USA > Indiana > Blackford County > Blackford and Grant Counties : Indiana a chronicle of their past and present with family lineage and personal memoirs > Part 65
USA > Indiana > Grant County > Blackford and Grant Counties : Indiana a chronicle of their past and present with family lineage and personal memoirs > Part 65
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Mr. and Mrs. Bedwell are the parents of the following children: Grant H., born May 6, 1890, was educated in the public schools, was for a time an electrician and is now a clerk for the Pennsylvania Railway Company at Upland. Orville, born June 20, 1892, is a graduate of the Upland high school. He is a telegraph operator at Upland. Mary, born on Christmas day of 1893, is a graduate of the Upland high school with the class of 1912. She was afterward a student in the Marion Business College, and is now engaged in teaching in the Upland public schools. Herbert, born June 17, 1896, is now a junior in the local high school and shows the quality of his useful enterprise in the operation of a picture show at Upland. Ralph P., born April 12, 1899, is now in the local schools in the grammar department. Lillian, born March 24, 1901, died April 29, 1907. Robert Aaron was born June 2, 1913. Mrs. Bedwell is an active member of the local Quaker church.
CHARLES G. BARLEY. One of the most telling enterprises located in the city of Marion and one that gives regular employment to more than two hundred men, is the Harwood & Barley Manufacturing Company, of which Charles G. Barley is treasurer and general manager. It is no small matter to be responsible for an enterprise that means so much in dollars and cents to the city wherein it is established, and the man who directs the destinies of such an establishment can not fail to be a power for good in any community where his labors are expended.
Charles G. Barley was born near the city of Marion, on April 5, 1874, and is the son of James L. and Louise J. (Gordon) Barley. The father, a native of Grant county, this state, also claims April 5th as his natal day, his birth occurring on that day in the year 1851, and the family may well be said to be one of the best known in the county, where members of it have for three generations been more or less prominent in business and social life. The mother of the subject came to Grant county when she was sixteen years old, in company with David Bish, who was her guardian and who reared her from childhood to young womanhood.
Charles Barley received his education in the public schools of Marion and later attended the Marion Business College, graduating from the commercial department of the latter, and upon emerging from that institution he entered the employment of the Barley & Spencer Lumber Company, with whom he was connected for a year. The next three years he spent with the old Sweetser & Turner Elevator, as manager, and for five years thereafter he was manager of the Marion Ice & Cold Storage Company. In all these positions, in his managerial capacity, he gained much of valuable experience that has been of invaluable help to him in his own business, and gone far toward making it the splendid success that has marked it since its organization. It was in 1898 that with George C. Harwood he organized the Harwood & Barley Manu- facturing Company, a close corporation organized for the manufacture of iron and brass beds, bed springs and motor trucks, and their growth has been exceptional from the start. Today their annual output aggre-
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gates seventy-five thousand beds, twenty-five thousand bed springs, and their output of motor trucks last year was one hundred and fifty. The firm employs two hundred men and the weekly payroll of the concern reaches $2,500. After fifteen years of life, the concern has reached a place of considerable importance in the industrial world of Marion and is counted among the solid and worth-while enterprises of the city and county.
Mr. Barley is a stanch Republican, but not a politician, and he is an earnest member of the Civic Assembly. He and his wife are prom- inent in social and other circles in the city.
Mr. Barley has membership in the Mecca Club, an exclusive social affair, and is a member of the Elks Lodge at Marion.
The marriage of Mr. Barley to Miss Mae Harwood, the daughter of his partner, took place on October 16, 1902, and they live in their new home on Spencer avenue, this city. They have no children.
ERNEST G. ZIMMER, M. D. A worthy representative of the medical profession in Grant county, is Dr. Ernest G. Zimmer, who for the past fourteen years has been located at Upland, and whose professional work began more than a quarter of a century ago. Both by his personal character and his technical ability he has dignified his calling, and has won a prestige by which he well merits recognition in this volume of Grant county biography. Dr. Zimmer is a graduate of the Cincinnati School of Medicine and Surgery, with the class of 1886. Soon after leaving medical college he established himself in practice at Santa Fe, Miami county, Indiana, and was in active practice there until 1899. Then, following a course at the Chicago Polyclinic, he located at Upland, where he has built up a representative clientage and is recognized as one of the leaders of his profession.
