USA > Indiana > Marion County > Indianapolis > Pictorial and biographical memoirs of Indianapolis and Marion County, Indiana, together with biographies of many prominent men of other portions of the state, both living and dead > Part 11
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CAPT. JACOB L. BIELER. This prominent business man was born in Germany in 1839 and has been well known in Indianapolis for a good while. He is a son of Fiedel Bieler, a popular and successful German architect and contractor, who was born in 1804 and died in his native land at the age of sixty-six years. He was a man of fine educational attainments and was exceptionally skillful and artistic as an architect and executed many important con- tracts. He had four sons and two daughters, of whom Jacob L. was the second born. Capt. Bieler was liberally educated in Germany, having graduated from some of the best in- stitutions there. He possesses fine artistic taste and natural talent, and while yet a mere boy placed himself under competent instruction to study art as developed under the most magical hand of the sculptor; but failing health compelled him to forego the acquisition of that profession. In 1856, then sixteen, he came to America and made his home with an uncle in Selma, Ala., who was a saddler in good business, and assisted him until 1861. For political reasons he did not wish to remain in the South after the beginning of the Civil War. He did not sympathize with the Southern movement and he saw the undesirability of remaining in that country without being able at the same time to esponse the cause of its people. Coming North, he decided to cast his fortune with those who went to do battle under the stars and stripes. Accordingly he lost no time in enlisting in the Sixth Indiana (Morton's) Battery, and at once went with his command to the seat of war. He participated in the fighting at Shiloh, Corinthi and other points grown historic through having been the scenes of sanguinary engagement in those days. He was disabled near Corinth but served thereafter until discharged. Upon his return, he engaged in business as a saddler and harness maker and continued successfully for about fifteen years. In 1878 Capt. Bieler was elected to the city council, and it is worthy of note that lie was on the committee on public improvement at
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the time when the great work of improving the city was begun. He was for a time con- nected with the city treasurer's office under the administration of Col. Wiles. In 1880 he was elected recorder of Marion County. In all these important positions he performed his duties with great credit to himself and to the entire satisfaction of the general public, that hardest of all task-masters. In 1891 he assumed the management of the An- heuser-Busch interests at Indianapolis, and under his skillful and energetic direction they have grown immensely in volume and popularity, his interests extending to distant parts of the State. Capt. Bieler is so known from the fact that he has long been Captain of the German Veteran organization. He is also lieutenant-colonel of the popular First Regi- ment of the K. of P. As a prominent member of the G. A. R. he is well and widely known as a member of George H. Thomas Post. He is also identified with the K. of P. Masonic Fraternity and I. O. O. F., and different societies and clubs, besides being a member of the Board of Trade. He was married in 1863 to Miss Caroline M. Hines of Indianapolis, and has three children, one son and two daughters. Capt Bieler has proved himself in every re- lation a good and useful citizen, always taking a decided stand on the side of practical and useful reform or improvement.
