USA > Wisconsin > Walworth County > History of Walworth county, Wisconsin, Volume II > Part 12
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Mr. Harrington has been twice married, first, in 1888, to Mary E. Potter, whose death occurred in 1896, leaving two children, Percy and Mary. In 1898 he contracted a matrimonial alliance with Rebecca Minshall, and to this union one child, a son, Delos, has been born.
RICHARD SMITH.
The life of Richard Smith, long a well known and industrious citizen of Walworth county, is well deserving of mention in a work of the nature of the one in hand, for it was led along honorable and conservative lines and resulted not only in good to himself and family but to the community as well.
Mr. Smith was born at Floyd, Oneida county, New York, November 5, 1838, and when ten years old he came with his parents to Wisconsin. His privations and hardships after the death of his father helped build his rugged character, and through a long and industrious life he continued to work with that zeal and energy that marked the days of his young manhood. He spent his life in agricultural pursuits, in which he met with large success, retiring from active life about 1894, selling his farm and moving to Harvard. How- ever, he could not be contented with idleness, and he continued to work at various things until ill health prevented further labor. He had a wide and favorable acquaintance and was esteemed and respected for his many good qualities. He was a gentleman of the strictest integrity and loyal friendship. He was sick a year and a half prior to his death.
Richard Smith was the son of James and Elizabeth (Bailey) Smith, both natives of England, where they grew to maturity and were married, probably near Ely in Cambridgeshire. When Richard Smith was about eight or nine years old his parents brought him to Walworth county, locating on a farm in Linn township, first settling in section 29, later moving to section 26. He was about eleven or twelve years old when his father died, leaving the mother with seven children, none of whom were old enough to make their own way. Rich- ard and his brother James, who was thirteen years old, and who now lives at Geneva, tried to care for the family, but finally found they were too young and the family was compelled to live among relatives. However, the two sons
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earned considerable money and assisted in the support of the mother and younger children. Richard worked out until he was married, in 1862, to Emma Brand, daughter of William and Mary (Hawkes) Brand and a native of Oneida county, New York, her parents and those of Mr. Smith coming from the same place in Cambridgeshire, England, to America together and located in New York where the Brand family remained until 1856. About 1851 her father bought a farm at Clinton, Wisconsin, and in 1856 moved the family there, the parents spending the rest of their lives on that place and there Mrs. Smith's brother, Joseph Brand, still lives.
In the spring of 1862 Richard Smith bought a farm in the northeast quarter of section 32, Linn township, and there resided for a period of thirty- two years. In 1894 he sold his farm and moved to the town of Harvard where he spent the rest of his life, his death occurring in June, 1909.
Two daughters were born to Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Cora and Carrie, the latter being now the wife of Clarence E. Bilyea, of Walworth, a sketch of whom appears in this work. Cora married Rolland Pierce, a brother of Delos Pierce, of Walworth. One son, Clifford, was born to Mr. and Mrs. Pierce, his birth occurring in August, 1892, in Hebron township, McHenry county, Illinois. His father died when he was about nine months old, and he was ten years old when his mother died. After his father's death he and his mother lived with Richard Smith and wife, of this sketch, and after the death of the mother Clifford Pierce remained with his grandparents.
In 1911 Mrs. Richard Smith purchased a small farm in the south edge of Walworth township, this county, a mile and a half east of Big Foot, where she and her grandson, Clifford Pierce, now reside.
GEORGE B. CRANDALL.
The subject of this sketch is one of the substantial and well known agriculturists and stock men of the southern part of Walworth county, owning a finely improved and valuable farmstead in Linn township, his place representing much hard labor and the exercise of sound judgment and good taste; but Mr. Crandall is a man of well known energy and determination, indolence and idleness being entirely foreign to his nature, and his continued activity in the management and development of this property has made his one of the most desirable farms in this locality.
