USA > South Dakota > Who's who in South Dakota, Vol. I > Part 17
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One month and three days before his twenty-first birthday, he was united in marriage to Miss Emily Derwent, of Rockford, Illinois -today one of Mitchell's happy and energetic club women and leader, blessed by a host of true friends, and active and en- thusiastic for the city's general welfare. Two girls came into their home. One of them is today Mrs. Maude Silsby-Nichols, of Faith, and the other, Mrs. H. E. Hitchcock, wife of Senator Hitchcock of Davison county.
The Silsbys enjoy a pleasant home life; and although the General is very busy, and increasing years are beginning to show their furrowed grooves, he is still the favorite orator for Decora- tion Day, for Old Settlers' picnics and at state camp-fires. Splendid citizen !
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AN EDUCATIONAL FINANCIER
Dr. Cavlin H. French, president of Huron College, was walk. ing down the streets of Cincinnati, when he met a wealthy frienc to whom he imparted his plan to raise an endowment of $250,000 for the Huron school. In a satirical manner, as if to poke fun at the undertaking, the fellow interpolated : "Why dont' you make it a half million?"
"I believe I will!" responded the doughty president, and from that very moment the big financial fight to raise $500,000 for Huron College was on.
ELEMENTS OF SUCCESS
After all is said and done, there are, from a common-sense, practical standpoint, only three primal elements to success in life -selection, preparation. determination. The latter will over- come a mistake made in either or both of the first two. It brought victory to the venture of Columbus, crowned Washing- ton's efforts with success, triumphed at Appomattox, and made Bob LaFollette governor of Wisconsin. It gave to Calvin H. French of Huron, an unprecedented victory in college financing.
Two years! Think of it! Two long years away from home. Two years of incessant struggle. Not one brief effort like Jacob wrestling all night with an angel at Jabbock's Ford, but 730 days and 730 nights of relentless struggle. Determination? What else? College presidents all over the country told him it couldn't be done. Preachers and philanthropists advised against it. Cal- vin H. French, alone, had faith in the task, faith in himself, faith in his fellowman, faith in God. It was undertaken. It was done. And today Huron College has been placed upon a Gibraltar basis, financially, where the storms of adversity, arising from short crops and political disturbances of the money market, will die into oblivion as they beat against the threshold of her buttress.
THE CLOSING SCENES
On the morning of the last day, this telegramn was received
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from Dr. French, who was at that time in New York City, mak- ing the greatest effort of his life to raise money :
"New pledge of Fifteen Thousand, on condition Huron guar- antees the last Ten Thousand."
Now, Huron had already given beyond her ability. But, $475,000 had been pledged on condition that the total amount, $500.000, should be subscribed before midnight, November 11, 1911. Thus $150,000 was now depending upon another home pledge of $10,000. Yes, more than that! $475,000 plus $15,000; total, $490;000, was hanging on that last $10,000, to be sub- scribed by Huron.
"Will they do it !? Dare they do it? Oh! God grant they won't refuse!"
Thus the words of the poet, put into the mouths of the pat- riots in Liberty Hall, in good old Philadelphia on the morning of July 4, 1776, were suddenly revived by the students and fac- ulty of Huron College. It was a challenge to heroic endeavor, to self-sacrifice, to build beyond the grave.
It was about nine o'clock p. m. November 11, last President Abel of the board of directors of Huron College, who had given lavishly of his own hard-earned funds, and who had struggled all day in personal interviews with the citizens of Huron to rise to the occasion and make the best investment that had ever con- fronted them, had gone out to the college to await news from Dr. French. The latter's faithful secretary, John I Pasek, a product of Ward Academy, was standing with one hand on the telephone receiver which had not as yet been lifted from the hook, debating with President Abel about the wording of a telegram to be sent to Dr. French, when, at that very moment, the phone, as if in- spired, gave a sharp ring.
Jerking down the receiver, slamming it tightly against his ear, Mr. Pasek, while an anxious crowd rushed forward to hear, shouted into the mouth-piece :
"Hello!"
"I've a telegram for you," said the operator at the Western Union.
"Repeat it! Quickly!" demanded Pasek.
"We win!
French."
