USA > Indiana > Elkhart County > A twentieth century history and biographical record of Elkhart County, Indiana > Part 48
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Mr. Brown has been an active factor in the business enterprises of his town ever since locating here. In 1901 he organized the local telephone company known as the Wakarusa Telephone Exchange, which has al- ready over two hundred subscribers and has connections with Nappanee, South Bend, Goshen. Elkbart. Millersburg, New Paris and other local points, besides the surrounding country. The company is capitalized at ten thousand dollars, with the following officers: C. W. Miller, presi- (lent : C. C. Piatt, vice president : and Frank W. Brown, secretary, treas- nrer and manager. Mr. Brown's office is located over the Exchange Bank. He has a nice law library, and is in every way equipped for the successful conduct of his profession and his business enterprises.
WILLIAM B. HILE.
William B. Hile, the well known attorney of Elkhart county, and prosecuting attorney for the thirty-fourth judicial district, has by sheer force of will and persistent energy and industry worked his way to a leading position at the Elkhart county bar. Strength of mind and body, power of concentration, and general executive ability have been distinguishing points in Mr. Hile's career, and his associates often refer to him as a "hustler," which in its definiteness of application is the highest compliment that can be paid to a man of enterprise.
Born in Ransom, Hillsdale county, Michigan, June 23. 1871, he comes of an excellent family and ancestry. His parents are George W. and Mary A. ( Stauffer ) Hile, his father a native of Summitt county. Ohio, and his mother of Center county, Pennsylvania. His paternal grandfather, William Hile, who was born in Pennsylvania and was of German lineage, settled near Akron, Ohio, where he was a blacksmith, and then a short time before the Civil war moved to Hillsdale county. Michigan. IHis wife's name was Sarah Zerbe, who was born in Ams- terdam, Holland.
George W. Hile, the father, is a veteran of the Civil war, having served three and a half years in the Sixty-fourth Ohio Volunteer In- fantry, until he was severely wounded, losing an eye at the battle of
William B. Ffile
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Missionary Ridge, after which he was honorably discharged from serv- ice. He has lived in Hillsdale county, Michigan, since his marriage, and has had a successful business career, for many years having been traveling salesman for the Walter A. Wood Machinery Company. He is an active Republican. He was married in Ohio, and his family con- sists of four sons and one daughter.
Spending his early years of boyhood on a farm and acquiring his preliminary education by attendance at the district schools, Mr. Hile even then had made a beginning of serious occupation, working for his father or the neighbors by the day or month. He left school at the age of fifteen and took charge of his father's farm, which he man- aged about four years. Coming to Elkhart in the fall of 1889, he be- gan work in the bakery of Hile and Chamberlain, his uncles, continued at that during the winter and for the following summer drove a de- livery wagon in and around Elkhart. For over four years, until Sep- tember, 1895, he was in the office of the engine dispatcher of the Lake Shore Railroad. Having in the meantime made up his mind to follow the legal profession and having carried on his studies to this end while at other employment. on leaving the railroad office he entered the law department of the University of Michigan, and by working his way through to pay expenses he graduated in 1898. prepared to enter upon the active practice of his profession. He came back to Elkhart and opened a law office in partnership with E. A. Baker, who had been his classmate and roommate in college, and they soon came into possession of a large practice. \ stanch Republican in politics, in 1900 Mr. Hile was nominated and elected prosecuting attorney for the thirty-fourth judicial district ( Elkhart and LaGrange counties) and was renomi- nated and elected for the second term in 1902.
In 1903 Mr. Hile married Miss Esteela M. Stone, of Elkhart. Fraternally he is a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.
FRANK P. ABBOTT.
