USA > Indiana > Henry County > Hazzard's history of Henry county, Indiana, 1822-1906, Volume II > Part 79
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84
The Masonic Advocate, in an article in its issue for May, 1901, speaking of Mr. Newby's legal attainments and successes, said: "Brother Newby has single-handed built up a large and lucrative practise, not only in his home court, but throughout Eastern Indiana, where he stands as the peer of the ahlest in his profession." The same jour- nal in addition to the foregoing says: "He has never aspired to the bench but is, how- ever, a favorite when acting as special judge and has frequently been called to the neigh- boring counties of late years, to hold special terms of court and try causes on change of venue,, having sat as the trial judge in many important cases."
Mr. Newby has been a Republican in politics all his life and is always active in the support of his party and its candidates. He has often been a member of the Repub- lican County Committee and, during two or more presidential campaigns, a member of the executive committee chosen by the Republican State Committee to act in conjunction with its chairman in the immediate direction of the work of the campaign.
Mr. Newby was nominated and elected to succeed the late General William Grose in the State Senate in 1892 and re-elected in 1896. His activities and services in that body were such that he soon took rank among the able leaders of the Republican party in the
1195
HAZZARD'S HISTORY OF HENRY COUNTY.
Senate and was for six years the president pro tempore of the Senate. He was also chairman of the judiciary committee for six years. He has been twice a candidate for the nomination by his party for lieutenant governor, but owing to the conflicting inter- ests of candidates for the other State offices he was defeated in convention both times by very narrow margins. He is a hustler, a good mixer and possessed of a rare geniality which with his recuperative powers of mind and spirit enable him to come out of such political contests without having suffered loss of temper and with no sore spots to nurse and no political graveyard to fill. Hence he is a hard man to keep down and, as he is yet young and in fine health and full of mental vigor, he is likely to be heard from in the future.
Mr. Newby has been thus far in life very successful in business, having accumulated a snug fortune. He is the owner of a fine home in Knightstown and quite a number of rental properties as well as some valuable business blocks. He has also some good farms in the neighborhood of his home town in which he takes much pride and greatly enjoys the time which he can give to their oversight. He owns stock in and is president of The Citizens' State Bank of Knightstown and also of The Natural Gas Company, The Electric Light and other business organizations of the town. He is a stockholder, director and vice-president in and of The Columbia National Bank of Indianapolis; a stockholder in The American National Bank of the same city, and one of the largest stockholders in' The Security Trust Company of Indianapolis and president of the New Castle Central Trust and Savings Company, and has many other important business interests in various parts of the State. He is also president of the board of trustees of the southern State prison or reformatory for young men and boys, which has rendered such signal service to the State in carrying out reforms in the prison management and making improve- ments to the buildings and grounds at a saving in money and to the betterment of the inmates as well as to the advantage of the people of the State.
Mr. Newby was united in marriage with Mary Elizabeth, daughter of Robert B. and Julia A. Breckinridge, of Knightstown, Indiana, September 20, 1877. Mrs. Newby's family is'a good one noted for the integrity and energy of its members, her father, the late Robert B. Breckinridge, having been for many years a prominent business man of Knightstown. She is a lady of many accomplishments and graces and skilled in the arts of home-making and in dispensing the genuine courtesies of social life. The married and home life of Mr. and Mrs. Newby have been very happy, surrounded by comforts and refinements, and cheered by a large circle of friends. They are the parents of two children, an accomplished daughter, and a son, who is a member of his father's profes- sion, of whom more will be said further on.
Mr. Newby is a member of several benevolent orders and other social and business societies; but the one society of his choice, in which he has taken most interest and to which he has devoted most time and talent, is the time-tried order of Free and Accepted Masons. He was made a Master Mason in Golden Rule Lodge, Number 16, Knightstown, naving been initiated April 12, 1882, passed May 17, and raised June 7, of the same year. The Masonic Advocate traces his advances in and services to Masonry as fol- lows:
"He was made a Royal Arch Mason in Knightstown Chapter, Number 33, receiving the preceding degrees during the months of August. September and October, and the Royal Arch, November 6, 1882. He was High Priest during 1898. He received the de- grees of Royal and Select Master in Cryptic Council, Number 29, Knightstown, Novem- ber 12, 1883. He was created a Knight Templar in Knightstown Commandery, Number 9, January 30, 1883, and worked his way up to Eminent Commander, which position he held during the years 1889 and 1890.
