Greater Indianapolis : the history, the industries, the institutions, and the people of a city of homes, Part 13

Author: Dunn, Jacob Piatt, 1855-1924. cn
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 972

USA > Indiana > Marion County > Indianapolis > Greater Indianapolis : the history, the industries, the institutions, and the people of a city of homes > Part 13

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tion until his death, and the property is still owned by his family, except 250 acres, which now forms a part of beautiful Riverside Park.

In the domain of practical politics Mr. Cooper wielded a large influence for many vears, and as a contemporary of Hendricks, Vorhees, McDonald, Gray and other leaders of the Democratic party in Indiana, he was prom- inent and influential in the party councils and assisted ably in the effective manoeuvering of political forces in his native state. In 1882, he was elected to the office of state treasurer, as the regular candidate on the Democratic ticket, and in 1884, a mark of popular appreciation and confidence was further given, in his being chosen as his own successor. A thorough busi- ness man and one of much executive ability, he administered the fiscal affairs of the state with consummate wisdom and discretion, and his record in this responsible office has passed into history as one of the best in the annals of the state. As a leader in legitimate political contests he had few superiors in Indiana and he ever brought his splendid powers to bear in forwarding the interests of the people and the development and upbuilding of his home city, In whose welfare his loval interest never flagged.

In his later years Mr. Cooper became promi- nently identified with the promotion and de- velopment of electric interurban railways, and in this important field of enterprise he was one of the pioneers in Indiana, which state now holds in this line practical precedence of all others in the Union. He was a member of the directorate of the Indianapolis, Greenfield & Eastern Electric Railway Company and also of the Indianapolis, Shelbyville & Southeastern Traction Company, besides which he was a stockholder in various other companies of like order. In 1886 he was one of the organizers and incorporators of the United States Encaustic Tile Works. of Indianapolis, representing one of the most extensive industries of its kind in the Union, and he served as president of this corporation from the time of its inception until his death.

As a citizen Mr. Cooper was essentially pro gressive. loyal and public-spirited, and all legit- imate measures and enterprises tending to con- serve the welfare and advancement of the cap- ital city were certain to receive the benefit of his influence and tangible co-operation. Sin- cerity and probity dwelt with him as constant guests, and upon his entire career there rests no shadow of wrong or injustice. He was en- tirely free from ostentation, was a keen judge of men and, understanding the well-springs of human thought and motive, he was tolerant in his judgment. Thus placing true values upon men and affairs, his helpfulness was man-

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ifested in wise and legitimate ways, and he made his forceful and noble personality count for good in all the relations of life. He was a Master Mason, and held membership in the Indianapolis Board of Trade and the Commer- cial Club. He passed to his reward, secure in the esteem of all who had appreciation of his true worth of character and of his large and generous accomplishment as one of the world's noble army of workers.

On June 24, 1852, was solemnized the mar- riage of Mr. Cooper to Miss Sarah F. Myers, who was born in Dearborn and reared in Ripley County, Indiana, where her father, James My- ers, was an early settler. Mrs. Cooper sur- vives her honored husband and still resides in the beautiful old homestead in Indianapolis. She is a member of the Tabernacle Presby- terian Church, as is also the family. Of their eight children only three are now living- Charles M., of whom individual mention is made on other pages of this publication; Vir- ginia E., who is the wife of Hon. John M. Wiley, of Buffalo, New York, and ex-member of Congress from that state; and Caroline C., who is the wife of Earl MI. Ogle, of Indianap- olis.

CHARLES M. COOPER. An able member of the bar of the state, Charles M. Cooper gave his attention to the work of his profession in the City of Indianapolis for a long term of years, but his various industrial and capitalistic interests now place such exigent demands upon his time and attention that he has to a large degree withdrawn from active practice at the bar. He is native of Indiana and a representa- tive of one of its sterling pioneer families, being a son of the late John J. Cooper, a dis- tinguished citizen to whom is dedicated a special memoir on other pages of this work, so that in the present connection further review of the family history is not essential.

