USA > Wisconsin > Wisconsin, its story and biography, 1848-1913, Volume V > Part 31
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The father of the subject was born in Albany, New York, but was reared and educated in Milwaukee, and here was admitted to the bar. Both the mother and father are living here at this writing, and the father is engaged as attorney for the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee.
George B. Miller was educated in the Milwaukee Public Schools, and is a graduate of the East Division High School, class of 1901. His high school training was followed by two years in Montana in the Crow In- dian Reservation where he was employed as an irrigating engineer, after which he returned to Milwaukee and identified himself with the real estate business. He was connected with The Savings and Investment Association when Mr. W. T. Durand was president of that concern. Mr. Durand was the leading insurance man in the city and had the lead- ing agency in Milwaukee when he died in 1909, and following his death the subject took charge of the agency, combining it .with the business of James B. Leedom, who also has a sketch in this work, and continuing the business under the present name of the W. T. Durand-Leedom Agency, which is one of the strongest fire and casualty insurance firms in Milwaukee.
Mr. Miller is a member of the Town Club, the Milwaukee Athletic Club and the City Club, and is prominent socially in the city. He was
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married on September 6, 1911, to Miss Inez F. Fuller, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Oliver Clyde Fuller of Milwaukee, one of the leading bankers of Wisconsin. Mr. Fuller is represented in a biographical sketch elsewhere in this work. The marriage of Mr. Miller and Miss Fuller was solemnized on Wednesday evening, September 6, 1911, at St. Paul's Episcopal Church. Mrs. Miller was born at Atlanta, Georgia, but was educated in the east and in this city. One daughter has been born to Mr. and Mrs. Miller,-Inez Elizabeth Miller. The family resi- dence is maintained at 855 Summit avenue.
FRED OSCAR HODSON. One of the thoroughly representative young business men of Stevens Point and of those who is fast making his way to the front in the enterprises with which he is identified, is Fred Oscar Hodson, manufacturer of ice-cream and the proprietor of the Stockton Creamery at this place. Mr. Hodson comes of an old and honored pioneer family, the name of Hodson having been known in this part of the state for many years. Fred O. Hodson is of Eastern birth, born in Penobscot county, Maine, on May 14, 1865, and is a son of John N. and Laura (Johnson) Hodson, of an old established family in that state. John N. Hodson followed the lumber business in the east, rafting on the rivers and in other activities with that industry. His first wife died while they were residents of Maine and for his second wife he married her sister. Belle Johnson, then a resident of Minneapolis. From then until the close of his life John N. Hodson was more or less associated with business life in Portage county, Wisconsin.
Mr. Hodson first came to Stevens Point, having followed a half brother, William Allen, to that place. William Allen was a pioneer sawmill man and millwright, and he is still remembered by many of the old settlers of these parts as a thrifty and competent workman. He built mills all along the Plover river, and among the buildings that still stand as a mark of his workmanship might be mentioned the Brown Brothers' Mill at Rhinelander. In 1855 he built the house in which Fred Oscar Hodson now lives, the same having seen a number of changes and improvements, however, since that time. William Allen died in 1908 aged eighty-three years, and his daughter, Mrs. Rose Raymond. the wife of Charles Raymond, is the only child of his who still lives here. The others have settled in Michigan and there maintain their homes and business activities. He came to the west in the early fifties, bringing his family in 1853.
John N. Hodson, the father of Fred O., of this review. worked for many years under the supervision of his half-brother, Mr. Allen. and he too is known for the mills he built all through this country. He is now retired and lives at Roxbury, Massachusetts. He became the father of two children. Fred Oscar Hodson is the child of his first marriage.
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and Genevieve, of the second union, is a teacher in a school for boys at Cornwall, Connecticut.
