Centennial History of Grant County Indiana, Part 53

Author: Rolland Lewis Whitson
Publication date: 1914
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1034

USA > Indiana > Grant County > Centennial History of Grant County Indiana > Part 53

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have since employed him to look after their individual interests. Nearly all the stockholders in the Gas City Land Company were Pan- handle Railway officials, and they thought they saw a great future for the town, but the story is all told in the failure of natural gas. Yet the work of the Land Company will always be apparent.

Mr. Jay acquired a thorough knowledge of business methods and real estate transactions while representing the Land Company, and since then real estate and insurance have been second nature to him. From 1905 to 1909 Mr. Jay served as trustee of Mill township, and he has served the town as a member of the school board and as city treasurer, being always active in community affairs.

Singularly enough, when Mr. Jay's son Fred was ready for busi- ness training, after graduating from the Gas City high school, he was sent to Poughkeepsie. The son was a student sixteen years after his father was there, and a most striking coincidence was that while stu- dents there, father and son each won a dictionary as a premium in a spelling contest. The father received an International and the son a Standard Dictionary in the same kind of contests, written spelling. When the son graduated from business college he had one and one- half years' employment at New Castle, Pennsylvania, and then went to Gary, where he is an accountant in the office of the American Sheet Steel and Tin Plate Works, beginning with the opening of the industry and remaining continuously.

Charles A. Jay, a brother of Will C. Jay, also acquired a knowl- edge of shorthand, and had employment with the American Window Glass Factory in Gas City, going with the company when its business was removed to Arnold, Pennsylvania, where he is now cashier and general superintendent of the factory. He married Miss Blanche Thomas and three little girls have been born to them : Anna, Florence and Edith.

While Miss Alice Jay has been principal of the ward school in Gas City many years, she was for five years a resident teacher at White's Institute when it was a government school for Indians, and she made frequent trips to the different Indian reservations in the west in the interests of the institution. When Thomas F. Jay died, it was his request that his sister Alice educate his daughter, and for two years Miss Belle Jay has taught in the Converse public schools. Edgar B. Jay always lived at the family homestead until the death of the mother on June 18, 1913, the property having been acquired by Will C. Jay, and his mother having remained its mistress as long as she lived.

COL. GEORGE W. GUNDER. The career of Col. George W. Gunder, both in military and civil life has been one of strict adherence to every duty, and during forty-five years he has been numbered among Marion's leading citizens. A veteran of two wars, in both of which he won dis- tinction, his record in business life is no less one of which he may well be proud, and although he is now retired from active affairs he still manifests the same interest in the affairs of his country and his com- munity which led him in earlier years to put aside his private interests and go forth to battle in defense of the flag of his native land. Colonel Gunder is a native of Darke county, Ohio, and was born July 6, 1840, a son of William and Nancy (Rice) Gunder.

William Gunder was born in 1797, in Lancaster county, Pennsyl- vania, and about the year 1820 moved to Darke county, Ohio, as one of the first settlers of Fort Jefferson. There he resided until 1855, in which year he removed to Montgomery county and there became a

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major in the Dragoons, the old militia, and one of the foremost men of his community. He died in 1863, while his wife, who was born in 1800, in Preble county, Ohio, passed away in 1849, in Darke county. They were the parents of ten children, of whom four are now living: Daniel, who resides at Marion; Mrs. Sarah Shepherd, an eighty-four year old resident of this city; Mrs. Caroline Shepherd, living in Covington, Ohio; and George W.

After attending the public schools of Darke and Montgomery coun- ties, Ohio, George W. Gunder took a course in Lewis Academy, Lewis- burg, Ohio, and when. seventeen years of age began to teach school. He had been so engaged about four years when the Civil War broke out, and laying aside the cap and gown he took up the sword and enlisted in Company B, Seventy-first Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, with which he saw three years service. He was soon pro- moted to first sergeant, and later to second lieutenant and then first lieutenant, and in the latter capacity commanded his company in sev- eral hard-fought engagements. The Seventy-first Ohio participated in a number of the most sanguinary battles of the great struggle, includ- ing Fort Henry, Fort Donelson and Shiloh, the campaign at Chatta- nooga, Atlanta, Nashville and Duck River. During many of these engagements, Colonel Gunder distinguished himself, and on receiving his honorable discharge, at the close of hostilities he had a record for bravery and faithfulness to duty that gained for him the admiration of his men and the respect of his superior officers.

