USA > Wisconsin > Wisconsin, its story and biography, 1848-1913, Volume VII > Part 43
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Captain Copps is a member of the Loyal Legion, as a result of his military activities and connections, and he is well advanced in Masonry, having affiliations with the Blue Lodge, Chapter and Commandery, and being popular and prominent in the various bodies.
On August 16, 1870, Mr. Copps was married to Florence I. Chandler, a daughter of Alden and Dorcas (Sinclair) Chandler, both representing old and well known families of New England, where they were promi- nent for years. Mrs. Copps was born in Michigan, the town of Esea- naba, now a busy and prosperous eity of some 15,000 inhabitants, being her birthplace, for it was there that her father settled in 1847, soon after his second marriage, and there engaged in lumber operations. He was a pioneer lumberman of that section of the country, which was onee a lum- her center of note and is yet the headuqarters of the I. Stephenson Com- pany, and at a point some five miles distant from the city proper, and now known as Chandler's Falls, Mr. Chandler operated a lumber mill for years. He died there in the year 1856, his wife surviving him until 1873, and their daughter, Mrs. Copps, is one of the family born to them there. The Chandlers were eastern people, coming from the state of Maine to Michigan, and both being of fine old eastern families, some of whom are the Aldens, Cushmans and Howlands of Mayflower Pilgrims and Col. Richard Sinclair and Capt. Joseph Cilley of the Revolution.
The children born to Mr. and Mrs. Copps numbered seven, and they are mentioned here briefly as follows: Edith Mabel, the first born, died at the age of twenty-eight. Egbert Earl, an electrical engineer, mar- ried Edna Catlin and lives in Minneapolis, Minn. Eunice married Harry E. Claflin and is a resident of Washington, D. C. Alfred M., familiarly known as Fred. married Lillian Betlach, and he is associated with his father in the grocery business, and also with the State Bank of Stevens Point. He is one of the rising young business men of the city, and takes a foremost place in business circles here. C'linton W. was graduated
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from Carroll College in 1911, and was there widely know as a football man of splendid prowess and accomplishment. He was married June 25, 1913, to Jeanette Wilson, daughter of Rev. and Mrs. Wilson of Reeds- burg, Wisconsin. Ruth, the fifth born, died at the age of sixteen years. Lyman A., who was graduated in the University of Chicago in 1913, is now a student in Rush Medical College. He is a young man of exceptional brilliance, his college career thus far being marked by accomplishments far superior to that of the average man of his age, and he gives promise of an exceptionally worthy and brilliant career in the field of pathological research. The two daughters, Mabel and Ruth, who are deceased, both passed away in the year 1900.
Twelve grandchildren there are in the family. Egbert, the eldest son, is the father of six, named Helen; Marion; Alma; Ralph, who died in infancy; Lawrence; and Harry. Eunice Claflin, of Washing- ton, D. C., has two-Dorothy and Florence; and Alfred is the father of four children, named Ruth, Chandler, Gordon and Jean. Mr. and Mrs. Copps are worthy members of the Presbyterian church, with which they have been identified for years, and their activities in behalf of the church are in every way characteristic of themselves.
In reviewing the business career of Mr. Copps, one is particularly impressed with the tide of misfortune that has swept over him in the years that have passed. He has suffered heavy losses by fire on numer- ous occasions, passing through the well remembered fire in 1871, while his mill in Stevens Point was destroyed by fire in 1877, and again in 1886, he lost his plant in the same manner. The stress of at least two financial panies brought him heavy losses, but he has weathered every storm of whatever nature, his sterling honesty and genuine busi- ness integrity standing him in excellent stead through it all, and finally bringing him safely into port, so that he stands today as one of the most solidly established business men in Portage county, where he has the confidence and esteem of the entire populace. Self-made in the truest phases of the term, he stands well to the front among his fel- lows and as soldier, citizen and busisess man, his record is one that is clean and unblemished, and altogether worthy of perpetuation in a historical and biographical record of the nature of this publication.
