USA > Indiana > Newton County > A standard history of Jasper and Newton counties, Indiana : an authentic narrative of the past, with an extended survey of modern developments in the progress of town and country, Volume II > Part 2
USA > Indiana > Jasper County > A standard history of Jasper and Newton counties, Indiana : an authentic narrative of the past, with an extended survey of modern developments in the progress of town and country, Volume II > Part 2
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42
NORMAN WARNER. For fifty-seven years a continuous resident of Jasper County and for fifty-five years living in the house in which he now resides at Rensselaer, Norman Warner has been in many other important ways closely identified with this community. He knew Rensselaer first when it was a hamlet, and his individual enterprise has been no unimportant factor in the collective activities which have constituted here one of the best small cities in North- western Indiana. As a business man his work was accomplished some years ago, and he has since surrendered the cares of a busi- ness, which developed under his direction to his capable sons.
A native of Indiana, Norman Warner was born in Rush County March 15, 1833, so that he passed the eightieth milestone of his mortal journey several years ago. His parents were Daniel K. and Elizabeth ( Phillips) Warner, the former a native of Connecti- cut and the latter of Ohio. Daniel K. Warner was a carriage maker by trade. As a Yankee peddler he came West in the early days of Indiana, and while in Rush County was married and for a time was associated with his wife's father in merchandising there. Sub- sequently, owing to the death of his father, he returned to Con- necticut and was engaged in carriage making in that state until the early '40s. He then moved to Cincinnati, and established a fac- tory as a carriage maker. While at Cincinnati he secured a valuable contract to make wagons for the war department to be used in the Mexican war. Few men of his time had greater push and cour- age than Daniel K. Warner. In 1850, fired by the glowing reports of the discovery of gold in California, he made the journey to the Pacific Coast by way of the Isthmus of Panama, taking with him material for a sawmill. Finding no satisfactory location in Cali- fornia, he went on to Astoria, Oregon, and there set up his plant and was one of the early lumber manufacturers in that region of the Northwest which now supplies so much of the lumber material of the world. After operating his mill a little more than two years he sold out and returned to Indiana.
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It was in 1853 that Daniel K. Warner first located in Jasper County. He bought nearly a section of land adjoining Rensselaer on the cast. A little later he embarked on what was then con- sidered a grand scale as a grower of wheat, planting for one crop more than five hundred acres to that grain. This was toward the end of his active and vigorous career, and he died on his farm in Rensselaer in 1856. His widow survived him until 1898. Of their nine children five reached maturity and two are now living.
Norman Warner, who was a young man of twenty-three when his father died, in youth had learned the blacksmith's trade as applied to carriage making at Cincinnati. His first acquaintance with Jasper County was made on his seventeenth birthday, in 1850, and his employment here at various occupations was varied, to use his own words, by "shaking with the ague." He also worked in Lafayette for a time.
On February 24, 1857, Norman Warner married Josephine Grant, a daughter of Daniel Grant, who had come to Jasper County as early as 1850. Following his marriage he lived at Waveland in Montgomery County for a time, and then moved to Rensselaer as /. his permanent home. For many years Mr. Warner followed general blacksmithing but from that embarked in the retail hardware busi- ness. For forty years he kept his place as one of the active mer- chants of Rensselaer, but since 1898 has been retired from the active cares of life. Mr. Warner is one of the few original republi- cans still living in Jasper County. He cast his first presidential bal- lot for Jolin C. Fremont, the first standard bearer of the new republican party in 1856, and for more than half a century has steadfastly affiliated with that party. His chief public service through the medium of office was given by a service of fifteen years as coroner of Jasper County. He and his wife are members of the Church of God. To their marriage were born three children, Daniel Grant and Norman Hale, both merchants at Rensselaer as the successors of their father, and Charles Crittenden.
In February, 1907, Mr. and Mrs. Norman Warner celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. They are among the oldest couples of Jasper County, and their works and influence have well upheld the dignity associated with such long years. Few people of Jasper County are more widely known and none more highly respected than Mr. and Mrs. Warner.
