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 8
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 8
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
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
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JOHN HIGGINS "The Drummer Boy of the Fifty-first Indiana Regiment of Infantry in 1861."
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judiciously and in his hands the public finances of the county are safe. Fraternally he is a Royal Arch Mason at Goodland and a member of the Eastern Star at Remington and also an Encamp- ment degree Odd Fellow at Remington, Indiana.
JOHN HIGGINS, One of the oldest and most honored citizens of Kentland is John Higgins. He is probably one of the youngest survivors who saw actual service in the great War of the Rebellion. Ile was hardly in his teens when he became a drummer boy. For fully half a century he has been a hard working industrious me- chanic and business man, and is still prosecuting his work vigorously at the head of an insurance, law and abstract office.
As a boy and young man he came into close touch with the hard circumstances of life. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, April 24, 1849, a son of Michael and Julia Higgins, of Irish descent. At the age of seven he was left an orphan, and for three years lived in the institution of the Children's Aid Society at New York City. In December, 1859, he came west with a carload of other children, and was adopted by Samuel Bramble of Tippecanoe County. With that man, for whose memory he has always had a high esteem, he made his home almost continuously until 1865. In the mean- time he gained some education and served an apprenticeship at the tinner's trade under George W. Smith.
On October 10, 1861, Mr. Higgins enlisted as a drummer boy in Company B of the Fifty-first Indiana Regiment of Infantry. A child among men, he served with faithfulness and with the courage of a man until March 22, 1863. Just about half a century ago he moved to Kentland and took up the work of his trade as tinner, which he followed actively until 1888. Mr. Higgins is one of the few men whose recollections cover almost the entire period of Kentland's history. When he first came here there was one busi- ness block, a hotel and five or six stores, with a very few residences on the townsite proper. His own business affairs have prospered and he has lent a helping hand to all movements for improve- ment and has served many individuals with kindness and a spirit of brotherly helpfulness.
In 1888 Mr. Higgins was elected county recorder, and filled that office four years, at the end of which time he was re-elected for another like term, this time without opposition. He then went into partnership with Frank A. Comparet, in the law, insurance and abstract business. Their association was continued from January, 1897, until Mr. Comparet's death in 1905. Since then for the past ten years Mr. Higgins has continued alone in business. This is his chief occupation and interest, and he has made his office an important service in the county.
In politics he is a republican, and besides his work as county recorder he served as member of the town board three different times. In 1907, he was appointed county attorney for Newton
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County, Indiana, serving in that capacity for seven years. He is affiliated with the Lodge and Chapter of Masonry in Kentland and with the Council at Monticello. His family are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
On September 4, 1878, Mr. Higgins married Annie Wittenberg, who was born and reared in White County, Indiana, a daughter of Charles and Caroline Wittenberg. Mrs. Wittenberg is yet living in White County, but the father is deceased. Mr. and Mrs. Higgins are the parents of three children : Frederick B., Harry L. and Ruth B. Frederick, who died April 20, 1916, was a resident of Los Angeles, California, where he was engaged in the railroad busi- ness. He was a graduate of the Kentland High School. Harry L., also educated in the Kentland High School, is private secretary to the general manager of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company at Pittsburg. The daughter Ruth is a high school graduate, and also pursued a literary and musical course at De Pauw University.
JASPER GUY. Prominent among the contingent of able and successful lawyers who are well upholding the prestige of the bar of Jasper County stands this well known citizen of Remington, who has held for more than twenty-five consecutive years the office of village attorney of this place, who controls a substantial and repre- sentative law business and who is local attorney for the Pennsyl- vania Railroad Company. Further interest attaches to his career by reason of the fact that he is a native son of Jasper County and a scion of a family that was founded in Jasper County nearly seventy years ago.