Prominent in the business circles of Goshen and esteemed in every relation of life, Frank P. Abbott was born in Essex county, Massachu- setts, and is of English descent. His grandfather, Benjamin F. Abbott, was a native of Providence, Rhode Island, but spent the greater part of his life in Massachusetts. Ilis son and the father of our subject. Will- iam \\. Abbott, was born in the last-named commonwealth. In 1862 he came to Elkhart county Indiana, and five years later, in 1867, took up his abode in Goshen, where he engaged in the manufacture of pumps. When about forty-five years of age his health began to fail, and he re- tired from the active duties of business, his life's labors being ended in death when he had reached the sixty-fourth milestone of earth's pilgrim- age. His wife, who bore the maiden name of Susan B. Rand, was a native of Massachusetts and a daughter of Parker Rand of that state.
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She, too, was of English descent, and her death occurred at the age of seventy-five years. In their family were six children, three daughters and three sons, but one of the number died in infancy and the youngest daughter died at the age of eighteen years. Those living are: Frank P., whose name introduces this review : Mrs. Fannie Chamberlain ; Will- iam H., a resident of New York city: and Mrs. Ruy Stockton, of New York.
Frank P. Abbott was about six years of age when brought by his parents to Elkhart county, Indiana, and to its public schools he is in- (lebted for his early educational privileges. He remained at home until his marriage, which occurred on the 27th of October, 1880, when Jen- nette Hascall became his wife. She is a daughter of Chauncey S. Has- call, one of the early settlers and pioneer merchants of Elkhart county, having been one of the first to engage in that line of trade in Goshen. Mrs. Abbott is his eldest living daughter, and was born in Goshen Au- gust 29. 1854, and she, too, received her education in its public schools. She has become the mother of ten children, and the eight now living are Ruby, Ellis, Florence, Frank, John, Jennette, Dorothy and William. The two who have passed away are Nellie and Gertrude.
After entering upon his business career Mr. Abbott spent three years as a clerk and in driving a delivery wagon, and for several years also worked for his father in his pump manufactory. In 1881 he went to the south and in New River, Tennessee, was superintendent in a pump manufacturing plant, which he conducted until 1884, in that year entering the employ of John H. Lesh & Company, buying logs and selling lumber. In 1890 the Leshi, Prouty & Abbott Lumber Company was organized at East Chicago, of which Mr. Abbott became the manager. and at the death of Mr. Lesh became the president and general manager of the company. In addition thereto he also has interests in several large lumber companies in the south, and is vice president of the State Bank of Goshen, also a director in the Elkhart County Loan & Trust Company, of Goshen. Throughout his entire career his business ability has been constantly manifested in one phase or another, showing unlim- ited possibilities, and the extensive concerns of which he is now the head are monuments to his wonderful power. He is a stanch and life- long Republican, and has ever taken an active interest in public affairs.
FRANK JACKSON.
Perhaps no character stands out more conspicuously in the early history of Elkhart county than that of the famous old Indian fighter. pioneer, landowner, farmer, man of affairs and public position, Col. John Jackson. Rugged and forceful in character, picturesque in personality. a man of action and influence, he has left the impress of his life and deeds upon this county in a way that challenges studied attention and brings one again and again to the consideration of his career. His per-
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sonal history and the results of his work in this county have been de- scribed at length in other portions of this volume, and are referred to here only as an introduction to the life history of his grandson, Frank Jackson, whose own career has been replete with the activity and success which has marked the Jackson family throughout, and who, further- more, deserves particular mention and interest from the citizens of this county from the fact that he resides on the veritable old Jackson home- stead which was settled by Colonel John over seventy-five years ago.
Frank Jackson was born in Jackson township-named after Colonel John-March 13. 1847. His father was Ira Jackson, a son of the pio- neer, and his mother was Susan A. (Smith ) Jackson, he being the third in their family of five children, three sons and two daughters. He is the only representative of this branch of the family now living.