VOLNEY THOMAS MALOTT. Prominent among the people of Indianapolis who have made for themselves honorable names, and who have acquired a competency of this world's goods largely through their own unaided efforts, is the gentleman whose name forms the heading for this sketch. A native of the Blue-Grass State, his birth occurred in Jefferson County September 9, 1838, being a son of William H. and Leah P. (Mckown) Malott. In 1841 the family moved to Salem, Washington County, Ind., where the father, abandoning his life pursuit of farming, embarked in mercantile pursuits in partnership with his brother, Major Eli W. Malott. Here he died November 5, 1845, leaving a widow and three children sur- viving him. Not long after this the family was further afflicted by the death of the youngest child. For a second helpmate Mrs. Malott wedded Jolin F. Ramsey, a prosperous manu- facturer and dealer of furniture in Indianapolis, and removing to this city made that her permanent place of residence. Thomas received his first schooling in Salem under the direc- tion of John I. Morrison, afterward State senator from Washington County, and later State treasurer. He came to Indianapolis in 1847, and entered a private school kept by Rev. W. A. Holliday. Later he took his last scholastic instruction in a half public school kept by Benjamin L. Lang in the "Old Seminary," an institution noted in the early days of the city. At intervals during his school vacations his aptitude for business and his clerkly attainments give him employment as clerk and messenger in the Traders' Bank of Indianap- olis, owned by Jolın Woolley and Andrew Wilson. At the age of sixteen he took a perma- nent place in the Bank of the Capitol, of which Mr. Woolley was cashier and manager. He acted as teller of this bank for two or three years and resigned in 1857 before the storm that overtook the State free banks of Indiana organized under the legislative act of 1853, and in which that institution went down. Its teller was soon made teller of the Indianapolis Bank of the State, intended by its founders to take the place of the old State Bank, which has proved of incalculable benefit, as well as profitable to the State and other stockholders. But the war and its financial necessities broke up what was left of the State free banks under the pressure of the National banks, and the Indianapolis branch of the bank of the State passed from existence with others of its kind. It might be too much to say that Mr. Malott's apprenticeship with the banking business, if such it may be termed, which ended in his twenty-fourth year, made him a safe and sagacious financier which he has proved himself to be, but it is quite certain that it served as a most solid foundation for the structure of success that had been erected upon it. One incident of this period illustrates the versatility of his appli- cation to business as well as the variety and accuracy of his information of its details. When the free banks began to shake under the financial strain of 1857, the daily papers of Indian- apolis found it necessary to follow the market changes of bank values very closely, for the public took and gave their bills usually at the rate indicated in the reports in the Indianap- olis morning papers. As there were scores of these banks of all degrees of prominence scat- tered over the State, and their bills were circulating everywhere at home, it was no small task to keep track of the constant fluctuations, but our boyish bank teller did it so carefully and completely that one of the papers regularly obtained its currency reports from him.
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This was an enterprise of no little importance for a boy of nineteen, and his reports and those furnished the other papers by the private banking house of Fletcher & Co. really fixed the market rates of Indiana currency for many months. In August, 1862, Mr. Malott was elected secretary and treasurer of the Peru & Indianapolis Railroad Company, a position which he gained at the early age of twenty four years through his reputation as a careful and trustworthy business man. The road had not proved very successful theretofore, but improved conditions soon followed, and aided in making for Mr. Malott a reputation as a railroad manager equaling, if not surpassing, his early repute as a banker. In 1864 he was made a State director in the branch bank, of which he had previously been teller, and the cashiership of which has been tendered to and declined by him in 1862. He was now put fully in the parallel paths of bank and railway management, in which he has moved forward for the last quarter of a century. It is notable in this connection that it has rarely happened in any country that a young man of twenty-six has by the free selection of competent men, determined solely by his reputation for ability and trustworthiness, been placed in two posi- tions of such responsibility at the same time. In 1865 be was the acting and directing agency in organizing the Merchants' National Bank of Indianapolis, and was made cashier of that institution while still retaining his position as secretary and treasurer of the Peru & Indianapolis Railway Company. In the spring of 1870 he resigned his place in the Mer- chants' Bank to take charge of the construction of the Michigan City & Indianapolis Rail- road, which was finished under his direction the following year, and passed with the Chicago, Cincinnati & Louisville Railroad under the control of the Indianapolis, Peru & Chicago Rail- road Company, originally the Peru & Indianapolis Railroad Company, of which Mr. Malott was secretary and treasurer, and one of the directors. In 1875 he was elected general man- ager of the combined lines, and in 1879 was made vice president, acting as president, and taking the management until the whole concern was leased in 1881 to the Wabash, St. Louis & Pacific Railroad Company. The advance of Mr. Malott in his banking affairs, though he gave less time to them than he could devote to them as cashier of the Merchants' National Bank, kept pace with his steadily widening reputation and responsibility as a railway man- ager. In 1878 he was elected president of the Merchants' National Bank, but four years later sold his interest in it and resigned his presidency to take a large interest in the Indiana --. National Bank, which had been transformed by the process of naturalization from the