History of southeast Missouri : a narrative account of its historical progress, its people and its principal interests, Volume II, Part 101

Author: Douglass, Robert Sidney. 4n
Publication date: 1912
Publisher: Chicago : The Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 802

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reared his family in Monroe county, but he is now living in Marietta, Ohio. It was on the 12th of November, 1855, that he was married to Charlotte Dibble, who was born in Mari- etta, Ohio, on the 24th of August, 1832. She was educated in Marietta, Ohio, and taught in the public schools, both in her home town and in other places. She was a Baptist, and "a woman of quiet but strong and winning per- sonality and of much influence, active in all religious and charitable work." She died in Monroe county, Ohio, on the 26th of August, 1873, at the early age of forty-one. She was a direct descendant of Captain Myles Stan- dish and of John Alden through the follow- ing line of descent: Myles Standish married his cousin, Barbara Standish, and their son, Alexander Standish, married Sarah Alden, the daughter of John Alden and Priscilla Mullins. Elizabeth Standish, the daughter of Alexander and Sarah, married Samuel De- lano, of the old French family of De La Noye. Her daughter, Elizabeth Delano, married Joseph Chandler III, of Pembroke, and had a son, Benjamin Chandler. The latter lived in Vermont, where he married Elizabeth Geof- freys, a native of that state. . He was killed in the battle of Bennington, and his son, Joseph Chandler, who was with his father at the bat- tle of Bennington, continued the line, through his marriage with Patient Mary Andrews, of Vermont. Their daughter, Hannah Chandler, married David Bingham, the son of Solomon and Rachel Bingham, of Rutland county, Vermont, and her daughter, Edna Harkness Bingham, married Collis Dibble, of Walling- ford, Connecticut, whose father and grand- father were soldiers in the Revolutionary war. These two were the grandparents of Winifred Johnson, Charlotte Dibble being their daughter. It is an interesting ancestry and one of which Miss Johnson should be proud, not because of what her forefathers were, but of what they did.

Winifred Johnson received her elementary education in the schools of Monroe county, Ohio, later attending the high school in Park- ersburg, West Virginia. She took her college work at Denison University, Ohio, and in Waynesburg College, Pennsylvania. She re- ceived an A. B. degree from the latter institu- tion in 1890, and in 1893 the same college con- ferred the degree of A. M. upon her. Before she had completed her college work she taught for short periods in the public schools of Ohio and West Virginia, and in the West Virginia Academy at Buckhannon, West Virginia. In

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1890 she was made a member of the faculty of the State Normal School at Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and has remained there since that time. She has been on leave of absence dur- ing two years of her connection with the normal school and has spent these in study at Leland Stanford University in California and at the University of Chicago.

Miss Johnson is a member of the Baptist church, and is active in the church work. She is a teacher in the Sunday-school and is con- nected with all phases of the charitable and religious work of the city. She is a member · of the Nancy Hunter Chapter of the Daugh- ters of the American Revolution, of the Alden Kindred of America, of the Massachusetts So- ciety of Mayflower Descendants, of the Amer- ican Historical Association and of the State Historical Society of Missouri. She is also a member of other patriotic, civic, educational and religious organizations, to all of which she brings keen interest and enthusiasm.

LOUIS FRANKLIN DINNING is a son of David M. and Sophia Dinning; his mother's maiden nanie was Milliken. His grandfather Milli- ken and family moved to Jackson county, Mis- souri. Sometime afterward his father moved to the same county in Missouri, where he and the mother of the subject of this sketch were married, settled down on a farm, and where Louis F. was born. The par- ents were born in Simpson county, Ken- tucky. When Louis F. was about four years old his parents moved back to Simp- son county, Kentucky, where their son was reared on a farm; he has no recollection of ever being in Missouri until he returned to the state after he was grown. He was edu- cated in the common schools of Simpson county and in Little Springs Academy, a school founded by Professor John Alexander, in which school quite a number of prominent men in that part of Missouri were educated. The school was located near the village of Middleton, Logan county, Kentucky. Mr. Dinning from a boy up always said that he intended to return to Missouri when he was grown and study law. In February, 1861, he returned to the state of Missouri and located in Ste. Genevieve county, in which he taught school ten months. He then got a school at the Brick church, near Big River Mills, in St. Francois county, Missouri; he taught school in that church three years. During the time he was teaching school at the Brick church he was studying law at nights and Saturdays.