Dr. Zimmer was born at Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1858. His early advantages after the common schools were secured largely through his own work with an ambition definitely fixed upon a professional career. He was a student in the normal school at Lebanon, Ohio, and spent two years in the medical department of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and later graduated with the degree of M. D. at the Cin- cinnati School of Medicine and Surgery. His father, George Zimmer, had a noteworthy career as a German immigrant to America. Born in Baden, Germany, he was of a good family, and many of its members gained distinction both in military and civic life. He was reared in his native land, where he learned the trade of a baker, and then in the revolutionary activities of the late forties he found himself a patriot on the side of the rebels. His uncle, General Wiler, of the German Army, advised young George to flee from his native country and use all secrecy in making his escape, leaving by night, otherwise he would pay forfeit of his life for his rebellion. He escaped from Baden and became a stowaway on a sailing vessel bound for the United States. Arriving in the City of New York without a penny, he begged a loaf of bread, and that was his only food for three days, while in the meantime he spent three nights in a deserted church. At the end of that time he found work at three dollars a week, and finally drifted west to Cincinnati. Within a few years he had saved money enough to send for his sweet- heart, whom he had left behind in Germany. Her name was Catherine Sutter, who was born in the same town as George Zimmer. After her arrival in the United States they were married, and started out to make their fortunes. As a baker Mr. Zimmer found regular employment in different places, and finally, with a capital of four hundred dollars, he went to Keokuk, Iowa, during the boom in that city, and invested all
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his savings in real estate. The boom collapsed, and all his surplus was thus swept away. With his wife and baby, Ernest G., he had to work his way back to Cincinnati, stopping at St. Louis a brief time, and then on to their destination. He soon afterward located at St. Paris, Ohio, where he was engaged in business for himself and lived until his death, in 1893. He was born in 1827. His wife was born in 1830, and passed away in 1906. In her native land she had been a school teacher, and throughout her life kept up on current literature. She was a woman of unusual powers of mind and character. Both were members of the Evangelical church in Germany, and in this country worshipped in the Lutheran faith. On first coming to America, George Zimmer espoused the principles of the Whig party, and afterward was a staunch adherent of the principles of the Republican party. Mr. and Mrs. Zimmer were the parents of eight children, six of whom grew to maturity and are still living, and four of these are married and have children of their own. Frank A. is a prominent lawyer in Urbana, Ohio, and has one son. Emanuel R. is a dentist engaged in practice in Greenville, Missouri, and has one daughter. Fritz is unmarried, being a baker by trade, and also lives in Greenville, Missouri. Mrs. Mary Mitchell, who for a number of years was a successful teacher at St. Paris, Ohio, now lives in Spring- field, Ohio, and has four children. Emma, who is unmarried, is a teacher of art and music at St. Paris, Ohio. Dr. Zimmer, the oldest of the children, was married in Ohio to Miss Eva Cook. Detroit, Michigan was her birthplace, and she received superior educational advantages in different places, chiefly in Chester county, Pennsylvania, near the home of Bayard Taylor. Dr. Zimmer and wife have one daughter, a talented young woman who is well known in Grant county, Miss Edna George Zimmer, who resides with her parents. She was educated in the Upland public schools and Taylor University. She early showed talent as a musician, and by study at home and under excellent instructors has become very proficient as a violinist and is now a member of the faculty of the Marion Conservatory of Music. Dr. Zimmer is affiliated with the Masonie order and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and his politics is Republican.
GEORGE M. HIMELICK. In a review of the lives of the prominent and influential citizens of Grant county, George M. Himelick is certainly deserving of more than passing mention, for his well spent career, his ability, his loyalty to the duties of citizenship and his fidelity in private life have all gained him a place among the leading residents of the com- munity. He is a member of an old and honored family, his grandfather, Joseph Himelick being born in Ohio in 1819, of German parentage. When sixteen years of age Joseph Himelick removed from the Buckeye State to Franklin county, Ind., where he was married to Miss Mary Curry, and there one son was born; nine months later they moved to Jennings county, Ind., where the three daughters were born. Later, during the early sixties, the grandparents and their children migrated to Madison county, Indiana, and settled on wooded land, which Mr. Himelick cleared and cultivated until his death in 1885. The grand- mother, who celebrated her ninety-first birthday September 13, 1913, has ninety-two living decendants, five of whom are great-great-grand- children. She still lives at Summitville, Madison county, and in view of her advanced years is in excellent health and in possession of her faculties. Mr. Himelick was a Democrat in politics, and in religious belief was connected with the Christian church, of which the grand- mother is still a member. They had these children: John, the father of George M. Himelick; Anna, the widow of William Carpenter, a farmer
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of Delaware county, Indiana, where she still resides with her family; Elizabeth, the wife of Robert Gallaway, a retired farmer of near Council Bluffs, Iowa, with a family ; and Mary, the widow of John Styers, living with her mother at Summitville, Indiana.