Indi- anapolis branch of the Bank of the State of Indiana, in which he had served five years as teller, and of which he was made president, a position which he has held to the present. When the affairs of the Citizens' National Bank were wound up a few years ago, Mr. Malott bought its fine stone front banking building and installed the Indiana National Bank therein, a fact which has gone far to establish his reputation as a conservative, thoroughly reliable and successful bank manager, was the triumph with which the Indiana National withstood the local stringency in 1885, when three private banks, two of them among the oldest in the city, went down together. While his railway and banking duties imposed expensive demands upon his time and energies, Mr. Malott has at the same time been alive to the value of enter- prises or the development of the resources of the State. He aided in organizing the Brazil Coal Company, not alone with a view to enlarging the State's fuel supply, but to benefit the lake railways which brought down great quantities of lumber with no adequate return freight, a deficiency which was supplied by the block and bituminous coal of the great southwestern field, of which Brazil has always been the metropolis. With the same view of enlarging railway business and State resources needed in forming the earliest and most extensive ice dealing firms in Indiana. In 1886 he helped organize the Brazil National Bank, of which he is a director. In 1888 he assisted Harry Bates and others to open an oolitic stone quarry at Romona, the product of which was largely distributed in Chicago and the North, and as far east as New York. He assisted in organizing the company controlling this quarry, and is one of its directors. and still retains his interest in the other enterprises mentioned above. At this time, in connection with Mr. Holliday, and others, he is engaged in organizing the Union Trust Company of Indianapolis. He has also built several of the largest and finest business houses in the city. Soon after he gave up the acting presidency of the Indianapo- lis, Peru & Chicago Railroad, he was elected vice-president and manager of the Union Rail- way Company of Indianapolis, a position in which he encountered more difficulties, prob-
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ably, than in any other part of his railway service. He entered the Union Company in July, 1883, and in the following September aided in bringing about an agreement for all the companies concerned on a new plan of organization. The old arrangement formed by three companies in 1849, when the old Madison, now part of the Indianapolis & Jefferson- ville lines were the only lines completed to Indianapolis and the other two were barely organ- ized, provided for the enlargement of the company from time to time, by the admission of other companies, as their roads were completed and it became necessary for them to use the Union tracks and depot. But the organization has remained unchanged in other respects, and was hardly applicable to the then present condition. Through the influence of Mr. Malott this scheme of organization was sanctioned by an act in the Legislature in 1885, which fur- ther authorized the formation of Union companies in all the cities of the State having a population of 50,000 or more. At this time the matter of a new Union depot, or station building and the necessary adjuncts was broached and discussed, but without reaching any conclusion till after the State Legislature had legalized the change. Meanwhile, pending the scheme of reorganization and the legal authorization to act under it, the Belt Railway, then circling the greater part of the city in connecting all the railways but one, was used for the transfer of freight by but one or two roads, the others running through and across the city streets, to the general discomfort and danger of the people. One of Mr. Malott's first important acts, as manager of the Union Company, was to require all the roads to make their transfers of freight by the Belt Railway outside of the city when it was possible to do so without serious inconvenience. This order was issued May 1, 1884. To give it effect lie superintended the extension of the Belt Railway so as to connect all railroads running into the city. After the legalization of the new organization of the Union Company, in the winter of 1885, the subject of a new station building came up in a more definite and urgent form. Plans were prepared and submitted to the City Council for approval in 1886, additional grounds were purchased, a loan was obtained on long bonds for $1,000,000, and work on the building was begun. The structure was com- pleted in September, 1888, and is regarded as the handsomest and most commodious station building in the United States. This grand building, costing so princely a sum, is in some sort a memorial of Mr. Malott's administration of the affairs of the Union Railway Com- pany, the responsibilities of which be resigned in August, 1889. May 18, 1889, at the re- quest of all the parties concerned, he was appointed by Judge Gresham of the United States Circuit Court receiver of the Chicago & Atlantic Railroad Company, the affairs of which occupied his time almost entirely until February, 1891, when the receivership was closed, the indebtedness having been paid in full, the property having been greatly improved and Mr. Malott having discharged the trust reposed in him with the entire satisfaction of the court and of all interested parties. June 4, 1890, Mr. Malott was elected president of the Chicago & Western Indiana Railroad Company and of the company owning the Belt Rail- road of Chicago. He declined a re-election at the annual meeting of the stockholders of these corporations in June, 1891, not having sufficient time to devote to the business which the office imposed upon him, whereupon the office of chairman of the board of directors was created and the principal financial matter was placed in the hands of the chairman. This office Mr. Malott accepted and has since held .. He is also director of the Chicago & Erie Railroad Company. Mr. Malott was never a politician. He has had matters of more interest and importance to attend to, but mainly because, though a Republican, he was not a politician. He was appointed by the State officers one of the three police commissioner's of Indianapolis, in which position he served nearly two years.