When he commenced to study law he went to the Honorable William Carter, then of Farm- ington, for advise and instructions. Mr. Car- ter gave him all the information he could concerning the study of the law; advised him what books to study and loaned him the books. As a rule young Dinning went to Farmington not less than once in two weeks and generally one a week and returned the book he had to Mr. Carter and borrowed the next one. The Honorable William Carter was elected judge of the twentieth judicial circuit.

In November, 1864, Mr. Dinning married Rushie Lee Tyler, daughter of John V. and Amanda Tyler, of Big River Mills, St. Fran- cois county, Missouri. In May, 1865, Judge Carter gave Mr. Dinning a license to practice law and administered him the oath required under the law to be taken by all lawyers in Missouri. Mr. Dinning, after he was married, taught a school for one term in Irondale, Washington county, Missouri. Judge Carter had for many years lived in Potosi, Missouri, and was a law partner of Hon. David E. Per- ryman, of that town. The firm name was Per- ryman and Carter. Through the influence and friendship of Judge Carter, Mr. Dinning was enabled to enter the law offices of Mr. Perryman, who had been for some time prae- ticing law with Mr. Israel McGrady, under the name of Perryman & McGrady. But what was known in that time as the test oath barred Judge Perryman from the practice, for he would not subscribe to the same. Mr. Din- ning moved to Potosi in November, 1865. Judge Perryman at that time had a fairly good law library. Mr. Dinning and Mr. Israel McGrady formed a partnership under the firm name of McGrady & Dinning. This firm did a good local practice. Mr. McGrady was an old citizen and had been clerk for many years of the circuit court of Washington, county, Missouri. He was a first class busi- ness man, not rich, but well to do and respon- sible for any collections that might be placed in the hands of the firm. At that time most all the collections were made through attor- neys and it was very important that the firms of lawyers should be thoroughly solvent and financially good. Mr. McGrady possessed these qualifications and was of great aid in bringing clients to their office. After the test oath had been declared unconstitutional by the supreme court of the United States, Mr. Mc- Grady retired from the practice and Mr. Din- ning formed a copartnership with Mr. Perry- man, under the firm name of Perryman &

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HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST MISSOURI

Dinning. Judge Perryman at that time was well known all over Southern Missouri as a good lawyer, and this firm did a good business. In 1866 Dinning was nominated by the Dem- ocratie party for the office of circuit attorney and was elected; that year the Republican party got into a row and nominated two can- didates for that office and either preferred Dinning to the rival candidate of his own party. Charges of disloyalty, etc., were lodged against Dinning with the Governor, who for quite a while refused to issue a commission to Dinning. After Dinning gave up hope of getting a commission it was then that he formed the copartnership with Mr. Perryman. Some time in the year 1867 the governor of Missouri issued a commission to Dinning as circuit attorney under his election to that of- fice. Dinning could not serve as circuit at- torney without dissolving his relations with Mr. Perryman, so he resigned the office of circuit attorney and the Governor appointed Hon. Ira E. Leonard to serve ont the time. In 1868 he was nominated by the Democrats of the Fifteenth judicial circuit for judge of that circuit. At the election following in November Dinning was elected and his election was certified to the Governor by Hon. Francis Rodman, then secretary of state. James H. Vail, who was the Republican nominee for judge at the same election, filed in the su- preme court of Missouri a petition contesting Dinning's election. This petition charged Dinning of disloyalty and of aiding and abet- ting the rebellion; that he was not thirty years old and many other reasons. Dinning's attorney, the Hon. Samuel T. Glover, filed a motion to dismiss this contest proceedings for the reasons that the supreme court had no jurisdiction to hear and determine the same. The supreme court sustained this motion and dismissed the case. Mr. Vail and his attor- neys went before the governor of the state and filed these charges against Dinning with that official. The Governor (Joseph W. McClurg) who entertained jurisdiction of the case and without notice of any kind to Dinning sat in solemn judgment upon the rights of Dinning and more especially upon the rights of the people of the Fifteenth cirenit. His Excel- lency found the issues for Mr. Vail and issued to him a commission as judge of the Twenty- sixth judicial circuit. Prior to this the legis- lature had redistricted the state and renum- bered the circuits and this, the Fifteenth, was called the Twenty-sixth in that revision. When Hon. B. Gratts Brown was elected.