Ira Jackson, the father, was born in Ross county, Ohio, November 18, 1819, and it was not until October 16, 1903, that this county was deprived of this venerable citizen. He had accompanied his parents to this county when ten years old, his father bringing the family in covered wagon and in true pioneer style across the swamps and through the dense forests which interposed all the way between their Ohio home and their destination in the not yet organized Elkhart county. At the edge of Elkhart prairie, in what later became Jackson township. Colonel Jackson entered a hundred and sixty acres of government land. This was the limit of the amount which could be taken up by one individual, but the Colonel acquired a great block of land in that vicinity by having his friends make entries which he later purchased. Frank Jackson lives on the original one hundred and sixty, and his home is on the identical spot where stood the log cabin crected in 1828. One of the valuable souvenirs in his possession is a walking cane, carved from a log which once formed a side of the log cabin, and on which is the following in- scription :
"Col. John Jackson. Settled on Elkhart prairie Feb., 1829."
Among the other interesting relics preserved at the Jackson home is a long sickle bar from one of the first McCormick machines ever used in the county. A notable collection of old deeds such as can hardly be duplicated anywhere forms another feature of the historical archives which Mr. Jackson is zealously preserving. There are ten of these parchment deeds, seven of them executed under the hand and seal of President Andrew Jackson, being dated in 1831 and 1832, and the other three deeds were executed in the years 1837-38 by President Martin Van Buren. These documents are the first titles ever drawn to a large area of land in this part of the county, and their historical interest and value will increase from vear to year. Mr. Frank Jackson has some of his father's old transcribed books in arithmetic, which were all written
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with a goosequill pen and are dated in 1838-40. This was in the days when the pounds, shillings and pence signs were used in the examples instead of dollars and cents.
Indians and wild animals and game were equally plentiful during the first years that the Jackson family lived in this county, nearly all their land was turned over by the old-style wooden plows and ox teams, grain was threshed out by the treading process or the flail, flax skutching and the use of spinning wheels were familiar customs, and all the various modes of life described elsewhere in this volume were experienced and witnessed to by the Jackson family.
Ira Jackson was throughout life one of the stanch and ever-ready supporters of old-fashioned Democracy. Fraternally he affiliated with the Masonic lodge, No. 12, at Goshen. He and his good wife were mem- bers and active supporters of the Methodist church. The mother of Frank Jackson, who was born in New York state January 16. 1823, and who came to Elkhart county when a girl of fifteen years, died September 10, 1889. after a happy wedded life of forty-eight years.
Mr. Frank Jackson acquired his education in the common schools and from one term in the Goshen high school, and from youth up has won his way by strenuous application and hard labor. He lived at home until his majority, at which time he entered the employ of his brother, a merchant in Ligonier, as salesman, and four years later invested his capital in business and was for twenty years one of the enterprising and successful business men of Ligonier. At the request of his father he returned to the old homestead and resumed agricultural pursuits, to which he has devoted his energies up to the present time.
October 6, 1875. Mr. Jackson married Miss Emma Dunning, and the five children born to them are all living. William C .. who completed his education in the Ligonier high school and who is now connected with a large clothing house of Chicago, married Miss Harriet Andrews and has one child. Stanley. Ira B., who was educated in the Ligonier seheols, is also connected with a large elothing firm, buit makes his home with his parents. Clara, who received her education in the Ligonier and Goshen high schools, graduated as professional nurse from the Baptist Hospital at Chieago and is now on constant duty as one of the successful nurses in that city. John R., a mechanic and resident of Waterford Mills, married Miss Pearl Castetter and has a little daughter. Virginia. Arthur D., the youngest of the home cirele, is in the fifth grade of the public schools and is one of the brightest students, his grades always averaging over ninety.