JONATHAN H. EVANS. One of the venerable and honored pioneers of Wisconsin is this well known citizen of Platteville, Grant county, Wisconsin. He has long been numbered among the prominent and influential citizens of this county and few have done more to foster the development and upbuilding of the little city of Platteville, where his varied and important interests, both civic and material, give evi- dence of his distinctive loyalty and progressiveness, while he lias so
Art. Avans.
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ordered his course in all of the relations of life as to merit and receive the unqualified confidence and esteem of his fellow men. Not only by reason of his being one of the representative citizens of Grant county and a member of one of the sterling pioneer families of the state is Mr. Evans entitled to special consideration in this publication, but he is also a scion of a family whose name has been most worthily linked with the annals of American history since the early colonial era.
The original American progenitors of the Evans family came from Montgomeryshire, Wales, the first of the name making the voyage to the New World in 1694 and others coming in 1722. Settlement was made at Uwchland, Chester county, Pennsylvania, about twenty miles west of Philadelphia, and the old homestead farm which was the home of the pioneer founder, Evan Evans, is still owned by some of his descendants. Evan Evans was a kinsman of John Evans, the colonial governor of Pennsylvania, 1704-9, and other representatives of this sterling family became prominent in the industrial, business and official affairs of the colony. John Evans, a scion of the third generation of the family in America, was one of the judges of the supreme court of Pennsylvania at the close of the war of the Revolu- tion. Dr. George Evans, a brother of Judge John Evans, was surgeon of Colonel Bailor's regiment in the division commanded by General Anthony Wayne in the great struggle for national independence, and in an engagement with the British forces near Tappan, New York, he was severely wounded, in a bayonet charge. After the close of the war Dr. George Evans and his brother Richard removed to Vir- ginia, and from them have descended many representatives of the name in that state, as well as those of prominence and influence in the state of South Carolina, of which John Evans, of this line, was governor in 1895-6.
Jesse Bateman Evans, father of him to whom this sketch is dedi- cated, was a representative of the fifth generation of the family in America. He was born in Westchester, Chester county, Pennsylvania, on the 14th of March, 1808. As a youth he learned the trades of blacksmith and machinist, in each of which he became a skilled artisan, the while he admirably developed his strong mental powers, so that he became a man of broad intellectual and mature judgment. In 1829 was solemnized his marriage to Miss Anna Shingle, and in 1834 he established car and machine shops a few miles west of Philadelphia, on the line of a railroad that was then in process of construction and that eventually became a part of the Pennsylvania Central system. There he began the manufacturing of freight cars and he was one of the pioneers in this line of industry in America. He continued his enterprise until 1838, when car-building operations were instituted
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by corporations, with large capital, with the result that he, as well as other small manufacturers, found their business unprofitable and retired from the same.
In 1843 Hon. David R. Porter, governor of Pennsylvania, appointed Jesse B. Evans lieutenant-colonel of the Brady regiment of Penn- sylvania militia, and in this capacity he continued to serve until April, 1846, when he resigned the post and eome with his family to Wisconsin. In Lafayette county he entered claim to a tract of gov- ernment land and became one of the pioneers in the development of the agricultural resources of that section of the state. In the work of reclamation he was ably assisted by his four sons,-Jonathan H., Thomas E., George T., and H. Clay. His spirit of adventure was vital- ized by the memorable discovery of gold in California, and in March, 1849, he set forth across the plains for the New Eldorado. The long and weary journey, attended with constant peril and hardship, was made with ox teams, and five months were demanded for making the trip. Portions of the journey were through a trackless and for- bidding wilderness and desert, and the only guide was that afforded by a pocket compass. Exeept for occasional trips to his Wisconsin home Mr. Evans passed the residue of his life in gold fields of Cali- fornia, Nevada and Montana, and he was one of the sturdy and gallant pioneers of the golden west. He died at Helena, Montana, on the 14th of March, 1869,-his sixty-first birthday anniversary,-and his widow passed the closing years of her life in Platteville, Wiseonsin, where she died in 1887. Of the sons, Thomas E., and George T., are retired farmers, and, venerable in years, they are passing the gracious eve- ning of their lives in peace and prosperity.