Charles M. Cooper was born in the village of Zenas, Ripley County, Indiana, on the 17th of January, 1855, and three years later his par- ents. removed to Kokomo; after six years' resi- dence there, they moved to Indianapolis, where he was reared to manhood and where he has maintained his home during the intervening years. He completed the curriculum of the public schools of the capital city, including a course in the high school, and in 1877 he was graduated in Cornell University at Ithaca, New York, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. Somewhat later he began reading law under the able preceptorship of the late and honored Judge Samuel H. Buskirk, former judge of the Supreme Court of Indianapolis, and in 1879 was admitted to the har of his native state, amply fortified in a preliminary

way for the work of the exacting vocation mi which he was destined to attain to marked success and prestige. He forthwith engaged in the practice of his profession in Indianap- olis and for more than twenty years he was numbered among the active and representative practitioners in the city. where he held prece- dence both as an able and discriminating trial lawyer and as a well fortified and conservative counselor. He became associated with his father in various business enterprises and also extended his operations individually in the in- dnstrial field, and with the expanding of these various interests in scope and importance he found it expedient to give to the same his per- sonal supervision. with the result that he in large measure relinquished the work of his profession. He succceded his father in the presidency of the United States Encaustic Tile Company, one of the large industrial concerns of Indianapolis and one of the most important of its kind in the United States, and of this position he is now incumbent. Much of his time is demanded in connection with the ad- ministration of the affairs of this corporation. and he also has other large and important capi- talistic interests in the city and state. In the promotion of business enterprises of magnitude he has contributed his quota to the upbuilding of the Greater Indianapolis, and no citizen has shown a more loyal and vital interest in all that tends to further its progress and material and civic prosperity. He is the only surviving son of his parents and is well upholding the pres- tige of the honored name which he hears.

As a stanch advocate of the principles and policies for which the Democratic party generic- ally stands sponsor, Mr. Cooper has been an active worker in its ranks, though he has never had aught of ambition for the honors or emolu- ments of public office. He is a member of the Indiana Democratic Club, and is also identified with the Indianapolis Board of Trade and the Commercial Club. In the Masonic fraternity he has completed the circle of both the York and Scottish Rite bodies, in which latter he is identified with the Consistory, of the Valley of Indianapolis, in which he has attained to the thirty-second degree, besides which he has crossed the sands of the desert and been en- rolled as a member of Murat Temple of the An- cient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. He is also affiliated with the local lodge of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. He is a member of the St. Paul's Episcopal Church of Indianapolis.

On the 10th of August, 1899, Mr. Cooper was united in marriage to Miss Nellie J. John- son, daughter of the late Dr. Thornton A. .Johnson, of Indianapolis, and their attractive

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home, at 1430 North Meridian street, is one in which is dispensed a gracious hospitality, touching the best social life of the capital city. They have two children, Sarah Frances, born September 5, 1900, and John J., born July 11, 1906.

JULIUS A. LEMCKE. The German-American element has long been one of the strongest forces in the bone and sinew of the Repub- lican party in the middle west, and the late Capt. Julius A. Lemcke was long a popular and stalwart leader of the Indiana contingent. Twenty-seven years of his earlier life was spent in Evansville as merchant, banker, Fremont compaigner and pioneer Republican, and finally as one of the most active men con- nected with the promotion of the boat interests of the Ohio River. In the latter capacity he not only acquired a considerable fortune and a high standing as a business man, but ren- dered his country splendid service in the early part of the Civil War by patrolling the lower Ohio and cutting off Confederate supplies, as well as by the transportation of men and muni- tions of war for the Union armies. He was an efficient official both of Evansville and Van- derburg County before he was called to In- dianapolis to become treasurer of Indiana and until his death, twenty-two years thereafter was a prominent and honored citizen of the capital. Captain Lemcke was a man who drew people to him because they admired him for what he had really accomplished and because of the attractive power which always abides with those who themselves have an honest af- fection for their fellows. Such lovable char- acters avoid much of the wear and tear of life which fall upon those who plow through the world by sheer strength and uncompromising force.