Mrs. Jackson, who was born in Fairfield county, Ohio. January 20. 1854. is a daughter of Louis I. and Anna ( Huber ) Dunning. There were six children, two sons and four daughters. in the family, and the four still living are : Jesse L .. postmaster at Ligonier, and is married : Lucinda, who resides at Goshen and is the widow of William A. Jackson. a brother of Frank: Mrs. Frank Johnson ; and Elizabeth, a resident of
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HISTORY OF ELKHART COUNTY
Ligonier. Mrs. Jackson's father, who was born at Millerton, Dutchess county, New York, in 1815, and died April 23. 1900, was one of the able men of this locality and came from an old New York family whose antecedents and record are of the best. flis grandmother was a sister of William Cullen Bryant, and the family was represented by several of its members in the Revolutionary war. Mrs. Jackson's father was a Republican in politics. Her mother. also a native of Fairfield county. Ohio, died October 31, 1901, and they were both members of the Pres- byterian church. Mrs. Jackson came to Noble county with her parents when she was five years old and was reared there, receiving her educa- tion in the Ligonier schools.
Mr. Jackson is a Democrat in politics, and has fraternal affiliations with Lodge No. 185 of the Masons at Ligonier. His wife is a member of the Methodist church. The Jackson farm contains one hundred and forty-three acres, and their frame residence is, in part, one of the oldest if not the oldest house in Elkhart county.
J. S. INKS, M. D.
Dr. J. S. Inks, engaged in the practice of medicine in Nappanee, where his capability has found ready recognition in a large patronage, was born in Columbus, Franklin county, Ohio, April 14, 1848. His paternal grandfather. Jehu Inks, built near Benton, Indiana, a sawmill and corn cracker-the first of the kind in the locality-and thus con- tributed to the early material development of the county. Thomas Inks. father of Dr. Inks, was likewise a native of Franklin county, Ohio, and was brought to Elkhart county in 1829, when he was a young lad. Here he was reared amid the usual surroundings and conditions of pioneer life. He learned the trades of stone and marble cutting and later he engaged in merchandising. He made his home for some years in or near Wakarusa and built the first house in that place. In 1848 he re- moved to Ohio, but after a short time returned to this county. where he remained until 1862. In response to the country's need, he then enlisted for service in the Union army and for three years followed the stars and stripes upon the battlefields of the south. With the exception of seven years his entire life was spent in this county, and he was numbered among the pioneer settlers of Elkhart county, who ever manifested a sincere and helpful interest in its progress and improvement. His polit- ical allegiance was given the Democratic party. In early manhood he married Elizabeth Moore, whose family came to Elkhart county about 1838. Mr. Inks passed away at the age of seventy-seven years, while his wife died at the age of seventy-five years. Their family numbered four sons and three daughters, and with the exception of one who died in infancy all reached adult age.
Dr. Inks. the second child and eldest son, was a pupil in the public schools of Elkhart county, also attended the first normal school of Elk-
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hart county, m Elkhart City, and completed his more specifically literary education in the Northern Indiana Normal School at Valparaiso. Choos- ing the medical profession as a life work, be prepared for practice by a course in the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Chicago, the med- ical department of the Illinois University, and was graduated with the class of 1884. He practiced through the succeeding four years at Waka- rusa. Elkhart county, and then came to Nappanee, where he has since remained. his practice growing with the passing years until the extent of his business indicates in unmistakable terms the large measure of confidence reposed in him by the public.
On the oth of May. 1879. Dr. Inks was married to Miss Mary Yant. a daughter of Andrew and Eveline ( Tower) Yant. Three chil- dren have been born to them : Ella, the wife of Elmer Gore, of Elk- hart county : Charles A., a physician, who is associated with his father in practice : and Nellie, who died in childhood.
Dr. and Mrs. Inks hokl membership in the German Baptist church and are deeply interested in its work and the extension of its influence. Ile gives his political support to the Democracy, and under President Cleveland served as United States examining surgeon for six years. He is also surgeon for the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad and he belongs to the County. State and American Medical Associations, whereby he continu- ally broadens his knowledge and promotes his usefulness through the interchange of ideas and experiences in the meetings of those organiza- tions. Dr. Inks was the first health officer elected in Nappanee and is still the incumbent of this office.
GEORGE STUCKMAN.