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George B. Crandall, who is the scion of a worthy old family, was born, on the farm where he now lives, in the southwestern part of Linn township, this county, November 21, 1871, and here he has been content to spend his life, well knowing that it were indeed useless to seek a country of larger op- portunities. He is the son of William Henry and Martha Lodicia (Greene) Crandall. The father was born in Otsego county, New York, March 16, 1832, the only son of Riley and Maria (Clark) Crandall. When William H. Crandall was about ten years old he went to live with his uncle, George Clark, in the same community and there he grew to manhood on a farm. In 1856 he came west and located on a farm about two miles east of Walworth, where he worked for a Mr. Burdick about a year, then worked about five miles east of there for a former schoolmate, Deacon Lucien Covey. In 1859 he married Martha L. Greene, daughter of Daniel and Lois (Johnson) Greene. She. too, was a native of Otsego county, New York. Her father was the son of Daniel and Rebecca (Conant) Greene, who came from Boston; Daniel Greene was a soldier in the war of 1812. His father, Daniel Greene, Sr .. was born in 1758, and was a soldier in the Revolutionary war, after which he drew a pension, and lived with his son in 1840 at Edmeston, Otsego county, New York. Rebecca (Conant) Greene was many years a widow. Her death occurred at Walworth, this county. August 11, 1882, lacking three days of her ninety-seventh birthday. She had come here from Otsego county, New York, in 1846, with her son, and had buried ten children, being the last of her family. Lois (Johnson) Greene, mother of Martha L. (Greene) Crandall, was born at Mexico, New York. Martha L. Greene came to this county with her parents when she was a girl. They located in the southern part of section 30, Linn township, later moving to the west side of the same section and there the father died in 1871 and her mother some years later.
After William H. Crandall was married he rented a farm for three years. They began life in typical pioneer fashion, living in a house of only two rooms, one above the other, which were whitewashed, and just outside the door was the well-sweep and "old oaken bucket." They were young. optimistic and happy. Mr. Crandall then bought forty acres and built a house on it and there made his home for twenty-eight years. He prospered by hard work and close application and later added forty acres to his original purchase, later other forties until he became the owner of an excellent farm of one hundred and sixty acres. He left the farm in October, 1892, and moved to Walworth, having accumulated a competency ; but he did not retire from active life, but took up quite a different line of work and for the next fifteen years was on the road as a traveling salesman, failing health finally
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compelling him to give it up. He remained in the village of Walworth the rest of his life, his death occurring on January 5, 1910. He was an active member of the Seventh-Day Baptist church, a Sabbath school teacher for many years and a deacon for fifteen years. Mrs. Crandall is also a faithful member of that church.
Six children were born to Mr. and Mrs. William H. Crandall, namely : Effie married Stephen Wickham, of Walworth, and they have three children, Benjamin, Floyd and Gertrude; Charles Henry married May Rodman and lived in Walworth until his death in 1892, leaving two children, Lyle and Pauline. William Crandall, who is in the furniture and undertaking business in Walworth, married Ada Humphrey, of Albion, and they have two children, Lester and Adeline; William Crandall is a man of unusual strength of char- acter in the face of a great trial. After years of active life on the farm and as a traveling salesman he was being educated for the ministry, when he suddenly became hopelessly blind. He spent three months at the State School for the Blind, then took a place in a furniture store and gradually worked up a business at Walworth for a non-resident undertaker, worked into the prac- tical work himself, started business in a small way, and, inducing his wife to help him, they in time became expert embalmers and are now well established in the furniture and undertaking business. He does not lament over his affliction, but is a cheerful, companionable man, successful in business and has a pleasant home life. Ellen Crandall, the fourth child born to William H. Crandall and wife, married Leonard Lyons, lives in Fontana, and they have one son, Owen, who is now attending the State University at Madison; George B., of this review; Nellie married Charles Babcock, of Walworth, and they have six children, Ernest, Kendall, Lulu, Henry, Ambrose and Victor.
Mrs. William H. Crandall, mother of the above named children, lives in Walworth. She has the satisfaction of knowing that her children have been well reared. While living on the farm five miles away the family was very regular at church services. The father was a God-fearing, reliable, earnest man, always doing what he could for the good of his community, where he was held in the highest esteem by all who knew him.