"In the Grand Commandery he started as Grand Sword Bearer in 1895 and by regular advancement became R. E. Grand Commander of Indiana at the recent Annual Conclave, and enjoyed the honor of representing the Grand Commandery in the Grand Encampment of the United States at the tri-centennial conclave at Louisville, Kentucky, in August, 1901.
"He received the grades of the A. A. Scottish Rite, including the Thirty Second De- gree, at the annual convocation in 'The Valley of Indianapolis' in March, 1892, and he- came a 'Shriner' in Murat Temple, March 25, 1892.
I196
HAZZARD'S HISTORY OF HENRY COUNTY.
"As secretary of the triennial committee of The Grand Commandery, Sir Knight Newby has rendered excellent service in providing quarters for the grand and subordinate commanderies of Indiana at the triennial conclave at Denver, Boston, Pittsburg, Louisville and San Francisco, whereby Indiana has always made a favorable showing with other grand jurisdictions and at a reasonable expense. As a member of the board of trustees of his home lodge and chapter at Knightstown, brother Newby took an active part in the erection of their fine Masonic Temple, which was destroyed by fire October 18, 1899, and also in the erection of the fine and massive new structure which now occupies the place of the old one and is such an adornment to the beautiful little city of Knightstown. As a Mason and as a citizen, in all the walks of life, he stands ready in a public-spirited way to do his full share in promoting the general good. Long may he live in his sphere of usefulness."
Such is the estimate of Mr. Newby as a Mason and a man, made by one who stands high in the "ancient and honorable" order. In addition it may be stated that Mr. Newby is now and has been for the past seven years Inspector General of The Knights Templar of Indiana, and is a life member of the Committee of Jurisprudence of the Knights Templar of the United States.
Mr. and Mrs. Newby have both traveled extensively in their own country and are familiar with many parts of the United States, and Mr. Newby himself has visited Cuba and other islands of the West India group, also Mexico and Central America, and gained much valuable information, and during the Summer of 1905 made a delightful trip to England and Continental Europe in company with Smiley N. Chambers, of Indianapolis, and others, from which he gleaned a great deal of pleasure and profit, and returned to again take up the responsibilities of life in the best county of the best State in the Union and in the town which to him is the best spot of the best county.
THE CHILDREN OF MR. AND MRS. LEONIDAS PERRY NEWBY.
Floss Newby, the only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Newby, was born May 3, 1879. She was reared in Knightstown, receiving her primary education in the public schools of that town and graduated from its high school. She also studied for three years in De Pauw University and afterwards graduated from Madam Phelps' Young Ladies School at Columbus, Ohio. She has received extensive' training in the Greek and Latin lan- guages and in French and German and also in music and has traveled much in her own country and made recently an extended tour of Europe. She is an accomplished young lady, whose genial manners and generous disposition have given her a large circle of friends. She makes her home with her parents at Knightstown.
Floyd J. Newby, the only son of Mr. and Mrs. Newby, was born in Knightstown, January 9, 1881, and grew up in that town, received his early education there and gradu- ated from its high school. After graduation from the Knightstown school, he spent four years in the regular course at De Pauw University and one year at the Indiana State University at Bloomington, in
the law course. He has also spent two years in the study of the law in an office where he came in contact with actual practise and the application of legal principles to business. Most of this time was devoted to study in the office of Judge Eugene H. Bundy, of New Castle, Indiana. He was then ad- mitted to the practise by the Henry Circuit Court, upon examination. He is now en- gaged in the practise in partnership with his father at Knightstown and is in the en- joyment of a prosperous business.
He was united in marriage with Mary H., only child of Judge Henry Clay Lewis, of Greencastle, Indiana, on November 23, 1904. She was educated in the Greencastle public schools, in De Pauw University, and completed her course in the Young Ladies' Seminary at Tarrytown, New York. She is an accomplished lady who stands very high among the best people of Knightstown as well as of her former home. There seem, therefore, to be many reasons to look for a happy and prosperous future for the junior Mr. Newby and his wife.
