Quincy and Adams County history and representative men, Vol. II, Part 87

Author: Wilcox, David F., 1851- ed
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 952

USA > Illinois > Adams County > Quincy > Quincy and Adams County history and representative men, Vol. II > Part 87

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Charles Alfred Lamb was twenty years old when his parents moved to Missouri. He therefore had grown up and acquired his early education in Adams County. He was on the home farm of his parents to the age of twenty- eight, and after his marriage he spent two years in Oregon and three years in Idaho as a farmer. He then returned to Chariton County, Missouri, and farmed there five years. That was a time of ups and downs, largely due to droughty conditions in Missouri, and several erop failures eaused him to return to Illinois in 1891. He rented land in Adams County until he bought his present place in 1914. This is the old Nelson farm of eighty aeres, for which he paid $125 an acre. It is highly improved, has good buildings, and Mr. Lamb followed general farming and oreharding. IIe had ten acres of bearing apple trees. Every year he fed from seventy-five to 100 hogs. He served the community as road commissioner.

At the age of twenty-eight he married Martha Ann Ruddell, a native of Chariton County, Missouri, but of Adams County parentage. She is a daugh- ter of John D. and Urilla Margaret (Nichols) Ruddell, formerly of Mendon Township, but natives of Ursa Township. Margaret Nichols' father was James Nichols, who came from the vicinity of Covington, Kentucky, to Illinois about 1834. Margaret Nichols was born on the old farm a mile north of Ursa in 1838. Her father donated the land for the New Providence cemetery there, and he died on his old farm at the age of ninety-two. His son, John Niehols, recently died at Ursa at the age of ninety. James Nichols married Mourning Ann Bowles, of Kentucky. She was the mother of Urilla Margaret, and was

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her husband's second wife. His third wife was Catherine Ruddell Henry, an aunt of John D. Ruddell. She died at the age of eighty years. John D. Rud- dell's father was John M. Ruddell, also a native of Kentucky. He established a pioncer home two and a half miles northwest of Ursa. John M. Ruddell died at the age of eighty-eight. He was an elder in the Christian Church, and with Jesse Bowles organized the Christian Church there. His wife was Martha Ann Dunlap, a daughter of John Dunlap, one of the early settlers of Adams County from Kentucky. John D. Ruddell enlisted at Liberty in Adams County in Company B of the Fiftieth Illinois Infantry, and stayed in that organization until the expiration of his term, when he veteranized and continued fighting the rebellion until it closed. For his unusual qualities as a soldier he was pro- moted from the ranks to second and first lieutenant and at the close of the war was made captain by brevet. About 1866 he left Adams County and moved to Chariton County, Missouri, locating near Mendon, and that was his permanent home. He never recovered from the hardships of his army experience and died at the carly age of forty years. His wife afterward married Basil Lamb, father of Charles A. Lamb. The latter was about twenty-six years of age when his father married a second wife, and Martha Ruddell was about eighteen. During the next two years they lived as members of the same family and until their marriage. After the death of Basil Lamb the widow spent her last years with Mr. and Mrs. Lamb and died aged seventy-eight August 24, 1916.

Of the children born to Mr. and Mrs. Lamb, Opal, the oldest, is the wife of George Horning, a rancher at Fort Pierre, South Dakota. They have one daugh- ter, Martha. Harry Everett was born October 23, 1892, in Oregon, is one of the young men in Adams County whose names appear on the honor roll of those who gave their lives to the country in the great war. He enlisted for the navy May 28. 1918, and was at the Great Lakes Training School at Chicago, where he died September 25, 1918. He had passed creditable examinations for the posi- tion of paymaster a short time before his death. He was brought home and laid to rest in the New Providence Cemetery in Ursa Township. Lena, the third child, is the wife of Avis R. Crank. Frank was in practice as a veterinary at Loraine, but is now attached to the United States Army as a veterinarian at Camp Hancock, Georgia. The youngest of the family is Carl Erwin, still at home.