Huron College was organized and established in 1883, at Pierre. S. D., with Rev. Thomas M. Finley as president. Two years later, Rev. William M. Blackburn D. D. LL. D., succeeded to the. presidency. The "dry time" in Dakota came on. After strug- gling for thirteen years against the adverse tide of conditions,
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he resigned in 1898, and Dr. Calvin H. French, a local preacher at Scotland, this state, and who had made an enviable record as president of the old Scotland Academy, was chosen as his successor.
The Spanish-American war was in progress. Times were just beginning to "lim- ber up." The vast gold fields of Alaska had begun to give forth their rich ores. Money was becoming more plentiful. Weather conditions changed. Bountiful crops began to yield their rich treasures. The cit- izens of Huron, through pri- vate subscription, bought for $5,000 the old Royal hotel at that place, which originally cost $50,000, and made a pres- ent of it to the school. It was the awakening. French was the man of the hour.
CONTRIBUTIONS
Four years later, the Chicago and Northwestern railway company gave to the CALVIN H. FRENCH school four beatuiful blocks of ground near the heart of the city of Huron on which to erect their future buildings. In 1904, Ralph Voorhees of Chicago, gave them $15,000 for a girls' dormitory. The faithful women of Huron raised $5,000 more to be added to it. This made $10,000 that Huron had already invested in the enterprise, let alone her liberal contributions toward the running expenses. Other con- tributions were made by distant friends. The year closed with $27,900 pledged.
In 1905, Mr. Voorhees offered conditionally to give $10,000 toward a central building. French said: "We'll take it!" The building was completed two years later, at a total cost of $122,- 000. It is as yet the finest school building in the state. There was an old indebtedness of $15,000. Mrs. Voorhees gave it. Noble people! One building was named for her, the other after her philanthropic husband.
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THE ENDOWMENT FUND
Dr. D. K. Pearsons, of Chicago, gave the school $15,000 in July, 1908, as the first contribution toward an endowment fund. Jim Hill, the raliroad magnate, followed it with $50,000. At midnight. November 11, 1911, Dr. French, through his own tire- less efforts, and at the sacrifice of numerous friends, brought it up to the high water mark of South Dakota educational endow- ments, $506,129. Hats off to his grit!
THE LOCATION
There are in South Dakota seven state educational institu- tions. As a result of some disgraceful political operations, they were split up and every single one of them, with but one execep- tion-the Madison Normal -were placed in border counties; that is, the outside tier of counties around the edge of the state. So, also, were all of the charitable institutions, save one, similarly located. The next generation will ask, with appropriate curiosity, "Why didn't they finish the job and connect them all with a high wall?"
This error in judgment gave to the denominational schools of the state the very opportunity they desired. The rich James River Valley, extending across the east central portion of the state, from north to south, lay open before them. The Congre- gationalists put in an academy at Redfield and a college at Yank- ton. The Methodists, with equal foresight, slipped their univer- sity into the city of Mitchell. The Free Methodists sought out Wessington Springs. Then the Presbyterians, taking creditable advantage of the situation, closed their academy at Scotland and their so-called university at Pierre, put the two together and es- tablished them as one institution on the bank of the Jim, in the beautiful city of Huron, which lies geographically, in the center of the old river's fertile valley.
Today, the beautiful college campus at Huron; the magnifi- cent, imposing bulidings thereon, and the large endowment fund -representing a total valuation of $771,120 -- the increase in the faculty from a membership of seven to twenty-five, and in the enrollment, from 136 to 488, all combine to attest the wisdom of the last maneuvers in location, and, as well, the judgment dis- played in the selection of a president.
PERSONAL
He, whose worthy deeds are feebly extolled in this article, was born in Williamsburg, Ohio, June 13, 1862. Attaining his
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Bachelor of Arts at Lake Forest University in 1888, he was, three years later, honored with his Master's degree, by the same insti- tution. In 1891 he graduated from the Union Theological Sem- inary of New York, and was ordained by the Presbytery of South Dakota the same year, and installed at once as pastor of the Scot- land church. This position he occupied until 1898. However, during 1897-8, he was also principal of Scotland Academy. In 1900, Wooster University honored him with his Doctor of Divin- ity. July 28, 1897, he was united in marriage at College Springs, Iowa, to Miss Anna Long, of that city. This brave little Christ- jan woman has been his fortress as well as his advance guard ever since, and much of his success has been due to her unwserving devotion.