1197
HAZZARD'S HISTORY OF HENRY COUNTY.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF ISAAC PARKER, A BACKWOODS GENIUS.
FARMER, LEGISLATOR AND MAN OF AFFAIRS.
Isaac Parker, son of Jeremiah and Keren (Newby) Parker, was born in North- ampton County, North Carolina, in 1806, where he reached the age of twelve years, with only such opportunities for gaining an education as an occasional term of an "old field school" afforded, before leaving the State. About the year 1818 he removed with his parents to Wayne Count, Indiana, where the family settled upon a tract of timber land on Elkhorn Creek, five or six miles south of Richmond. It is upon this tract of land that the big Elkhorn sulphur spring is situated.
His father was descended from that English family of Parkers who came with, or soon afterward followed, William Penn from England into the wilderness of Penn- sylvania, and from which one branch went south and settled in North Carolina, another went to New England, and one remained in Chester and Westmoreland counties, Penn- sylvania, where the original settlements of the family were made. The southern branch of the family has contributed many men and women of strong character and influence to the life of the South. .
His mother was a daughter of Robert Newby, whose broad acres lay well down to Albemarle Sound, upon the Perquimans River, but who impoverished himself by giv- ing freedom to all of his slaves, of whom the best information obtainable seems to in- dicate that there were more than one hundred, about one-half of whom he sent to Li- beria, and was put to much expense and trouble to prevent the others from being sold back into slavery. Some of these ex-slaves came with the Parker family to Indiana, and one of them, then an old woman, lived in Isaac Parker's family as late as 1859 and 1860.
Mr. Parker's mother was a very active and sprightly woman, with a wonderful memory and strong intellect. She remembered with great clearness scenes and inci- dents of the Revolutionary period, especially when Greene and Cornwallis were con- tending for the mastery in the Carolinas, and often rehearsed them to her grandchil- dren. His father was an invalid from a hurt received in early life, so that the work of making and cultivating the backwoods farm fell upon Isaac and his elder brother, Rob- ert. But the father was not idle. He had learned the shoemaker's trade and was a fine workman in that line. When able to work he was always busy at the bench, for his work was in much demand. He was a gentle, kind-hearted man, but so thoroughly grounded in the peculiar formalities that had grown up among the Friends in country places at that early day that his rule often hore hard upon his son Isaac, who seems to have inherited a broader view of life from his gracious and gifted mother. He ven- erated and loved his father nevertheless, but he also loved books and poetry and longed for a larger life and opportunities. There were occasional winter terms of school taught at the Orange Meeting House, near the farm and home of the family on Elk- horn Creek, but the teachers were so poorly equipped with learning that little was to he gained from them. A few terms of two to three months in the winter at that school and a single term in a school conducted by Elijah Coffin-so long at the head of The Indiana Yearly Meeting of Friends, and also of the hanking interests of eastern Indiana- in which he paid his way by hearing recitations and acting as the master's assistant, constituted his only opportunities for obtaining a school education.
But so eager was he for knowledge that he sought for books in all directions, read them with eagerness and stored their contents in one of the most comprehensive and tenacious of memories. As long as he lived and retained his faculties he could all the day long repeat the beautiful or striking things in oratory, history, poetry and the drama that he had read in his earlier years, or even when well along in life, often hav- ing heard or read them but once. Parts of great speeches, sermons, newspaper edito- rials and a vast fund of anecdote were thus stored in his memory ready for use at any time. But withal the memory was not abnormal and did not affect his originality of character, save in a favorable and pleasing way. It must have been very largely the result of his intense yearning for those things which appeal to the larger and better
I198
HAZZARD'S HISTORY OF HENRY COUNTY.
intelligence of men, and his fervor in their pursuit which literally burned them into his brain and made them part of his being. How did he acquire all that he knew of history, law, biography, romance and poetry? One can but wonder how in that early day, in a backwoods cabin, restrained and restricted by his father's mistrust of books and printed matter that did not emanate from his own religious society, he ever secured the use of the books from which to obtain it, and did so without giving offense or grief to the parent whom he loved.