JOHN B. THOMAS is proprietor of the Walnut Grove Stock Farm, comprising 350 acres of land, part of it in Gilmer and part in Columbus townships, but situ- ated in a body. This farm is sixteen miles east of Quincy and a mile south of Columbus. It is a farm well deserving of a distinctive title, and there are hundreds of successful stock men all over the Middle West who know the Walnut Grove Farm products, and by its many prize winners in the state and local fairs. Many of the old time residents of Adams County will easily identify the farm as the old Ben Rutledge homestead. The horse barn was erected by Mr. Rutledge, while Mr. Thomas has carried out the equipment on a thor- oughly modern scale, erecting a cattle barn 50x70 feet, also hog houses, and in its improvements and arrangement alone this farm would easily be counted one of the finest in Adams County. Mr. Thomas completely remodeled the house, installing bath room and many other conveniences. He also erected a tenant house for his son, and there are few conveniences of the city which have not been introdueted into this country place. Mr. Thomas has liberally used cement in and around his buildings. The front yard is guarded from the road by a handsome cement wall. and all the walks are laid of concrete. He has two silos built of vitrified tile block. An inexhaustible supply of pure water is pumped by means of gasoline engines. The high class livestock raised on this farm consists chiefly of the Aberdeen Angus cattle, registered, and the Duroc Jersey and Poland China hogs. Mr. Thomas ships one or more carloads of cattle every year, besides selling many individual animals to stock men. For a number of vears he has advertised his stock in the leading farm journals, and has exhib- ited them in the local fairs and the state fairs of Iowa, Illinois and Missouri, and

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has a large number of trophies given to his exhibits as prizes. Mr. Thomas also specializes in the Percheron horses.

John B. Thomas was born at LaPrairie in Northeast Township of this county Mareh 24, 1862, a son of E. P. and Lucy (Dilts) Thomas. His father was born in Wales and was brought to this country when five years of age by his parents, who located at Cincinnati, Ohio, where they died soon afterward. He grew up in the home of an uncle at Cincinnati, learned the molder's trade, and fol- lowed it for a number of years. Later he engaged in merchandising at Cincin- nati, and from that city moved to Kirksville, Missouri, a short time before the Civil war. He was a pronounced Union man, very outspoken of his opinions, and naturally suffered a good deal of persecution in a district where southern sentiment predominated. It was a much more eongenial neighborhood in which he located during the first year of the war at LaPrairie, Illinois. He farmed in that township, later lived in the Village of LaPrairie and operated the farm, and finally removed to Golden, where he was member of a company manufac- turing bed springs under the name of the Golden Specialty Company. He finally beeame sole proprietor of this business. Failing health eaused him to give it up. and after his wife's death he lived with his sons L. E. at Golden and John B. on the farm. He died at the age of eighty years. He married at Lawrenceville, Indiana, his wife being an Indiana girl. Her grandfather was a noted preacher in that state in pioneer times. E. P. Thomas served at one time as justice of the peace at Golden. He was a republican, a man of good education, and was something of a leader in every community where he lived. His family consisted of the following children: L. E. Thomas, who owns a farm at Golden and is also connected with the Stock Food Manufacturing Company at Shenandoah, Iowa ; Aurora, who married B. F. Talbot, of LaPrairie, and died six years after their marriage; John B .; Mary, who after the death of her sister beeame the second wife of B. F. Talbot, now a contractor at Dallas, Texas.

John B. Thomas spent his boyhood days at LaPrairie, partly on the farm and partly in the village, and attended common schools there. Though regarded as one of the most successful stockmen in the county, Mr. Thomas has had a varied experience in different lines. During his youth he spent three years working in a butcher shop. Another year he was in the store of his uncle at Moberly, Missouri. For two years he was employed by E. G. Hoyt in Houston Township. While his wages during that service amounted to only $200 a year, Mr. Thomas considers the period one of the most memorable in his life, sinee while there he found his wife in the daughter of Mr. Hoyt. After leaving Mr. Hoyt's employment Mr. Thomas determined to get a better education and attended normal school at Bushnell, Illinois. With this training for teaching he aceepted a school in the Washington District of Northeast Township, and was in that school eight years and two years in Houston Township. In the Wash- ington District he directed the studies and growing capabilities of his pupils, some of them from the time they began learning the alphabet until they had completed the eighth grade. Mr. Thomas was a teacher out of the ordinary. Ile was concerned not only with the imparting formal literary instruction but also encouraging the talents and latent powers of the boys and girls under him, and when a boy showed some special talent or inclination Mr. Thomas was quick to foster that disposition, and thus he was responsible for guiding many young men and women into useful spheres of activity. Even now some of his old pupils meet him occasionally and always express deep acknowledgment and gratitude for their early associations with him. During the ten years he was engaged in teaching Mr. Thomas spent his vacations in different lines of work. One factor of his success was his freedom from that form of pride which fre- quently prevents young men from making themselves useful. He worked on a railroad section for a time, also sold farm machinery, and when not otherwise employed worked as a farm hand. He finally entered business for himself as a marble and granite salesman at Golden for one year. He then bought a

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half interest in the business and two years later became sole owner. For three or four years he traveled as salesman for his business, and at the same time kept his workmen employed in his shop, and later had three other salesmen on the road.