Transferred to Huron, in 1898, as previously set forth, this determined, plucky youth from the east, showed himself to be no tenderfoot in the race of life. Upon his return from New York, after his successful endowment campaign, the citizens of Huron turned out en masse and gave him a banquet long to be remem- bered. One of the unique and worthy features of the occasion, was the rendition of the following hymn of welcome, in his honor, composed by H. Foster Jones:
TO PRESIDENT C. H. FRENCH
Strong Man of God, whose tireless hands Through many a year in faith have wrought, Thy Master-work before thee stands- An lo, thou hast not striven for naught. As one who, in the world's new dawn, A temple reared to God's high Name, In lines of fairest marble drawn,
And toiled for love, and not for fame; So hast thou shaped with patient skill,
This nobler structure, whose intent - Trained mind and consecrated will- Shall be thy lasting monument. And we who, wondering day by day, Have seen the splendid vision rise- We can but bow our heads, and say, "He knew; for God had made him wise." Strong Man of God, whose faith serene, Hath shamed the petty doubts of men, Weclome to this thy triumph-scene- Dear welcome to thine own again.
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REV. W. M. MAIR
ANOTHER ADOPTED SON
Through his lectures before graduating classes and other pop- ular audiences, his wide range of sermons, and his activity in the educational world as teacher and superintendent, the Reverend W. M. Mair-that little, sawed-off Scotch-American preacher, at present pastor of the Congregational church in the city of Mitchell -has brought himself into prominence, and is beginnng to make his name a household word in South Dakota.
Mair is a persuasive fellow. Born in Peter- head, Scotland, in 1870, 'tis said, as the story goes, that at the infant age of four years, he had already familiarized him- self with so much his- tory and had become so innoculated with the spirit of liberty, that he persuaded his parents to take him and move to America where he might rise to greatness and pave the way for his fel- low Scotchman, Andrew Carnegie, to make a for- tune. The parents yielded and Mair has already ac- hieved both objects. Car- negie's name will remain chiseled in stone over the doors of public libraries long after Mair is dead and forgotten, but the moral stimulus being
REV. W. M. MAIR
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given by Mair to those about him will widen in the wake of its influence, like the tail of a comet, and continue to inspire men to higher ideals, long after the stone structures containing Car- negie's engraved name have crumbled to dust.
Strange! Isn't it !? How one man seeks fortune and builds for today, while another seeks righteousness and builds for to- morrow. Wealth is doing all it can to perpetuate its own appe- tite. Philanthropy is today being conducted in too many cases under a mask of hypocritical self-aggrandizement. The name of the richest man on earth, 1912 years ago last Christmas morning, is not known and cannot be found among the sacred pages of con- tracting history, while the name of a little Child who entered life in the manger of a grotto in old Bethlehem, on that day, now lives everywhere. The name of the richest man in America on that eventful day when the Emancipation Proclamation was pro- mulgated to the nation, is either unknown or forgotten, while the name of that impoverished country lawyer who penned it, today stirs the patritoc instinct of every American at its very ut- terance. Wealth is today struggling as never before to buy a place of prominence to perpetuate itself in the history of the race. Dedications here! Dedications there! Names chiseled on prom- inent stones in massive structures, of those whose gifts erected them (for the ultimate sake of self)! - the palsied struggle of wealth for self perpetuation. Yet these give way in the human heart to the towering shafts of granite, builded by the tiny gifts of the poor, that point their illumined spires heavenward at Springfield, Illinois, at Canton, Ohio, at Gettysburg, in the city of Washington, and amid the pines of Boston. Mair is building well.
The Mair family first settled at Toronto, Canada. From here they soon removed to Tennessee. Here W. M. attended the pub- lic schools, and later graduated from Pleasant Hill Normal Insti- tute. Dissatisfied with his preparation for life, he persuaded his father to send hin to Oberlin, where through self-support, self- exertion and honest application, he fitted himself for a minister of the Gospel, and graduated with distinction.
PREACHER-TEACHER
Filled with unquenchable enthusiasm, the young pastor did not go back to the old family haunts of Tennessee, but rather he struck westward and accepted the pastorate of a church at Henry. South Dakota, where he preached 1897-99 inclusive. Accepting a call to Garretson, S. D., he occupied the pulpit at that place
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for several years, and then resigned to accept the principalship of the Garretson schools.