On his return to the pursuits of peace, in 1866, Mr. Gunder embarked in the mercantile business at West Baltimore, Ohio, and continued there until May 1, 1868, when with his partner, Mr. Samuel Arnold, he came to Marion, Indiana, and here for twelve years continued the same business, ten years of this time having their establishment on the present site of Barney Prince's store. In 1880 the business was organized as Gunder, Arnold & Company, dealers in dry goods, etc., the enterprise having by this time assumed large proportions, and in 1890 the personnel of the firm was changed and the style became Gunder Brothers. This was conducted by Colonel Gunder and his brother until the Colonel's retirement in 1904, since which time he has lived a more or less retired life, devoting his time to looking after his extensive realty interests. He has been successful in a material way and has accumulated a large property, but while he has been a busy man, with large private enterprises, he has never neglected to assist in all move- ments for the welfare of his community, and his support and coopera- tion have done much to aid in the progress that has made Marion a center of commercial and industrial activity.

In 1885 Colonel Gunder organized Company D, of the Third Regi- ment, Indiana National Guards. He was Captain of Company D for three years and was made major of that regiment under Judge McBride, now of Indianapolis, who was its colonel. In that same year, Governor Hovey authorized the organization of the Fourth Regiment, Indiana National Guards, appointing Colonel Gunder for this service, and when it was fully recruited, in 1890, he became its colonel. He was acting in this capacity when war was declared between the United States and Spain, in 1898, and on May 12th the Fourth Indiana was mustered into service, although enrolled April 26, 1898. The regiment was mobilized at Chickamauga Park, and on July 25, 1898, was ordered to Newport News, to embark for Porto Rico. After inspection by the Secretary of War, the Fourth was one of the first to be selected to go to the front, and subsequently saw service in Cuba and Porto Rico, and on the former island relieved the Spanish garrison at Mantanzas. The regi- Vol. 1-8

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ment was out one year, and was mustered out of the service at Savan- nah, Georgia, April 25, 1899. Of its one thousand three hundred and sixty men who left for the front, one thousand three hundred and fifty returned, the smallest loss of any regiment in active service, which was a distinct and eloquent evidence of Colonel Gunder's military skill. Although a strict disciplinarian, he was ever just, and was a great favorite with his men, who knew that he would ask them to do nothing that he would not himself perform.

On May 9, 1861, Colonel Gunder was married to Miss Anna Snorf, who died April 17, 1896, without issue. His second marriage occurred May 26, 1897, when he was united with Nita Fisher, of Marion. Colonel Gunder has had no children of his own, but has reared two boys: Milton H. Snorf, whom he took when seven years of age, and was reared to manhood, becoming prominent in Wabash county business and politi- cal circles; and Vernon A. Cogwill, who was educated in Marion High school and West Point, graduating from the latter in 1890, since which time he has been in Alaska, the Philippines, and other United States possessions, and is now a major in the Twenty-fifth United States Infantry, located in the Hawaiian Islands.

Colonel Gunder is a valued member of the Grand Army of the Republic. He was made a Master Mason at Troy, Ohio, in November, 1861, and has continued to enjoy the privileges of membership in this order to the present time, being prelate of Marion Commandery No. 21, and a thirty-second degree member of the Indianapolis Consistory. Politically a Republican, he was chairman of the Republican County Central Committee in 1884, but of late years has only taken a good citizen's interest in public matters. He has been a life-long member of the Congregational temple of the Christian church, which he assisted in building.

EVAN HARVEY FERREE. All that tradition lacks of being authentic history is verification, and the story has followed the fortunes of the Ferree family in America that the name was Americanized when a woman and three sons came over from France, casting their lot with the people of the New World. All that is known of the original Ferree family in America is that one of the sons lived in New York, one in - Ohio and one in North Carolina, where each has posterity, and the well known Grant county Ferree family is descended from the southern wing of this trio of Ferrees in America.

While Daniel Ferree was of French ancestry with military blood in his veins, and not much given to the quiet, sedate life of Friends, he married Lydia Elliott, who was among the blue blooded North Caro- lina Quaker families, and some of her relatives were slaveholders according to the custom of the community. However, there was a revolt among orthodox Quakers against the institution of slavery, and knowing they could not overthrow it they came into the Northwest territory to escape it. Daniel Ferree and his wife joined this exodus early in the nineteenth century, but he did not become a Friend until long after taking up his residence in Morgan county, Indiana. The Quakers had some restrictions that did not suit him-his life having been in decided contrast to their peace-loving attributes.