governor he issued a commission to Dinning as judge of the Twenty-sixth judicial circuit, and under that commission Dinning held a term of court in Iron county and one in Reynolds county. Judge Vail sued ont of of the su- preme court a writ of mandamus to compel the auditor to pay Vail the salary. The supreme court sustained the application and issued an order to allow the salary in favor of Vail, and also in that opinion held that Governor Brown could not issue a commission after his prede- cessor had issued a commission to the opposite candidate. Dinning then went to work and tried to get the matters before the courts of the state, as no one but a circuit attorney or the attorney general at that time could pre- sent a petition for the writ of quo warranto. The circuit attorney refused to sign a petition for this writ; Dinning then applied to the at- torney general, who also refused to sign a peti- tion for the writ. The matters stood still then until in 1872, when the voters elected a Demo- crat to the office of attorney general of the state (Hon. H. Clay Ewing). General Ewing on the part of the state applied to the supreme court for a writ of quo warranto against James H. Vail, asking him to show by what authority he held the office of judge of the Twenty-sixth judicial circuit and in July 1873, the supreme court rendered a judgment ousting Judge Vail from the office to which he had no title except a void commission is- sued him by Governor McClurg. Right after this decision the governor of the state of Mis- souri gave Dinning a commission as judge of the Twenty-sixth judicial circuit based upon the certificate of his election as given by the secretary of state. Judge Dinning during this contest was a very poor man and would never have prosecuted it except for the fact that he felt under obligations to the people of the circuit and knew that their rights had been shamefully trampled under foot and that he, Dinning, was the only person in a position to assist the people in a restoration of their rights, which had been taken from them by mere force of power. In 1876 Din- ning was again nominated for judge of the Twenty-sixth judicial circuit. His two years on the bench had convinced the Republicans that there had been many things said about Dinning that was untrue, and his record made on the circuit bench met the approval of the Republican party. When that party's con- vention met for the purpose of nominating a candidate for circuit judge, instead of nomi- nating a candidate they passed a resolution

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HISTORY OF SOUTHEAST MISSOURI

to the effect that they would make no nomina- tion for that office but vote for Louis F. Din- ning, which the Republicans did as nearly unanimous, doubtless, as they did for any can- didate of their own party. At that time it will be borne in mind we had no Australian ballot. Judge Dinning was the youngest man ever elected to the circuit bench in Missouri; and he had fewer cases reversed by the supreme court than any judge ever had who occupied that position. Since his retirement from the circuit bench, in 1881, he has still held the record. No circuit judge since that time has had fewer cases reversed than Judge Dinning had for the same length of time. The opinion of the supreme court, which finally ended this long controversy in the judgment ousting Judge Vail, will be found in the 53rd Mo. Rep. page 97.

At the time Dinning was judge the salary was only two thousand dollars per year, he paying his expenses out of that. After he got into the contest with Judge Vail, who was on the bench at that time, of course Dinning lost all the practice he had or very nearly all, for whether there is any thing to it or not there are few people who want to employ a lawyer to attend to their case who is litigating the judge on the bench as to his rights to oc- cupy that seat. When he had served this second term in office he had not paid all the debts he had contracted during the contest. For him and his little family to live during these years he was forced to borrow money. His friends stood loyally by him to this ex- tent, they would sign his note to anybody who had the money to loan. No one ever assisted him in a financial way in this contest to the extent of one cent except Hon. Samuel T. Glover, of St. Louis, who rendered him much valuable assistance in a legal way, for which he made no charge. On account of the small salary paid the circuit judge he was com- pelled to decline a re-election and seek some- thing that would enable him and his family to live and pay his debts ( move the mortgage from off his little home at Potosi). After he retired from the circuit bench. he and the Hon. Sam Byrns, of Jefferson county, formed a partnership to practice law, under the firm name of Dinning & Byrns. This firm lasted for sixteen years and did a large and lucra- tive practice. Mr. Byrns at the time was a member of the senate, had served a term in the lower house of the Missouri legislature and later was elected a member of congress from the tenth district. This law firm was ap-

pointed assistant attorneys for the St. Louis Iron Mountain & Southern Railroad Company by the Hon. Martin L. Clardy as soon as he was made general attorney of that company. The firm was dissolved the first of January 1897, and Judge Dinning continued to repre- sent the railroad as assistant attorney until 1907, when he resigned. His home was in Potosi from the fall of 1865 to 1910, when he moved with his family to Poplar Bluff, Butler county, Missouri. In 1888 Judge Dinning made an active canvass for judge of the St. Louis court of appeals and was beaten in the convention by one vote. He never ran for a political office nor had any inclination to hold one. Has always admired the country, the farm and the woods; he never has taken any stock in many of the new things and ways of the people of modern times. He has never had any desire to read novels of any kind, main- taining always that there were enough of realities of life to occupy the mind. With the exception of two or three novels he never read any, and these he did read were connected with the law. When he left the circuit bench he determined to devote his attention especi- ally to corporation and real estate law; and so he has and has done a large amount of business, especially concerning land titles in Missouri.

