USA > Wisconsin > Wisconsin, its story and biography, 1848-1913, Volume VII > Part 29
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On July 11, 1894, Mr. Tomlinson was united in marriage with Miss Emma L. Yerka, who was born in Wisconsin, and to this union there have been born two children: Clarence M. and Mildred L. Both Mr. Tomlinson and his wife are widely and favorably known in social cir- cles of Superior, where they number many friends.
NELSON POWELL HULST. In the field of mining engineering, no name is better known in the Northwest than that of Nelson P. Hulst, who for more than thirty years held a position of recognized prestige in his pro- fession in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and during this time was retained by some of the leading operators of the country. He is now living a retired life in Milwaukee, where he is devoting his energies to work of a philanthropic nature. Mr. Hulst was born in Bushwick, a suburb of Brooklyn, New York, February 8, 1842, the third child of Ger- ret and Nancy (Powell) Hulst. On the paternal side he traces his
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ancestry back to Jacobus (Ver) Hulst, who emigrated to New Neth- erlands about the year 1625 from Vleisingen (Flushing), Holland, set- tling in Gowanus, now a part of Brooklyn. On the maternal side, Mr. Hulst is sixth in descent from Thomas Powell, of Wales, who settled on Long Island, New York, in 1641.
Mr. Hulst received his early education in the public schools of Brook- lyn, and was fifteen years of age when taken to Alexandria, Virginia, by his parents. He prepared for college in the Quaker schools of Alex- andria, Virginia, and Sandy Spring, Montgomery county, Maryland, and in 1863 entered Yale, where he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1867. He was graduated from Sheffield (Yale) Scientific School in 1869, with the degree of Bachelor of Philosophy, having taken the mining engineering course, and was granted the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Yale in 1870. In September of that year he became chemist and engineer of the Milwaukee Iron Company, Milwaukee, Wis- consin, choosing this opportunity in preference to the professorship of Chemistry at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Mary- land, which had been offered to him. During the period from the fall of 1870 until the summer of 1872 he was engaged in investigating for the Milwaukee Iron Company the iron ore resources of the southern half of Wisconsin, and in July 1872, made a reconnaissance of the iron ore district of Menominee county, Michigan, and the contiguous territory in Wisconsin. In the fall of 1872 Mr. Hulst began a systematic explor- ation of portions of the Menominee range in Michigan, this resulting in a decided success. In 1876 he began and continued the development of many of the chief mines of this range as general superintendent of the Menominee Mining Company and the Florence Iron Mining Company, as manager of the Pewabie Company, and finally as general manager of all the iron mining interests for the Carnegie Steel Company in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and Minnesota. In 1901, at the organiza- tion of the United States Steel Corporation, Mr. Hulst became vice- president of its various iron mining corporations in the States of Mich- igan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, but resigned from that position in 1904, and since the latter year has been identified as director with several of the local philanthropie civic institutions of Milwaukee. A man of broad public spirit, Mr. Hulst has at various times been connected with bod- ies of earnest, zealous citizens in the work of promoting the interests of his adopted city. He has been a witness to the wonderful develop- ment which has occurred not alone in the mining industry but in other lines of endeavor, and has himself played no small part in bringing this development about.
J. GEORGE MORRIS. One of the native sons of the city of Oshkosh who has here attained to a position of prominence and influence in con- nection with one of the most important industrial enterprises of the
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city. He is president of the R. McMillen Company, the history of which covers nearly half a century of consecutive and progressive identifica- tion with lumbering and allied operations in this section of the state, and his advancement to this position is the more gratifying to note by reason of the fact that it has been gained through his own ability and well directed efforts. It is assuredly no slight achievement for a man to have advanced from a very subordinate status to that of executive head of a great industrial corporation, and that corporation the legitimate out- growth of a firm that founded the original enterprise before the birth of the present president of the company. Mr. Morris is in all respects one of the representative business men of his native city and state and his high standing in the community which has been his home during the major part of his life well entitles him to specific recognition in this publication.
