USA > Indiana > Hendricks County > History of Hendricks County, Indiana, her people, industries and institutions > Part 16
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Edgar W. Shirley was educated in the public schools of Pittsboro, con- cluded the common school courses in that town, and attended Butler Uni- versity, Indianapolis. Immediately after the termination of his college course, he entered the store of his father in Danville, and has remained there con- tinuously since that time. Upon his father's death in 1913, he succeeded him in the business firm of Shirley & Showalter. This firm has by its courteous treatment of its customers and strict integrity in all their business dealings, not only gained the confidence of the people, but have built up a large and profit- able business, being numbered among the enterprising and progressive business houses of this city.
Mr. Shirley was married in 1908 to Bernice (Burk) Kendall, of Danville. Industry and probity have been the chief factors of Mr. Shirley's steady ad- vance in business affairs and his position in the world is such as to reflect high
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credit upon himself and to add to the reputation of Danville as an important business center. In addition to his interests in the mercantile business, Mr. Shirley has large real estate holdings in the county. Fraternally, he is a member of the order of Free and Accepted Masons, having taken all the de- grees, including the thirty-second. In his politics, he has been affiliated with the Republican party, although he has never held any office. At the same time he takes an active interest in the political issues of the day. He helps all public enterprises and when the new Christian church was started in Dan- ville he donated three thousand five hundred dollars to its erection. By the exercise of sound business principles and by being energetic at all times Mr. Shirley has forged to the front and is today one of the most deserving business men of the county, where he is held in high esteem by all classes because of his honesty of purpose, his industry, courteous manner and public spirit.
JOHN W. TROTTER.
It is not an easy task to adequately describe the character of a man who has led an eminently active and busy life in connection with the great legal profession and who has stamped his individuality on the plane of definite accomplishment in one of the most exacting fields of human endeavor. Among the truly self-made and representative men of Hendricks county none ranks higher than the honorable gentleman whose name heads this sketch, who is a conspicuous figure in the civic life of the community. A man of tireless energy and indomitable courage, he has won and held the unquali- fied esteem of his fellow citizens. Although the law is his profession, he has won a high reputation as a real estate, insurance and business man. In fact, he has probably done more for the material advancement of Danville and Hendricks county than any other citizen.
Jolın W. Trotter, the son of James M. and Nancy E. (Crose) Trotter, was born in Hendricks county, Indiana, October 15, 1861. His parents were both natives of this county and are still living in Danville. James M. Trotter was a farmer and stock raiser and was one of Hendricks county's most substantial agriculturists, but has been living retired in Danville for several years. Mr. and Mrs. James M. Trotter are both members of the Methodist Episcopal church and have been for the past forty years. They are the parents of six children, five of whom are still living: John W .; Rose, the wife of George M. Thompson, of Lizton, this county; James
John . Frotter.
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W., a farmer in Eel River township; Gretta, who died in 1893, at the age of twenty-four years; Mary C., the wife of Aaron Kinder, of Danville; Retta, the wife of Robert Davidson, of Detroit, Michigan. The Trotter family is of English lineage and came to America in the eighteenth century. The great-grandfather of the present John W. Trotter came from Vir- ginia to Indiana when he was only two years old, his parents settling in Eel River township, this county, on land which they entered from the govern- ment. James Trotter was the father of ten sons, all of whom settled in western states except three who stayed in Hendricks and adjoining coun- ties. These three were Anderson Trotter, of Jamestown, Boone county, Indiana; William Trotter, of North Salem, this county, and James, the grandfather of John W., the immediate subject of this sketch. James Trot- ter, in addition to being a very succesful farmer, was also the township trustee for several terms.