SAMUEL SCHUCK. Of late years no form of investment has become so popular with the conservative public as judiciously selected real estate. Just now the market is active, and among those conspicuous in the operations that are now going on is Samnel Schuck. a mem- ber of the firm of Samuel Schuck & Co., Haughville, Ind., dealers in real estate, loans, rents, fire insurance, etc. Mr. Schuck has always enjoyed a high reputation and the esteem and confidence of all having dealings with him. All who come in contact with him either socially or in a business way, pronounce him a gentleman in every respect, and patrons can depend upon any and all representations made by him, and that their interests will always be protected. He was born near Dayton, Ohio, August 4, 1859, and is a son of George and
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Minnie (Leightner) Schuck, natives of Germany. The father remained in his native country until 1854 and then crossed the ocean to America. He was married near Dayton, Ohio, to Miss Leightner, who was also born in the old country, but who came to the United States with her parents when a little girl seven years of age. Mr. Schuck was a potter by trade and worked at the same most of his life, his death occurring October 15, 1889, near Wapakoneta, Ohio. The mother is still living and resides in Haughville, Ind. Samuel Schuck attained his growth near Dayton, Ohio, and was educated in the public schools. He was engaged in tilling the soil until twenty-six years of age, after which he came to Haugh- ville and learned the core making trade, at which he worked a short time when he was made foreman, continuing in that capacity for four years. Hc then resigned and engaged in the real estate business in April, 1891, since which time he has given his entire attention to that and to insurance. He deals in real estate in all parts of the country and represents some of the leading fire insurance companies. Mr. Schuck was married May 6, 1891, to Miss Odessa Hurst, a native of Illinois, and the daughter of Stephen C. and Ellen (Worrell) Hurst. Mr. and Mrs. Schuck are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church and Mr. Schuck is a Regular Baptist and one of the stewards of the same. He is a Republican in politics.
FRANKLIN HAYS, M. D. It has come to be a recognized fact with the medical fraternity and with the general public, that owing to the advance of science and the multiplication of facilities for acquiring knowledge and practice, many of the younger physicians of to-day are better informed and more skillful practitioners than were many of the old physicians a couple of generations ago. In every large city in the United States, and well as'in many of the better of the country towns, the young doctor is the more popular of the two classes mentioned, and has the larger practice. During recent years some of the younger physi- cians of Indianapolis have gained reputations for skill and efficiency in their professions which has made quite a number of them known throughout the State and a few of them throughout the United States. A fair representative of the physicians of this type and one who has done much to sustain the reputation they have attained as a class, is Dr. Franklin Hays who, though a young man, stands by virtue of real merit and well known achieve- ments, among the most prominent medical men of the city. Dr. Hays was born in Eldo- rado, Ohio, April 2, 1858. On his father's side his ancestry was of the sturdy pioneer class who located in the commonwealths of Georgia and Tennessee, where the family became con- spicuously identified with public interests, representing their States most ably in times of war and in times of peace, and in tlie Civil War some of them achieved distinction both under the stars and stripes and the stars and bars. James C. Hays, Esq., the father of Dr. Hays, was a merchant of prominence who traced his lineage to this fine line of old Southern pioneers. The Doctor's mother. Sarah J. (Clevenger) Hays, is descended from what may be comprehensively described as Scotch-Irish Presbyterian stock, leading back to Colonial days in this country, and numbers among her kindred many persons who have attained distinction in peace and in war since the days of the Revolution, notable among such in late years being Shubael Clevenger, the well known American sculptor, whose genius and labors have made him a name on both sides of the Atlantic. The parents of Dr. Hays removed from Ohio to Indiana and lived in Columbus, Bartholomew County, until he had advanced in life to his eighteenth year. In the high school at Columbus he acquired the basis of a sound educa- tion, and later, he entered the Kentucky University at Lexington, where, while giving due attention to the curriculum as a whole, he made a special study of literature and the natural sciences. Upon the completion of liis collegiate course he took up the study of