On the homestead farm of his parents, in Barkley Township, this county, Mr. Guy was born on the 15th of August, 1850, and he is one of the two surviving members of a family of eight children born to Samuel and Adaline (Cave) Guy. The father was born in Delaware County, Ohio, in 1815, a member of one of the sterling pioneer families of the old Buckeye State, and the latter of whom was born in Kentucky, in 1825, their marriage having been solemnized in Tippecanoe County. Indiana, where they remained until about the year 1848, when they came to Jasper County and became pioneer settlers in Barkley Township, where Samuel Guy devoted his attention to the reclamation and cultivation of his pioneer farmstead for the ensuing eight years. He then removed with his family to Medaryville, Pulaski County, in which locality he continued his activities as an agriculturist and stock-grower until about the year 1869, when the family returned to Jasper County and established a home in the village of Remington. Here the devoted wife and mother died in 1870, and Samuel Guy, who later contracted a second marriage, passed to the life eternal in 1885, shortly after having attained to the psalmist's span of three score years and ten.
Jasper Guy acquired his early education in the schools of Jas-
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per and Pulaski counties and remained at the parental home until the removal of the family to Remington, when, as a youth of about nineteen years, he went to the State of Iowa, where he completed his higher education by a thorough course in Cornell College, at Mount Vernon, an institution in which he was graduated as a mem- ber of the class of 1873 and from which he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts. He then returned to Indiana, where he became a successful and popular representative of the pedagogic profes- sions, his effective services as a teacher having continued until 1877 and during one terin it having been his privilege to be a mem- ber of the corps of teachers in the public schools of Remington. Both in youth and in later years has Mr. Guy been ambitious and untiring in the accumulation of knowledge, and he looks upon the entire period of human existence as one of progressive education. Thus, while 'still engaged in teaching, he devoted himself as- siduously to the study of medicine, but he finally gave up the idea of preparing himself for the medical profession and during vaca- tion periods while teaching school he acquired an excellent . knowledge of pharmacy by serving as clerk in drug stores.
In 1877, well fortified in technical knowledge, Mr. Guy engaged in the drug business at Remington, and with this line of enterprise he continued to be identified about twelve years. In the meanwhile his ambition and versatile talents were shown by the substantial progress he had made in the absorption and assimilation of the involved science of jurisprudence, he having come to the determina- tion to prepare himself adequately for the practice of law. He was admitted to the bar of his native state in 1888, and since that time has been engaged in the active general practice of his profes- sion at Remington, where he now has precedence as the virtual dean of the local bar and where his close application, and his recog- nized ability as a resourceful trial lawyer and well fortified coun- selor, have gained to him unequivocal success, as well as high standing at the bar of this section of the state. As previously stated, he is local attorney for the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and has been for more than a quarter of a century retained con- secutively in the office of village attorney. In connection with his law practice he has developed a substantial insurance and loan busi- ness. Mr. Guy has been a leader in local sentiment and action and has wielded much influence in the furtherance of enterprises and measures that have inured greatly to the benefit of his attractive little home city and that of the community in general. His political allegiance is given to the republican party and he is an effective exponent of its principles and policies, though he has never been imbued with ambition for political office. Both he and his wife are zealous members of the Christian Church of Remington.
In 1874 Mr. Guy wedded Miss Emma Hartman, and the cherished and devoted wife of his youth continued his companion and helpmate for twenty years, when the marital ties were severed Vol. 11-5
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by her death, in 1894. Concerning the children of this union brief record is here given : Grace became, in 1897, the wife of Eugene Dingman, and she was summoned to the life eternal in 1906, being survived by her husband and one son, Frank; Pearl is the wife of John W. Reed, one of the managers of a leading mercantile estab- lishment in the city of Indianapolis; Homer holds the position of superintendent of the signal service department of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad Company, with headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri; Leroy died in 1906, at the age of twenty- two years; Myrtle is the wife of Augustus Leonhardi, of Los Angeles, California, and they have one son, Summer; Bessie, the wife of Robert Gardner, of Bennettsville, Indiana; and Dale is employed as a lineman in the service of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company.
In 1909 Mr. Guy contracted a second marriage, when Helene A. Roades became his wife, and they have one daughter, Geraldine. Mr. Guy has also been a member of the Indiana Bar, since October, 1912.