Fred O. Hodson was about ten years of age when he came west with his father, Wisconsin being regarded as decidedly west by natives of Maine, and though he had gone to school a little in Penobscot county, his education was not added to very materially in Wisconsin. He gained his education, such as it is, chiefly by observation and his association with the lumber business added not a little to his mental equipment. After the death of his mother he was practically an orphan, as his father's extended absence in the wilds of the state left him much alone and with- out parental guidance of any sort. Reared for the most part in the homes of relatives, young Hodson was still very young when he set out for himself in life. For a while he worked on the farm for his uncle and others, much as the average country youth of limited advantages has done and will continue to do, and in 1890 he took employment with a railroad, but before long returned to Portage county. Previous to that, however, he had worked in the dairy business near Stevens Point, on the dairy farm of M. E. Means, and there he had an insight into that enter- prise that clung to him through the years. In 1892, after his try at railroad work, the young man engaged in business for himself as a milk dealer, buying a herd of cattle from a local cattleman after a short time. Two years later he sold his cattle, though he still continued in the milk business as a dealer. In the early days he sold on an average of three hundred and fifty quarts of milk daily. Today, he runs two wagons and delivers some four hundred quarts per day: In 1901 he en- gaged in the ice cream business, and since that time he has devoted the major part of his attention to that phase of his business, in which he has been successful from the beginning. Straightforward business methods and close attention to his own affairs have been the main elements that have entered into his success, and he is now at the head of a very promising business.
In 1912 Mr. Hodson bought the creamery at Stockton, Wisconsin. from B. L. Ward, and this department of his enterprise buys milk from the farmers thereabouts to the extent of about $1,000 monthly.
In 1905 Mr. Hodson bought his Water street residence, purchasing the place from his father, who in his turn had bought it from William Allen, his half brother, previously mentioned. This place Mr. Hod- son has remodeled and improved in many respects so that it is one of the commodious and comfortable residences in the city.
Mr. Hodson has been twice married. He was first married in 1893 to Miss Fannie Zellmar of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. She died on March 28, 1899, leaving one child, Verna Hodson. On December 1, 1905, he married Mabel Scott, a daughter of Ellison G. Scott. Mr. Hodson is a member of the Odd Fellows and of the Modern Woodmen of America. He is not one who has ever taken an active interest in politics, but he has served
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Jorge Di Loupsou ML
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as an alderman from the Second ward, and he votes the Republican tieket. As a business man, he is one of the up-to-date and progressive order, and one who has made his own way, unaided and untaught, save as he learned from that most reliable teacher, experience.
GEORGE FARNSWORTH THOMPSON, M. D. A native son of Wisconsin, the son of an old pioneer in the lumber district of the northern half of the state, and an alumnus of the State University, Dr. Thompson is now regarded as one of the leading physicians and surgeons of the city of Chicago, in which eity all his practice has been performed.
George Farnsworth Thompson was born in Oconto county, Wis- consin, March 17, 1875, a son of Moses C. and Margaret (Bellew) Thompson. His father, who was born at Dexter, in Kennebec county, Maine, in 1834, and who died in 1912, spent his boyhood days on his father's farm in Kennebec county, receiving a publie school educa- tion until he was eighteen years of age. Being one of twelve ehil- dren, he had to get out and hustle for himself at an early age, and in 1852 went to Canada, where he lived for three years. In 1855 he arrived at Milwaukee, went to Green Bay, and in 1856 became one of the pioneer settlers at Oconto in Oconto county. He was identified with the Oconto Lumber Company, of which he rose to the position of general superintendent, and forty years of his active career were given to the management of that company's affairs. He was one of the builders of the first logging roads in the wilderness of Oeono county, and was connected with practically every phase of the great lumber business in that section of the state. He retired in 1900, and spent the last twelve years in the peaceful enjoyment of a well spent career. He never cared for public office, and in polities was in early life a Whig and afterwards a Republican. In his section of Wisconsin he was one of the strongest supporters of Abraham Lineoh. He was married in Chieago in 1873 to Miss Bellew, who was born in Dundalk County Louth, Ireland, in 1844, and is still living. There were three children by their marriage: Dr. Thompson. Leola, wife of Dr. A. B. Storm of Chieago, and May.