John George Morris was born in Oshkosh on the 14th of December, 1865, and is a son of Price and Ellen (Thompson) Morris, the former a native of Wales and the latter of England, their marriage having been solemnized in Chicago, Illinois. Of the eight children, all sous, only three are now living and he whose name initiates this review was the third in order of birth. Price Morris was reared and educated in his native land, whence he immigrated to America in 1850. He died in 1904 in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where he had lived since coming to Amer- ica. His widow, who has attained to the age of three score years and ten, now resides at her home in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. To her is accorded the utmost of filial solicitude in the gracious sunset period of her gentle and kindly life.
In the public schools of Oshkosh J. George Morris pursued his studies until he had attained to the age of seventeen years, and his effective discipline included the curriculum of the high school.
After leaving school Mr. Morris initiated his business career by assuming the position of office boy in the employ of the Paine Lumber Company, of Oshkosh, with which concern he remained three years, at nominal wages, and in the meanwhile he profited much from the exper- ience gained. He next became order clerk for Carlton, Foster & Com- pany, engaged in the sash and door business in the city of Chicago, He remained in the great western metropolis one year and then returned to Oshkosh, where, in 1887, he accepted a position as order clerk in the great lumbering establishment and sash, door and blind manufactory of the firm of R. McMillen & Company. Later he became traveling sales- man for this firm and he was employed in this capacity for a period of three years, at the expiration of which he engaged in the retail lumber business at Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin. He there continued operation for the ensuing eight years, within which he built up a pros- perous business. He disposed of this enterprise at the expiration of the period noted and returned to Oshkosh, where he became identified with
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the MeMillen concern, as one of the interested principals. Upon the reor- ganization of the same, in 1902, the business was incorporated under the present title of the R. McMillen Company, and Mr. Morris was chosen vice-president of the corporation. He retained this incumbency five years, and upon the death of the honored president, Robert MeMillen, he was elected the latter's successor. He has thus been president of the company since 1906 and his vigorous and progressive administration has been attended by prolific results in the expansion of the company's trade and in making it one of the most important industrial concerns lending to the precedence of Oshkosh as a manufacturing and commer- cial center. There can be no impropriety in incorporating at this june- ture brief extracts from an announcement recently issued by the com- pany, as the record gives an idea of the scope and importance of the business as now constituted. Slight elimination and paraphrase are indulged in the reproduction of the context:
"Forty-six years ago John and Robert McMillen started a saw mill on the bank of the Fox river, within a stone's throw of the present site of the Max Royal plant. Later a planing mill was added, and repeated enlargements, additions and improvements were made to keep step with the rapid growth of the business. When the daily output of doors reached the hundred mark it was a thing of which to be proud, but each successive year the business was extended into new fields, until the MeMillen product was sold in every part of the United States and the average output was between five and six hundred doors. In 1902 the business was reorganized and incorporated, to meet the demands of the constantly expanding trade, and with the infusion of fresh blood and the adoption of new ideas and skilled methods, we decided to specialize on oak and birch veneered doors, the product on which we had built an enviable reputation. The demand increased, our capacity was taxed to the utmost, and the necessity for a larger plant was apparent. Accord- ingly, in 1909, we started on the foundation of the present magnificent Max Royal home, reputed to be the finest and most completely equipped plant in the world for the manufacture of veneered doors. The main factory has about one hundred and fifty thousand square feet of floor space, and with the connecting buildings, dry kilns, power plant, ware- houses, lumber sheds, etc., occupies about twenty acres of ground, while sidings and switch tracks give us direct connection with all railroads entering the city. Our present output is two complete hardwood- veneered doors every minute during every working hour of every day in the year. Age counts for experience, which counts for knowledge, which counts for results. The most useful education is not that which we get out of a book, but that which we get in our efforts to make a liv- ing. Our record, tried and true, makes a stronger appeal for business than mere words, because it represents something we have done, not something we hope to do.
