and his mind trained for battle, be it of tongues or pens. In his religions affiliations Judge Newlin is an active member of the Methodist Episcopal church, and for twenty years has been president of the board of trustees. In the fraternal world he places his whole allegiance with the Masons, being a Royal Arch Mason and a Knight Templar of Olney. Illinois. The greatest sorrow of his life occurred when his mother, who had lived to see her sons all grow into the sort of men she had tried so hard to make them, passed away, on the 7th of January, 1903. She had been married a second time, her husband being Thomas Lewis, and three children had been born of this union.
On the Ist of January, 1885, Judge Newlin was married to Clara A. Coulter. a daughter of Melville and Mary Coulter. Both of her parents were natives of Crawford county. where they lived and died. She is the niece of the late Judge Jacob Wilkin, of the supreme court of Illinois. Judge and Mrs. Newlin have three children. The eldest, Mary Fay, is now Mrs. Landgrebe, and lives at Huntingburg, Indiana, where her husband's work calls him at present. Iler husband, Mr. E.
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C. Landgrebe, is a civil engineer. Frank E. Newlin, the only son, has chosen the profession which his father honors, and was admitted to the bar in July, 1911. He is now practicing law in Robinson. The youngest, Marian O., is going to school and is at home.
CHARLES STAHLHEBER. For the past quarter of a century Grand Chain has known Charles Stahlheber as one of her successful and pro- gressive farmers. Coming to this place in 1886 from Monroe county, Illinois, he located here and while the first years of his residence as a farmer were attended by more than unusual hardships, there is noth- ing in his life today to indicate that he has not always been the pros- perous and representative citizen which he now is.
Charles Stahlheber was born near Ilecker, a small town in Monroe eounty, on January 25, 1851. He is the son of Martin Stahlheber, a German immigrant born at Michaelstadt, a small province of the Ger- man Empire, in about 1820. When Martin Stahlheber was twenty-one years of age he immigrated to America, stopping at Philadelphia, Pen- sylvania, for perhaps twelve years. He there married Miss Katie Kun- kel, who died after the removal of the family to Monroe county, Illinois, m 1855, when she was forty years of age. Ten children were born of their union. They included : John, of Pinckneyville, Illinois; David, a farmer in St. Clair county, Illinois; William, of St. Louis; Charles, of Grand Chain; George and Ilenry, of Ilecker, Illinois; Wilhelmina, the wife of Charles Esienfelder, of Pinekneyville, Illinois; Sophia, the wife of Henry Schaffer, of Freeburg, Illinois; and Mary, who married John Hepp, of Heeker, Illinois.
Such education as was possible to the Stahlhebers was of a most meager order, and Charles came to manhood with but a limited knowl- edge of books. Ile continued to be an active support of the parental home until he reached the age of twenty-eight years, when he married and established a new house of Stahlheber in the midst of the com- munity. While he lived in his native county he resided on a rented farm, but he later removed to Pulaski county, where he became a prop- erty owner. He was one of the first German farmers to settle in Grand Chain. After he had rented a few years he was able to purchase eighty acres of farm land, which forms the center of his present estate. His industry at grain and stock raising brought him a degree of pros- perity sufficient to enable him to purchase another eighty acres in five years, and thus he has continued to add to his holdings from time to time, so that he now ranks among the foremost farmers of his locality. The success which Mr. Stahlheber has enjoyed has been the positive result of his constant, unremitting toil in the years that have elapsed sinee he first located in Grand Chain. "Rome was not built in a day." neither is it possible to make a verdant and prolifie l'arm out of a stump-covered area of disheartened looking land without the applica- tion of time, money and genuine hard labor. His hands and those of his growing family have ever been busy in the making of this fine homestead, until now the sons and daughters of the home have gone out in to the world to make careers for themselves, and the burden of the years has begun to leave its mark upon the master of the house and his faithful helpmate.
On March 30, 1880. Mr. Stahlheber married in Monroe county, IHi- nois, Miss Lonisa Ramseger, a daughter of George Ramseger, who was born at Kelen. Rhine Province, Germany, and, coming to the United States, married Miss Kate Schneider in Monroe county. Mrs. Stahl- heber was born November 11. 1857, and is the eldest child of her parents. The others were Peter, who died near Grand Chain in 1911 : Mary, who
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married Abraham Seitz; and Lizzie, who became the wife of Joseph Cange. Mr. Ramseger died near Grand Chain in 1891, at the age of seventy-seven, and his wife passed away in Monroe county.
The children of Mr. and Mrs. Stahlheber are: Lizzie, who married Arthur Gaskill, a Pulaski county farmer; Jacob is a farmer and is mar- ried to Annie Barthel; Emma is the wife of Edward Weisenbor, of Grand Chain; and Henry is still in the parental home. The Stahlheber family are communicants of the Lutheran church, and the male mem- bers of the family are adherents to principles of Republicanism, although not especially active in political cireles.