John W. Trotter was reared on the home place, worked as a boy on his father's farm and has never known an idle day since that time. He en- tered the Central Normal College, at Danville, at the age of seventeen, but after a few weeks he secured a license to teach and began his pedagogical ex- perience before he was eighteen years of age. He taught in the county schools and at North Salem, Lizton, Brownsburg and Danville. He re- signed the principalship at Lizton, after being there for three years, to take the principalship at Brownsburg. While teaching at the latter place, he was elected county surveyor, being the youngest man ever elected to a county office in Hendricks county. Upon being elected to the office of county sur- veyor he moved to Danville in 1887, where he has continued to reside. He was elected to the office of surveyor five times in succession by majorities ranging from nine hundred and eighty-five to fourteen hundred and nine- teen. His long service in the surveyor's office made him a practical man in the abstract business, and upon retiring from the surveyor's office he bought a set of abstract books and in 1894 sold a half interest in the business to George T. Pattison, who had been a professor in the Central Normal Col- lege for several years. Messrs, Trotter and Pattison then studied law to- gether and were admitted to the bar, and for nine years, under the name of Trotter & Pattison, practiced law and conducted an abstract, real estate, loan and insurance business. During the past ten years Mr. Trotter has been alone in the business, doing a probate business and a large real estate and loan business, selling many thousand acres of western land in North Dakota, Texas and other states. He also handles large real estate deals at home and
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has platted and sold out many additions to towns and cities throughout the Central West. He has the largest loan business in the county, his loans amounting to three hundred thousand dollars a year. Besides making loans for corporations, he loans for one hundred and fifty private parties. He is financial correspondent for the Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company for this territory and inspects lands, examines titles, prepares all papers and closes the loans in his own office, making it possible in this way to close a loan on short notice. The companies which he represents are giving the cheapest money and on the best terms of any company loaning money in Indiana. In addition to his loaning business, he does a large amount of in- surance business, having eleven of the best old-line fire insurance companies. He looks after his law, real estate, loan and insurance business and his farms and buildings with the aid of one office man, and he tries not to neglect the other things of life which he considers of importance.
Mr. Trotter is now serving his fourth year as president of the Danville Commercial Club and has always devoted much of his time to its interests and the improvement of Danville. He is president of the Danville Canning Company and is a promoter and stockholder in the Danville Creamery. He is also president of the Danville South Cemetery Association, president of the board of stewards of the Danville Methodist Episcopal church, and vice- president and director of the Capitol Circuit Traction Company. It was in Mr. Trotter's office that the company was organized that built the interurban railroad from Indianapolis to Danville, and he was a director and its secre- tary until it was sold to a Boston syndicate. He was the engineer, sur- veyor and superintendent of construction in full charge of the road when it was sold. He is now interested in two other roads, which he hopes to se. built before long
Mr. Trotter, by native gift of what we call enterprise and diplomacy, and by hard work all the time from childhood, all through the years of his life, has developed an accuracy for details, a versatility in knowledge of business and affairs of small and large concern that make him a ready, a quick, a judicious and a decidedly big man in the business world. His ex- perience on the farm as a boy doing all kinds of farm work, his ten years in the surveyor's office, his railroad building, his inspection of land for loans for many companies, his traveling in many states in the Union and in Mexico and Canada, have awakened in him a great interest in lands and farm prop- erty, and he deems it the safest and most stable investment that can be made. He is now the owner of nearly eight hundred acres of land in Cen-
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tral Indiana, which he is farming, besides about eighteen hundred acres of Texas and North Dakota land which he believes will soon develop into fine farms, as the country in which these lands are located is rapidly de- veloping. He classes himself among the farmers and stock raisers of this country and makes a specialty of stock raising and general diversified farm- ing. Governor Marshall, recognizing his interests in agricultural affairs, appointed him as a delegate from this congressional district to the National Farm Land Congress, in Chicago, November 16 to 21, 1909. He has always been a progressive of progressives. When he bought the building known as the Trotter block, in Danville, he put an army of carpenters, masons, paint- ers, paper hangers, plumbers and electricians at work and remodeled and modernized the building until he had a three-story building that for comfort, convenience, beauty and desirability for modern offices and living rooms, would do credit to a city five times as large as Danville.