After eleven years in that line he retired and moved to Monroe City, Missouri, having acquired an eighty acre farm at Shelbina, Missouri, which he afterward sold and hought 132 acres at Monroe City, Missouri. With his home in the city he supervised the farm and also carried on a general real estate agency. Mr. Thomas has bought and sold lands and negotiated land deals in many states in the Middle West. After six years he moved out to his Missouri farm, and operated it under his own supervision until 1907. During that time he had developed a place of 240 acres, and the success which has attended his Walnut Grove Farm in Adams County might be said to be a continuation of the work he has already instituted in Missouri.

This brief record is sufficient evidence that Mr. Thomas has been an exceed- ingly busy man, and it is not strange, therefore, that he has had no time for politics, and in fact his inclinations do not run in that direction. Several years ago he refused to be a candidate for the Legislature. He is a republican voter. However, Mr. Thomas has many other interests outside his farm and business. Ile and his family are all active members of the Methodist Episcopal Church at Columbus. He is past master of Golden Lodge of Masons, has sat in the Grand Lodge several times, and is a charter member and was venerable consul of the Camp of the Modern Woodmen at Golden, and has attended as a delegate several state and national conventions, including those of St. Paul and Washington. He has also been a delegate to the Anti-Saloon League Con- vention at Washington, being one of the forty Illinois delegates. These broader movements have aroused much of Mr. Thomas' enthusiasm and co-operation, and he has frequently been a speaker in gatherings of different kinds. Hc keeps well informed on the activities of church. Sunday school, temperance and other social and educational activities.

Mr. Thomas was twenty-four and his bride was twenty-two when he and Miss Margaret Hoyt were married. Mrs. Thomas is a daughter of the late E. G. Hoyt and a granddaughter of Capt. E. B. Hoyt, one of the prominent pio- neers of Adams County. E. G. Hoyt was born in Orange County. New York, December 27. 1835, and arrived in Adams County with his parents July 6, 1843. He was one of the prominent farmers and stock raisers of Houston Township many years, and died at Golden at the age of seventy. Mrs. Thomas was born on the Hoyt homestead in Houston Township, and was well educated in the local schools.

A brief record of the children of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas is as follows: Harry B., who is a farmer in Columbus Township, and by his marriage to Pearl Wil- hoit has a son, Donald; Benjamin Franklin, who is associated with his father in the Walnut Grove Stock Farm, married Hazel Wilhoit; Eddie H., who rents part of the home farm, married Nina Haley and has one child, Ruth ; Grace E. is the wife of Granville Lummis, who is in the United States army with special assignment to automobile duty : Luther E. and Fred L., the youngest members of the family, are students in the Quincy High School.

ITON. CHARLES R. McNAY, of Ursa, is the present state senator representing the Thirty-sixth District, including Adams, Calhoun, Pike and Scott counties. There has been no time within the past half century when such an office has carried greater responsibilities and corresponding honors than in the period of the great World war. It will be no small distinction in after years to say that Mr. MeNay was a member of the Illinois Senate during this critical period in the nation's history.

His substantial qualities of American citizenship are unquestioned and are based upon not only his individual career but an ancestry that has been Ameri- can for more than a century. His grandparents, Andrew and Jane MeNay,

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came from the Scotch Highlands and settled in Kentucky about 1815. It was in Pendleton County, Kentucky, that John McNay, father of Senator MeNay, was born October 6, 1818. For fully eighty years the MeNay family has been identified with Adams County. John MeNay and his brother Andrew came here in 1837. Two other brothers, William and James, were also early settlers in the county. John MeNay settled four miles northwest of Mendon, and it is in the northwestern part of the county that the activities of the family have been especially pronounced. The mother of these brothers also spent her last years in the county. John McNay was a highly prosperous farmer and owned 200 acres of land, still held in the estate of his heirs. He died August 22, 1896. John MeNay married Amanda James, who was born in Boone County, Missouri, January 18, 1832, and at the age of sixteen came to Adams County with her parents, Adam and Amanda James. John and Amanda MeNay were married May 5, 1850. She died May 4, 1918. After her husband's death she had left the farm, and she died at Ursa. They were active members of the Franklin Baptist Church near their homestead, and both were laid to rest in the burying ground of that churchyard. John McNay was a democrat. They had three sons, Daniel F., who was born in 1851, was a farmer and died at Quincy in 1915, being deputy sheriff at the time of his death ; Mitchell M., a retired farmer at Ursa; and Charles R.

