USA > Indiana > Marion County > Indianapolis > Greater Indianapolis : the history, the industries, the institutions, and the people of a city of homes > Part 37
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ever, he returned to Madison, to attend to cer- tain property interests of the family, and he remained in that city from 1903 until 1907, in which latter year he resumed the practice of his profession in Indianapolis.
In the spring of 1908 Mr. Korbly was made the nominee on the Democratic ticket for rep- resentative of the Seventh district in Con- gress, and in the ensuing November election he was successful in overcoming a large Re- publican majority, receiving a gratifying en- dorsement at the polls. As one of the active and well fortified younger members of Con- gress he has made a record creditable alike to his state and to his fidelity and discrimination as a legislator. For fully a decade he has been a zealous and effective worker in behalf of the cause of the Democratic party, and he has served as a member of various party com- mittees in his home state. He is a versatile advocate at the bar and an effective public speaker, and he has been a successful fac- tor in campaign work in Indiana. He is a member of the Indiana Bar Association and is identified with the Indianapolis Board of Trade and the Commercial Club and the In- diana State Historical Society. The impor- tant official position of which he is incumbent offers emphatic voucher for his personal pop- ularity.
On the 10th of June, 1902, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Korbly to Miss Isabel Palmer, who was born and reared in Indian- apolis, Indiana, and who is a member of one of the distinguished pioneer families of this state. She is a daughter of Edward and Elizabeth (Stephens) Palmer and is a grand- daughter of Hon. Nathan B. Palmer, who was speaker of the Indiana House of Repre- sentatives in 1832 and who was shortly aft- erward elected treasurer of the state. The Palmer family was founded in America in the colonial epoch of our national history and representatives of the same were found enrolled as valiant soldiers of the Continental 'line during the War of the Revolution.
WILLIAM OSENBACH, M. D. A representa- tive member of the medical profession in In- dianapolis, where he is specially prominent in the field of surgery, is Dr. William Osen- bach, who has been engaged in practice in the capital city since the year 1896 and whose success in his chosen vocation has been of the most unequivocal type.
Dr. Osenbach is a native of the City of Lafayette, Indiana. where he was born on the 29th of June, 1866, and he is a son of Fletcher and Emma (Gipe) Osenbach, both of whom were born at Noblesville, this state, of German lineage. They were reared and
AmParty
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educated in their native town and there their marriage was solemnized, soon after which important event in their lives they removed to Lafayette, where. they have maintained their home during the long intervening years. The father, who was for many years a suc- cessful and popular traveling salesman, is now identified with the hardware business in Lafayette, where he has ever commanded unqualified confidence and esteem and where he is an influential citizen and representative business man. Of the five children two are deceased, and of the three surviving the sub- ject of this sketch is the eldest; Della is the wife of William McCarty and resides in La- fayette; and Elmer is identified with busi- ness interests at Lafayette.
Dr. Osenbach was reared to manhood in his native city, to whose public schools he is indebted for his earlier educational discipline, which included a course in the high school. Having formulated definite plans for his fu- ture career, in 1892 he was matriculated in the Central College of Physicians and Sur- geons, in Indianapolis, in which he completed the prescribed technical course and was grad- uated as a member of the class of 1896, with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. He forth- with engaged in the active work of his pro- fession in Indianapolis, where his success has been of cumulative order and where he has gained marked precedence in the surgical branch of his practice, which is essentially of representative character. He has shown dis- tinctive devotion to his exacting vocation, in which his labors have been unremitting and his study and investigation such as to keep him in the most perfect touch with the ad- vances made in both medical and surgical science. In the years 1903-4-5 he did ef- fective post-graduate work in the Chicago Post-Graduate Medical School, and he has devoted much attention to the line of work which he has made his specialty, that of sur- gery. He is consulting surgeon to the Dea- coness Hospital, of Indianapolis, and is sur- gcon-in-chief of the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton Railroad, besides which he is surgeon for a large number of the leading manufac- turing concerns of Indianapolis. He holds membership in the Indianapolis Medical So- ciety, the Indiana State Medical Society, and the American Medical Association. In poli- tics the doctor gives his allegiance to the Re- publican party, he is affiliated with Marion Lodge No. 35, Free and Accepted Másons, and is identified with Star Lodge No. 7, Knights of Pythias, of which he is past chan- cellor commander. Both he and his wife
Vol. II-12
hold membership in the Central Avenue Meth- odist Episcopal Church.