medicine under the direction of Dr. Grove, of Columbus, and pursued it later with Drs. Howard and Martin, of Greenfield, and later still with Drs. P. H. and Henry Jameson, of Indianapolis, until he completed the course in the Medical College of Indiana, from which he was gradu- ated with much distinction in 1880 with the degree of M. D. While yet an under graduate in this institution he was elected an assistant to the chair of chemistry and toxicology. After graduation he was continued as assistant in the chair of chemistry, and until 1883 was librarian and registrar. In the year last mentioned he was appointed lecturer on dermatol- ogy and venereal diseases, and at the same time was made superintendent of Bobb's Free Dispensary. . In the interval he had taken a post graduate course in the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania, and had further perfected himself for the duties and
Handlin HaPays Mand
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responsibilities of his profession in the hospitals of Philadelphia and New York prior to his acceptance of the chair of dermatology, etc., above referred to. His valuable labors in connection with his alma mater made him a leading spirit in the reorganization of the institution which resulted in the establishment of the Medical College of Indiana as one of the foremost colleges of the West, devoted to the preparation of men for the practice of the profession of medicine and surgery, and the general advancement of medical learning. Three years later Dr. Hays was elected to the professorship in the faculty of this institution, succeeding the late Dr. Charles E. Wright in the chair of materia medica and therapeutics, to which was added dermatology. He was also made secretary of the college and faculty, and the signal ability with which he has performed the functions of both positions to the present time is well known both in and out of the profession. He has been honored by the Alumni of the college by an election to its presidency for one term and to its secretaryship for three successive terms. He is an active and valuable member of the Marion County Medical Society, the Indiana State Medical Society and the American Medical Association, and is on the consulting staff of the Indianapolis City Hospital, the City Dispensary and St. Vin- cent's Hospital, of the last named of which he was for several years attending physician. While the duties devolving upon him in these relations are performed with the utmost fidel- ity, he does not permit them to encroach on the time which belongs legitimately to his large general practice in the city. When it is further stated that Dr. Hays has a large consulta- tion practice in Indiana and adjoining States, it will be believed that he must of necessity be a very busy man, and all physicians and many business men will concede to him the pos- session of a wonderfully systematic executive capacity and a most vigorous physical consti- tution as the first requisite to the accomplishment of the vast amount of labor devolving upon him in these varied relations. Notwithstanding all the demands upon his time and energies which have been referred to and which he meets with a conscientious devotion to duty, he manages to find opportunity for social duties, in the performance of which he has gained extensive and well founded popularity in the large circle of society and club friends. An active Mason of high standing and a member of many of its orders, including the Ancient Scottish Rite, the Doctor is identified also with the order of the Mystic Shrine and other fraternal organizations, as well as with the Commercial Club and the leading social clubs of the city. In the city of his adoption Dr. Hays is held in the highest esteem as a public spirited citizen, always ready to lend his aid most practically and in a most liberal degree to all charities and movements tending to benefit his fellow citizens or any deserving or unfortunate class of them. He was happily married June 25, 1884, to Miss Louella Graves White, daughter of the late Thomas White, Esq., of Memphis, Tenn., well known as a banker and as an owner of extensive plantations. Busch Hays and Thomas Whitcomb Hays are two interesting little sons who complete the happiness of the Doctor's home. It is a well recognized fact among the medical fraternity of Indianapolis and the State of Indiana that no endeavor is regarded by Dr Hays as too laborious, no means too expensive which gives any promise of aiding him to keep abreast of or in advance of his profession, and with this object in view, he has supplemented the knowledge he has gained in his regular medical course in his practice and through varied and studious reading, by observation obtained in several visits to the hospitals of Europe and by annual tours of the East to visit the leading hospitals of the United States.
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