USA > Illinois > Cook County > Chicago > The biographical dictionary and portrait gallery of representative men of Chicago, Minnesota cities and the World's Columbian exposition : with illustrations on steel. V. 2 > Part 37
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American Brog l'ub Cc. Chicago
Very truly Edivia lo Herred
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and his perseverance and industry exhibited in the performance of his first duties soon earned for him a promotion and a year's engagement in the same store at a salary of nine dollars per month. His ability and shrewdness as a sales- man and buyer of country produce increased with experience, and his work gave such satisfaction that he was engaged for a second year at a salary of one hundred and thirty-five dollars. Before the close of this year his employer died, and he was selected by the administators to close up the business of the estate at a large increase in salary. Mr. Herrick's thorough knowledge of the business made his services now almost indispensa- ble, and the successor to the busines retained him more than three years at the highest salary then being paid to any country clerk.
Two years later Mr. Herrick entered the largest wholesale and retail dry-goods house in Cleve- land, Ohio, as a salesman, where he pursued his chosen avocation with a vigorous determination to become master of it. In 1860 he made his first business venture, opening a dry-goods store in Ashtabula, Ohio, with his eldest brother, Will- iam W., under the firm-name of Herrick Broth- ers. His sound, practical judgment and fair dealing during his business experience of eight years in this place brought him a fair degree of financial success. During these years the civil war began and ended. His heart was always in sympathy with the Union and the cause of humanity, and his means ever ready to aid.
After the close of the war, Mr. Herrick realized that his thorough knowledge of his business, his indomitable energy and increased capital demanded a broader field for operation. This thought, seconded by a hope that a change of climate might benefit the health of his wife, whose tendency to pulmonary disease was becom- ing more pronounced, induced him to spend the summer of 1867 in prospecting throughout the west. He visited many cities before reaching Minneapolis, which then laid claim to a popula- tion of ten thousand. Being favorably impressed he spent some time investigating the prospects and resources of the young city, and returned to Ohio fully convinced that this, of all the cities he had seen, was the place to "drive his stake." The business at Ashtabula was speedily disposed of, and on the Ist day of June, 1868, the two
brothers arrived in Minneapolis. Mr. Herrick's firm belief in the rapid growth of the city in- duced him to make his first investment in real estate, and he has continued in that business ever since.
During the decade beginning with 1870, his firm engaged in large transactions in lumber, timber, and farming lands and city real-estate. Their creation of "Groveland Addition," and purchase of the real-estate and building known as the Academy of Music, were important in the history of Minneapolis. .
For ten years Mr. Herrick was the manager of public amusements in the Academy, at that time the finest theater in the northwest. His con- stant aim was to cultivate the public taste for music and to elevate the moral standard of the drama by presenting the best talent to be had in the west, though often done under most dis- couraging circumstances and at personal pecu- niary loss. The enterprise and untiring efforts of Mr. Herrick in this direction brought to Minne- apolis the dawn of a new era and a higher moral tone in the history of her amusements.
During the seven years of financial depression, from 1873 to 1880, when many men were forced into bankruptcy, Mr. Herrick never, for once, lost faith in the city of his adoption, and in those years did much to stimulate the growth of the city by the erection of business blocks. Under his personal supervision, Temple Court was erected in 1885 on the site of the old Academy of Music. Mr. Herrick was one of the first subscribers to the stock of the "Soo Railway," during the period of its construction a director, and for a time president of an auxiliary railway of that system.
His love for scenery and art made him an extensive traveler. His travels have extended into every state and territory of the Union, as well as through the British possessions and Mexico. He has crossed the Atlantic four times, and visited nearly every country in central and northern Europe, including Norway, Sweden and Russia. On his European tours, in 1886 and 1891, he was accompanied by his only son, Roy Durand Herrick.
In politics Mr. Herrick is and always has been a Republican, though not a partisan, always de- siring to see the best men in office. He has
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never aspired to official position, and his aver- sion to publicity or notoriety of any sort is very strong.