Dr. Thompson grew up in Oconto county, attended the grade and high schools of Oconto city, and after graduation from high school in 1892, entered the University of Wisconsin, and took his Bachelor of Science degree there in 1896. During his college career he had determined upon the medical profession as his life work, and after leaving college matriculated in the medieal department of North- western University, and later became a student in the Rush Medieal College of Chicago, graduating M. D. in 1899. For eighteen months he was an interne in the Cook County Hospital, and then was engaged in the general practice of medicine up to 1907 in Chicago. Since that time he has devoted nearly all his attention to his special work as
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surgeon, and it is as a skillful surgeon that he is best known to the profession. Dr. Thompson is serving as attending surgeon at Cook County Hospital, and has held that position for the last ten years. He is also attending surgeon to the West Side Hospital, a professor of surgery in the medical department of the State University, is professor of surgical gynecology in the Illinois Post Graduate Col- lege and is Chicago surgeon for the. Minneapolis, St. Paul and Sault Ste. Marie Railway Company. Dr. Thompson has membership in the Chicago Medical Society, the Illinois Medical Society, the Chicago Surgical Society, the Railway Surgeons Association, and the Ameri- can Medical Association. During his career in Wisconsin University he played half-back position on the Badger Football Team, and has been an interested follower of the great college game ever since. In politics the doctor is a Republican.
On June 11, 1902, Dr. Thompson married Irma Sturm, who was born in Chicago, a daughter of Adolph Sturm, one of the pioneer business men of that city. Her father died in 1911. Four daughters were born to Dr. Thompson and wife: Dorothy Joan, Irma Beatrice, Helen and Georgiana.
EMANUEL E. A. WURSTER. Probably no citizen of Milwaukee has won a more distinctive position in manufacturing and general commer- cial circles than Mr. Wurster, secretary and treasurer of the Falk Manu- facturing Company. He began his career something more than thirty years ago as a bookkeeper for A. Gambler & Co. and became prominently identified with Milwaukee in 1880. He was one of the organizers about twenty years ago of the Falk Manufacturing Company, which has become one of the largest concerns engaged in the manufacture of steel products in the entire northwest.
Emanuel E. A. Wurster is a native of the city of Buffalo, New York, where he was born March 11, 1861, a son of Gottlieb Martin and Rosena Kathrine Wurster, both parents being natives of Wurtemberg, Germany. The parents were both born in the year 1819, and in 1848 the father and mother emigrated to America and located at Buffalo, where in a few years by his industry and thrift he had risen to a position as one of the most prominent millers. There were nine children in the family of the parents, and all died in infancy with the exception of the Milwau- kee manufacturer, above named.
During his boyhood and youth he attended the public schools of Buffalo, New York, and in 1874 was sent west to Watertown, Wisconsin, to continue his education in the Northwestern University at that city. He subsequently returned to his home city of Buffalo, and after a course at Spencer Business College he returned in 1880 to Wisconsin to make Milwaukee his permanent home, and in that city became associated with the Franz Falk Brewing Company and its successors, Falk, Jung &
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Borchert and Pabst Brewing Co., in which he used his abilities to such advantage as to effectively promote the business welfare of the company and at the same time to secure his own advancement through various grades of responsibility. He was one of the competent and independent young business men of the city, in 1894, at which time he severed his connection with the brewing company to start in business with Herman W. Falk, organizing the Falk Manufacturing Company. Mr. Wurster became secretary and treasurer and has retained those offices under the subsequent reorganization and changes of title of the corporation to the Falk Company. To Mr. Wurster's enterprise and executive ability are due many of the details of management and methods in business administrations which have made the Falk Company preeminent in its field over a large section of the United States.
Mr. Wurster is prominent in both business and social circles of his home city. He is an active member of the Merchants & Manufacturers Association ; is a Scottish Rite Mason, with thirty-two degrees, and affil- iated with the Consistory and the Mystic Shrine; and has membership in the Milwaukee Club, Deutscher Club, the Calumet Club, the Milwau- kee Athletic Club, and Blue Mound Country Club, while the church connection of himself and family has been the St. James' Episcopal.
On February 19, 1891, Mr. Wurster married Miss Hattie Schultz. of Watertown, Wisconsin, a daughter of Carl W. Schultz, who is a sub- stantial and well known merchant of that city. The two children of Mr. and Mrs. Wurster are : Erwin G., who is a rising young attorney of Mil- waukee, and mentioned on other pages of this work; and Hattie S., who is the wife of Charles D. Beaton, of Omaha, Nebraska. Both children were born in Milwaukee. The residence of Mr. Wurster and family is at 3207 Highland Boulevard.