Charles R. MeNay was born at Mendon January 28, 1859, and received a good education, attending the State Normal School at Kirksville, Missouri, for several years. At the age of twenty-four, on December 23, 1882, he married Miss Olive Miller, daughter of William E. Miller of Marcelline, now deceased. She was twenty years of age at the time of her marriage. Mr. MeNay then began farming in Lima Township, remained there four years, and then for two years was engaged in general merchandising with U. K. Miller under the firm name of Miller & McNay. On November 4, 1888, Mr. MeNay lost his wife, and about that time he gave up the store business and entered the field where his abilities have been most suceessful, as a dealer and shipper of livestock.

Four years after the death of his first wife he married at Quincy Mary D. Welshons, daughter of John and Martha (Tranf) Welshons. Her parents came from Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, to Adams County about 1840. Her father was a miller at Lima and in other places in the county, and died here at the age of forty-seven. Her mother survived nearly forty years and she passed away at the age of seventy-nine. Mrs. McNay was born at Lima.

After his marriage Senator MeNay resumed farming in Lima Township for four years and vigorously prosecuted his enterprise as a stock buyer. That has been his main business for over a quarter of a century. He has been one of the leading shippers of hogs and cattle to the markets of St. Louis and Chicago, and has concentrated hundreds of thousands of carloads of stock at Ursa preparatory to further shipment. His headquarters have been at Ursa for twenty years, and it has been his practice to ship about 200 earloads of stock every year, chiefly hogs. He has also handled a number of fine horses.

His qualifications as a public leader have not been less pronounced than in a business way. He has been accustomed to bearing public responsibilities for many years. IIe served five years as assessor of Ursa Township, was on the school board, was supervisor six years and chairman of the board three years, and in 1914 was elected on the democratic ticket to the State Senate to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Senator Campbell S. Hearne in the Forty- Ninth Session. He was re-elected in 1916. In the 1914 primaries he carried every precinct in Adams County, including Quincy, and the same popularity followed at the general elections and this performance was repeated in 1916. Senator MeNay has been entrusted with much of the important work of the committees and on the floor of the Senate. He has served as a member of the committees on appropriation, agriculture, livestock and dairying, charitable, reformatory and penal institutions, county and township organization, public utilities, revenue and finance, waterways, etc. Long before he took a seat in

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the Senate he had been a strenuous advocate for good roads. The good roads movement in Illinois is now at its culminating point, and is only temporarily delayed by the exigencies of the war. Senator MeNay has used all the influence he possesses personally and from his district to lay a solid and substantial basis for really good roads in Illinois, and the legislation in that direction now pending and certain to pass within the near future has no abler advocate than the senator from the Thirty-sixth Distriet.

Senator MeNay has filled all the chairs in the Odd. Fellows Lodge and has been a representative to the Grand Lodge. He is also a member of the Fraternal Order of Eagles and the Modern Woodmen of America.

He is the father of three sons. Clyde, a son by his first wife, is now private secretary to the general manager of the Missouri Pacific Railway in the general offices at St. Louis. Rue W. completed his education in Harvard College and was connected with a commission house in the National Livestock at St. Louis until he enlisted in the navy for the World war, and is now a wireless operator. Carl F. is still at home, attending high school.

HENRY WOOD STRICKLER, an Adams County pioneer, who is perhaps most widely known for his devoted labors eovering a period of over forty years in behalf of the Church of the Brethren, is now living superannuated at his home a half mile south of the Village of Loraine.

He was born in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, April 24, 1836, son of Jacob D. and Rhumy (Wood) Strickler. The Stricklers are deseendants of William the Silent, through Frederick Henry and King George HI. The family origi- nated in some of the older provinces of Germany and Switzerland. They early embraced the simple doctrines of religion similar to the English Quakers, and the first of the name to come to America were from a German Canton of Switzerland and reached Pennsylvania soon after 1722. One of four brothers settled in Philadelphia, one at Lancaster, one at York and the fourth, Abram, in Chester County, Pennsylvania. His son Jacob moved to the Susquehanna River, became a Mennonite minister and moved to Virginia.