In 1888 Dr. Osenbach was united in mar- riage to Miss Sophronia Rycraft, who was born and reared in Lafayette, Indiana, and they have one daughter, Zelda, who is an accomplished pianist, having taken the artists' course on the piano at the Indianapolis Con- servatory of Music, and has shown marked ability and talent in her chosen calling.
DAVID M. PARRY. The glory of our great American republic is in the perpetuation of individuality and in the according of the ut- most scope for individual accomplishment. Fostered under auspicious surroundings, the nation has produced men of the finest mental caliber, of true virile strength and of vigor- ous purpose. The record of accomplishment in the individual sense is the record which the true and loyal American holds in highest appreciation and honor. Among the prolific workers in connection with the productive activities of life is found David M. Parry, who may well be designated as one of the val- iant and resourceful "captains of industry" who have conserved the progress and up- building of the "Greater Indianapolis" where he was president of the Parry Manu- facturing Company, representing one of the important industrial concerns of the capital city, and where he has also been a factor in the promotion of other noteworthy enter- prises. He is now president of Parry Auto Company, is vice-president of the Indianap- olis Southern Railway Company, and not in an ephemeral way is his name associated with the word progress. He has shown marked initiative ability, has been a power in practi- cal business and commercial enterprise, and has given his influence and tangible support to every worthy movement for civic better- ment. As one of the essentially representa- tive business men of Indianapolis he is well entitled to consideration in this publication. His career has been characterized by cour- age, confidence, progressiveness and impreg- nable integrity of purpose. and he has won success that is worthy of the name.
David M. Parry was born in Allegany County, Pennsylvania, near the city of Pitts- burg, on the 26th of March, 1852, and is a son of Thomas J. and Lydia (Maclean) Par- ry, both of whom were natives of the city of Pittsburg and members of honored pioneer families of the old Keystone state of the Union. The Parry family traces its lineage back to stanch Welsh origin and the subject of this review is a representative of the third generation of the family in America. His paternal grandfather, Henry Parry, was born
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in Wales, where he was reared and educated and where he was well trained for the pro- fession of civil engineering, to which he de- voted his attention upon coming to America. He had the distinction of erecting the first court house west of the Alleghany Mountains in Pennsylvania. He established his home in the city of Pittsburg, where he passed the residue of his life, which was prolonged to an advanced age. He rendered effective service in the War of 1812, in which he had super- vision of the somewhat primitive cannon util- ized by the American forces in their second conflict with England. He married a daugh- ter of General John Cadwallader, and of this union twelve children were born.
General John Cadwallader was one of the distinguished men of his day and generation, and history bears record of his gallant serv- ices as a general of the patriot forces in the war of the Revolution, in which he was a valued member of the staff of General Wash- ington. He laid out the historic old Fort DuQuesne, and he was a most ardent patriot, having been a stalwart advocate of the cause of national independence during the cli- macteric period leading up to the Revolution. His father, Dr. Thomas Cadwallader, presided over a famous "tea party", held in a coffee- house in Philadelphia, prior to the more cele- brated "Boston tea party". The meeting thus held in Philadelphia was the first one to voice protest in such manner against the unjust taxation imposed by the mother coun- try. The Cadwallader family is of Welsh origin and has ever been renowned for the high intellectuality of its representatives. Dr. Thomas Cadwallader was a distinguished physician and pathologist and was an inti- mate friend and associate of Benjamin Franklin. He was a man of exceptional schol- astic and scientific erudition and was the coadjutor of Dr. Rush and others in the founding of the University of Pennsylvania.