George Stuckman, for many years an honored and respected citizen of Elkhart county, was born in Union township. February 22, 1838. His father, Martin Stuckman, was a native of Pennsylvania and in early manhood came westward to northwestern Indiana, establishing his home in Elkhart county when Goshen contained only a few log cabins and when the work of improvement and progress seemed scarcely begun. His was the first marriage celebrated in Union township, and he cast the first vote in the township. In fact his name is closely associated with the early history of the county, and is now found upon the roll of honored dead. He took a helpful part in promoting early improvement and aided in laying broad and deep the foundation for the present upbuild- ing and prosperity of this portion of the state. He passed away at the very venerable age of ninety-seven years.
George Stuckman was born, reared and educated in Union town- ship and taught school for twenty terms, following that profession suc- cessfully through the winter seasons, while in the summer months he engaged in farming. He had the ability to impart clearly and concisely to others the knowledge that he had acquired, and he did much to ad-
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vance the standard of education in this part of the state. He has for a number of years been extensively engaged in bee culture and now has one hundred stands of bees, making a specialty of the raising of queen bees, which he ships to all parts of the United States and to Canada. He has made a close study of the business and has comprehensive knowl- edge connected with the apiary and of the best methods of caring for the bees and the honey.
George Stuckman was united in marriage to Miss Emma Mc- Laughlin, who has made a notable record as a teacher. She has taught more than one hundred terms, and in addition to her educational work that has covered more than a half century, she has reared a family of two sons and a daughter. She began teaching at the age of fourteen years in 1851. in a little log schoolhouse about three miles from Milford in Kosciusko county, the building being fourteen by sixteen feet. Nearly all of her teaching since that time has been in Elkhart and Kosciusko counties. She was born in Juniata county. Pennsylvania, and removed to Milford with her parents in 1845. She did not have the privilege of attending school after she was fourteen years of age, and she took ad- vantage of county normals such as were provided for teachers in the earlier days, and in later years she availed herself of the advantages of the Northern Indiana Normal School, living for twelve years at Val- paraiso and attending school there between terms. She has always kept abreast with the best thought of her profession by reading the educa- tional periodicals and keeping in close touch with those whom she knew to be efficient in the work. As a result she is to-day in demand by trustees who seek the best instructors. While in Valparaiso she wrote monthly articles on government and school discipline for the college school journal. She has also traveled quite extensively throughout the west and has thus broadened her knowledge and experience. To Mr. and Mrs. Stuckman were born seven children, of whom four have passed away. William was one of triplets, the other two having died. He was quartermaster in the regular army and is now in New York city. Edwin D. is engaged in the practice of medicine in Nappanee. Ethel is the wife of Melvin Strycker, of Chicago, and is a musician and teacher of music of considerable note.
George Stuckman is now practically living retired. He is a strong temperance man and is a stanch supporter of the Prohibition party. He has never used either tobacco or liquor in any way, but has kept his life clean and pure in thought, purpose and conduct. He belongs to the Progressive Brethren church, and his Christian principles have been a permeating influence in his relations with his fellow men. He has been a life-long resident of Indiana, having spent almost the entire time in Elkhart county, and he is well known in this portion of the state.
Dr. Edwin D. Stuckman, the younger son of the family, and now an active and successful physician of Nappanee, was born in Locke town- ship. Elkhart county. March 10. 1868. He was reared at the place of
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his nativity, and after attending the common schools he pursued a course of instruction at Mount Morris, Illinois. He afterward engaged in teaching for seven years, spending two years of that time at Lesterville, South Dakota, about sixteen miles northwest of Yankton. Entering the Northern Indiana Normal School at Valparaiso, he was graduated in pharmacy in 1892, and then preparing for the practice of medicine and surgery he completed a course in the Indiana Medical College at Indiana- polis by graduation on the 29th of March, 1895. He located at New Paris, where he remained for three years, and since that time has been in Nappanee, where as a general practitioner he has built up an extensive practice that is profitable and creditable. He is continually adding to his knowledge through research and investigation, and his efficiency is accepted by general consent throughout his community.
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