George B. Crandall, the immediate subject of this sketch, grew to man- hood on the home farm and received his education in the public schools, and he remained on the home place until about 1892. On August 16, 1893, he married Florence May Merwin, daughter of George H. Merwin and wife, of Walworth, a sketch of whom appears elsewhere in this work. She was educated in the high school at Walworth and was a successful teacher in the
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public schools of this county until her marriage. A year preceding his mar- riage, Mr. Crandall went to Walworth and took up painting, paper hanging and decorating, and the year after his marriage was spent at Fontana in the same line of work. In 1894 he returned to the home farm, which he has conducted ever since, keeping the old place well improved and well cultivated. The place consists of one hundred and thirty-nine acres.
Mr. Crandall is not a politician and he has never been an aspirant for public office. However, he has been a member of the local school board sincce 1896 and has been clerk of the board for some time.
Three children hae been born to the subject and wife, namely : Glenna Belle, Vivian Iola and Marian Irene. The two eldest are attending high school at Walworth. Mr. Crandall is a member of the Modern Woodmen and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.
HUGH D. LONG.
The biographier is always glad to write of a family like the Longs, men- bers of which have been known in the locality of which this history treats for a period of nearly three-quarters of a century, for the father of the sub- ject braved the wilds and settled in Darien township when the country was very sparsely settled and indeed gave no promise of the wonderfully fine farming section that is here seen today. Members of this old family have done much for the advancement of this community, having been altruistic enough to labor not only for their own good but also for the good of their neighbors and the general public and they have lived such correct lives and been so public-spirited that they have ever been held in high esteem by all classes in Walworth county. It is to such people as these that civilization in the North and West today especially owes its great advancement.
Hugh D. Long was born on October 24, 1854, in Darien township, this county. He is the son of Chester D. and Laura A. (Lee) Long. The father was a farmer and insurance agent, and early in his career he came west and first settled in section 28. Darien township, in the year 1839, and there he developed a good farm in true pioneer fashion and spent the rest of his life. He took an active interest in public affairs and for a period of four years he held the office of recorder of deeds in Elkhorn, discharging his duties very capably, after which he returned to his farm, and carried on general farming
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and stock raising successfully until summoned to close his earthly career on June 15, 1884. His boyhood was spent at Pembroke, New York, where his birth occurred.
Hugh D. Long, of this sketch, was reared on the home farm and when but a lad he assisted with the general work on the same, finding time to attend the district schools of Darien township. Early in life he took up farming for a livelihood and this has been his life work continuously to the present time. and he has met with encouraging success as a general farmer and stock raiser, in connection with which he has been engaged in the insurance busi- ness, representing the Northwestern National Insurance Company, of Mil- waukee, and the Continental Insurance Company of New York. He has built up a large and constantly growing business in this line of endeavor.
Fraternally, Mr. Long is a member of the Masonic order and the Wood- men, and he is well known and active in local lodge circles.
Mr. Long was married on November 18, 1875, to Abbie Blakely, daugh- ter of William Blakely, a highly respected family who have been well known in Walworth county for many years. Two children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Hugh D. Long, namely: William H. and Minnie Louise, who are still with their parents.
ALBERT J. NOKES.
The climate, soil and general conditions prevalent in southeastern Wis- consin are well adapted to the general conditions of farming and stock raising. One of the men who has shown by his success that he is a master of the art of farming in Troy township. Walworth county, is Albert J. Nokes, who was born in Jefferson county, Wisconsin, September 12, 1869. He is the son of Charles E. and Julia (Condon) Nokes. Joseph Nokes and wife, the paternal grandparents, were early settlers in Jefferson county and there the mother of the subject was born and reared. The maternal grandparents, Isaac Condon and wife, were also early settlers in Jefferson county and there they spent the rest of their lives. In that county the father of Albert J. Nokes was reared and educated. He was a mason by trade, and he is now living in South Dakota, where he owns one hundred and sixty acres. Politically, he is a Republican and he belongs to the Methodist church. His family consisted of ten children, of whom eight are living. AAlbert J. Nokes spent his childhood at the town of Palmyra. Wisconsin, and attended school there. He went to South Dakota when fourteen years old, and when nineteen years of age he
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returned to Palmyra, Wisconsin, where he attended graded school, and took a special course in dairying at the University of Wisconsin. Then for several years he followed butter making, turning his attention to general farming in 1900. He bought the fine farm he now owns in 1904. It con- sists of one hundred and eighty-six acres, and is known as the "Maple Street Stock Farm." He has placed it under a fine state of improvement and culti- vation, paying special attention to stock raising, keeping large numbers of Guernsey cattle and Duroc-Jersey hogs. He has been very successful and has one of the choice farms of the township. He has erected the buildings, and his father-in-law set out the trees about the place.