Daniel Grant Warner, the oldest of the sons of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Warner, has for many years been a successful factor in business affairs. He was born March 23, 1858, at Waveland in Montgomery County, Indiana, but soon afterward went with his parents on their return to Jasper County. He grew up in Rensse- laer, attended the public schools of his time, and his career found its practical beginning as a clerk in his father's store. He has been identified with that business for about thirty-five years, and in 1898 he and his brother Norman H. succeeded to its management under
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the firm name of Warner Brothers. Mr. Warner is a republican and is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias. On January 28, 1886, he married Miss Gertrude M. Robinson, a daughter of George M. Robinson. They have one son, Rex D. Mrs. Warner is an active member of the Presbyterian Church. Norman Hale Warner, second of these cons, was born in the house in which his father now resides at Rensselaer on September 21, 1860. For fifty-five years he has lived in Jasper County, and with an education supplied by the public schools was thoroughly trained to business under the direction of his father. He assisted in the store until he and his brother succeeded to the business in 1898, and has since been one of the active members of the firm of Warner Brothers. He is a republi- can, and has been affiliated with the local lodge of the Knights of Pythias since 1881. On January 25, 1885, Norman H. Warner married Miss Blanche Burroughs, who died June 30, 1897. Her daughter, Hazel, born December 13, 1885, was married on Febru- ary 24, 1910, the fifty-third wedding anniversary of her grand- parents, to J. V. Hamilton, and they now reside in Indianapolis. On August 24, 1899, Norman H. Warner married Miss Mary Fetrow of Denver, Indiana. Mrs. Warner is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. ,
Charles Crittenden Warner, the youngest of the three Warner brothers, has had a somewhat more varied career than the other two, spent several years in the West, served two terms as Circuit Court clerk of Jasper County, and is now prosperously engaged in the lumber business at Rensselaer. He was born in Rensselaer Octo- ber 26, 1862, and grew up in his home town, was educated in the pub- lic schools, and to describe his youthful days in his own words, passed much of his time fishing, playing baseball and frequenting the old "swimmin' hole" made famous by James Whitcomb Riley. Before reaching his majority he had made himself useful in his father's hardware store and finished his education by attending DePauw and Purdue universities. On completing his schooling he spent about three years in a law office as collector and in the handling of insurance and abstract work. From 1888 to 1892 Mr. Warner lived in Colorado, where he proved up on a quarter section of land, and for three years was employed in the county recorder's office of Baca County. Then returning to Rensselaer, he was in the retail hardware business for a time, but in 1902 was elected to office as Circuit Court clerk and began his duties in 1904. His service of eight years in that office was characterized by the fidelity and meth- odical management which are the chief requirements in such an office, and the duties of the position were never more capably per- formed than by Mr. Warner. Since leaving his office in the court house Mr. Warner has been engaged in the retail lumber business.
In politics he is a republican, and is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias. On October 10, 1900, he married Miss Mary Bell Purcupile of Rensselaer. They have one daughter, Helen.
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JOHN L. NICHOLS. One of the oldest living representatives of the pioneer generation in Jasper County is John L. Nichols of Rensselaer. While he belongs to the third generation since the families of his mother and father came to America, those in the paternal line coming from Ireland and those in the maternal from Germany, there are few families who have been identified with the country west of the Alleghenies for a longer time. His father, George W. Nichols, was born in Kentucky in 1793, not long after Kentucky was made a sovereign state and during the first adminis- tration of President Washington. His mother, Rebecca (Lewis) Nichols was born in Ohio in 1795, and thus it is evident that the family on both sides was identified with the early American move- ments to the West.