It is reasonably inferred that the wife ruled when the Ferree family left the country where slavery existed, but after they came to Morgan county and when the environment was so different from the Southland, her church became his church, and their children grew up Friends. Evan Harvey Ferree remembers hearing his father tell of some of the - obstacles in the way of this grandfather with Huguenot blood in his

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veins. in reconciling the Quaker attitude toward slavery and his own early training, but in time he amalgamated with the society about him. It is hard for a strong nature to completely revolutionize itself, but that is what occurred in the life of Daniel Ferree, founder of the well known Grant county branch of the Ferree family in America.

In Morgan county the Ferree family lived neighbors to William and Ruth (Hadley) Harvey, and when the Harveys came to Grant county, John Ferree, a son of Daniel and Lydia (Elliott) Ferree, who had previously married Rebekah Harvey, came with them. This was the only Ferree of his generation who ever lived in Grant county. Mrs. Ferree was a sister to well known Grant county citizens by the name of Harvey. Her brothers-David, Eli, Mahlon, Jonathan, Jehu, Sidney and Alvin-and her sisters, Sarah and Mary, all have posterity here, some of them otherwise commemorated in the Centennial history. The children of John and Rebekah (Harvey) Ferree are: Alvin, who married Mary A. Bell; Evan H., who married Flora A. Cammack; Lydia, the wife of M. A. Hiatt; Charles A., who married Emma Dora Bond; William E., who married Charlotte Annis; and John D., who married Ada M. Heaston.

The Ferree family homestead was in the Little Ridge community in Liberty, and there all the children grew up, the father and mother later retiring from the farm and living in Fairmount. They gave their children educational advantages, and some were students in Earlham College, in addition to common school training, and there were teachers, business and professional men among them. Evan H. Ferree was a teacher for fourteen years, having had experience both in country and town schools and in a political way he has been highly favored by the voters of Grant county. (See chapter on Civil Gov- ernment.) He has served as postmaster at Marion, and is at present. connected with the Marion Light and Heating Company.

Mr. Ferree on August 20, 1880, married Flora A. Cammack, daugh- ter of Willis and Sarah (Jay) Cammack. Their children are: Edna S., wife of Edward H. Harris, and Evan Mark Ferree. The two little granddaughters in the family are Virginia and Janet Harris. The Harrises live in Richmond, but each summer Mrs. Ferree and her chil- dren and grandchildren spend some time in the Ferree cottage at Winona Lake. Mr. Ferree has always been a useful man in the community, fulfilling an old saying in Quaker circles, "He is frequently used in the meeting." They adhere to the Friends' faith in which both husband and wife had their training in childhood. The religious influences of his youth were from the Little Ridge and her's from the Bethel Friends Church in Liberty, two Quaker communities about four miles apart in the country. .

WILLIS CAMMACK. So closely identified with Grant county affairs was the late Willis Cammack that, although a native of Bartholomew county, he seemed to have always lived in the community. He came as a young boy to Fairmount with his father, James Cammack, at a time when there was only one house in the town. James Cammack set up a saw mill, and from his plant was supplied much of the mate- rial for the building in the early days of that village.

Willis Cammack was a son of James and Penina (Cook) Cammack. In 1849 the parents located in Grant county, and afterwards moved to Hamilton county. There were five other sons: Calvin, William, Albert, Clark and Ira, and one sister, Elvira Cammack. Willis Cam- mack was the only one who continued to live in Grant county.

There was a romance in the early life of Willis Cammack and Sarah

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Jay, and the outlines of the story may be properly sketched at this point, as part of the family records and as a matter in which subse- quent generations will take an interest. Nathan Morris had a son and daugher, Thomas and Ruth Morris. Thomas Morris had plighted his troth with Sarah Jay while Ruth Morris was promised to Willis Cammack. Both the Morris young people were stricken with typhoid fever. Mr. Cammack and Miss Jay went and nursed them, but the fever was so virulent that all care and nursing were in vain, and both the young man and the young woman died. The fever was a scourge in that part of the country in that year, and so widespread that there were often as many as two funerals in a single day from the same neighborhood. The death of Thomas and Ruth Morris bereaved both Willis Cammack and Sarah Jay, and in their grief and sorrow they turned to each other for sympathy and solace, and the result was that their lives were linked together ever afterward, and not long after the intimate acquaintance formed while in the Morris household in 1857 they were married. All were Quaker families and well known to each other.