In 1722 Abraham Stewart and Abraham Strickler, brothers-in-law, of Ches- ter, Pennsylvania, settled in Fayette County. They acquired a joint claim to 1,200 acres of land, and in 1789 Stewart deeded his share to Abraham Striekler. Henry Strickler, son of Abraham, Sr., was the grandfather of Henry Wood Strickler of Adams County. This Henry married Franees Stewart, daughter of Abraham Stewart, who was a cousin of Queen Elizabeth, and sister of Hon. Hamilton Stewart, long a prominent member of Congress. Henry Strickler set out a large orchard on the old estate, and for a number of years manufae- tured brandies and wines. Becoming convineed of the evils of intemperanee, he eut down the orchard and removed all traces of his former occupation. He was a blacksmith hy trade and for some years he packed coal on a mule a dis- tanee of ten miles for his shop, though there was a nine-foot vein under his own farm. Henry Striekler died January 14, 1840, at the age of seventy-seven. His old home was willed to his son Henry, Jr., who died February 10, 1894, and from him it passed to his son George W., whose widow still owns the old place.

Jacob D. Strickler, father of Elder Strickler, secured a one-third share in the estate. Within the recollection of Elder Strickler the first sale of coal without the land was sold for cooking manufacture by his father. That was the first sale in the great Pittsburg district for cooking. Jacob Striekler died in Penn- sylvania at the age of eighty-one. He was a member of the Church of the Brethren or Dunkards. His wife, Rhumy Wood, was a daughter of Capt. Ahina Wood. Captain Wood was born July 7, 1777, in Cumberland County. New Jersey, son of Jonathan Wood, who remained a Royalist during the Revolution- ary war. Abina Wood inherited the old farm, but for many years was a nav- igator and was sailing master for vessels owned by the noted Stephen Girard

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of Philadelphia. Abina Wood married on August 17, 1799, Susan Humphreys, and they had fourteen children.

Henry Wood Strickler arrived at Quincy March 13, 1854. His brother Lewis had come to Adams County in March, 1851, and Henry lived with his brother in Honey Creek Township for two years. On June 6, 1856, he married Nancy Jane Hardy, who was born February 24, 1835, in Keene Township of Adams County. Her father, Baptist Hardy, made the second purchase of land in Keene Township, this land being in section 36. He helped to organize the county into townships, and was the first supervisor of Keene Township. He married Tamar Patterson, of Tennessee.

Henry W. Strickler was 50 cents in debt when he reached Quincy. He had to borrow 50 cents at St. Louis to pay his fare, and the first two days work he did was cutting hazelbush at 50 cents a day. On Saturday afternoon he walked nine miles to repay his creditor. He then continued work for three months at $13 a month, and continued in this general way until his marriage.

He set up his home in section 29 with 117 acres of uncleared land and went in debt for the entire purchase. His first home was a little house of poles and boards containing two rooms. His first home was burned in 1876, and he then built the house which is still standing and is a credit to the community. He aequired 217 acres and made it one of the fine farms of the township. Mr. Strickler retired from farming in 1906, after having spent fifty years on one place.

He first took up the ministry of the Church of the Brethren in 1876, when he was ordained, and for over thirty years he gave much of his time and energies to the work. As is customary in this church, the ministers serve without sal- ary, and Mr. Strickler went even further than that and paid practically all his expenses even when on evangelical trips to distant communities. His first church was at Liberty, but in 1881, through his efforts, was organized the church at Loraine of fourteen members. Many of the early meetings of this denom- ination were held in school houses and other public buildings, and also in the barn and house of Mr. Strickler himself. The church at Loraine was begun April 1, 1882, and was dedicated November 16, 1882. The house was built by his own hands, and he furnished three-fourths of the money for the building. Elder Striekler was in charge of several other churches in surrounding counties, and he did evangelistic work in all the states from Pennsylvania west to Ne- braska. Six years ago he was given the position of a superannuated minister. His wife, who died April 26, 1911, after they had lived together fifty-five years, was an assistant elderess and equally zealous in church work. Mr. Strickler was ordained an elder or hishop of his church December 22, 1881. He has been a delegate to annual conferences some thirteen times and has attended more than twenty district conferences. He is a fluent speaker, thoroughly learned on Gospel and Bible history, and is a writer who wields a facile pen in both prose and verse.

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Quincy and Adams County history and representative men, Vol. II, Part 87

Author: Wilcox, David F., 1851- ed Publication date: 1919 Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 952

Author: Wilcox, David F., 1851- ed
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Chicago, New York, The Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 952