Although he was raised in the Puritan faith of his parents and immediate ancestors, yet in his manhood his freer thought and naturally liberal mind found a more congenial and satisfactory home in the Universalist faith. Since 1869 he and his family have been identified with the Church of the Redeemer in Minneapolis. In the west transept of this beautiful church edifice Mr. Herrick erected, in 1890, an artistic and costly memorial window of rare beauty, in loving mem- ory of the departed members of his family.
On July 29, 1861, Mr. Herrick married Miss Juliet C. Durand, at Westfield, New York, and their early married life was spent at Ashtabula, Ohio. Three children were born to them: Dora G., in 1862, a lovely girl, who died at the age of
nineteen years ; Roy Durand, in 1869, at present a senior in Harvard University, and Edwin L., in 1875, who died suddenly in his seventh year. Mrs. Herrick was graduated at Wadawannuc In- stitute, Stonington, Connecticut, in 1860. She possessed a clear and brilliant literary mind and a keen perception ; she was practical in thought and deed, and was a kind and loving companion and mother. Her mental strength was too great for her frail physique, and while at Jacksonville, Florida, in search of health, in February, 1880, her pure spirit returned to Him who gave it.
In studying the character and career of Edwin W. Herrick we note his active and comprehensive mind. His record is a remarkable one for its simplicity, its usefulness, its success. By his strict integrity, unwavering determination and persevering industry, he has carved out of his surroundings a success that is purely his own.
CLINTON MORRISON,
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.
TN this enlightened age, when real merit is beginning to find its true appreciation ; when men of energy and industry are rapidly coming to the front, our admiration is properly bestowed on those men who, by their own unaided efforts, have won fame and fortune. The opportunities of the west have developed a galaxy of successful business men that challenge the history of all times and nations.
To the thoughtful student there is a valuable lesson to be gleaned from the lives of those men whose courage and confidence enabled them to struggle through the many adversities of the early days in Minnesota, and to build the foundations on which Minneapolis now stands, the first city of the northwest.
On January 21, 1842, in Livermore, Maine, Clinton Morrison was born. He is a son of Darilus Morrison, an honored pioneer of Minneapolis. The Morrison family is one of the oldest in New England, and representatives of it may be found in almost every state in the Union. In 1844 our subject's father removed to Bangor, Maine, and ยท engaged in business as a merchant; here Clinton received his early education, attending the pub-
lic schools until 1855. At that time the possibili- ties of the west claimed the attention of those men who had the courage to bear the hardships and privations of pioneer life, and the intelligence to forsee the magnificent future of a country so rich in natural advantages. Accordingly, early in the spring of 1853, Mr. Morrison removed his entire family to Minneapolis, and immediately engaged in the lumber business with Cadwallader C. Wash- burn, under the firm-name of D. Morrison and Company.
Clinton attended the public schools in Minne- apolis, and as a student gave evidence of a marked ability, but deciding in favor of a business career, he left school in 1862, and entered his father's office where he received his earliest commercial training. He remained with his father five years, and, by strict economy and the judicious invest- ment of his savings, accumulated a few thousand dollars, with which, as his share of the capital, he opened a general store on Nicollet avenue, near Washington avenue, with J. Wells Gardner, under the firm-name of Gardner and Morrison. They did a thriving business until 1868, when Mr. Mor- rison sold his interest, and with his brother,
Christen Moreso
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George H. Morrison, engaged in the lumber busi- ness under the firm-name of Morrison Brothers, at the corner of Washington and Fifth avenues, south. It required industry and perseverance to succeed in those days, but, being a man of great executive ability and possessed of an unusual amount of business tact and shrewdness he soon placed his house on a sound commercial basis, and earned for himself a reputation for integrity and honorable dealing of which any man might well be proud.
In 1874, Mr. Morrison became identified with the Farmers' and Mechanics' Savings Bank of Minneapolis as trustee, and in 1887 he was elected its president, and still holds that office (1892). Under his able direction this bank has enjoyed a wonderful prosperity. It is purly a mutual insti- tution, without any subscribed capital stock, its depositors reaping all the benefits accruing from the investments of the deposits. It is governed by a board of trustees. It receives no business accounts and does not transact a general banking business, but is devoted solely to the safe invest- ment of trust funds and the savings of mechanics, farmers, clerks, etc. Its prosperity is shown in the fact that its statement of January 1, 1891, showed deposits of over six million dollars.