GEORGE W. DOWELL. Lovers of the romantic say we have no heroes in these days, that the courage that attempts the impossible is dead; they forget that the heroes of modern times often fight their battles in their own homes, that there is no list upon which their prowess might be dis- played, save the lists of the modern business world, in which the struggle is as much more terrifying than that between Ivanhoe and Front de Boeuf as the refinement and civilization that shudders at the thought of a mortal combat is greater than that of the time of Richard Coeur de Lion. In these days the fall of a man means not only his own ruin, but usually the hurt of all those dependent on him. Those that do not be- lieve that we have modern heroes, read the story of George W. Dowell. This man was just one among hundreds of other grimy toilers, each day that he spent under the ground stifling more and more the power of initi- ative that burned within him, but each day his ambition to become some- thing more than a miner increased. He was a grown man, too old to enter the high schools, too poor to go to even the most inexpensive colleges, had he had the education that would permit him to enter. Did he sit down in front of this problem and say, "It. is impossible, nothing but a miracle could make me anything but what I am." He did not, he ground his teeth together and said, "I will," with the result that today, after only four years of practice, he is one of the most successful lawyers in DuQuoin and his popularity is growing every minute.
George W. Dowell was born in Williamson county, Illinois, on the 18th of August, 1879. He is the son of William J. Dowell, who was born in Tennessee. The latter acquired a fair education, and when his father, David Dowell, went to Arkansas in ante-bellum days the son ae- companied him. David Dowell was a merchant and a race-horse man, and died near Salem, Arkansas. William J. separated from his parents before the ontbreak of the Civil war and came to Southern Illinois. On the 26th of August, 1861, he enlisted in Company E of the Thirty-first Illinois Infantry, which was General Logan's old regiment. He became color bearer of the regiment and when his three year term of enlistment expired he re-enlisted and was in the service nearly five years. He was one of the few who took part in the fighting in the heart of the Con- federacy and escaped both wounds and captivity. He returned home in the fall of 1865, with the consciousness of having performed a patriot's part in the preservation of the Union. He is now one of the rapidly thinning band that compose the Grand Army of the Republic, and is the only member of his family that fought on the side of the Union. He married Mary E. Robinson, a daughter of John Robinson, who came to Illinois from Kentucky, having previously lived in the state of Virginia. The children of Mr. and Mrs. Dowell are: John L. S., who is general manager of the Moke and Impson Mine; Clifford, who died in infancy ; W. L., who is a contractor at Elkville, Illinois; James, who died in baby- hood; A. B., living in Carbondale; Sarah, the wife of John Lounsberry, of Texarkana, Arkansas; Maggie, who married John Cox and lives in
Geolli Dowell
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Centralia, Illinois; Thomas, who died in his youth ; George W .; L. N., of Caldwell, Washington; Nannie and Mary, who passed away as little ehit- dren. Mr. Dowell is a Republican, but has never entered very prom- inently into politics, preferring to work in a quiet way for the party 10 which he owes allegiance.
George W. Dowell grew up in Marion, Carterville and Elkville, Illi- nois, learning something of farm life and later taking his place in the ranks of the miners. His home was that of a man of toil, for his father had followed the butcher business, farming and mining, and in conse- quenee the dinner pail became a close companion of the son as soon as he left the common schools. As the lad grew to manhood his soul revolted at the thought of spending all of his days down in the depths of the earth, the miner's cap became the symbol of all that was hateful to him and he did not even wish to be connected with the mines in the capacity of a superintendent, which position he would surely have reached in time. He had the mind of a lawyer and the eloquence of a lawyer, he possessed the power of concentration and the ability to reason logically. Even in those days it was evident that the professional world was the one for which he was naturally adapted. But, how to get past the portal ? Sinee he could not enter high school because he was too old, he decided to at- tempt a high school course of his own. Therefore every night he would come home from the mines, weary from the physical labor, and after his often meagre supper, for it took so much money to buy books, would sit down close to the lamp and there in the company of his young wife would labor over knotty problems in algebra and geometry, and try to understand what Chaneer was talking about, or why "Equal volumes of gas at the same temperature and pressure contain equal numbers of molecules." Think of the struggles we ourselves had with the best of teachers and the most modern apparatus, studying at a time when our brains were most receptive and when facts found an easy lodgment therein, and compare our comparatively easy time with what this man had to contend with. With no seientifie apparatus, no teacher to straighten out tangles, and with a brain that had passed the stage when it resembles a sponge, yet he determined that he would conquer, and he did. He completed all the work required in the curriculum of the high school and passed the examination on questions given to him by the super- intendent of schools. He had now taken the first and longest step. While he had been toiling over his school books he had also been poring over the massive tomes of legal knowledge that lay near by on his table. So he was ready to begin at once on his professional work. His first work was done by correspondence, in the Sprague Correspondence School of Detroit, after which he read under the instructions of Judge Ellis, of Carbondale, and later entered the offices of Harker and Harker and Light- foot in the same eity. From Carbondale he moved to Herrin, and in 1907 took the bar examination in the Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. He was one of fifty-two successful ones among more than two hundred applicants. He was admitted on the 23rd of June and was the first man to hand in his final paper to the examining commission, of which Judge George W. Wall, of DuQuoin, was president.
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