John Himelick, the father of George M. Himelick, was born Decem- ber 25, 1840, and was reared and educated on the home farm, upon which he resided until his marriage to Mary Morris, who was born September 23, 1844. After the birth of their first two children, Mr. and Mrs. Himelick moved to Madison county, Indiana, but in 1874 changed their residence to Fairmount township, Grant county, where the father spent the remaining active years of his life. He then retired to Mills township, where his death occurred July 25, 1905. The mother still survives and makes her home at Summitville, where she is a faithful member of the Christian church. Mr. and Mrs. Himelick were the parents of the following children: George M. is the subject of this review; Joseph, who married Ella Webster, and had three children, Elva, Virgil and Willis; Elizabeth, who married Ullysus Horner. Mrs. Horner had two children, Lillie and John; Mrs. Horner died January 6, 1894, and Ullysus Horner died in 1901; Robert, a resident of River Falls, Wisconsin, is superintendent of the State Normal school. He married Media Tyler, and has two children, Frances and Jesse; John W. is represented on another page of this work; Olive is the wife of Virgil Duling, a farmer of Fairmount township, and has one daughter, Mary. Maude is the wife of William Moss, of Marion, Indiana. Orville, engaged in the hardware business at Upland, married Nancy Ruley and has four children, Louise, John, Paul and an infant. Earl, a fore- man in the shops at Jonesboro, married Dora Nelson, and has three children, Lucile, Raymond and Robert.
George M. Himelick was born March 23, 1864, in Jennings county, Indiana, and received his education in the schools of Madison and Grant counties. He was reared to habits of industry and integrity, and grew up an agriculturist, embarking upon his own career on a farm of 113 acres in section 4, Jefferson township. This land he has brought to a high state of cultivation, and has made numerous modern improvements, having a fine red barn and commodious white house, both fitted out with conveniences and accessories of the most modern nature. In addition he owns four eighty-acre tracts in Monroe, on which are located two sets of fine farm buildings. Mr. Himelick has devoted the greater part of his time and attention to the raising of all kinds of cereals, and has been exceptionally successful in this line, but also is greatly interested in breeding all kinds of livestock. His products meet with a ready sale and fancy prices in the markets, and he is known as a man strictly honorable in his business transactions. He owes his success to energy, industry and perseverance, and to an intelligent application of the most progressive methods to his operations. He has always been a firm friend of education, morality and good citizenship, and has contributed his aid to the cause of temperance as a voter iu the ranks of the Prohibition party. With his family, he attends the New Light Christian church.
Mr. Himelick was married in Jefferson township to Miss Lydia J. Wise, who was born, reared and educated in this township and is a daughter of Jacob Wise, a review of whose career will be found else- where in this volume. The following children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Himelick: Ernest F., who married Lotus Atkinson, had a son born November 7, 1913, and is carrying on agricultural operations in Monroe township, on one of his father's properties; Clarence, married to Marie Stephens, January 1, 1914; Bertha M., Orvin William, Waldo R., Lemley, Myrle, Esther, Ralph, Olive Maude and Ethel O., who are
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all living at home with their parents; and Homer E., who died at the age of four months. The children have all been given good educational advantages, and are proving themselves credits to their family and to their community.
C. DEE SMITH. With youth and energy at his command, and also the resourcefulness and business enterprise of the modern farmer, C. Dee Smith is one of the most successful in that line of enterprise in Mill township. He operates the fine old Elisha Overman farm of one hundred and eighty-seven acres on section twelve of Mill township, and had his place well stocked with graded cattle, hogs and horses, and each year brings in a number of stock for feeding, having shown himself an excep- tional manager of the livestock business. His farm is the property of his father-in-law. Its improvements are of the very highest class, com- prising two large red barns, other out buildings, and a comfortable dwelling house. All the land is in a fine state of cultivation, and Mr. Smith is prospering as he well deserves. He has been manager and has lived on the place for the last four years.