Captain Lemcke's enviable record commences with his birth in Hamburg, Germany, on the 11th of September, 1832; is extended into his carly boyhood by the death of his father and into the period of his youth by his emigra- tion to the United States in the spring of 1846. An ocean voyage of three months on a sailing vessel brought the youth of fourteen to New Orleans, and a trip of several days, up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, brought him to to the farm of his maternal uncle, William L. Deubler, ten miles from Evansville on the New Harmony road. There was no child in the household and the four years which the hardy German boy spent on this homestead were busy ones indeed, valuable to him chiefly as a season of good discipline: his wages were nothing the first three years and four dollars monthly, the last year. So he decided to try a drygoods store in Evansville. In his quaint

book of "Reminiscences", published not long before his death, the captain gives a graphic sketch of the duties which had fallen to him. "It was not unnatural," he says, "that the childless couple I left behind should be loth to part with a handy boy, who, never idle, began at daybreak with milking the cows; before breakfast had fed the stock and chopped an armful of wood; and who, during the day, when not at work in the field or the clearing, kept up repairs on the barn and farming im- plements of the place, patched the harness of the horses, half-soled the shoes of the family, did the hog killing at Christmas, pickled the hams and smoked them, made the sausage and souse, watched the ash hopper and boiled the soap, and, who, on Saturday nights, helped Aunt Hannah darn the stockings of the fam- ily." Not to mention assisting the old uncle in his prosperous country store, both in selling his goods and hauling country produce to Evansville for shipment to New Orleans.

After working in the drygoods store, study- ing bookkeeping at night and clerking in a grain and grocery store for about a year, young Lemcke went to New Orleans as receiving clerk on a passenger steamer. On his return he was sent up Green River, Kentucky, to take charge of a country store, and in the winter of 1852 he took charge of the railroad station of Kings Station, then the northern terminus of the Evansville and Terre Haute line. The station was in the forest and the agent, who was soon dispensed with, returned to Evansville and commenced to make cigars. Soon afterward he was back on the river as a steamboat clerk, and then for some time operated a country store, auctioneered and did various other things, a dozen miles from Mount Vernon, Posey County, Indiana. Another return to Evansville followed, with some experience in connection with the "wildcat" bank of the place, and in the autumn of 1856 the young German-American appeared as a vigorous cam- paigner for Fremont and the Republican party. He was elected city clerk of Evansville in 1858: next became a member of the whole- sole grocery firm of Sorenson, Lemcke and Company, from which he emerged financially broken but in fair spirits; built a first-class hotel, of which the city was much in need, and before the outbreak of the war had become largely interested in several well equipped steamboats, having. by general consent. fairly earned the title of Captain. In 1861 the United States Government detailed him to patrol the lower Ohio River. and before regular posts were established in the valley. he did good service in preventing the transportation of supplies across the lines to the Confederacy.

of a Lawicks

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HISTORY OF GREATER INDIANAPOLIS.

He also served with one of his boats under Generals Grant and Sheridan at Cairo and Pa- ducah, and carried away the first load of wounded Union soldiers from Fort Donelson. Still later he was in the military service on the Ohio, Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, and in 1862, with Captain Dexter, he organ- ized the first Evansville and Cairo line. In times of peace he served for ten years as a member of the Ohio River Commission, and, in all respects, during his day no man was more closely identified with the boat interests of the Ohio valley. In 1876 he was elected city treas- urer of Evansville; in 1880 became sheriff of the county for two terms and was a member of the city police board. He was cashier of the Merchants' National Bank of Evansville and became interested in a woolen factory, also in Evansville.

In 1887, when Captain Lemcke commenced his first term as state treasurer, he moved to Indianapolis, which ever after was his home. He was re-elected in 1888 and continued in office until 1891. President Harrison after- ward offered him the United States treasurer- ship, which he declined, and not long there- after visited Europe for the second time (first trip in 1866). While in Germany he formed a warm attachment to the poet Bodenstedt, who died during his stay in the fatherland, and he was honored by appointment as one of his famous friend's pallbearers. During the later years of his life, Captain Lemcke devoted much time in writing an account of his Euro- pean travels and his "Reminiscences of an Indianian", developing a remarkable gift for. humorous and graphic narrative. Although the deceased belonged to no secret societies, he was an old member of the Columbia Club, Maennerchor, German House, Indianapolis Lit- erary Club and the Indianapolis Art Associa- tion, and no one was ever more welcome to any circle which he chose to enter than Cap- tain Lemcke. His death occurred at his home on North Pennsylvania street, the direct cause of his demise being pneumonia. He was buried in Evansville beside his eldest son, George, who had died ten years before. The surviving members of his family are his widow, to whom he was married January 1, 1874; two daugh- ters, Mrs. Harry Sloan Hicks, of New York City, and Eleanor, now the wife of Russell Fortune, of Indianapolis; and Ralph A. Lemcke, who was associated with his father in the management of his property. Captain Lemcke built the present handsome office build- ing, now known as the Lemcke Building, which was commenced in the spring of 1895.