JAMES A. WASHBURN. In 1915 was recorded eighteen years of Mr. Washburn's continuous residence in the attractive and vigorous village of Remington, Jasper County, and during this entire period he has here been a prominent factor in the grain business, with which he is still actively identified. He is one of the liberal and progressive business men of Remington and his civic loyalty is shown in his constant and helpful interest in all that touches the welfare of the community.
From the time of his nativity has Mr. Washburn been a resi- dent of northwestern Indiana, and he was born at Kentland, the judicial center of Newton County, on the 6th of August, 1870, a scion of an old and honored Indiana family. He is a son of Perry and Elizabeth (Clayton) Washburn, who established their home at Kentland in 1869, the father later becoming a prosperous and repre- sentative farmer in Benton County, where his death occurred. His widow now resides at Kentland, and of the nine children seven still survive the honored father.
James A. Washburn found the period of his boyhood and early youth compassed by the influence of the home farm, in Benton County, and parental admonition as well as personal appreciation caused him to make good use of the advantages afforded to him in the district schools. After leaving the farm he acquired his novitiate in practical business by entering the employ of Warren T. McCray, who was engaged in the buying and shipping of grain at Kentland. A year later, in 1897, Mr. Washburn, as a partner in the grain business of the firm of McCray, Morrison & Company, became its representative at Remington, and in 1899 the substan- tial business here conducted by the firm made but consistent the changing of the commercial title of the concern to the Remington
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Grain Company. In October, 1910, the business was sold to the Remington Farmers' Elevator Company, and at this juncture in his career Mr. Washburn became associated in an active way with the Frank Kelley Grain Company, with which representative Remington corporation he has since maintained his alliance. He is an acknowl- edged authority in all that pertains to the grain business and is one of its prominent representatives in this part of his native state.
In politics Mr. Washburn accords unqualified allegiance to the democratic party and he is an influential factor in its local activities, besides which he has held various public offices of minor order, and in 1914 was his party's unsuccessful candidate for the office of county commissioner. He is affiliated with the Remington lodge and chapter of York Rite of the time-honored Masonic fraternity and also holds membership in the local lodge of the Knights of Pythias. Both he and his wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
October 21, 1896, was the date on which was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Washburn to Miss Lydia Shonkwiler, of Raub, Benton County, and their pleasant home in Remington is a center of generous hospitality. They have five children: Nina, Will, Lowell, Lucille and Grace.
JOIN FENWICK. Among the prominent residents of Carpen- ter Township is John Fenwick, general farmer and stock raiser, but now living retired, whose home has been in Jasper County for . more than forty years. He has been a witness to much of the growth and development that have occurred in this time, and as the years have passed he has so directed his labors that success has resulted and he is enabled to enjoy a competence won by hard work and a strict integrity.
A native of England, he was born in North Lincolnshire May 25, 1847, a son of Edward and Mary J. Fenwick. He grew up in his native English country, gained a limited equipment of scholastic knowledge there, and from an early age has been closely acquainted with hard work as a means of pushing oneself forward in the world. In 1870 he emigrated to America, and for a couple of years worked in different forms of labor near Joliet, Illinois.
In 1873 he came to Jasper County, locating in Jordan Town- ship, and has been identified with this section of Indiana ever since. On August 9, 1877, Mr. Fenwick married Mrs. Mary A. Harris Sage, widow of the late George Sage, and eight children were born of that union, of whom three are living : Mary E., the wife of John Eck, a farmer of Carpenter Township, and they have three chil- dren, Mary, Nellie and William; Warren W. Sage, a farmer who is married and resides near Rensselaer; and John W. Sage, a resi- dent of Goodland and an agriculturist. He has been twice married, first to Della Farmer, and they had one daughter, Ora, who is a teacher, and his second marriage was with Irma Heath, and they have a son, John R. Mrs. Fenwick was born in Baltimore County,
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Maryland, April 25, 1838, a daughter of Thomas and Mary (Alban) Harris, and one of their five living children, namely: Ellen, the widow of Isaac Westfall and a resident of Kansas City, Missouri; Mrs. Fenwick; John, who is a resident of Remington, a farmer, a democrat and a member of the Christian Church; Ann Eliza, wife of Van Buren Hines, a retired farmer living in Arkansas; and Violet E., widow of Joseph Glosser, of Remington. Both Mr. and Mrs. Harris were natives of Maryland, and they came to Indiana when their daughter Mrs. Fenwick, was sixteen years of age. Mr. Harris, who was a tiller of the soil, accumulated a farm of 160 acres in Carpenter Township. He affiliated with the democratic party and was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Both he and his wife were laid to rest in the Egypt cemetery in Car- penter Township.
Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick have had two children. The daughter Lucy is now deceased. Joseph Franklin, the only survivor, is a resident of Jordan Township, and by his marriage to Anna Wort- ley, has five children named Edith, Opal, Fern, Oral and an infant still unnamed. Joseph F. Fenwick is a member of the Church of the Living God and is affiliated with the democratic party.
In politics Mr. Fenwick has identified himself with the demo- cratic party since gaining American citizenship, though the seek- ing of office has been furthest from his desires or aspirations. He has played the part of a worthy citizen without striving for the honors that go with public office, and has always favored local improvements. He and his wife are both members of the Church of the Living God. At the present time Mr. and Mrs. Fenwick live retired in the village of Remington, where they have had a com- fortable home since the fall of 1905. Mr. Fenwick owns eighty acres of first class farmning land and also owns his home and other property in the town.
HUME L. SAMMONS. Any community can be grateful for the possession of such citizens as Hume L. Sammons. He is a lawyer by profession, and in fifteen years has established a reputation for sound ability and patient and careful handling of every trust. He has proved a real leader in public affairs. It is not his disposition to rest content with present achievement, especially when the standard of public improvements is lower than it ought to be. Hence he has done much to bring Kentland forward as a progressive. municipality, and at the present time is serving as Kentland's post- master.
A native of this section of Indiana, he was born near Morocco in Newton County April 2, 1871, a son of Nicholas D. and Margaret (Woolnough) Sammons. His parents were of English ancestry and were born in Canada, near Niagara Falls, Ontario. They were reared, educated and married there, and became the parents of four children. James B., now deceased, who was drowned in 1880
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in Puget Sound, while a member of the United States Regular Army; Emma V., who is the wife of Judge Darroch of Kentland; George M., a merchant at Milford, Illinois; and Hume L.
It was about 1860 that the Sammons family inoved to Newton County and located in Beaver Township. The father followed farming and stock raising and general trading and during the period of the Civil war was employed as a bookkeeper for the Sandwich Manufacturing Company. Later he taught school for two years in Newton County. He was also for a time engaged in work for Mr. Young. About 1876 he entered the drug busi- ness at Donovan, Illinois, and from there removed to Milford, Illinois, and conducted a hotel until he retired about 1896. His death occurred in Milford, Illinois, March 26, 1906, while his wife passed away April 8, 1908. Both are buried at Milford. Nicholas D. Sammons was one of the organizers and a charter member of the Masonic Lodge at Morocco, and his wife was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Hume L. Sammons acquired his early education at Milford, Illinois. He has had a great variety of experience and has acquired a large knowledge of men and affairs. As a boy he apprenticed himself to learn the printer's trade, beginning at sixteen and at the age of nincteen was enjoying the responsibilities as editor and fore- man of the principal paper at Milford. At the age of twenty-two he was one of the proprietors and was managing editor of a daily paper at Kankakee.
. It was in 1896 that Mr. Sammons removed to Kentland and took up the study of law with the firm of Cummings & Darroch. After admission to the bar he started independent practice in 1901, and has now been an active member of the bar for fifteen years. For a democrat in a normally republican community Mr. Sammons has accomplished the seeming impossible on several occasions as head of the democratic organization and has exercised a potent influence in public affairs. In 1913 he was appointed to the office of postmaster. Some years earlier as a member of the local town board he undertook to remedy certain conditions and succeeded admirably. Poor city pavements were replaced with good ones, bad wooden sidewalks with cement, and in many ways the general appearance and convenience of the little community were thor- oughly changed for the better. Some ill feeling was aroused by such progressiveness, but in the end his work was thoroughly appre- ciated and some years later he was unanimously elected as a non- partisan candidate for the town board. Again he proved a valuable factor in a later stage of town improvements, and brought about the construction of the splendid new waterworks, established boulevard lights and sanitary drinking fountains in the business district of Kentland. Mr. Sammons in conjunction with C. C. Kent organ- ized Kent State Bank in 1910, and has been a director of that insti- tution since its organization. He is now president of the school
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board, vice president of the library board and was a member of the building committee which constructed the local library build- ing.