Mr. Trotter was married to Mary E. Jeffers in 1887, and he gives a large share of the credit of his success in all his enterprises to her aid as an untiring worker at the practical affairs of life and to her encouragement. They have worked together through all these years as true helpmates and their home life has been ideal. Mr. Trotter has always taken an active in- terest in church affairs, and for fourteen years has been teacher of the largest Bible class in Hendricks county, teaching the normal class in which the students of Central Normal College, to the number of over two hundred, are enrolled yearly. These students are young men and women from every county in the state and from many other states, many being teachers in this and other states. He numbers his pupils in his class by thousands and re- gards this as his best work and productive of the most pleasure and profit. He was a Sunday school superintendent when only eighteen years of age at North Salem, and has been superintendent or assistant superintendent of the Danville Methodist Sunday school for twenty-three years.
Fraternally, Mr. Trotter is a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, to which order he has belonged for the past twenty-seven years, joining the Danville Silcox Lodge in 1887. He is also a member of the encampment and Rebekahs. Mr. Trotter is a man of vigorous mentality and strong mental fiber and finds these qualities the chief factors in the carving out of a career that has been above suspicion and reproach and of honor to the county which he so ably and acceptably serves as a public and private citizen.
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TAVNER NEAL.
One of the sterling citizens of Hendricks county, who is today filling an important position, is Tavner Neal, the efficient superintendent of the Hendricks county poor farm, who was born in Bourbon county, Kentucky. His parents were Charles W. and Emma S. (Bradley) Neal.
Tavner Neal has been one of those self-made men who have risen to prominence solely because of their own industry and perseverance. When he was married he and his wife started to housekeeping in a log cabin, built at the northwest corner of his father's farm. This little square log cabin speaks eloquently of the early days when they started their married life. They lived there for about two years, when they moved to their present home three and one-half miles southeast of Brownsburg, and there lived until March 1, 1914. He then took his present position as superintendent of the county poor farm. Starting out with nothing in life, he has accumulated a farm of one hundred and thirty-three acres in Lincoln township, and has taken a great deal of interest in the breeding of live stock of various kinds. He not only raises live stock but he has dealt largely in poultry. He raises pedigreed Jersey cattle, Berkshire hogs, and for several years has made a specialty of pure bred Barred Rock chickens. He is regarded as an expert chicken fancier and has taken many premiums at various fairs and exhibits in his county and other counties in the state. He is a member of the American Berkshire Record Association. and for the past twenty years has belonged to the American Poultry Association, as well as the American Barred Plymouth Rock Association. He is a progressive and well informed farmer and lec- tures frequently at farmers' institutes and has the honor of raising one hun- dred and six and one-half bushels of corn to the acre at a time when average crops in his community were about twelve bushels to the acre. When he came to his farm it was exhausted from consecutive cropping and in very poor condition. He has not only reclaimed his land, which was practically useless, but has conserved the food element in his soil. He knows, to begin with. that an ounce of fertilizer as a preventive against soil exhaustion is worth a pound of fertilizer for soil reclamation. On this basic principle he plans his crops and plants in rotation to the end that the continuous growth of one variety of crop on the same ground will not rob it of its plant food elements. Clover naturally follows corn, or some similar rotation, and the land remains fertile and only a minimum amount of fertilizer is required. Not many years ago land in Indiana in more than one part of the state was
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"corned" to death. Crop after crop of corn was planted until corn no longer thrived. Now it is rare indeed to find a farmer who plants corn in the same field twice in succession. He insists that at least one crop of some other farm produce must intervene between two corn plantings.
In 1885 Mr. Neal was married to Annie Turpin, the daughter of Ander- son and Eveline (Reupert) Turpin, of Kentucky. Anderson Turpin was born in Bourbon county, Kentucky, the son of Robison and Rachel (Powell) Turpin. Robison Turpin was the son of Jacob and Martha Turpin, and his birth occurred in Bourbon county, Kentucky, on April 7, 1805, and in 1820 he moved to Scott county, in that state. In 1834. Robison Turpin sold his farm in Kentucky and moved to Indiana, where he bought two hundred and five acres of land in the eastern edge of Hendricks county, near Brownsburg.