CHARLES E. COFFIN. In the enlisting of men of enterprise, ability and integrity in the

furtherance of her financial, commercial and industrial activities, is mainly due the prece- dence and prosperity of Indiana's capital city, and as representative of the progressive spirit which has brought about the upbuilding of "Greater Indianapolis" it is consonant that in this publication special recognition be accorded to Charles E. Coffin, president of The Central 'Trust Company, which has been prominent in its sphere of operations in our favored com- monwealth.

Mr. Coffin finds a due measure of satisfac- tion in reverting to the fine old Hoosier state as the place of his nativity. He was born at Salem, Washington County, Indiana, on the 13th of July, 1849, and is a son of Zachariah 'T. and Caroline (Armfield) Coffin, who re- moved from Salem to Bloomington, this state, in 1862. There they passed the residue of their lives, honored by all who knew them. The father was a tanner and justice of the peace.

Charles E. Coffin secured his rudimentary education in the schools of his native village and thereafter continued his studies in the pub- lic schools of Bloomington, where he was reared to maturity. In 1869, when twenty years of age, Mr. Coffin came to Indianapolis, where he assumed a position in the employ of Wylie & Martin, leading real estate dealers. He re- mained with this firm for a period of six years, at the expiration of which he established him- self independently in the same line of business, in which his operations eventually attained large proportions. He built up a most success- ful enterprise and incidentally did much to further the material upbuilding of Indianapolis through the handling of both business and resi- dence properties and the opening of suburban subdivisions. He continued to be actively en- gaged in the real estate business until 1899, when he effected the organization of The Cen- tral Trust Company, of which he has since been president and which, under his able ad- ministration as chief executive, has become one of the strongest financial and fiduciary institu- tions of its kind in the state. Mr. Coffin was also one of the organizers of the Indianapolis & Eastern Railroad Company, in which he was one of the original stockholders and of which he served as vice-president for a number of years. He is a valued member of the Indian- apolis Board of Trade, of whose board of gov- ernors he was a member for one term. He was one of the organizers and incorporators of the Commercial Club and was its president in 1900. He was one of the incorporators of the County Club and a member of its directorate, and is a director of the Art Association of Indianapolis, which controls the Heron Art In- stitute. For the past eleven years he has been

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a member of the city board of park commis- sioners, and at the present time is the senior member in service in this important municipal body.

From the foregoing statements, brief as they are, it will be seen that Mr. Coffin is animated by broad public spirit and civic loyalty and that he has touched the various activities which make for advancement and prosperity and con- serve consecutive progress in the beautiful capital city of Indiana. He was one of the charter members of the Columbia Club and is a member of the Marion Club, both repre- sentative social organizations of Indianapolis, and he takes deep interest in the affairs of the Indiana Historical Society, of which he is treasurer. In politics, though never animated by aught of ambition for official preferment, Mr. Coffin gives a stanch allegiance to the Re- publican party. and his religious faith is that of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In the Masonic fraternity he has attained to the thirty- second degree of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite and is also identified with its adjunct or- ganization, the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, in which he has affiliation in Murat Temple.

ALBERT J. BEVERIDGE. Through his own powers and labors has Hon. Albert J. Beveridge lifted himself to the plane of high achievement and distinguished service, and though it is im- possible in a publication of this order to enter into details concerning his career in its entirety, vet consistency demands that in a work touch- ing the history of "Greater Indianapolis", the city of his home, a tribute be paid to this dis- finguished Indiana representative in the United States sonate. In the very prime of strong and rigorous manhood, none can deny that he has made a lasting impress upon the history of his time. and that still more brilliant accom- plishment shall be his is but a logical sequence. A figure of prominence in national affairs. a lawyer of marked ability, a man of fine in- tellectual. oratorical and literary powers. he has made his influence felt in divers directions and has emphatically honored the state that has honored him in conferring upon him the dig- nified office of which he is now incumbent.