H. Clay Evans, the youngest of the sons, left the farm in 1858, when fifteen years of age, and became a elerk for his brother Jonathan II., who was then register of deeds for Grant county, Wisconsin. He was thus engaged for two years and from 1861 to 1864 he was a elerk in a local mercantile establishment. In the latter year he tendered his services in defense of the Union, by enlisting in the Forty-first Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, in which he was ehosen quartermas- ter's sergeant. In the autumn of the same year he was transferred to the quartermaster's department at Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he continued in active and effective service until the elose of the war and he was at the base of supplies during Sherman's Atlanta eampaign and subsequent triumphal "march to the sea." After vic- tory had erowned the Union arms General Meigs retained Mr. Evans in service until 1869, and in this eonnection he acted as agent for the department in disposing of the war material which had accumulated at different points along the line which had been marked by the aggressive eampaign operations of General Sherman. While he main- tained headquarters at Chattanooga, the business of his department
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called him to distant points, including Andersonville, Atlanta and New Orleans, as well as Brownsville, Texas, where he resigned his office in 1869. From Texas he returned to Chattanooga, where he forthwith identified himself closely with important industrial and general business enterprises, especially in connection with the iron industry and the manufacturing of railroad cars. He became one of the representative business men and foremost citizens of Chattanooga, and his influence in public affairs eventually transcended local limita- tions. He served successively as alderman and mayor of his home city, and thereafter was president of its board of education. In 1888 he was elected to the Fifty-first Congress as a representative of the Third district of Tennessee, and thereafter he became first assistant postmaster general under the administration of President Harrison. In 1894 he was elected governor of Tennessee, on the Republican ticket, but through the peculiar methods which have prevailed in political affairs in some parts of the country he was counted ont of the posi- tion to which he had been elected, this being the result of action on the part of a legislature adverse to him and his party. In 1897 he was appointed, by President MeKinley, commissioner of pensions, and in this office he served with characteristic ability and distinction. He was appointed by Roosevelt as Consul-General to London for three years. He is now living in Chattanooga, Tenn.
Jonathan H. Evans, whose name initiates this review, is the eldest of the four sons, and was born in Delaware county, Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, on the 29th of October, 1830. In all of the rela- tions of life he has well upheld the prestige of the honored name which he bears and he has been essentially a productive force in connection with the practical affairs of life. He attended the common schools until he was about eleven years of age and was then, in 1841, appren- ticed to learn the printer's trade, in the office of the Cumberland Val- ley Whig, a weekly paper published at Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. This incidental discipline proved of much value to him in the forma- tive period of his life, as the training of a liberal education. While thus employed an accident so crippled him that he has remained lame throughont his entire mature life.
In 1846 Mr. Evans accompanied his parents on their removal to the pioneer wilds of Wisconsin, and his memories of the early days have quickened in him an enduring appreciation of the state, its resources and its history. He continued to be actively identified with the work and management of the pioneer farm until 1851 and then signalized his ambition by becoming a student in the Platteville Academy, where he applied himself with characteristic diligence and earnestness. In the winter of 1851-2 he began teaching in one of the district schools of Lafayette county, and in the following August he assumed a posi-
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tion as salesman and bookkeeper in a retail mercantile establishment in Platteville.
In the meanwhile Mr. Evans had manifested a lively interest in public affairs of a local order and had gained secure vantage-place in popular confidence and esteem. In 1856 he was elected register of deeds of Grant county, and his administration was so acceptable that he was reelected at the close of his first term, and thus served four con- secutive years, within which he brought the records of his office up to a high standard, with thorough systematization of all details. The great Civil war was in the meantime precipitated upon a divided nation, and the intense loyalty and patriotism of Mr. Evans could not long be denied patent exemplification. In 1862 he was appointed sutler of the Thirty-third Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry, and he was thereafter in active service for two years with the Army of the Tennessee, with which he witnessed the siege and fall of Vicksburg and other important events of the great struggle through, which the integrity of the Union was preserved.