George W. Nichols was a farmer all his life. During the exist- ence of that party he voted the whig ticket and was afterwards equally loyal to the principles of the republican doctrines and candi- dates. He served as a justice of the peace for many years in Jasper County, and was a very active and substantial citizen. He was a working member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
It was in October, 1842, that the Nichols family came to Jasper County. Little had been done in the way of clearing and improve- ment at that time, and even when John L. Nichols was oid enough to appreciate his surroundings his outlook was upon a district very sparsely populated and practically everyone living in log cabins and making very slow advances towards clearing and cultivating the land. The family on coming to Jasper County settled in Barkley Township, where the father bought one hundred sixty acres direct from the Government, paying the regular price of one dollar' and a quarter per acre. In that community the family of children were reared, and of these children there were twelve in number. namely: Cynthia Ann, Jackson, Elizabeth, Hester Jane, Olive, Solomon, John L., Harrison, Samuel R., Mary Matilda, Ben- jamin and Alonzo. All are now deceased except John L. and Mary Matilda. The oldest son, Jackson, enlisted as a private in an . Indiana regiment for service in the Mexican war, going to the front from Rensselaer, and he died while in service south of the Rio Grande. While he was the only one of his family to serve in the Mexican war, there were two of the sons who made records in the Civil war. These were John L. and his brother Solomon, both of whom enlisted on August 11, in 1862 in Company A of the 87th Indiana Infantry. They went out as privates and both fought at the battle of Perryville, in the fall of the same year. John L. Nichols subsequently was stricken with the measles, and was sent home and given an honorable discharge in May, 1863.
The mind of John L. Nichols is stored with many interesting recollections of carly conditions and people in Jasper County. As he was born December 16, 1839, in Champaign County, Ohio, he was about three years old when the family moved to Jasper County,
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and his individual recollections go back into the decade of the '40s, for almost seventy years. As a boy he attended school at the old Hinkle schoolhouse. That was a school supported on the old time subscription plan when a family paid two dollars for a term of three months for each pupil in the school. After John L. had attended four terms, his education so far as books and schools were concerned was ended, since his services were required at home as a helper on the farm and thenceforth his training was in the direction of practical work in the line of the occupation which he followed for a livelihood throughout his active years.
On October 25, 1859, when about twenty years of age, Mr. Nichols married Martha Daniels, member of an old and prominent Jasper County family. They had little more than established their first home when Mr. Nichols left to enter the army. To their union were born six children: Angeline, Wallace, Jesse, Dallas, Hattic and Chattie. In May, 1885, the beloved mother of this family was laid to rest, after more than twenty-five years of married companionship. After her death the family lived in Rensselaer for six months, but then returned to the home farm.
Mr. Nichols' second marriage was with Mary Reed, but no children were born of that union. His present wife was Mrs. Eliza Jane (Potts) Lowman, their marriage having occurred on the 17th of May, 1912. Mrs. Nichols was born in Hancock County, Indiana, October 26, 1856, and she was reared and educated there. By her marriage to Charles Lowman she became the mother of five children, of whom four are now living, three sons and one daughter, all residents of Indiana. Mr. Lowman died in 1902. Both Mr. and Mrs. Nichols are members of the Methodist Episco- pal Church at Rensselaer, and he is also a member of the Indepen- dent Order of Odd Fellows of that city.
Mr. John L. Nichols in his own work as a farmer has rendered the country a service through the extensive improvements he has placed upon his land and has kept his own property up to the advanced standards of progressive agriculture. In politics he is a republican and served as trustee of his home township for four years. In every movement for public improvement, education, general uplift in moral and religious conditions, he has given his active support.
IRA M. WASHBURN. For almost forty years the name Wash- burn has had familiar associations in Jasper County with the pro- fession of medicine. The older representative of the name is Dr. Israel B. Washburn, and his son Dr. Ira M. Washburn has for the past fifteen years looked after a large and excellent practice in medicine and surgery at Rensselaer.
Both these physicians were natives of Indiana and Dr. Ira M. Washburn was born at Logansport June 23, 1874. Dr. Israel B. Washburn was also born in Cass County, a son of Moses L.
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Washburn, who was a fariner by occupation and settled in Cass County in pioneer times.
Dr. Israel B. Washburn graduated from Rush Medical College in Chicago with the class of 1861. He soon afterwards entered the army and was surgeon of the 46th Indiana Volunteer Infantry. He entered the army as a private soldier in the ranks and was gradually advanced along the line of promotion until he attained the posi- tion of surgeon in the regiment with the rank of major. He was still under twenty-five when he reached this high responsibility, and that was a splendid compliment to his ability and soldierly qualities. After the war he located in Logansport, practiced there until 1877, and then removed to Rensselaer, which was his home until his death in 1903. He was one of the organizers and the first president of the Kankakee Valley Medical Society, which later be- came the Tenth District Medical Society. He was an unusual man in his profession and kept abreast of the times by extensive read- ing and post-graduate courses. He was also a liberal contributor to the medical press and one of the foremost medical men of his day in Indiana. Dr. Israel B. Washburn married Martha A. Moore of Logansport. Of their eight children four are still living. The mother now makes her home in Virginia.