In 1903 he took a trip back to his native land, looked over the "Mosses (on the) Old Manse," filled himself full of European ozone, and then returned to his adopted land to work out his des- tiny . This trip opened a new field of endeavor to him. His observations had given birth to a stirring lecture on the Old World. Requests for its repetition came from all over the state. Mair's gifted tongue was rapidly earning back for him the money he spent abroad.
Always possessed of an inherent longing for school work, and realizing how closely connected are the lives of the teacher and the preacher, Mair returned to the school roon at Garretson --- using this as a stepping stone to the superintendency of Minne - haha county, 1907-10. In this position he made an enviable rec- ord. He superintended, taught, lectured, preached, wrote, con- ducted corn-growing contests, and gave a general impetus to the school work and, as well, to the sociability of the entire county.
A. Craig Bowdish, pastor of the Congregational church in the city of Mitchell, resigned his pastorate in 1910, to re-enter school. The membership of the church, who had been reading the Sioux Falls papers, and consequently were somewhat familiar with the aggressive methods of our preacher-teacher, sent for Mair. He took a "try out;" preached them a few eloquent ser- mons; received a unanimous call; left Sioux Falls a few weeks before the expiration of his second term in the county superin- tendent's office and removed to Mitchell, where today he is one of the "live wires" among the preachers of that city. His con- gregation has built an elegant modern parsonage for him and his family -a little Scotch lassie of his own size and ambition for a wife, plus two lovely daughters.
MAIRS'. LITERARY STYLE
For several years Mair has edited a department, once a week in the Argus-Leader, entitled "The Observer," which bristles with live facts, tastily written. He has a literary style of his own. It is admirably set forth in the following extract from his speech delivered before the students of the Aberdeen Normal, September 11, 1912:
"I once dined in the home of a southern friend in the far south. The dinner was prepared and served by a negro servant, old and grey, who had been a slave in the home before the Civil War. She was an expert in the mysteries of culinary proficiency. Yes, she was more-she was an artist. The snowy white linen,
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the polished silver and china, the creamy hot biscuit, the deli- cious fried chicken, the golden butter, the digestible cake, and the a mber-colored coffee, -a nectar fit for the gods, will remain a sweet and grateful memory with me for another decade, and will atone in large measure for the interruptions and disappoint- ments of life I have sometimes experienced. Was that aged negress educated because she could create and serve so royal a feast? She could neither read nor write her own name. She was educated in only a faculty or two, and yet I can not speak too highly in passing of the necessity of the kind of education she possessed. We can hardly conceive an educated woman not knowing how to do the very things this negress could do, but we cannot conceive an educated woman knowing only what she knew and doing what she could do. But education is something more than the doing of things with trained hands. Education awakens the whole man. It gives wings to the imagination, refines the tastes, purifies the sensibilities, enlarges the vision, intensifies the powers of speech, quickens every power and trains every fac- ulty, and fills the soul with ambitions requiring the most heroic effort to attain. What though a woman can cook to plesae the fastidious taste of the epicurean if her soul is forever dead to the charm of music, the nobility of literature, the beauty of art? What though a man can shoe a horse, drive an engine, or build a house, if the only pleasures and progress he can appreciate are the rasping voice of the cheap phonograph, the ribald song of the painted actress, the insipid intellectuality of the modern novel, the voices of the masters in literature, science and government unheard and unknown? What is the outlook of the soul whose world is measured only by the boundary of the tiny world in which his hands toil for daily bread! Is this the educated man - a hewer of wood and a carrier of water? The educated man re- ceives tribute from the past and the present, in every department of learning, for his pleasure and progress, and his outlook is as infinite as the field of knowledge."
Strangely enough, Reverend Mair is also a money maker - not a money chaser. Like Lowell, he says: "I only ask that heaven send A little more than I shall spend."
This "little more" has been carefully guarded until today it has accumulated into one of the nicest farms in Minnehaha county, and into two beautiful lots in the city of Sioux Falls, on which he expects to build a manse, in which he and Mrs. Mair may spend their declining years, after he shall have become too old to work. Thoughtful man!