The Turpin family trace their ancestry back as far as Jacob Turpin, who was born in eastern Maryland in 1785, the son of William and Nancy (Henley) Turpin, who were married in Maryland in 1783. Jacob Turpin's grandfather was a soldier in the Revolutionary War and lived until he was more than one hundred years old. In 1786 William and Nancy Turpin moved to Kentucky and settled among the hostile Indians, and were com- pelled to live in block houses with other settlers in order to protect themselves from the Indians. Jacob Turpin married Martha Taylor in Bourbon county, Kentucky, in 1804, she being born in that county in 1786, of Scotch parent- age. In 1820 they moved to Scott county, that state, and bought a farm and in the same year sold it and moved to Indianapolis when it was a town of seven hundred people. In 1829 Jacob Turpin and his wife moved to Hendricks county, settling near Clermont, where there was a cabin, log stable and five or six acres already partly cleared. Jacob Turpin died in 1849 and his wife in 1865. They had one son, Robison Turpin, born in 1805, in Bourbon county, Kentucky, who was married in 1827 to Rachel Powell, also a native of Kentucky, her birth having occurred there in 1807. Robison Turpin was engaged in farming in that state until 1834, when he sold out his holdings in Kentucky and came to Indiana, purchasing two hundred and five acres of land in Hendricks county, where he became one of the most prosper- ous and successful farmers of that day. He was a man of excellent business ability and judgment and when his death occurred on January 30, 1905, he was sincerely mourned by his community, having won the esteem and con- fidence of all by his straightforward and honorable life. Robison Turpin and wife were the parents of ten children, Anderson, the father of Mrs. Neal, being the third child. Anderson Turpin was born in Scott county, Ken-
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tucky, on October 2, 1831, and came with his parents to Indiana in 1834. He was married to Louisa Eveline Reupert, who was a native of Georgetown, Kentucky, her birth having occurred there in 1835. Anderson Turpin lived and died a farmer, passing away at Brownsburg, this county, in 1905. His wife lived until May, 1913.
Mr. Neal lends his hearty support to the Democratic party, and has been very active in the affairs of that political organization. He and the members of his family are faithful attendants of the Methodist Episcopal church and lend to it their zealous support. They are the parents of two children, Chester and Bertha. Chester married Grace Phillips and lives near his father's old home south of Brownsburg, and has one son, Marley. Bertha is still at home with her parents.
In his fraternal relations Mr. Neal has long been a member of the Inde- pendent Order of Odd Fellows and the Tribe of Ben-Hur. He is a man who has always been a hard worker and is highly esteemed by his neighbors because he has been a busy man. Judged by his labors, none have done more to advance the material interests of his section of the county, and as a citizen 110 one stands higher in the esteem and confidence of the people of Hendricks county.
CHARLES E. EDWARDS.
It is the progressive, wide-awake man of affairs who makes the real history of a community and his influence as a potential factor of the body politic is difficult to estimate. The example such men furnish of patient purpose and steadfast integrity only illustrate what is in the power of each to accomplish, and there is always a full measure of satisfaction in advert- ing even in a casual way to their achievements in advancing the interests of their fellow men, and in giving strength and solidity to the institutions which make so much for the prosperity of the community. Such a man is the worthy subject of this sketch, and as such it is proper that his career be accorded a place among the representative citizens of the county in which he has lived for so many years. As a merchant and as a county official he has made his mark in the community and in the county where he has lived as a man of more than ordinary ability, and it is believed that a study of the life of such a man by the youth of the county will be an inspiration which will help them in their future careers.