Dr. Ira M. Washburn came to Rensselaer when three years of age. He grew to manhood in this locality and from the public schools he entered Purdue University where he was graduated Bachelor of Science in 1896. In the fall of the same year he entered Rush Medical College at Chicago, but had previously read medicine under his father's direction. While a student in Chi- cago he enlisted as hospital private for the Spanish-American war. He became a member of Company K First Infantry, Illinois National Guard. Subsequently he was promoted to the rank of hospital steward. He was one of the comparatively few volunteers who got into actual service, and was present at the siege of Santiago. He received his honorable discharge from the army December 1, 1898.
Reentering Rush Medical College, he remained there until graduating M. D. in 1900. Since then for fifteen years steadily he has practiced at Rensselaer, and succeeded to much of the practice which his father had enjoyed and has built up a large and influential clientele of his own.
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He is a member of the North American Association of Rail- way. Surgeons, the Monon Railway Surgeons Association, the American Medical Association, the Indiana State Medical Associa- tion, the .Tenth District Medical Society and the Jasper and New- ton Counties Medical Society. Fraternally he is affiliated with the Masonic Order. On June 10, 1903, Doctor Washburn married Elsie M. Watson. Their four children are named Josephine, Mary, Nathaniel and Elsie.
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Henry Amsler
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HENRY AMSLER. Some of the most progressive of Jasper County's citizens came from the West rather than from the East, which is the usual movement in the progress of migration. In this class is found Henry Amsler, who is a native of Illinois, in which state he spent most of his years until his removal to Jasper County about fifteen years ago. Mr. Amsler is a veteran of the Civil war, and laid the foundation for his material prosperity in the rich farm- ing districts of Central Illinois. Though now a resident of Rens- selacr, he is one of the extensive land holders of Jasper County.
A native of Woodford County, Illinois, he was born there December 5, 1838, a son of John and Anna (Brock) Amsler. Both his parents were born in the little Republic of Switzerland, were reared and married there, and while able to provide for their needs by the simple and limited possibilities of farm husbandry in the old country, they were induced by the promise of greater oppor- tunities in the New World to come to America, and accomplished that journey, then a very difficult performance, during the closing ycars of the decade of the '20s. There were no steamships cross- ing the Atlantic at that time, and the sailing vessel on which they took passage was two months on the voyage. For about four years they lived in Pennsylvania, then moved west and for one year farmed in what is now a part of the City of Peoria, Illinois. From there they went to Woodford County and later to Tazewell County, where they spent the remaining days of their lives. They were the parents of nine children, one of whom was born in Switzerland, and four of them are still living.
The youth and early manhood of Henry Amsler was spent in assisting in the work of the home farm in Illinois. His entire attendance at school did not aggregate more than eighteen months. At the age of twenty-one he started out for himself, and as might be truthfully said he began at the bottom of the ladder of life, and with the exception of the time while he was in the army has always followed farming and agricultural pursuits. For about ten years he was engaged in agriculture in Woodford County, but with that exception his home was in Livingston County, Illinois, until his removal to Jasper County. In August, 1901, he came to this county, and has since had his home in Rensselaer, but owns and looks after the cultivation and management of about 700 acres of land in the county.
On November 11, 1866, Mr. Amsler married Miss Emma J. Clark. She was born in Franklin County, New York, January I, 1849, a daughter of Jonas and Martha ( Mills) Clark, who spent their declining years in Jasper County with Mr. and Mrs. Amsler. They both died here, and each was about ninety-three years of age at the time. Mr. and Mrs. Amsler have become the parents of five chil- dren. Bert married Miss Eliza Clark, and they have four children : Myrtle, who married Floyd Spain, and they have one child, Bert, two months old, Ralph, William and Geraldine. James Vol. 11-2
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Amsler, the second son, married Miss Nettie Eldred, and their three children are Theodore, Della and Sylvester. Iva married Jesse Car- valho, and they have two children, Milton and Lorene. Myrtle mar- ried Irving Jones, and they have six children, Josephine, Mildred, Lewis, Gerald, Clark and Louise. Floyd married Miss Opal Sei- bert, and their only child is Floyd Seibert. Mrs. Amsler, the mother of these children, has ever been faithful to her religious duties in the Methodist Episcopal Church, in which she is an official in the Ladies' Aid Society and the Ladies Foreign Missionary Society.