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WHEELER S. BOWEN
OUR CLASSICAL EDITOR
The days of swaying public sentiment through broadsides of oratory from the platform are rapidly passing away in this coun- try, although they will never cease. The reason for this is the establishment of so many monthly and weekly magazines, the springing up here and there of such a multitudinous number of daily newspapers and the creation of local and rural mail carriers for their distributon; also to the diffusion of education and the creation of the reading habit.
The Revolutionary war period called forth a score of the ablest orators the world has ever produced. The Civil War per- iod gave to us another band of spirited speakers who re-echoed the sentiments of revolutionary days. Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death," found its parting echo three- quarters of a century later in Dan Webster's "Liberty and union, one and inseparable, now and forever."
During the nineteenth century, journalism not only took root but multiplied itself and flourished greatly. In 1814, Nathan Hale, a talented nephew of the famous spy of the revolution, bought the "Boston Daily Advertiser," which was, and still is, the leading daily paper of New England. He edited it for fifty years. Down in a little, dingy cellar under an old building on Nassau street in New York City, James Gordon Bennet established the "New York Herald" in 1835; and for over seventy-five years it has remained one of the most powerful papers on either con- tinent. Horace Greeley, in 1833, had thrust the "Morning Post" into the arena of newspaperdom. It was the first penny paper ever published in the entire world. The next year it was con- verted into the "New Yorker," which six years later gave way to the "Logcabin," and which, in turn, yielded to the "New York Tribune," Chas. A. Dana, Henry Raymond, George Curtis and George Childs, each as editorial satellites, glided into prom- inence and took their respective places in the firmament of journalism.
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While these men were rounding out journalism on a large scale in the far east, Dame Nature was slowly developing at Janesville, Wisconsin, a young lad who was destined to achieve distinction in a smaller way, as an editorial writer in the west; and, who, had he been given a chance with those of the east, would easily have taken rank with the best of them -Editor W. S. Bowen of the "Daily Huronite," the most classical editorial writer in South Dakota, and one of the ablest in the west.
Editor Bowen was born in 1843 at Akron, Ohio, where his father owned and published the "Summit County Bea- con.'' Six years later the family removed to Janesville, Wisconsin, where W. S., as a mere boy, took up city editor- ial work in a print shop which his father estab- lished at that place.
In 1873, he "pulled stakes" and struck out for Yankton, S. D., where he took up and continued for twenty= three years his editorial work on the "Press and Dakotan." A political editor of unusual force and ability, he had been one of the strongest fac- tors in the state in send- ing R. F. Pettigrew to the United States Sen- ate. Mr. Pettigrew was WHEELER S. BOWEN not ungrateful for the service rendered, and Editor Bowen soon found himself called to the Senator's private secretaryship.
He bought a half interest in the "Sioux Falls Daily Press," in 1901, and in 1907 he sold his interest to W. C. Cook, our in- ternal revenue collector. It was during his six years as editor of The Press that he achieved distinction as an editorial writer. During this period, The Press enjoyed a remarkable growth, and it was quoted by all the leading dailies of the west.
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Like Napoleon battering out the keystone to a strong-hold by centering his fire constantly on the pivotal spot, so Editor Bowen kept hurling large calibre missiles of political death at his opponents until he had forced a retreat and placed Coe I. Crawford in the United States Senate Without Bowen's news- paper battery constantly in action, Mr. Crawford never could have won.
After selling his interest in The Press, Mr. Bowen went to Boise City, Idaho, where for one year he edited the "Idaho Scimater." Returning to South Dakota, he bought the "Daily Huronite," in 1909, and later bought and united with it the "Huron Spirit." Although bowed with the turmoil of sixty-nine years, his editorial pen "still lives, forever young." Dipping it into the "fountain of eternal youth," he writes with the vigor, the courage, the clearness and the coherency of thirty years ago. Could anything be prettier than his editorial in the "Huronite," last year, on Memorial Day? It follows:
MEMORIAL DAY
"Through so many years of prosperous peace has the memor- ial anniversary in honor of the dead of the Civil War been ob- served that the event has become as well established as our Christ- ian Sabbath. As the swift years go by, increasing solemnity is attached to the observances of each 30th of May, couched though they are in the forms that admit of no variation.
"It is far away now, the weary march, the bristling line, the sputtering fire, the roar of musketry, the boon of artillery, the weird cadence of flying shells and the hiss of the death deal- ing minnie, the sobbing away of life, the moans, the shrieks, the shouts of triumph, the groans of despair.
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