Politically, Mr. Nokes is a Prohibitionist, and he belongs to the Metho- dist church. On April 20, 1892, he was united in marriage with Maud E. Cook, a native of Troy township, this county, born here on the farm they now own, on April 3, 1870. She is the daughter of Henry Smith Cook and Cath- erine Young (Morrison) Cook, the father a native of Florence, Oneida county, New York, born there in 1829, and she was born in Hartford, Con- necticut, in 1840. Mr. Cook came to Walworth county, Wisconsin, in 1856, while Katherine Morrison came in an early day and here they were married in 1861 and settled in Troy township on the hundred and eighty-six acres that they now own. He went to Palmyra, Jefferson county, in 1882 and there he died in 1899; Mrs. Cook's death occurred in 1900. They were the parents of five children, three of whom are living. In politics he was a Republican and a member of the Congregational church, and for a number of years he was a deacon in the same.
To Mr. and Mrs. Nokes the following children have been born : Douglas A., deceased; Kenneth Lyle, Katherine Morrison, Thelma Maud, Albert Colon, Valeria and Marguerite, deceased.
CHARLES M. BLACKMAN.
Charles M. Blackman was born in Bridgewater; New York, on October 10, 1833. He was the son of Alva and Almira (Briggs) Blackman, who spent their lives engaged in agricultural pursuits, moving from New York to Wisconsin in 1846, when their son, Charles M., was thirteen years old, and settled in Johnstown, Rock county. Alva Blackman became the owner of a large farm on Rock Prairie, in the vicinity of Johnstown. Both the parents were from old New York families and received good educations. Three chil-
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dren were born to Alva Blackman and wife, namely: Henry Harrison, Charles M., the subject, and Harriet Almira.
Charles M. Blackman grew to manhood on the home farm in Rock county, where he assisted with the general work about the place and he at- tended the common schools there. When a youth he came to Whitewater and entered the employ of Marsh & Partridge, dealers in general merchandise, and while in the capacity of clerk for this firm he mastered the ins and outs of merchandising, and in the year 1856 he went to Stoughton, Wisconsin, where he remained until 1863, engaging in the mercantile business for himself during those seven years. He had built up a good business, but, seeking a wider field for the exercise of his talents, he returned to Whitewater, where he and Sanger Marsh organized the First National Bank, which opened for business January 2, 1864. This was the second national bank in Wisconsin, and which, because of its clean and careful management, has earned a high and honorable position among the banking institutions of the country. And Mr. Blackman became an ideal banker. He carried his sound and popular institution safely through every financial panic since the Civil war. Any business man knows what this means, and can thus understand something of the exceptional financial ability of the subject. During the past fifty years Mr. Blackman assisted many business men, not only in prosperous times, but also in periods of financial depression and danger. He had many large trans- actions with men outside of Whitewater and gained some of his warmest personal friends on a strict business basis, and in conservative business rela- tions.
On August 13, 1860, Mr. Blackburn was married to Mary E. Billings, a representative of one of the prominent old families of Whitewater, and here she grew to womanhood and was educated and proved a worthy companion and helpmeet. Four children blessed this union, namely: Edith, wife of F. K. Sanders, president of Washburn College at Topeka, Kansas; Jessie, wife of William H. Breese, a business man of Portage, Wisconsin; Mary, wife of Rev. H. T. Sell, formerly of Chicago, now of Jacksonville, Florida; and T. M. Blackman, of Whitewater, who is vice-president of the bank of which his father was so long the head. These children all received the advantages of good educations and are well situated in life.