For the past ten years Mr. Morrison has been vice-president and manager of the Minneapolis Harvester Works, a local corporation engaged in the manufacture of harvesters, etc. He is also a stockholder and director in both of the street rail- way systems of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Mr. Morrison is a staunch Republican and pro- tectionist, and, although he has always exercised his prerogative for the greatest good of his party, he has steadily refused public office.
Personally he is a man of fine presence, and dig- nified and courteous manner, showing that consid- eration for others which marks the true gentleman.
In February, 1873, he married Miss Julia K. Washburn, of Brookline, Massachusetts, a daugh- ter of. Mr. Nehemiah Washburn, a merchant of Boston, and a member of the old Washburn family, from which have sprung so many men of promi- nence in political and commercial circles. In 1883, while on a visit to Chicago, Mrs. Morrison died, and since then Mr. Morrison has devoted himself entirely to his business and the education of his two children.
Mr. Morrison is a member of the Church of the Redeemer in the Universalist faith, and con- tributes freely of his time and means to this and to every worthy charitable and benevolent object.
HON. WINTHROP YOUNG,
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.
PROMINENT among the business men of Min- neapolis stands the man whose name heads this biography. He comes of patriotic and heroic ancestry, and inherited their thrift, enterprise and integrity. His life-history illustrates what may be accomplished by perseverance, industry and strict adherence to correct business principles.
He was born at Waterford, near Saint Johns- bury, in Caledonia county, Vermont, September 17, 1817, to Benjamin and Polly (Jackson) Young.
Benjamin Young was a farmer, well-known and highly respected for his general intelligence, firm integrity and generous hospitality. The mother of our subject was an earnest, consistent, Christian woman, who governed her large family firmly, yet with kindness. She was of a long-lived race, and died at the advanced age of one hundred years
and three months. His maternal grandfather, Samuel Jackson, was a soldier in the Revolution- ary war and fought the British at the battle of Bunker's Hill. The old musket that he. carried through the war is still preserved by one of his descendants. His paternal grandfather, Win- throp Young, was a Baptist clergyman of consid- erable celebrity, and our subject well remembers his continental costume of silk stockings with silver knee-buckles; he lived to be eighty-seven years old, and his wife, the grandmother of our subject, lived to be ninety-one years of age. His ances- tors were all long-lived people. He had nine brothers, all of whom lived to be sober, temperate, honest men.
Our subject spent his boyhood on his father's farm and at the public schools. At the age of
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twenty-one, owing to ill-health, he engaged in com- mercial business. He went to Bucksport, Maine, in 1838. He traveled most of the time during the next eleven years, making sales a part of the time, but for the most part making collections. He traveled all over Maine, Nova Scotia, and a part of Lower Canada, and made the acquaintance of several noted men, among whom was Judge Hali- burton, of Nova Scotia (known as the author of " Sam Slick" literature). Mr. Young recalls these days as among the happiest of his life.
In company with his brother Benjamin, he then engaged in ship-building at Calais, Maine, and fol- lowed this business two years. He then went into the custom house at Calais, where he remained during two years of President Pierce's administra- tion and through all of President Buchanan's, mak- ing a term of six years in government service. He has voted for every Democratic presidential nominee since he was of age. Upon leaving the custom-house, he went to Minneapolis, to visit his brother, who had preceded him thither. He re- turned to Maine, but did not remain long, but in compliance with the earnest request of his brother he removed to Minneapolis, and after helping his brother out of financial troubles, occasioned by the panic of 1857 and the hard times following that year, in 1862 he engaged in buying pine lands, giving his attention to this business until 1869, and incidentally making purchases of this kind as late as 1875.
In 1878 he engaged in banking; he became a director in the Northwestern National Bank of Minneapolis, and still (1892) holds that position.
About that time he became president of the Farm- ers' and Mechanics' Bank, which position he held some eight years. He was also elected the first president of the Commercial Bank of Minneapolis, and he still holds that office. In addition to being an able financier, Mr. Young has always been prominent in municipal affairs, and has interested himself in everything calculated to develop his city's resources and expand her rapidly increasing dimensions. . He was a member of the board of education for fifteen years and then resigned.