On July 4, 1897, he married Miss Elizabeth Fenwick, of Kanka- kee, Illinois. They are the parents of two children: George F., born August 11, 1898, who was graduated from the Kentland High School with the class of 1916; and Florence M., born August 22, 1902, a member of the freshman class of the Kentland High School.
S. G. HAND. President of the State Bank of Remington, where he has had his home for a little over ten years, Mr, Hand is a veteran railroad man, and spent the greater part of his active years as a telegraph operator and station agent in Indiana. Since coming to Remington he has been closely identified with its business and civic life.
Born at New Albany, Indiana, August 26, 1852, he is a son of L. F. Hand, who was a civil engineer by profession and served for many terms as surveyor of Floyd County, Indiana. In New Albany S. G. Hand spent the first seventeen years of his life, and in that time gained a common school education. In 1869 he went to San Pierre, and a few months later went to Grundy County, Illinois, and found work as a farm hand during the summers while he attended school in the winter. With his small savings he then took a course in telegraphy, and following that for twenty-nine years was employed as an operator and station agent at different places in Indiana, and continuously in the service of the Pennsylvania Rail- road Company. He was at Kentland for nineteen years, and while there became interested in the grain business at Remington, which brought him to that Jasper County town in 1904. He also spent two years at Toledo, Ohio, but was really there only for the purpose of giving his daughter a home while she was gaining her musical education.
Mr. Hand was one of the organizers of the State Bank of Remington, and has since been identified with its growth and prosperity. He is a republican in politics, and he and his family are members of the Presbyterian Church. In 1876 he married Miss Rachel Taylor. They have two daughters: Grace A. is the wife of Alviere Milligan, who was formerly in the banking business in Florida ; and Edith B., who is the wife of H. Pierre Branning, now presiding judge of the Eleventh Judicial District of Florida. Mr. Hand is now serving his second term as a member of the town board of Remington, while Mrs. Hand is a member of the Reming- ton Library Board.
WALTER E. JOHNSTON. A great proportion of the trade in lumber, coal and general building material handled at Remington is through the firm of C. B. Johnston & Son. They have a large sum invested in a complete stock of lumber, coal, glass, sewer pipe,
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salt, lime, cement, brick and everything known in the building line including nails and fencing materials.
The constituent members of the firm are Charles B. Johnston and his son Walter E. Johnston. On November 16, 1908, they came to Remington and bought out the Jasper County Lumber Company, and have since continued and expanded this successful concern. The Johnston family lived at Arrowsmith, Illinois, prior to their re- moval to Remington, and were in the lumber and grain business in that Illinois town for a number of years.
Charles B. Johnston was born at Branch Hill near Cincinnati, Ohio, June 16, 1848, and his son was born in the same locality December 7, 1874. Charles B. Johnston married Ida Eveland, who was also a native of Ohio. Their five children are: Walter E .; Anna G., wife of John D. Snyder, living at Hutchinson, Kansas; Margaret, at home ; Dr. C. Roy, of Decatur, Illinois ; and Ida Bertha, who is the wife of Dr. J. A. Meiner and lives at Kokomo.
Charles B. Johnston was formerly a democrat in politics, but is now a prohibitionist, and his son has followed in the same direc- tion. Walter E. Johnston is affiliated with Arrowsmith Lodge No. 737, Ancient Free and Accepted Masons, but his father is a mem- ber of no secret order. The latter is a Methodist, while Walter is a member of the Christian Church and has been superintendent of the Sunday School ever since moving to Remington. Walter E. Johnston received his high school education in Washburn, Illinois, and afterward studied both law and commercial courses at Bloom- ington, Illinois.
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