Sarah Jay was a daughter of Thomas and Eliza (Wareham) Jay, and her brothers and sisters were: Joseph, Denny, Mary, Rebecca, Angelina, Daniel and Ezra. Of this family of eight Joseph Jay was a resident of Richmond and all the others of Grant county, and all of them well known in their generation. Thomas Jay was a well known Friends' minister, and after the death of his wife married Mrs. Elizabeth Rush, and together they went about the country a great deal in the service of the church. After the death of his second wife, Thomas Jay always lived in the home of his daughter, Mrs. Cammack.

The children born to Willis and Sarah (Jay) Cammack were : Rosalie, who married Orange Peters, and had one son, Charles Peters, an invalid from birth and now deceased; Bayard T., who married Mattie Osborn, and had two children, Carl and Mary; Flora A., the wife of E. H. Ferree, has two chilren, Edna S. and Evan Mark (see sketch of Ferree family) ; Ella is the wife of W. E. Waggoner, and has two children, Sarah and William; William T. married Emlin Cox, and their two children are Jerry Ward and Hazel; and Edgar married Catherine Harris.

On January 4, 1883, Willis Cammack married for his second wife Mrs. Elizabeth (Cornelius) Cammack, widow of his brother, Albert Cammack. She brought to her second husband a daughter, Sula, and to the second marriage was born another daughter, Laverne, who married Demetrius Howell. Their children are Kenneth and Willis. Four of the Cammack grandchildren are married and live outside of Grant county, namely : Edna S. Ferree, wife of E. H. Harris; Jerry Ward Cammack, who married Mittie C. Hurley; Carl, who married Margaret Wright; and Mary Cammack, who married Fred Gold- smith. Mrs. Ferree is the only permanent resident in Grant county among the children in the Willis Cammack family. Sula Cammack, the child of the second Mrs. Willis Cammack, married R. E. Felton, and left a daughter, Edith Felton.

While the family of Willis Cammack are deceased and scattered, there was a time when they were well known in the Bethel Friends Community, and there never was a man in all Grant county who was more universally and highly respected than Willis Cammack. When Bethel Friends Meeting was established in 1864, David Jay was rec- ognized as the official head of the meeting until his death four years later, when Willis Cammack was honored in that way, and continued

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at the head of the meeting until his death, although for a few years he was an invalid and unable to occupy the pew in the meeting house. No one ever questioned his word or his religion, and he was a man of much influence in the church and the community. The biographer knew Willis Cammack from childhood. He recalls one occasion of an otherwise "silent meeting" of Friends at Bethel church. After the members had been sitting an hour in silence, and just before the breaking up of the meeting, which Willis Cammack always performed by shaking hands with the one sitting next to him, he exclaimed : "Be ye also ready," and the watchword suggested seemed to prevail and influence his own personal life-a man whose integrity no one ever questioned. For several years Mr. Cammack was connected with public improvements, associated with his neighbor, Isaac W. Carter, and with David Overman of Marion. Many miles of gravel road were built under his watchful eye, and when he died all who knew him felt a distinctive community loss-that a good man had been removed from things earthly and that he was worthy of the higher life.

L. G. W. RICHARDS. That farming is Big Business needs no other proof than a visit to one of the stock farms conducted by L. G. W. Richards. On the home place in section twenty-eight of Jefferson township, a group of well arranged, shining white buildings attract the visitor at the very first, and as soon as he begins to look around, he finds good management and efficiency written in every department of the farm activities. Mr. Richards has a reputation throughout this section of Indiana, as one of the most successful cattle growers, breed- ers and feeders, and it has been a matter of pride through a long period of years to keep up the highest standards in his fine herds of Hereford cattle. Mr. Richards is proprietor of three splendid farms, each one equipped with fine buildings. The home place comprises one hundred and twenty-seven acres, with a big and modern residence, and good barns. This is known as the Green Lawn Farm. Another farm owned by him is the Meadow Brook Farm, consisting of one hundred and twenty acres, and conducted by his son, Jacob Harvey Richards. That farm also has a fine equipment of buildings and facilities. Another farm is the old homestead, which was entered by his grandfather on the Mississinewa River in 1833, and is known as the Riverside Farm. The Riverside Farm consists of one hundred and fifty-five acres, and one of its improvements is a barn, forty by sixty feet in ground di- mensions, with a slate roof, and one of the best structures of its kind in the entire county. On each of these farms is a large silo, and the aggregate capacity of the three is two hundred and thirty-three tons. Mr. Richards and his sons are practical men in every particular, are hard workers, and yet are not slaves to their business, and are masters of agriculture, rather than being driven by the work as many less pros- perous farmers are.