Mr. Blackman was always ranked among the county's foremost citizens. Every worthy public cause had his sympathy and support in a substantial way. For the sake of some unpopular movements he often was in the minor- ity, and sometimes alone. His unconscious influence was even then so great (56)
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that his presence, without a word, was sufficient to rebuke, and, at times, silence a false public measure. In any case no one dared to approach him to advocate a wrong thing in public life. His example was his argument. He was always prominent in temperance work.
Mr. Blackman was well known as a worker in the interest of the Young Men's Christian Association and Sunday school conventions, especially in his earlier years, and in later days in the home mission work of the Congrega- tional church in Wisconsin, he having been an active and influential member of that denomination and a liberal supporter of the local church, in fact, a pillar in the same for many years. He was a religious man through and through, and believed in carrying his religion into his everyday life. His was of the workable and working type of religion of which the world stands in so much need. The Christian church with him was at the center of all good, public or private.
As president and director for years of the State Young Men's Christian Association, as trustee of Beloit College, as treasurer and director for a period of nineteen years of the state home missionary interests, and for a period as Wisconsin's member of the board of directors of the National Home Missionary Society, to say nothing of other positions of honor and trust, his circle of devoted friends and admirers was unusually large.
Mr. Blackman was successful in a financial way and through his unaided efforts accumulated a competency. He had a commodious and attractive home in Whitewater which was known as a place of hospitality and good cheer and here he was summoned to his reward on a higher plane of action on Friday, April 19. 1912, in the seventy-ninth year of his life, thus going down in the mellow Indian summer of his years like a sheaf fully ripened, and with every assurance of another and more glorious springtime in another world than ours.
J. J. READER.
One of the venerable pioneers who remains to tell the story of the days of the wolf and the Indian and the far-flung forests of Walworth county is J. J. Reader, of Delavan, a man whom to know is to honor and accord the high- est esteem, for his life has been exemplary and has resulted in much good to those with whom he has been associated. The history of this locality and that of his own career are pretty much one and the same, being intertwined in- dissolubly, for he came here some three-quarters of a century ago and during the subsequent periods of development he has played no inconspicuous part.
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Mr. Reader was born in Waterville, Oneida county, New York, April 6. 1827, and he is the son of Deacon John Reader, whose family was long a prominent one here, in fact the father played such an important part in the history of the county and was such a sterling character that it is but just that the biographer go somewhat exhaustively into his record, before proceeding with that of the immediate subject of this review.
Deacon John Reader was born in Headcorn, Kent county, England, February 21, 1803. He was the son of Thomas and Elizabeth Reader, both natives of England, where they grew up and were married and where their oldest child, Elizabeth, was born. The family emigrated to America in 1824 and located in Oneida county, New York, where they followed farming until the fall of 1836, when they came to Wisconsin, locating in Sharon township, in fact were the first white settlers at what was later the town of Sharon. The elder Reader returned to the East in 1837 and brought his family here in September of that year, his son, J. J., of this sketch, having come with him on the first trip, remaining at the home of a Mr. Sanders at the head of Geneva lake. They settled on Big Foot Prairie, in section 18, Walworth township, where the father finally became the owner of over four hundred acres of land.
The following children were born to John Reader and wife, some in New York, seven daughters and three sons: Elizabeth married Edward Hall. of Beloit, and is now deceased; Phoebe married James Bending, of Chicago, and is also deceased; J. J., of this sketch; Richard, who became an electrical mechanic in the Civil war, died in 1864, from disease contracted while in the army ; Mary, who married D. Searl, of Rockford, Illinois, is deceased ; James, deceased; Martha married Franklin Trahern, of Rockford; Caroline married David Jacobie, of Sharon; Eliza married Robert Spinsley and she lives at Walworth; Rebecca, who married Jasper Voorhees and lived in California, is deceased; Rachael married Elias Harris, of Delavan; Stephen is now de- ceased ; Amanda married Richard Wilson, of Delavan.
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