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"The most talked about new feature among trade is the Max Royal lock joint, which forms a complete joining of parts and affords a per- manent internal clamp. This insures rigidity and adds to the life of the door. Improved automatic machinery has been installed for hand- ling this dove-tail process, and all Max Royal doors are built with the MeMillen lock-joint construction. This is only one of the many devices we have for saving time and improving our doors.
"Oshkosh is the logical point for the manufacture of oak and birch veneered doors, because it is located in the heart of the hardwood region and in the midst of the veneer mills, so that there is a saving in time, labor and money in transporting the raw material. Oshkosh is not ham- pered with labor troubles, and most of our employes have grown up with the business. Grandsons occupy the places that their grandfathers once held. They are well paid and understand the business thoroughly. Most of them own their own homes and are not of the roaming kind so often found in manufacturing cities. Another advantage is afforded in our splendid shipping facilities with three competing railroad lines, giving us direct connections to all sections of the country, so that while the raw material is within easy reach our freight rates are favorable on all outgoing business. Cars going east are transferred across Lake Mich- igan from Manitowoc by car ferry, saving both time and money, so there is not a single section of this great country, including Canada, where we can not compete favorably on this special line of business."
Mr. Morris has shown himself most loyal and earnest in his civic. attitude and takes great interest in all that touches the welfare and advancement of his native city. He is a staunch Republican in politics and in the face of recent reverses believes that the well tried and well proved principles of the "grand old party" will yet prove sufficient to amalgamate its forces and bring it again to its former prestige. He is affiliated with the local organizations of the Masonic fraternity, the Knights of Pythias and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and both he and his wife, as well as their daughters, are popular factors in the representative social life of the community.
The 4th of September, 1889, gave record of the marriage of Mr. Morris to Miss Edith F. Amos, daughter of Frank Amos, a well known citizen and business man of Oshkosh, Wisconsin. The two children of this union are Ruth and Irene, the former of whom is a member of the class of 1914 in the University of Wisconsin, and the latter of whom is a member of the class of 1913 in the Oshkosh high school.
ROUJET DE LISLE MARSHALL. Many of the great men of the world drew their inspiration from a reading of Plutarch's Lives. Biography is and should be the fruitful storehouse for instruction and guidance to the youth of all ages. More and more in our modern system of education are the lives of good men and true set before the youth as
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daily reading, and the study of mankind, individually and collectively, is as useful today as it was when the world was young. The careers of Plutarch's heroes still have their place; but they belonged to an alien and distant age, and it is more profitable to contemplate men closer to the present, whose surroundings can be more easily appreciated, and whose aspirations and successes are more intimate in their instructive quality. There are Wisconsin men whose achieve- ments are still subjects for current history and ready apprecia- tion by young men now reaching out to grasp the prizes of the world. One of these is now in the nineteenth year of his service on the Su- preme Bench of the State, and who, in his profession and in the broad field of business and affairs, has attained many of the finest distinc- tions and rewards which a state can bestow. It is the purpose in the following paragraphs to show not only the ordinary facts of biography, but to emphasize the incentive of such a career as Judge Marshall's to the younger generation.
Judge Marshall was born in the City of Nashua, New Hampshire, December 29, 1847. He is of the blood of some of the old and most prominent English and Scotch families which came to this country around the middle of the sixteenth century, Marshalls, Emersons, Pit- kins and Dodges.
The paternal progenitor in this country, Thomas Marshall, came from England and settled in Boston in 1635. The great-grandfather of the Judge, Joseph Marshall, lived at Chelmsford, a place near the battle grounds of Lexington and Concord,-at the breaking out of the Revolution. He was one of the "minute men" who were first on the field in those early conflicts, and was later one of the "minute men" at Ware, New Hampshire, to which place he removed soon after the battle of Bunker Hill, in which he participated. After removal to Ware, he enlisted again and again, serving much time as a soldier during the Revolutionary period, and participating in the Battle of Bennington and other conflicts besides the early contests before men- tioned.