L. G. W. Richards was born in Jefferson township, September 30, 1856. He belongs to the prominent Richards family, so well known through its different branches in this county, and more detailed infor- mation concerning the genealogy and family relationship will be found in the sketch of L. G. Richards, published elsewhere in this volume. L. G. W. Richards was reared and educated in the public schools, and since becoming of age has engaged in farming on his own account, and most of the property which he manages so successfully represents his individual accumulations and business judgment. Mr. Richards' parents were Jacob and Susan (Gillispie) Richards, his father a native of Guernsey county, Ohio, and his mother a native of the same state.

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When young people they moved to Grant county. The mother was a daughter of Rev. James Gillispie, a minister of the Primitive Baptist church, and Rev. Jacob Richards was also active as a preacher and worker in that denomination. They settled in Jefferson township, and were pioneers in this vicinity. Rev. Jacob Richards died when a little past eighty years of age, and his wife passed away a year later, when past seventy-eight. L. G. W. Richards was the third in a family of six children that grew up and were married. James H. and Isabell Harrison died recently, each leaving children, and those living are: Catherine, wife of J. F. Jones, of Jefferson township; L. G. W. Rich- ards; Hester, wife of John D. Leach, of Fowlerton ; and Lucy A., widow of John W. Patterson, of Jefferson township, and the mother of several children.

L. G. W. Richards was married in Delaware county to Miss Clara M. McCormick, who was born there in 1858, and was reared and edu- cated in her native locality. Her parents were William and Mary (Corey) McCormick, both natives of Ohio, but who were married and spent most of their lives in Delaware county. Mr. and Mrs. Richards are the parents of the following children: Jacob Harvey, manager of the Meadow Brook Farm, married Mary Williamson, of Ohio, and their children are Jacob A., F. Belle, and Howard L. G. William F. lives on and operates the Riverside Farm, and by his marriage to Madie Jones of Ohio has one son, Mark Henry. Mark, who lives at home, was, like the other children, well educated and married Cleo Littler. Mr. and Mrs. Richards are members of the Primitive Baptist church, and he and his sons all vote the Democratic ticket.

NETTIE BAINBRIDGE POWELL, M. D. Identified for twenty years with the medical profession in Grant county, Dr. Powell is recognized as one of the two leading women physicians in the state of Indiana, a physician who is accorded unstinted praise by her professional asso- ciates, and with a record of skillful service and large accomplishment in her home city. The science of medicine and surgery has made a remark- able progress in the last half century, but aside from the technical side probably the greatest single feature in the progress of the profession has been the increasing number of women whose services have been enlisted in the ranks of the physicians, and who in ability and in capac- ity for the special work have demonstrated equal fitness with their brothers who have so long occupied this field.

Nettie Bainbridge Powell is a native of Whitley county, Indiana, born at Columbia City, January 5, 1868, a daughter of George Milton and Martha Jane (Hughes) Bainbridge. Her father was born in Oneida county, New York, March 9, 1832, and the mother in Whitley county, Indiana, October 10, 1843. Grandfather Charles Wesley Hughes, on the mother's side was a Virginian by birth, came to Indiana many years ago, and during the war served on Governor Morton's staff, perform- ing a number of important commissions, both for the governor and also at the personal behest of President Lincoln. It is an interesting fact that Charles Wesley Hughes married Mary Davis, who was born in Ohio, and was a first counsin of Jefferson Davis, once president of the Confederacy. She lived until June 13, 1912, her death occurring in the home of Dr. Powell at Marion, at the age of ninety-one, her birth hav- ing occurred in 1821.

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Centennial History of Grant County Indiana, Part 53

Author: Rolland Lewis Whitson Publication date: 1914 Publisher: Number of Pages: 1034

Author: Rolland Lewis Whitson
Publication date: 1914
Publisher:
Number of Pages: 1034