In the formation of his tastes he was greatly aided by the works of that great English Quaker and profound linguist and scholar, Lindley Murray, whose books, "The English Reader," "The Introduction to the English Reader" and "Murray's English Grammar," were then in use in all the better schools and in even the humblest of the Quaker schools. They were crowded with selections from the writings of the world's great thinkers, from Homer and Demosthenes among the ancient Greeks to Virgil and Cicero among the Romans; the Bible and Josephus, besides the whole broad field of Eng- lish literature as it existed in the dawn of the nineteenth century. These led him natu- rally to the great authors of the past and few men of his time knew Plutarch's Lives or Shakespeare's plays better than he, and fewer still, except professional actors, could have rendered from memory so many of the choicest passages in the plays.
His familiarity with English and American verse, including Pope's Translation of Homer; Shakespeare, Milton, Pope, Cowper, Goldsmith, Byron, Crabbe, Heber, Pollok, Scott, Campbell, Moore, Burns, Mrs. Hemans and the earlier American poets such as Frenean, Barlow, Trumble, "The Milford Bard"; Mrs. Sigourney and later in his life, Whittier, Halleck, Bryant, Longfellow, Nathaniel P. Willis and Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, was perhaps greater than that of any other person in the eastern half of In- diana. He wrote some verse himself, but most of it was in the way of political satire and has not survived him.
In romance his field of interest was even wider, including everything from Field- ing to the latest of Fenimore Cooper's Indian stories. Among his favorites were Bul- wer Lytton, Sir Walter Scott, Eugene Sue and Victor Hugo, though Hugo had not then reached his best. He loved to recite from Burns or Shakespeare for the pleasure of his friends and in that way added to the enjoyment of many a neighborhood gathering. In Burns's "Tam O'Shanter's Ride" and "The Address to a Louse" he was at his best.
But to recount a tithe of the striking or beautiful things he knew is not possible in this brief sketch. His poses and attitudes were all peculiar and different from those of the staid people about him, who thought him exceedingly awkward, a charge to which he readily pleaded guilty and which he seemed to enjoy. The keen delight he experienced in reading Macaulay's History of England aloud to the family soon after its first appearance in this country was most remarkable. Its splen lid diction stirred him to a lively emotion, such as "The Ballads of Ancient Rome" often awake in a studi- ous boy who is thrilled with a yearning for military glory.
In his early life he longed for a professional career. Medicine or the law he thought would open up to him opportunities for the realization of his dreams, and business seemed to him to point in the same direction, but his father's religious notions were in the way of any such undertaking and more than all else that withheld him was the fact that by the time he had reached the age to begin such studies his father's declin- ing health made it necessary for him-he being the youngest son-to assume the care of his parents and devote himself to their welfare. He bowed to the inevitable, but relaxed not his pursuit after knowledge and the ability to do things well.
He associated with the foremost young men of Wayne County-J. C. Williams, Sep- timus Smith, David P. Holloway, John Finley, John S. Newman and others who were then coming into notice, were among his advisers and friends who helped him to books and gave him encouragement. When he lay upon his death bed in 1866 John S. New- man, then president of The Indiana Central Railway, spent a day at his bedside, re- newing with him the struggles and triumphs of their early lives. Newman was almost the last of his earlier friends.
About the year 1830 the family determined to remove to Henry County, where an eighty-acre tract of land was entered and another purchased later. In 1831 a neat house
1199
HAZZARD'S HISTORY OF HENRY COUNTY.
of hewed logs was built on the first tract, where the farm residence of Robert Hall now stands. Into this house Mr. Parker's parents removed, after selling their Wayne County holdings. When Mr. Parker married he built a round-log cabin nearby, in which he and his young wife, Mary Strattan, began the journey of life together in 1831. He had made her acquaintance in Richmond, Indiana, some years before, she having been the daughter of Benjamin Strattan, a village blacksmith, who was somewhat famous as a fine workman in iron and steel. He was an auger, axe and bellmaker and manufacturer of many kinds of wood workers' tools, his house heing not far from the site of the pres- ent court house of Wayne County. Mary Strattan proved to be a most intelligent and sympathetic partner for a man of the character and attainments of Isaac Parker. Her father and mother had sold their home in Richmond and purchased a farm in what is now the Hopewell neighborhood, and moved there to spend the evening of their lives, with the homes of their married sons and daughters about them, on neighboring eighties. In the same new Quaker neighborhood of Hopewell settled Robert, brother of Isaac Parker, and his two married sisters.