C. Dee Smith is of an old Virginia family, and was born in Scott county of that state, September 14, 1878. His grandfather was William Smith, a Confederate soldier, born in Washington county, Virginia, and with the exception of the time spent in the army lived there all his life, his death occurring when nearly fourscore years old, July, 1907. His wife was Disa Fleener, a Virginia girl of the same locality, who died when about the same age in 1912. They were substantial farming people and Methodists in religion, while the political faith was the prevailing one of the Democratic party. Of their large family, eleven are still living, and they are all past middle age, being physically strong and large.
Of these children Pascal B. Smith, the oldest, is the father of the Mill township farmer. He was born February 24, 1853, in Scott county, Virginia, was reared on the old homestead, and married from the same locality, Miss Elizabeth Gardner, who was born on September 22, 1856, and is still living. Her parents Euliel and Peggy (Barnhart) Gardner, lived and died in Scott county. Her father was a California Forty-niner, spending four years on the gold coast and meeting with fair success in the diggings. Both Euhel and Peggy Gardner lived to a good old age. They were born about 1830. Though Virginians, they were both members of the Northern Methodist Church, and he was a Republican. Eleven of the Gardner family are still living and some of them are already old.
C. Dee Smith was next to the oldest among eleven children, nine of whom are still living, namely: Stephen R., who is married; C. Dee; Charles Lee, married ; Orval S. and James C., both of whom died when twenty-eight years of age, the latter being married; Henry C., married; Daisy E., Maude, Woody M., Joseph L., and Gladys, who are all as vet unmarried.
C. Dee Smith came to Grant county in 1898; the rest of the family' are also residents of the county, the father Pascal B. Smith being a farmer in Fairmount township. Mr. Smith was married in Grant county, November 15, 1909, to Miss Ethel Overman, who was born in Mill township, January 23, 1890, and had her education in the common schools and in the Gas City high school where she graduated in 1908. Her parents are Elisha and Minnie (McGinnis) Overman, who now live retired in Gas City. Mr. and Mrs. Smith are the parents of two children: Virginia Helen, born January 22, 1911; and Velma I., who died at the age of five months. Mr. Smith is a Democrat in politics,
A Mimball
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and is affiliated with the Improved Order of Red Men and the Junior Order of United American Mechanics at Jonesboro.
JOHN S. JETT. One of the active and progressive young farming men of Mill township is John S. Jett, who operates a ninety acre farm in Sections 30 and 31. His place, known as the "William Carter Farm," is reckoned among the finest and most productive of the community, and is still owned by the widow of Mr. Carter, though Mr. Jett has operated it since 1911, when Mr. Carter died. His widow now resides in Marion, and leaves the entire care of the place to Mr. Jett. The farm is well stocked with blooded cattle, and the buildings and all minor improve- ments are of the highest character. About forty acres of corn, twenty of wheat and a few acres of oats is about the proportion of the crops raised, and the yield per acre is especially bountiful, the average running as high as sixty bushels of corn, twenty-five of wheat and seventy-five of oats to the acre. Mr. Jett manifests a pardonable pride in his work, and it is conceded by all that he is a natural farmer. He was reared to the work on his father's place, but that alone would not be sufficient to inculcate in him the talent for making a given spot of ground yield more than any other man can coax from it.
Mr. Jett was born in Scott county, Virginia, on January 2, 1882, and was there educated in the public schools. He continued to live there until 1904, when he came to Grant county, and since then has spent the most of the time in Mill township. He has been farming independently since he first came to the county, and though he is not yet a landowner, it is safe to say that the time will come when he will control some land of his own.
Full details relative to the family of Mr. Jett are to be found in the biographical sketch of Garn Jett, so that only the briefest facts con- cerning him need be set forth here. He is the fourth child in a family of five sons and three daughters, of which number there are as yet three unmarried sons. The mother and certain of the younger children are yet residing on the fine old family plantation in Scott county, Virgina, and Mr. Jett, with a brother Garn Jett, mentioned above, are the only two residents of Indiana.