In 1868 he was elected mayor of St. Anthony, and filled that position with ability. He was nom- inated for governor of Minnesota by the Demo- crats in 1871, but the state then being over- whelmingly Republican, together with the rest of the state ticket, he failed of an election. He was made a trustee of the school known as St. Mary's Hall, at Faribault, and also one of the trustees of the Episcopal Church of that place, and he still holds those positions. He is a member of the Episcopal Church in Minneapolis.
Mr. and Mrs. Young have one daughter and one son ; the latter, Hewell W. Young, is a prominent young lawyer of Minneapolis, a graduate of Dart- mouth College and of the law department of the Iowa State University at Iowa City. He is thor- oughly versed in the law, and his judgment is ex- cellent. He is a good trial lawyer, and is a safe counselor. He has built up quite an extensive practice, and numbers among his clients some of the best business men of Minneapolis. The daugh- ter, Emily S., is the wife of Mr. E. J. Kimball, of Minneapolis.
JAMES C. YOUNG,
MINNEAPOLIS, MINN.
AMES CARLETON YOUNG, the eldest J son of Joseph B. and Jennie M. Young, was born in Marion, Linn county, Iowa, July 29, 1856. He belongs to a race long-lived, and who have been noted in the place and day they lived ; on his mother's side by business sagacity, and on his father's, for many generations, by eloquence and generosity.
Rev. Alcinous Young was in the active itin- erant work of the Methodist Church for more
than fifty years, and was possessed of remarkable force and a clear thinker. It was he who had the famous debate with Joseph Smith, the Mormon leader, at Nauvoo, Illinois, which occupied the attention of the entire country at the time. More than fourteen thousand persons claimed conver- sion under his ministrations. Joseph B. Young, the father, was an eminent lawyer and orator. At twenty-one we find him prosecuting attorney for Linn county, Iowa; at twenty-nine, a member
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of the legislature; at thirty, a senator; at thirty- three, a captain in the commissary department of the Union army; at thirty-four, a paymaster with rank of major, and at the close of the war again a senator. Later he was tendered the position of United States minister to Brazil, or United States pension agent, and chose the latter. He was the most remarkable debater and gifted ora- tor the Republican party had in Iowa for many years, and was honored in successive conventions with nominations for district elector and elector at large on the presidential ticket, and so great was his popularity that he was never defeated at the polls. On the maternal side, the grandfather was for many years a successful merchant, and founded Lennox Collegiate Institute, at Hopkin- ton, Iowa. The mother is a woman of broad cul- ture, who has devoted her life to charities and literature.
James attended school at the place of his birth until December, 1869; he then left home for Cor- nell College, graduating in June, 1876, and was chosen valedictorian of his class. In 1875 and 1876, though a mere boy, he was elected captain of the Cornell Cadets, a military organization under the direction of a lieutenant of the regular army, and until he graduated wore the captain's bars, an honor which came to him through merit of proficiency in drill and scholarship. Up to this time he was the youngest graduate the col- lege ever sent out, and in his last two years re- ceived the highest grades of scholarship which any graduate had ever attained. Three years afterwards he was chosen out of his class to de- liver the master's oration at the college com- mencement and received the degree of Bachelor of Sciences. The next day after leaving college he went into the real-estate business on a capital of ten dollars, obtaining desk room by doing the janitor work of the office, and then commenced a career in the real-estate business to which the his- tory of the country affords few parallels. It was at a time when the railways of the northwest were making many extensions, and he was so- licited by one of the managers to buy the town sites along a new line of three hundred miles. Accepting the work, he found not only liberal pay, but unlimited opportunities for making in- vestments. After this he was frequently in de- mand by other railway corporations, who recog-
nized his peculiar tact, ability, and promptness in this field. Being without capital, Mr. Young spent his winters in the eastern cities presenting the opportunities for safe investments in the northwest, and crossed the Atlantic six times. As one result he organized the Western Mort- gage Company, an Iowa incorporation, of which he is now president. He is also at this time manager of W. J. Barney & Company, in the Guaranty Loan Building, Minneapolis, a firm which has been continuously in the western land business since 1851, with several offices, the one in Chicago being removed here June I, 1891. Though but yet a very young man he manages a business of over a million dollars a year.