At the time of his election to the United States senate. in 1899. Albert J. Beveridge was one of the youngest men ever called to that wrest deliberative body of our national legjs- lature. Here he has not failed to sunnort his initial brilliancy with a record of practical and effective statesmanship. One especially familiar with the career of Senator Beveridge has offered the following pertinent and appreciative esti- mato: "Retaining the respect and admiration of his confreres at the bar and of those promi-

nent in public life, he is by them recognized as an eloquent orator and at the same time he has evinced-in the halls of the United States senate and through the newspaper press, peri- odical literature and individual authorship-a solidity of mental equipment that has given his reputation the quality of endurance as well as that of elasticity. This stability of power, with consequent and normal expansion thereof, was denied him by the dictums of opposing political prophets, in the earlier period of his public career. To those familiar with the cir- cumstances that compassed him during his youth and early manhood there must come a feeling of respect and admiration, for he has unmistakably risen on the ladder of his own building and merits that proudest of American titles, 'self-made man'."

Senator Beveridge was born on a farm on the borders of Adams and Highland Counties, Ohio, on the 6th of October; 1862, the old homestead residence having been located in Highland County .. His father had entered the Union service at the inception of the Civil War, and upon his return to his neglected farm, soon after the birth of Albert J., the veteran soldier found himself facing serious financial problems, and soon after the close of the war he removed to Sullivan, Moultrie County. Illi- nois. In the rapid fluctuation of values in the early post-belhun period he was unable to pro- tect his interests and suffered the loss of his entire property. It was at this time that the family home was established in Illinois, where the father resumed agricultural operations un- der unfavorable circumstances.

That the future United States senator was denied proper educational advantages in his boyhood days was the direct result of the de- pressing conditions that compassed the family fortunes. He attended the district schools of Moultrie County, Illinois, in a desultory war, and at the age of twelve years the boy was to be found following the plow. There was in his makenp. however, naught of apathy or stolid patience, and his alert mentality and definite ambition soon manifested themselves in de- termined effort for advancement through in- dividual endeavor. At the age of fourteen vears he was employed as a laborer on a rail- road, and even then was he devising and for- mulating plans for the securing of an educa- tion far beyond the imperfect and irregular training thus far accorded him. In later davs than those of the youth of the martyred and noble president. Abraham Lincoln, have there been those who have wrought out their own salvation through equally strennous toil and endeavor, and there can be naught of incon- sistoney in drawing measurable parallels. At

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fifteen years of age Senator Beveridge was pro- viding for his own maintenance through his labors as a logger and teamster, and his leisure hours, oft times lent with grudging favor of the god of sleep, were given to study. Con- cerning his early struggles the following words have been written: "The deadlock in his hard affairs was temporarily broken when he became a high-school student, but then, and for a number of years afterward, whatever he achieved mentally was a double triumph, for he was not only compelled to master the task in hand but also, by sheer force of will, to raise himself above all physical considerations most natural to the young man who is also valiantly struggling to provide himself with the absolute necessities of life." What of am- bition and determination belonged to the young student and worker 'need not be asked. He grappled with circumstance and bent it to his will. Under such conditions as have been desig- nated in foregoing sentences he also entered Asbury University, now DePauw University, at Greencastle, Indiana, in which institution he was graduated as a member of the class of 1885, with high honors. He received his de- gree of Bachelor of Arts, but the baccalaureate honors rested upon one who was virtually penni- less. After winning such intermediate vic- tories it was not to be expected that the young collegiate would flinch in the face of the fu- ture-a "foeman worthy of his steel". There must have been to him at this point in his career much of that "stern joy that warriors feel", and supine inactivity or rebellious protest found no hospice at his houseless door.

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Greater Indianapolis : the history, the industries, the institutions, and the people of a city of homes, Part 13

Author: Dunn, Jacob Piatt, 1855-1924. cn Publication date: 1910 Publisher: Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Company Number of Pages: 972

Author: Dunn, Jacob Piatt, 1855-1924. cn
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Chicago : The Lewis Publishing Company
Number of Pages: 972