Thomas Parry, the youngest of the twelve children of Henry Parry, was reared to man- hood in Pennsylvania, where he received good educational advantages, according to the standard of the period, and he continued his residence in his native state until 1853, when he removed to Indiana and settled on a farm near Laurel, Franklin County, where he was long and successfully identified with agricul- tural pursuits and where he ever commanded, a secure place in popular confidence and es- teem, having been a man of strong mentality and having wielded no little influence in pub- lic affairs of a local order. He passed the last seven years of his life in Indianapolis, where he died in 1899. at the venerable age
of seventy-six years. He was a stanch Re- publican in his political adherency and both he and his wife were devout members of the Presbyterian Church. Mrs. Parry was a daughter of Matthew Maclean, who was born and reared in Scotland, and who took up his residence in Pittsburg upon coming to the United States. He was a man of marked ability and was an influential factor in pub- lic affairs in Pennsylvania, where for half a century he was the owner and editor of the Pittsburg Gazette and where he died at a venerable age. He and his wife became the parents of one son and four daughters. Aft- er the death of her honored husband Mrs. Lydia (Maclean) Parry remained in Indian- apolis, where she passed the closing years of her signally gentle and gracious life in the home of her only daughter, but while visiting her sister in Parnassus, Pennsylvania, died on the 12th of December, 1903, at about eighty years of age.
David M. Parry, was about nine months old at the time of the family removal from Penn- sylvania to Indiana, and he passed his boy- hood and youth on the home farm, near Laurel, Franklin County, in which locality he duly availed himself of the advantages of the district school, in the meanwhile con- tributing his quota to the work of the farm. At the age of sixteen years, with no particu- lar blare of trumpets or pomp of circum- stance, Mr. Parry gave initiation to his busi- ness career. He left the home farm and be- took himself to the neighboring village of Laurel, where he assumed the dignified posi- tion of clerk in a general store, receiving in compensation for his services the princely sti- pend of ten dollars a month, from which he paid for his own maintenance. He remained thus engaged for a period of about eighteen months and then went to Lawrenceburg. where for two years he held a clerkship in a dry-goods store. In 1872 he went to Co- lumbus City, Iowa, where he passed a few months as clerk in a store conducted by his brother Edward, who is now a resident of Indianapolis and who is the eldest of the family of five children; the subject of this review was the second in order of birth; Jen- nie is the widow of O. P. Griffith and resides in Indianapolis; Thomas H. and St. Clair, are interested principals in the Parry Manu- facturing Company, and thus all of the chil- dren now maintain their home in Indianap- olis. From Iowa, David M. Parry went to New York City, where he became bookkeeper for the New York Enamel Paint Company, retaining this position about one year, after which he was there employed as a salesman
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in the wholesale dry-goods house of Ober- holser & Keefer until 1873, when he returned to Indiana and located at Connersville, where he and his brother Edward engaged in the hardware business; the requisite capital hav- ing been furnished by their father. A few years later the honored father met with finan- cial reverses and David M. Parry sold his interest in the hardware business and di- verted the proceeds to meeting his father's obligations and thus saving to him his home- stead farm.
Under these conditions David M. Parry as- sumed a position as traveling salesman for a wholesale hardware house in Cincinnati, in whose interests he covered territory in east- ern Indiana and western Ohio for a period of about three years, within which time he so carefully conserved his resources that he was enabled to purchase a hardware store at Rushville, Indiana, where he established his home and continued in business until 1882, when he disposed of his interests in that place. He had made preparations to go to South America early in that year, as a sales- man of agricultural implements, but the death of his wife, who was survived by two little daughters, caused him to abandon this trip. In his consideration of ways and mean's he finally was led to purchase a small car- riage shop in Rushville, and there he con- tinned the operation of the business, upon a modest scale, for a period of two years, at the expiration of which, in 1886, he removed to Indianapolis, where he has since main- tained his home and where he has gained splendid success and prestige in the indus- trial field. Concerning the development of the important manufacturing enterprise of which he was the head, the following perti- nent statements have been made: "The im- mense concern which he built up was begun in a very modest way. Mr. Parry rented a part of the old Woodburn Sarven Wheel Works and began manufacturing vehicles and farm implements, meeting with success from the very start. He began operations with about forty persons represented on his pay rolls, and the business has increased so phe- nomenally that this concern now gives em- ployment to about twenty-four hundred per- sons. The factory is particularly noted for the high grade of its light-weight vehicles of all kinds. and these are marketed all over the world. For several years Mr. Parry's brother Thomas H. was bookkeeper for the establish- ment, in which he had an interest from the inception of operations, and about 1891 his brother St. Clair entered the firm. In 1899 the eldest of the brothers, Edward, came into
the business, which is now conducted under the name of the Parry Manufacturing Com- pany. The plant is modern in equipment and facilities, and the large and substantial build- ings are situated on a sixty-acre tract of ground west of White River, the offices being at the factory."