Returning to Wisconsin in 1864, Mr. Evans engaged in the general merchandise business at Platteville, and through fair and honorable dealing and careful consideration to the demands of his trade, he soon built up a large and prosperous enterprise. For many years he was numbered among the leading merchants of this section of the state and he won success that was worthy of the name, his retirement from this line of enterprise occurring in 1884. In 1872 Mr. Evans was appointed, by Governor Washburn, a member of the board of regents of the state normal schools of Wisconsin, and through successive reappointments he retained this important post for twenty years, during the greater part of which, 1878 to 1890, he served as president of the board. Deeply appreciative of the value of popular education and realizing the special importance of the normal schools, Mr. Evans was zealous and in promoting the interests of this feature of the edu- cational activities of the state, and had much to do with formulating and perfecting the plans and policies which have made the normal- school system of Wisconsin one not excelled by that of any other commonwealth of the Union. In February, 1884, Mr. Evans was appointed assignee of a Platteville bank, and for the discharge of this important trust he gave a bond for $245,000, the work of adjusting the affairs of the defunct institution demanding his attention for a period of nearly five years. He has been called upon to act as execu- tor and administrator of many large estates in Grant county, and his careful and conscientious conservation of the same has fully justified the confidence reposed in him. No citizen has a stronger hold upon popular esteem than he, and his advice and counsel have been freely sought by all classes of citizens, his integrity and maturity of judg- ment being uniformly recognized.
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Mr. Evans has kept in close touch with the march of progress and development in Grant county and has been a leader in the advance- ment of civic and material interests in this favored section of the state. He has been an extensive dealer in real estate, with which line of enterprise he has been identified for thirty-two years, and he platted and placed on the market twenty-three sub-divisions to the city of Platteville. In 1890 he opened a general real-estate office and within a decade he surveyed, platted and subdivided fifteen additions to the city, incidentally giving in this connection names to more than thirty new streets required in these sub-divisions. He was one of the organ- izers and incorporators of the First National Bank of Platteville and has been its vice-president since 1890, is one of the principal stock- holders of the Platteville Electric Light & Power Company and served as its secretary and general manager until he sold his interests. He has been active in the promotion of those enterprises and measures which have tended to conserve the progress and prosperity of his home city, county and state, and pays most loyal allegiance to the great commonwealth which has so long represented his home, and been the stage of his earnest and well ordered endeavors. He is a valued member of the Wisconsin State Historical Society and is one . of the sterling men whose memory links the formative pioneer period with the latter days of prosperity and advancement. He has now passed the age of four score years but his mental and physical powers indicate a man many years his junior. He has lived a "godly, righte- ous and sober life" and its sequel is good health, peace and prosperity. Mr. Evans has been essentially and emphatically a worker, and has had no desire for leisure or ease. Ile has stated that he has virtu- ally had no definite relaxation from work of some order from the time when he entered the printing office when a boy up to the present period, which finds him able to take a retrospective view of a career marked by earnest and effective endeavor erowned with success and well earned honors.