Few men are better known in Missouri than Judge Dinning. His practice has extended to most of the counties in Southeastern Mis- souri. His reputation as a lawyer is coexten- sive with the state. There were born of his marriage eleven children. His wife died in November, 1889, and they had seven daughters and four sons; three daughters and two sons have died, leaving six children: Loulee, who married Frank X. Teasdale, a druggist of Louisiana, Pike county, Missouri; Louis F., Jr., who married Miss Florence Marriott, of Sulphur Springs, Missouri, and who is living and practicing law in Poplar Bluff; Madge, who married Frank J. Flynn, is assistant cashier of the Washington Bank, and they live in Potosi, Missouri, and have had two chil- dren, a little boy who died and one, a girl named Rushie Lee, after her grandmother; Katherine T., Genevieve and Sam B. are liv- ing at home with their father at Poplar Bluff, Missouri. Judge Dinning gave his children a liberal education, Louis F. Dinning, Jr., was educated at Christian Brothers College, of St. Louis, Missouri, and in the law depart- ment of the University at Columbia. Sam Byrns Dinning was educated at St. Marys

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College, St. Marys, Kansas, and at Gem City Business College, Quincy, Illinois. His daugh- ters were educated at Arcadia College, Ar- cadia, Missouri.

Judge Dinning when he started his little school in Ste. Genevieve county, was as poor as one will get. He has always maintained that no one can succeed in law if he has any other business to carry on with it. He is a firm believer in Lord Bacon's opinion on this subject : "The law is a jealous mistress and if you wish to win her favors you must court her alone." By economy, industry and fru- gality, Judge Dinning has acquired a compe- teney, and is in easy circumstances, but by no means rich. He and his family belong to the Roman Catholic church. He and his wife when they were young became converts to that church and raised their children in that faith.

While the Judge admits that some men may be born poets, he has always insisted that no man was born a lawyer. For a num- ber of years his practice had been chiefly in the southeastern part of the state, where he has represented large corporations and large land interest, all the time retaining his home at Potosi, Missouri, though for a number of years his offices were kept in De Soto, Mis- souri, and in 1910 he decided to make his home in Poplar Bluff, where he now resides in a beautiful home, 621 Cynthia street.

Politically Judge Dinning was always a Democrat. He took no part in the late Civil war. He was a great friend of the late Rich- ard P. Bland, and endorsed that statesman's views on the silver question. Dinning has al- ways insisted that Congress had no power to destroy or demonetize silver. Judge Dinning's career is one in which all who know him may well feel a personal pride and the exalted place he holds in the hearts and minds of his fellow citizens is but the inevitable result of an up- right and honorable career.

J. H. SCHONHOFF, of Advance, Stoddard county, Missouri, was born at Cape Girardeau, this state, November 6, 1860, and, as his name indicates, is of German descent. In his youth he had the advantage of the public schools, after which he was sent to a private German school, and he also took a course of study at Chambers' Commercial College in his native town.

In the spring of 1884, at the age of twenty- four, he came to Advance, and it may be said of him that he got in on the "ground floor." While he had no financial capital with which

to make an entering wedge, he had a fine physique and good judgment, and he was equipped with a knowledge of the blacksmith's trade that is gained only by work in the shop. This was just before the arrival of the rail- road. While it was being built T. J. Morse opened extensive tie works here, and J. H. Schonhoff was employed as blacksmith. The work was so heavy that it required an assist- ant, and he employed a man. Also about this time his brother, the wagonmaker, came, and together the two Schonhoffs branched out into a hardware business. In the meantime, in May of the year he came to Advance, J. H. Schonhoff married, and the first year of his married life was spent in a little three-room box house. Then he built a larger house, but a cheap one, into which he moved, and while he had some discouragements, in the way of losing money through dishonest lawyers, yet he worked away and planned ahead, with the result that his years of labor and his various investments have netted him not only a com- fortable competency but have placed him at the head of the financial interests in the town. The lots he bought on the installment plan and the farm lands he put his money into have increased in value and thus show the wisdom of his investments. He has been engaged in his present business-hardware and imple- ments-since about 1890, when he opened up a stock in a little shed, which he occupied seven or eight years, and from which he moved to his present store about 1898. Here he ear- ries a first-class line of implements and all kinds of hardware. In connection with his brother he is interested in nearly everything of importance in the town. He helped to or- ganize the Bank of Advance, of which he has been president most of the time since its or- ganization, and he also helped to promote the Telephone Company, of which he is president.