The Parry Manufacturing Company is one of the substantial and extensive manufactur- ing concerns that have contributed materially to the industrial and commercial prestige of Indianapolis. The Parry Manufacturing Company and its offices are now located on Parry avenue, Henry and the Vandalia Rail- road. From the beginning David M. Parry exercised the decisive influence in the man- agement of the business, and that its great success is largely attributable to his persist- ent energy, sagacity, integrity and marked initiative and constructive ability, is free- ly and uniformly acknowledged by all who are familiar with the upbuilding of the magnificent enterprise. In May, 1909, Mr. Parry resigned the office of president of the Parry Manufacturing Company, in which he still holds his interests, and is now the president of the Parry Auto Company, which was incorporated July 28, 1909, with a capital stock of one million dol- lars, Mr. Parry being the organizer of the Company. The plant is located at Standard avenue and Division street, where they manu- facture the Parry Car. In 1904 Mr. Parry organized the American Manufacturers' Mu- tual Fire Insurance Company, with headquar- ters at Indianapolis, which has grown to be one of the three largest of its kind in the country. He was its first president and still is incumbent of that office. In 1909 he be- came president of the Automobile Insurance Company of America, which was organized by Cincinnati capital, October 21, 1909, be- ing the date of incorporation. A man of so broad capacity naturally is led to find vari- ous avenues for the utilization of his ener- gies, and this has been true of Mr. Parry, who has identified himself with various other enterprises of important order. He is at the present time vice-president of the In- dianapolis Southern Railroad and has other capitalistic interests through which the prog- ress of the greater commercial city of In- dianapolis is being aided in no small degree. He is well known and held in high regard in local business circles and is one of the en- thusiastic, loyal and public-spirited citizens of the fair capital of the Hoosier state. He is a valued member of the National Association of Manufacturers of the United States, of which organization he had the distinction of
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being elected president in 1902, serving four years. He has also served as president of the Indianapolis Board of Trade and of the Commercial Club, in the affairs of both of which important civic organizations he has shown a lively and helpful interest.
Mr. Parry is distinctly a man of ideas and ideals, and he has not narrowed his mental horizon within the bounds of personal ad- vancement and aggrandizement. He has made for himself a secure place in the com- mercial and civic life of Indianapolis, and his vantage ground is one of the most stable order, from the fact that he has won right worthily his success and prestige as an able business man and sterling citizen. In the midst of the cares and exactions of business he has found time to place himself on record as an active worker in behalf of his home city and also in the field of practical so- ciology, to which he has given much thought and study. The following estimate is well worthy of reproduction in these pages: "As a large employer of labor, Mr. Parry has been deeply interested in the vital issues between capital and labor that have characterized re- cent popular movements, and he was the first man to make a stand against unjust demands and unlawful methods adopted by some of the organized-labor bodies, which he consid- ered a direct violation of American principles. His high personal character and well known principles, as well as his labors in behalf of the improvement of conditions among the working classes, absolved him from any charge of undue self-interest in the position he took and which was for the justness of all concerned. He is well known in Indianap- olis as an enthusiastic student of sociology and its problems, in which connection he is the author of the valuable book entitled the 'Scarlet Empire'."
In politics, though never a seeker of of- fice, Mr. Parry accords a stanch allegiance to the Republican party and is a loyal advo- cate of its cause. He and his wife hold mem- bership in the First Baptist Church, of which he is a trustee, and he has attained to the thirty-second degree of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of Masonry, besides being af- filiated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.