GEORGE H. ALLEN. When the brass works were established at Kenosha some years ago the new enterprise was considered as one of the most important additions to the industrial activities of that city, and they still rank high among those large concerns which have given Kenosha such an eminent place among Wisconsin's industrial centers. Con- ducted for a number of years under the name of the Chicago Brass Com- pany, the business in 1912 was sold and merged with the American Brass Company, and the business is now known as the Kenosha Branch of the American Brass Company. Affiliated with the local company are four or five other large concerns of national scope, notably the Ansonia Brass & Copper Works at Ansonia, Connecticut, the Benedict and Burn- ham branch at Waterbury, Connecticut, the Coe Brass Works at Torring- ton, Connecticut, the Coe Brass Branch at Ansonia, Connectient, and the Waterbury Brass Branch at Waterbury. At Kenosha are manufactured brass, copper, bronze, and German silver in sheets, plates, rolls, wire. rods, tubes, blanks and shells. Under the business corporation known
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as the Chicago Brass Company the officers were Charles F. Brooker, president; John A. Coe, Jr., vice president; George H. Allen, treasurer ; and Clifford G. Hackett, secretary.
Mr. George H. Allen, who is vice president of the American Brass Company, Kenosha branch, was at one time a laborer in the factory of the Coe Brass Company back in Connecticut. Many capable business execu- tives began their career in similar manner, but seldom does a man rise so rapidly from the ranks of laborer to the higher honors and rewards of business.
George HI. Allen was born August 4, 1879, in New Melford, Connec- ticut, a son of William and Caroline (Weaver) Allen. His parents were born in Connecticut, where the family had been residents for several generations. Up to his fifteenth year Mr. Allen received his education in the common schools, and then started out to earn his own way. He found a job in the mill of the Coe Brass Company, and after two years' work was graduated from the mill into the business offices, taking a place as a clerk for the Coe Brass Manufacturing Company at Torrington. He remained in that position for eight years, with increasing respon- sibilities and growing knowledge of every branch of the industry. In 1905 he was sent out on the road as a traveling salesman for the con- cern, and called on the trade and distributed goods in that way until 1908. In that year he was elected assistant treasurer and held that position until 1912. In that year the Chicago Brass Company at Kenosha was absorbed by the American Brass Company, and Mr. Allen took a place in the Kenosha organization as treasurer, and later as vice president in the larger corporation. Few men know the brass industry on all sides and in every detail so thoroughly as Mr. Allen, and he has earned every promotion granted him since he began his work in the mill.
Mr. Allen is a member of the Masonic Order, having affiliation with the Blue Lodge in Waterbury, Connecticut, and with the Commandery and Chapter at Kenosha. He is also a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and the Knights of Pythias. His polities is Republican.
CALVIN STEWART. The part taken by Calvin Stewart in the affairs of Kenosha and Kenosha county has been that of an able and conscien- tious lawyer, whose affiliations have always been straightforward and honorable and who probably more than any other local attorney has represented the interests of the "common people," often the poorer classes, and his practice, which has been extensive and snecessful, has brought him into connection with the middle-class individuals rather than with the large corporate and wealthy clientage. Mr. Stewart is one of the most popular members of the Kenosha bar, and has rendered many important services through his professional activities.
Calvin Stewart entered the legal profession with an unusual equip-
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ment of experience in the field of manual toil and commercial affairs. He was born February 22, 1868, on a farm- in Clinton county, Michigan. His family soon afterwards moved to Ionia county in the same state, where he was educated in the district schools. He also attended the I. M. Pouchers' Business College and the M. A. Grayes' Literary Insti- tute. His parents, like most farmers, believed in educating their chil- dren in the arts of manual practice as well as through books, and he accordingly early learned all the duties of farm life. He continued at work on the home farm until he was eighteen years old, and then earned his bread by the sweat of his brow in a foundry and car shop. At the age of twenty-one he found a place on the road as a commercial traveler, and during the four years of that occupation, he soll goods in nearly all of the middle and western states.