The Pitkins were of the mother side. The head of the family, Wil- liam Pitkin, came to this country from England in 1659 as an English officer. He was attorney-general for the colony of Connecticut, The Pitkin family was identified with the official history of Connecticut, second to no other and only equaled by the Wolcott and Griswold families, which were also of the Pitkin blood, the maternal head being a sister of the first William Pitkin. William Pitkin fourth, with Ben- jamin Franklin and a few others, at Albany, in 1754, drafted the first plan for a union of the colonies, the forerunner of the Articles of Confederation. The first political history of this country, a work in two volumes, was written and published first in 1828 and republished in 1835, by Timothy Pitkin, who was a lawyer and in one branch or
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the other, represented Connecticut in the Congress of the United States for many years. The family was prominently connected with Yale College for a long period, as the Marshall family was with Dartmouth.
So much for a general outline of the origin of the subject of this sketch. . "Blood will tell" is a common saying; though doubtless it is not a universal rule. However, in the case of Judge Marshall he is justly entitled to much pride of ancestry. Certainly he inherited the strong traits of character seen in the eight generations in this country of the families leading up to him. If this background of his life stimulated his ambition and largely made him what he is, it is a most natural development.
Judge Marshall's parents were of the middle English class. They settled at Nashua, New Hampshire, about 1840; the father coming from his birthplace in that state and the mother from Marshfield, Vermont. The father occupied a prominent position with the Nashua Manufac- turing Company until, because of impaired health from the perils of cotton mill life, he removed to Wisconsin. That was in 1854. He settled in a beautiful valley in the Town of Delton, Sauk county, Wis- consin, and commenced to create, in character, a high class New Eng- land home with its commodious buildings, dwelling house furnished with the characteristic green blinds, made in Nashua, New Hamp- shire, and its attractive surroundings, particularly the wide spread- ing elms. The place came to the Judge's care while he was yet a young man; the father having died in 1868. The mother lived to the ripe age of eighty-five, and was distinguished for her strong moral, religious and industrial influence. No history of Judge Marshall would be com- plete without paying high tribute to his sturdy New England mother. He almost worshiped her and commonly referred to her influence as the key to his career.
Judge Marshall's life from 1854 until he was twenty-one was not unlike that of the sons of well-to-do farmers of his time, who, while performing their part in developing the farm and supporting the fam- ily, put in most of the winter period and much of the summertime, outside of ordinary working hours, in obtaining a good education ; accomplishing it, largely, by self-culture. He had the advantages of a good common school course and attendance at the Delton Academy, Baraboo Collegiate Institute and Lawrence University. Ilis attend- ance at the latter was not for a long period. The death of his father and resulting increase of responsibility compelled him, rather prema- turely, to take up the burden of winning by actual work a distinguished place in his chosen profession, for which, by reading under the guid- ance of good lawyers between times while performing his farm duties, he had been preparing from the age of seventeen. At twenty-one he was married to Mary E. Jenkins, of Baraboo, Wisconsin. About that time he entered the office of N. W. Wheeler, a prominent lawyer of
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Baraboo, Wisconsin, and commenced studying law there and continued for such time as he could be away from his farm until he was twenty- four years old, when he was admitted to the Bar and, soon thereafter, commenced the practice of his profession at Chippewa Falls, Wiscon- sin. There, in a few years, by that tireless industry for which he is distinguished, he won a place in the front rank of his profession, as well as in the leading business activities of the Chippewa Valley. In the course of a few years he came to have a most lucrative and signifi- cant legal business, probably second to no one in the Northwestern part of the state. By that time he was the trusted lawyer and confi- dential advisor of the controlling personality of the great lumber combinations of the Mississippi Valley and, later, of the far West. The Judge pays high tribute to the confidence the great but modest man referred to reposed in him for some twelve years, as one of the chief things which gave him opportunity to apply his natural talents and activities and win the high place as a lawyer and business man he attained. The name of the person who thus early selected Judge Marshall to represent his great interests in legal matters is absent from here in deference to the Judge's idea that the one who so exercised an influence upon his life and has never ceased to watch his career with interest and admiration, prefers not to have. his name used in a way to indicate effort to direct attention to him.