Mr. Jett was married in his native county to Miss Jodil Lee Wolfe, who was born on August 28, 1886, and who was reared and educated in the county of her birth. She is a daughter of George and Rebecca (Wilhelm) Wolfe, long residents of Virginia and natives of the state, where they have spent their lives in the farming industry. In 1908 Mr. and Mrs. Wolf moved to Tennessee, and they now live in Washington county, that state. The father is sixty-one and the mother fifty-six years of age. They are members of the Methodist Church South. The paternal grandfather of Mrs. Jett, Isaac Wolfe, was a large plantation owner of Virginia and owner of many slaves in the days before the war.
Mr. and Mrs. Jett have two children, Virginia Vance was born on December 21, 1904, and is now in school, and Susie Eileen was born on April 10, 1907.
Mr. Jett is a Democrat, as have been members of the family for years. His fraternal relations are with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows of Jonesboro, with both lodge and encampment affiliations. He is one of the live and active men of the community, and with his wife enjoys the sincere regard of a wide circle of friends.
DR. ABNER D. KIMBALL. Few men of the past generation in Grant county, Indiana, have been more sorely missed or more sincerely mourned than the late Dr. Abner D. Kimball. He is not only missed because of
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his high professional ability but also because of his splendid personality and the gifts that won him the friendship of the entire county. He bore the reputation of being one of the most skillful surgeons in the state of Indiana, but he had another reputation of which he was much prouder and that was of having the ability of winning everyone for his friend. For many years he was closely identified with the interests of Marion, Indiana, being chief surgeon of the Marion branch of the National Mili- tary Home, and he took an active part in the life of the people of Marion.
Dr. Abner Kimball was born in Coshocton county, Ohio, on the 24th of January, 1839, the son of Moses and Louisa (Powell) Kimball. His father was a native of Coshocton county also, but his mother was a Southern woman, having been born near Richmond, Virginia. The Kimball family were of English origin and two brothers settling in New Hampshire or Connecticut early in the eighteenth century founded the family in the United States. Moses Kimball lived in the state of Ohio until 1850 when he removed with his family to Miami county, Indiana, and there resided until 1872, when he went yet further west and settled in Wilson county, Kansas. There he died in 1886. The children of Moses and Louisa Kimball were nine in number, as follows: Abner D., Henry, Thomas C., Millard, Charles, Frank, Henrietta, Nancy and Harriet.
Dr. Abner D. Kimball grew up on the farm of his father, acquiring his elementary education in the schools of Miami and Grant counties, Indiana. He then attended the high school in Marion and then took up the study of medicine with Dr. Frazier, of Converse, Indiana. This was in 1857, and during the following winter he attended his first course of lectures in Rush Medical College, at Chicago. During 1859 and 1860 he attended his second course of lectures and in the spring of 1860 he was graduated from this famous old middle west institution which has turned out so many of the best physicians and surgeons in the country.
Immediately after his graduation he began the practice of his pro- fession at Converse, Indiana, and here he remained until he enlisted in the fall of 1862 in the Union army. He was mustered into the service as first assistant surgeon of the Forty-eighth Indiana Infantry and later on in the course of the war he served as acting assistant surgeon of the Ninety-ninth Indiana Infantry. He served under General Sherman in the famous march to the sea and was with him during the Carolina campaign and again when the cry heard throughout the army was "On to Richmond." He was mustered out of the service at Lonisville, Kentucky, on the 20th day of July, 1865.
After the war the doctor resumed his practice in Converse, Indiana, and remained there until 1884 when he removed to Marion. Here on the 20th of May, 1890, he received the appointment as chief surgeon of the Marion branch of the National Military Home for Disabled Volunteers. He held this position for many years, filling the post to the great satisfac- tion of both the soldiers unto whom he ministered and of those in author- ity who had placed him in charge. Shortly after the war in the winter of 1868-1869, Dr. Kimball took a course in surgery in Bellevue Hospital in New York City, and after that time he was always especially inter- ested in surgery and in the advance which that branch of medical science has made of late years, for he had seen the horrors of the crude surgery of the battlefield and realized how necessary a greater knowledge was to surgeons. He died in Marion, November 4, 1904.
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