On the 13th of October, 1875, that re- nowned clergyman, the late Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, solemnized the marriage of Mr. Parry to Miss Cora Harbottle, daugh- ter of Thomas and Helen (McIntosh) Har- bottle, of Brooklyn, New York. Mrs. Parry was a member of Plymouth Church, in the
City of Brooklyn, over which Mr. Beecher presided for so many years. Mrs. Cora (Harbottle) Parry was summoned to the life eternal in July, 1882, at the age of twenty! four years, and she is survived by two chil- dren-Helen, who is the wife of Frank N. Fitzgerald, of Indianapolis, and Cora, who is the wife of Warren D. Oakes, of this city.
October 3, 1883, is the date of the marriage of Mr. Parry to Miss. Hessie Maxwell, daugh- ter of John M. and Isabell (Moffett) Max- well, who were at that time residents of In- dianapolis. The names of the seven children of the second marriage are here noted : Ly- dia, Maxwell, Addison, Isabel, Ruth. Jean- ette, and David. The beautiful family home is at Golden Hill, one of the most attractive residence sections of the Indiana capital.
THEODORE EADS GRIFFITH. "Earn thy re- ward; the gods give naught to sloth". is an aphorism uttered long ago by the sage philoso- pher, Epicharmus, and the application of the precept is as insistent in this twentieth cen- tury as in the days of the remote past. A man whose life exemplified appreciation of the truth of this statement was Theodore Eads Griffith, who was in the most significant sense the architect of his own fortune and who left upon the annals of his period the record of a worthy life and of worthy ac- complishment. Measured by its beneficence, its rectitude, its altruism and its material success, his life counted for much, and in this history of the city in which he main- tained his home for thirty years and to whose industrial and civic progress he contributed his due quota, it is but consistent that a tribute to his memory and services be entered. He was summoned to the life eternal on the 4th of November, 1906, at his home in In- dianapolis, and in his death the capital city lost one of its progressive and substantial business men and one of its most popular and honored citizens. He was head of the whole- sale millinery house of Griffith Brothers at the time of his death and the same title is still maintained, his two sons being now the interested principals in the enterprise which he founded many years ago.
Theodore Eads Griffith was born in Day- ton, Ohio, which city was then but a vil- lage, and the, date of his nativity was Octo- ber 14, 1845. He was a son of Thomas and Mary Elizabeth (Eads) Griffith, of whose eleven children he was the first born, and of the number it may be stated that only two are now living. Thomas Griffith was a na- tive of Pennsylvania, as was also his father, and the lineage of the family is traced back to stanch Welsh stock. The father of Thomas
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Griffith became one of the pioneers of Ohio, whither he removed from the old Keystone state early in the nineteenth century, and, from exposure while en route to the new home, he died soon after his arrival. His family settled in the village of Dayton, and there Thomas Griffith eventually became an honored citizen. There both he and his wife passed the residue of their lives.
Theodore E. Griffith was reared to ma- tnrity in Dayton, Ohio, and that he made good use of the advantages afforded him in the common schools of the locality and period is evident when it is noted that when but fifteen years of age he became a successful teacher in the district schools of his native county. Later he became a salesman in a book store in Dayton, and when seventeen years of age he tendered his services in de- fense of the Union, having enlisted for a term of one hundred days as a member of a regi- ment of Ohio volunteer infantry, with which he served until the close of his term, when he received his honorable discharge. When about cighteen years of age Mr. Griffith be- came salesman for a wholesale millinery con- cern in Dayton, and he thus initiated his as- sociation with a line of enterprise in which he was destined to achieve splendid success in later years. After being employed as a sales- man for a short time he became a member of the firm, and about the year 1867 the control of this enterprise passed to the firm of Grif- fith Brothers, which was then organized. The original principals in this firm were the sub- ject of this memoir and his brother, George Franklin, and they gave close attention to business, availed themselves of progressive methods and built up a prosperous trade, based .also upon the popular appreciation of the integrity and honor of the brothers. In January, 1873, Theodore E. Griffith became a junior partner in the firm of C. H. F. Ahrens & Company, of New York City, manu- faeturers of and importers of artificial flow- ers and feathers, and he then removed to the national metropolis, in the meanwhile retain- ing his interest in the business in Dayton.
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