One of Mr. Schonhoff's farms, one hundred and eighty acre, extends into the town of Ad- vance, and his ten-room, frame residence is one of the best here, it being equipped with private electric light and water-works systems, and having every modern convenience.

On May 20, 1884, at Cape Girardeau, J. H. Schonhoff and Miss Theresa Whitelak were united in marriage. Mrs. Schonhoff shared with her husband the many disadvantages and privations incident to life in a new town and now enjoys with him the comforts of their modern and commodious home. They have two children: Clarence, born in May, 1889, and Joseph, in February, 1894. Personally

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Mr. Schonhoff is quiet and unassuming in manner. He is a man of action rather than words. He was reared in the Catholic church, of which he is a devout member, and politic- ally he affiliates with the Democratie party.

SAMUEL L. RAMSEY. The march of im- provement and progress is accelerated day by day and each successive moment seems to de- mand a man of broader intelligence and a keener discernment than the preceding. The successful men must be live men in this day, active. strong to plan and perform and with a recognition of opportunity that enables them to grasp and utilize the possibilities of the moment. Such a class finds a worthy repre- sentative in Samuel L. Ramsey, who has been identified with a number of important busi- ness ventures in Stoddard county, Missouri, since the initiation of his active career, and who is now living on his fine rural estate of one hundred and sixty acres, some miles dis- tant from Frisco.

Samuel L. Ramsey was born in Union county, Kentucky, on the 2nd of February, 1868, and he is a son of John L. and Susan A. (Lay) Ramsey, the former of whom was born at Bolivar, in Hardeman county, Ten- nessee, on the 23d of March, 1837. John L. Ramsey is a son of William Ramsey, who was reared in eastern Tennessee. The Ramsey family removed from Tennessee to Missouri in the year 1872, at which time Samuel L. was a child of but four years of age. Loca- tion was made on a farm three miles west of Bernie, on Crawley Ridge, and there the fam- ily home was maintained until 1886, when the father retired from active participation in active business affairs. He is now living with his son Samuel L. He served as deputy sheriff and as constable in his native place in Tennessee and at the time of the inception of the Civil war gave evidence of his in- trinsie loyalty to the cause of his beloved southland by enlisting as a soldier in the Confederate army. He served with all honor and distinction as a gallant soldier from May 15, 1861, to the final surrender, on the 9th of April, 1865, having been mustered out of service at Gainesville, Alabama. He was a member of the regiment commanded by General Forrest and from the rank of private was raised to the office of lien- tenant of his company. He was never wounded or captured but at Franklin, Ten- nessee, had the experience of being severely shocked by the explosion of a shell. He is a

fine old man and his innate kindliness of spirit and exciting war stories make him an exceed- ingly interesting character.

On the old homestead farm in Stoddard county Samuel L. Ramsey was reared to the age of twenty years. At that time he pur- chased a tract of one hundred and sixty acres of land, the same being located ten miles south of Essex and eleven miles southeast of Dexter. For this property, which was heavily wooded, he paid six hundred dollars. The best timber was cut off and Mr. Ramsey began the ardnons work of clearing. He lived alone in a little pole shanty that had been built by trappers and worked on his farm for two years, at the expiration of which he began to work out by the month. At the age of twenty-six years he decided that he needed a better education and for the succeeding two years he was a student in the Bernie school. Later he attended train- ing school at Bloomfield and for four years he was a popular and successful teacher in the public schools of Stoddard county. After lis marriage, in 1896, he opened a hardware store and an undertaking establishment at Bernie and he continued to be engaged in that line of work for two years. He then, in 1898, returned to his farm, where he remained for four years, at the end of which he had eighty acres under cultivation. In 1902 he removed to Essex in order to give his children better educational advantages and for three years thereafter he was in the real-estate business, being in the employ of A. R. Ewing. He made the race for the nomination for the office of county assessor, but owing to political exigen- cies he was defeated by about eighty-nine votes. During 1909-10 he devoted his time and attention to farming and then he lived for a short time at Essex, returning to his country estate in the spring of 1911. He now has about one hundred acres of his land cleared and under cultivation and he is engaged in diversified agriculture and the raising of high- grade stock.

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History of southeast Missouri : a narrative account of its historical progress, its people and its principal interests, Volume II, Part 101

Author: Douglass, Robert Sidney. 4n Publication date: 1912 Publisher: Chicago : The Lewis Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 802

Author: Douglass, Robert Sidney. 4n
Publication date: 1912
Publisher: Chicago : The Lewis Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 802