In politics Mr. Amsler has supported the republican candidates since casting his first vote for Lincoln in 1860. When the Civil war threatened the disruption of the Union he enlisted at one of the critical times in the struggle on August 27, 1862, in Company F of the Eighty-fifth Illinois Infantry. He went to the front at Louis- ville, Kentucky, and a few days later was first under fire in the Battle of Perryville, Kentucky. . His regiment participated in a number of minor engagements and also in the great battle of Stone River, though owing to illness Mr. Amsler was not present at that engagement. Later he fought at Missionary Ridge and was also on the expedition sent to relieve Knoxville. He rejoined Sherman's command in time to participate in the great campaign through North- ern Georgia, and was in much of the hundred days' fighting between Chattanooga and Atlanta, and participated in the siege and fall of Atlanta, one of the chief strategic centers of the Confederacy. After the capture of Atlanta he continued with Sherman's armies in their splendid march to the sea, cutting a swath across the Empire State of Georgia sixty miles wide, thence went up through the Caro- linas, and ended his military career in the Grand Review at Wash- ington. He was discharged with the rank of sergeant in July, 1865, after nearly three years of continuous service. Mr. Amsler is one of the esteemed members of the Grand Army of the Republic in Jasper County, and he and his wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
JUDSON H. PERKINS. The present clerk of the Jasper County Circuit Court has been identified by residence with Newton and Jasper counties for more than thirty-five years. His career before coming to Indiana was passed largely as a teacher, and in Jasper and Newton counties he was for a long time a successful agricultur- ist, and for more than twenty years has been a resident of Rensselaer and was engaged in business until his election to his present office. Mr. Perkins is a well informed and courteous offi- cial, a master of the details of his office, and has succeeded in his ambition in making the performance of his duties an important factor in the smooth and expeditious administration of justice in his county.
Judson H. Perkins was born in Michigan on a farm near Adrian in Lenawee County May 8, 1847. His parents were Elmeron
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and Eliza B. (Church) Perkins, his father a native of Warren County, New York, and his mother of Eastern New York. Elmeron Perkins was a farmer, and became a pioneer of Southern Michi- gan, settling in Lenawee County of that state about the middle of the decade of the '30s. He continued to live in Michigan until 1856, and then moved out to Grundy County, Illinois, where he died November 19, 1881. Of a family of five children three are still living.
Judson H. Perkins was nine years old when the family went to Illinois, and he grew to manhood in that state. By a good deal of self-sacrifice and hard work he accomplished his carly ambition to secure a liberal education. He attended country schools and also the public schools at Morris, Illinois, the Morris Classical Institute, and finished his training in the Illinois State Normal School at Bloomington. In the meantime he had qualified for teaching and for several years alternated between the schoolroom in which he was instructor and the institutions in which he was pursuing his own higher education. For fourteen school years Mr. Perkins did some very able work as a teacher in Illinois, five years of that time being spent as superintendent of the Gardner Public Schools.
On March 31, 1875, he married Miss Ada Brumbach. Four years later, in 1879, he came to Newton County, Indiana, where he had previously purchased land, and began the work of its develop- ment and continued as an agriculturist in that county until the spring of 1891. He then sold his Newton County property and moved to Marion Township in Jasper County, where he continued farming until 1893. In that year he came into Rensselaer, and was engaged in the windmill and pump business at the county seat until 1912.
In the meantime, in 1910, Mr. Perkins, who for many years has been interested in local affairs and a figure in local politics, was elected to the office of Circuit Court clerk and took up the active duties of that office in 1912. In 1914 he was reelected, but at this writing has not yet begun his second term. He is a republican, and a member of the Baptist Church.
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