Charles E. Edwards, the present county clerk of Hendricks county, was
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born August 29, 1871, on a farm in Clay township, between Amo and Coates- ville. His parents were Solomon D. and Mary (Hornaday) Edwards, his father being a native of this county, and his mother a native of Morgan county, this state. Solomon Edwards is still living on the old home farm in Clay township, where he and his wife lived the simple lives of farm- ers all their lives. They are the parents of six children, all of whom are living : Minnie B., the wife of William O. Brown, of Clay township; Roscoe, a farmer of Clay township, who married Bertha Kendall; Charles E., the immediate subject of this sketch; Myrtle, the wife of Walter Hodgson, a farmer of Clay township; Maude L., the wife of Virley Moon, a rural route carrier out of Amo; John A., who is a merchant in Danville, who married Mary Wills. The mother of these children was called to rest April 13, 1914. She was a good Christian and lived a life above reproach, and no mother could have been more kind and loving. Her thoughts were always of others and self was forgotten. Quiet and retiring in manner. yet she exerted a potent influence for good over those with whom her life was spent.
Charles Edwards spent his boyhood days in the manner which is cus- tomary with all farmers' lads, attending school in the winter months, and working on the farm during the summer months. He attended the country schools until he reached the eighth grade and then took the last year of his common school course in the graded schools at Coatesville. With the idea of preparing himself for the teaching profession, he attended the State Normal School at Terre Haute in the spring of 1890. Following this he taught for three years in the Coatesville schools, where he made a successful record as an instructor. He afterwards took some work in the Central Normal College at Danville. However, the call of business was not to be denied and he engaged in the mercantile business at Coatesville in his father-in-law's store, and upon - the death of his father-in-law, became the manager of the store. Subse- quently he became interested in the milling company at Coatesville and man- aged this plant for one and one-half years, at the expiration of which time he sold it out and bought a grocery and queensware business in Danville, which he conducted for ten years. Upon his election as county clerk in 1910, he sold his store and became interested with Otis E. Gully in the real estate and loan business. He was elected county clerk of Hendricks county in November, 1910, on the Republican ticket, with a handsome majority at a time when part of his ticket was defeated. In the conduct of the affairs of his office, which he assumed on July 27, 1912, he has proved himself an able and efficient administrator of the public's affairs and is making an enviable
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record as one of the most popular officials who have ever held office in Hendricks county.
Mr. Edwards was married December 23, 1894, to Ida A. Job, the eldest daughter of Allen and Nettie Job, of Coatesville. Her father was one of the leading merchants in that part of the county. To this union have been born two daughters: Pauline, who is now sixteen years of age and a junior in the high school at Danville, and Mary Jeannette, who is thirteen years of age and completing her common school work this year. Mr. Edwards and all the members of his family are consistent and loyal adherents of the Methodist Episcopal church. Mr. Edwards has been a member of the board of stewards of this denomination for many years. Fraternally, he is a member of the Knights of Pythias and Silcox Lodge of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.
Mr. Edwards is interested in the real estate and loan business with Otis E. Gulley under the firm name of Gulley & Edwards and also has land interests scattered throughout the county. He was a member of the Danville school board for five years and resigned that position when he became county clerk. Mr. Edwards is a man of splendid business qualifications, which, com- bined with his courtesy, genial disposition and unfailing good nature, have commended him to the good will and friendship of all who know him. His life is the record of a well balanced mental and moral constitution. In all of life's relations he has been true and faithful to himself and all the trusts reposed in him and thereby he has won the unqualified confidence and respect of his fellow men.
EVERETT ROSCOE ROBARDS.
It is a well attested maxim that the greatness of a community or a state lies not in the machinery of government, nor even in its institutions, but rather in the sterling qualities of the individual citizen, in his capacity for high and unselfish effort and his devotion to the public welfare. In these particulars he whose name appears at the head of this review has conferred honor and dignity upon his locality, and as an elemental part of history it is consonant that there should be recorded a resume of his career, with the object in view of noting his connection with the advancement of one of the most flourishing and progressive sections of the commonwealth, as well as his official relations with the administration of the public affairs of the county honored by his citizenship.
Everett R. Robards
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