In 1893 Mr. Stewart began the study of law in the office of Ritchie & Heck at Racine. He was admitted to practice before the supreme court of Wisconsin February 18, 1896, and some time later was admitted before the Federal Courts. For the past seventeen years he has been in active practice in Wisconsin, and fully seventy-five per cent of his civil practice has been representative of the poor. He understands the hardworking people, and these members of society have always trusted him implicitly, so that most of his business has been in handling their cases. While he is not opposed to corporations as an industrial necessity and important asset in commercial affairs, it has so happened that his professional connections have always been entirely with individuals. and he is therefore free from any possible taint of corporation con- trol or influence.
Mr. Stewart has for a number of years been active in Democratic polities in his district. In 1904 he was nominated for congress, and in that year when Judge Parker was the presidential candidate, although the entire ticket was defeated. Mr. Stewart ran ahead of the presiden- tial nominee in this district by nearly three thousand votes. In explana- tion of this vote it may be said that while his personal popularity was undoubtedly a factor. the vote was rather due to the progressive prin- ciples for which Mr. Stewart has always stood. In 1910 he was again the Democratic nominee for congress in his district, but on account of the "twenty per cent" law, most of the counties had no county tieket. In Kenosha county where there was a full county ticket in the field. Mr. Stewart carried the county for the first time in twenty years in favor of a. Democratie candidate. his plurality being nearly two hundred. In 1912 he was again successful as a candidate at the Democratie primaries, and in the subsequent election decreased the majority of his opponent from fourteen thousand to about five thousand.
Mr. Stewart has his law offices at 252 Main street in Kenosha. He is connected with various local organizations in his city, and through his political activities, his name is well known through the first congres-
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sional district. Mr. Stewart married Miss Emma Werve, a daughter of Matthias Werve, who for so many years has been prominent in manu- facturing circles at Kenosha.
ALBERT E. BUCKMASTER. The bar of Kenosha county has one of its ablest members in Albert E. Buckmaster, who has practiced law in that city for the past twenty years, made a record of special efficiency, while district attorney, and has made high connections in his professional activities. Like many successful lawyers, he entered his profession through the avenue of teaching, from which occupation he derived the means to continue his university education.
A native son of Wisconsin, born in Fayette, Lafayette county, Sep- tember 6, 1863, Albert E. Buckmaster is a son of Benjamin F. and Alfreda (Cook) Buckmaster. His people were farmers, and it was on a farm that Albert E. Buckmaster spent his youth, and thus had a wholesome environment during the plastic period of his boyhood. He attended the district schools, and was graduated from the Darlington high school in the class of 1881. For two years he was engaged in teaching, and then entered the state university at Madison, where he was graduated in the English classical course in 1889. After leaving the university he took the principalship of the schools of West Salem, and continued as a teacher for three years. In the meantime he had taken up the study of law at the University, and gained a high standing in his law class work. He was the first president of the Columbian Law Society. Admitted to the bar in 1894, Mr. Buckmaster at once opened his office in Kenosha, and has since been identified with the local bar. For a period of ten years he was district attorney. He has been a member of the Soldiers' Relief Commission for several years, and is on the board of directors of the Young Men's Christian Association. He is also a director in the Masonic Temple Association, and treasurer of its board, and for six years was a member of the Board of Education of Kenosha.
On December 22, 1891, Mr. Buckmaster married Miss Nellie Stalker, a daughter of Dr. H. J. and Ellen M. (MacNeill) Stalker, of Mauston, Wisconsin. The three children born to them are : Ben, Dean and Bruce. Mr. Buckmaster is affiliated with Kenosha Lodge No. 47, A. F. & A. M., with Chapter No. 3, R. A. M., and Kenosha Commandery No. 30, Knights Templar, and in politics is an active Republican.
REV. THEODORE B. MEYER. That St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church of Racine is now one of the strongest and most efficient parishes of the church in Wisconsin, is due primarily to the devoted services of its pastors and more particularly to the Rev. Theodore B. Mever. The record of the parish during his seventeen years of pastoral super- vision, is sufficient evidence of Father Meyer's excellent ability as pastor and church executive, but with these qualities, he also unites
Rev. Theo. B. Mayer
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