His originality is shown in the thorough sys- tem he has inaugurated for the purchase and sale of lands, and no office in the country is more completely furnished with maps, reports and data concerning the farm lands of the great northwest, than the one of which he has charge. In Feb- ruary, 1878, though but twenty-one years of age, he was appointed as an Honorary Commissioner to the Paris International Exposition, and was the youngest member of that commission from any part of the world. He sailed in March, and was absent a year visiting nearly every country and place of interest in Europe, making the tour of the Alps and Apennines with a companion on foot. In 1882 he made another general tour of Europe, and again in 1884, with his father, ex- tending his travels this time into Asia. During all his journeys he was employed in study, except several weeks each time, which were devoted to business in London. During this last journey Mr. Young spent several weeks in Vienna and the provinces bordering on the Danube and Black Sea, investigating the business and methods employed by the fire insurance companies doing business there. As a result of his efforts, after more than two years' investigation, the first American Fire Insurance Company was organ- ized on the continent of Europe, being founded with large capital by the Insurance Company of North America about four years ago, and the results have been more satisfactory than the most sanguine had dared to hope for.
In January, 1885, the real-estate dealers of the United States held a national convention in New Orleans, which lasted several days. Mr. Young
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was elected temporary chairman, and afterward permanent president. He has traveled in every portion of his own country, and is thoroughly posted on statistics and affairs connected with his line of business. Endowed with a strong con- stitution, an indomitable will, combined with close study and application, he has, aided by a liberal education and his extended travels, the
elements of success many an older one might envy.
April 30, 1888, he married Etta May Rogers, of Lake City, Minnesota, daughter of the late Hon. C. F. Rogers, and removed to Minneapolis, June 1, 1891. In politics, Mr. Young is a Repub- lican, and in religion a liberal thinker, though a regular attendant of the Episcopal Church.
HON. JAMES SMITH, JR. ST. PAUL, MINN. -
J AMES SMITH, Jr., is a name that appears
often in the Minnesota Supreme Court Re- ports as attorney in connection with important litigation. He is one of the best known lawyers in the northwest, and is noted for his integrity and fair dealing, and no man in the profession is more highly respected than he. He is an able lawyer, who modestly wears the laurels he has won, and whose uniform courtesy and kindness of heart have won for him a host of friends.
His great-grandfather, John Smith, of Bristol, England, who was a captain in the British military service, settled in Fauquier county, Virginia, about the year 1700. He had eight sons, all of whom served in the American army during the war of the Revolution, and were present at the surrender of Cornwallis. The grandfather of our subject, one of these sons, Daniel Smith, married Jane Harrison, of Charles City, Virginia, a sister of Benjamin Harrison, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and settled near Harrisonburg, Virginia, and raised a numerous family. Two of his sons were ministers. Daniel was of the Methodist Episcopal, and James of the Christian Church. They had conscientious scruples regarding the moral right of any per- son to hold slaves, and having inherited, each, . a number of slaves from their father, they, upon his death, liberated them. James married a daughter of the Rev. John Emmett, of Augusta county, Virginia. In 1805 the two brothers set- tled in Ohio; Daniel near Lancaster, Fairfield county, and James at Mt. Vernon, in Knox county, where the subject of this sketch was born October 29, 1815.
Young Smith obtained what education he could
in the schools of that county, and occasionally assisted his father, who was clerk of the common pleas and the supreme courts of Knox county for nearly twenty years. Having determined to adopt the profession of the law, he entered the office of the Hon. John T. Brazee, in Lancaster, Ohio, and remained there until 1839, when he was admitted to practice by the supreme court of Ohio. Soon afterwards he was attacked with ophthalmy of such a violent character that for two years he was unable to see to read, and from the effects of which he has never entirely recovered.
He formed a law partnership with Colonel Joseph W. Vance, in 1842, in his native town, and had an extensive practice fourteen years at that place, taking an active part in the mu- nicipal movement of his native city, as attorney and otherwise.
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