Another Friends' community was then forming on Flatrock, among whom Jeremiah Parker, father of Isaac, was one of the oldest of the first-comers. A meeting house was built one mile north of his home in the woods, and, at his suggestion, the meeting and the neighborhood, taken as one, were called "Richsquare," after the name of his old home meeting in North Carolina, where it seems to have been a very decided mis- fit. It was in this church that the first Richsquare schools were taught. A school certif- icate is still extant which was issued to Isaac Parker to teach "reading, writing and arithmetic to the single rule of three," signed by Jehu T. Elliott, Joel Reed and Martin L. Bundy, the license being in the beautiful handwriting of Mr. Bundy. These three gentlemen were then the county school examiners. The school was taught in the log meeting house in the winter of 1836-7, and it is needless to say that much more was taught than the certificate required, as the school was largely made up of young men . and women much further advanced in their studies. The school was a success and an- other term. was called for. At least one other primary school had been taught in the new neighborhood before, hut Parker's first term was the practical inauguration of the very effective school which has been maintained there ever since and which is now the Franklin Township High School.
In his early career in Henry County Isaac Parker was quite a successful, farmer, as farming was done in those days, but as more and more demands were made upon him to undertake the settlement of estates and such puhlic duties as the assessing of property for taxation, the appraisement of real estate, the taking of the census and like services, which occupied his time, the management of the farm fell upon the oldest son, Benjamin S. Parker, and a brother, Edwin E. Parker, eight years younger.
Isaac Parker was also drawn into politics, for which he had a great liking, but for which his temperament unfitted him. Generous and sincere himself, he could not bring himself to understand nor to condone the self-seeking eagerness and often bitter personalities and dissimulations of politicians, great and small, and was wounded and hurt by them so deeply and lastingly that the suffering entailed upon him far exceeded all the gain from office that ever came to him. He was several times the nominee of his party for places of honor, the last time being for delegate to the constitutional conven- tion of 1851. In that instance he was defeated by a curious coalition between the Dem- ocrats and Free Soilers of the county. By the terms of the act of the General Assembly providing for the election of delegates to the convention, each county was entitled to as many delegates as it had representatives in the lower House of the General Assembly, and each senatorial district to one member, but there was no difference whatever created between the functions of a senatorial and representative delegate, as all were to serve in . the same body upon an equal footing, yet an awkwardness in the wording of the act distinguished them as senatorial and representative delegates and the political parties followed the blunder in making their nominations and printing their tickets. Thus the Whigs nominated Daniel Mason, of Knightstown, for senatorial delegate, and Isaac Parker, of Franklin Township, and Dr. George H. Ballengall, of Middletown, for repre- sentative delegates, while the coalition of Democrats and Free Soilers chose Isaac
I200
HAZZARD'S HISTORY OF HENRY COUNTY.
Kinley, Free Soiler, for senatorial delegate, and Daniel Mowrer and John F. Johnston for representative delegates, and the two tickets were so printed and distributed. The vote was a very close one with the result that Kinley received more votes than Mason, and Mowrer more votes than Parker, while Ballengall scored a few more than either of the opposition candidates for representative delegate, and Parker received more votes than Kinley. As a matter of fact the entire Whig ticket for delegates was elected, Henry County being then entitled to two representatives and one senator; but under the ruling that prevailed, two fusionists, Kinley and Mowrer, and one Whig, Ballengall, were given the certificates of election and served in that memorable body to the ap- proval of the people of the county. It seems proper to say that Major Isaac Kinley who, after a long and highly honorable career as teacher, author, editor, legislator, scholar and soldier, is now an invalid in Los Angeles, California, and unable to leave his bed, is believed to be the only surviving member of the convention that framed our present State constitution.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.