By 1888, Judge Marshall stood at the head of his profession in his section, was classed as a man of wealth and was well known in public life. He had been County Judge of his county for six years, a Regent of the University of Wisconsin for five years, and had shaped more than any other person the important legislation appertaining to the great lumber interests of the northern part of the state, and the municipal legislation, embodying the plan for a uniform code for all Wisconsin cities. He was particularly noted in his profession as an authority on corporation law and as a legal representative of corpora- tions in court and before the Legislature.
The foregoing leads up to a very interesting and significant inci- dent in Judge Marshall's life. For some years prior to 1888 the Circuit Bench in the Northwestern circuit of the State was occupied by an able Judge who had the unbounded respect of the people; but whose health, age and executive talents were not such as to enable him to success- fully cope with the very large amount of business of his circuit. In consequence thereof the delays in settlement of controversies by judicial means became so great, and the strain upon the judge of trying to relieve the situation so exhausting that no one appreciated the neces- sity of having a young man of exceptional strength of mind, body and executive ability to cope with the situation as well as himself. The time for electing a Judge for a new term was at hand. The public, under the leadership of the Circuit Judge and a practically unanimous
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Bar, turned to Judge Marshall as the man of the hour. He hesitated to leave the practice where there was practical certainty of acquire- ment of a large fortune and a very high professional position. He, too, sensed danger that, though there was apparent unanimity in his favor, in the end, some ambitious man would reckon on making a cam- paign of opposition, pointing to Judge Marshall's connection with cor- porations and his supposed wealth and rather austere life as evidence that his sympathies and leanings were liable to be dangerously in favor of the strong and wealthy. However, he accepted the call. What he thought might happen occurred. An ambitious person of no command- ing professional position announced himself as a candidate to run on an anti-corporation and anti-prohibition record,-a sort of poor man's candidate. Judge Marshall's admirers promptly joined issue on whether a distinguished lawyer and business man of high moral char- acter, a man conceded to be pre-eminently fitted for judicial work should be defeated for the office of Circuit Judge by a person of mediocre ability and experience appealing to and stimulating unrea- sonable prejudice. The result of a hotly contested campaign was the election of Judge Marshall by an overwhelming majority, the rural dis- tricts, particularly, giving him their confidence.
Next followed a period in Judge Marshall's life of well nigh seven years of labor as a circuit judge, during which he cleared up the work which had been accumulating for some time, all the current work of his circuit, which was greater by far than that of any outside of the Milwaukee Circuit, besides helping other judges in different parts of the state. There were no delays. Terms of court, from start to finish, moved like a perfectly adjusted, well lubricated machine. The Bar came early under the perfect discipline of a veteran organizer. There was no waste energy, either in the trial or decision of cases. Trials were short and decisive, and case followed case with such rap- idity that every one concerned had to be on the alert to fit, at the proper time, into his proper place. Appeals were few. The large volume of work, which would have overwhelmed men in general was performed with apparent ease and real judicial enjoyment. All thought that the Judge might lean towards corporate influences or against the weak speedily entirely disappeared. When the six year term of office was approaching completion there was no thought of any change in the incumbency. Judge Marshall was re-elected with- out opposition. Prior thereto his reputation had twice caused his name to be prominently mentioned for a place on the Supreme Bench and once he was nominated therefor by a large convention of lawyers ; but he declined to run because there were other candidates seeking the place, and to run, under the circumstances, meant appearance of an unseemly scramble for the office. On the first occasion Judge Pin-
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