Mr. Evans is a staunch Republican in his political allegiance and for many years he has been prominent and influential in the time- honored Masonic fraternity. On the 22d of February, 1854, he was made a Mason, in Melody Lodge, No. 2, in Platteville, and in the fol- lowing June he received the degree in Washington Chapter, No. 2, Royal Arch Masons, with both of which organizations he is still actively affiliated. In 1872 he received the degrees in the commandery of Knights Templar at Madison, and has been identified with the council of Royal & Select Masters sinee 1880. In 1890 he received the degrees of the adjunct organization, the Order of the Eastern Star. He has passed nearly all of the official chairs in the various local Masonic bodies with which he is affiliated and has served as delegate to the grand lodge, grand chapter and grand commandery of the state. IIe represented the Royal Arch Masons of Wisconsin in the national Vol. VII-24
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assemblies of the order at Baltimore, Maryland, in 1871, and Nash- ville, Tennessee, in 1874. He has been for many years the accredited representative of the grand chapters of New Jersey, South Carolina and Kentucky to the grand chapter of Wisconsin, in which latter he has been an officer for an even longer period. He was grand high priest of the Wisconsin Grand Chapter of Royal Arch Masons in 1874-5, and in 1895 he was elected grand patron of the grand chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star in this state. In 1898 and again in 1900 he was elected treasurer of the grand lodge of Wisconsin, and it may well be understood that he is known and honored in the ranks of the great fraternity in the state which has long been his home and in which his interests have centered. During the past ten years he has held the position of accredited representative of the Grand Lodge of Ireland to the Grand Lodge of Wisconsin.
On the 7th of November, 1855, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Evans to Miss Sarah Kilbourne, of Columbus, Ohio. She was born at Columbus, Ohio, and is a danghter of the late Professor John Kil- bourne, who was president of Worthington College, near Colum- bus, Ohio. She is also a cousin of the late Byron Kilbourne, who was one of the representative pioneers and influential citizens of Mil- waukee. The original American representatives of the Kilbourne fam- ily came from England in 1632 and settled in Connecticut, from which commonwealth have gone forth many of the name to become promi- nent citizens of various other commonwealths of the Union. Mr. and Mrs. Evans became the parents of four children, all of whom are living. Concerning them brief mention is made in the concluding paragraph of this review.
Judge Charles R. Evans, the eldest of the four children, is now one of the distinguished citizens of the state of Tennessee, where he main- tains his residence in the city of Chattanooga. He received from the University of Wisconsin the degrees of Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts and later prepared himself admirably for the legal profession. He is a member of the Wisconsin bar as well as that of Tennessee, and has been admitted to practice before the Wisconsin supreme court, and the court of appeals, as well as the United States circuit court in this state. He is a member of the American Bar Association and is one of the leading members of his profession at Chattanooga, Tennes- see, where he has been engaged in practice for a period of about thirty years. He was city attorney of Chattanooga in 1887-8 and in 1891; was commissioner of registration in 1894-5; was county attorney of Hamilton county, Tennessee, from 1894 to 1898; presided on the bench of the circuit court of the Sixth judicial circuit of that state in 1911; was vice-president of the Tennessee Bar Association in 1911-12; and since 1901 he has been dean of the law department of the University of Chattanooga. He has been an influential figure in the ranks of the Republican party in Tennessee, and on its ticket was chosen an elector
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at large in 1900, in the campaign of which year he made effective speeches in nearly every county in the state. In Chattanooga Judge Evans early identified himself with the Tennessee National Guard, in which he became captain of the Sixth Infantry. At the inception of the Spanish-American war he promptly volunteered with his command and was appointed and commissioned, by President MeKinley, as major of the Sixth Tennessee Volunteer Infantry. He served with his regi- ment in Porto Rico, where, in 1899, he held for several months the office of judge advocate of the general court martial. Iu the same year he served for a time as military judge of the province of Arecibo. He was mustered out with his regiment and has since been engaged in the practice of his profession in Chattanooga. Harry K., the sec- ond son, likewise received excellent educational advantages and for the past 30 years he has been cashier and financial manager of the Roane Iron Company, at Rockwood, Tennessee. Mary, the ouly daughter, was graduated in the University of Wisconsin, and is the wife of William S. Mason, a prominent banker at Evanston, Illinois. Thomas C., the youngest of the children remains at the parental home.
JOHN H. KOPMEIER. A native son of Milwaukee who has accounted well to himself and to the world is John Henry Kopmeier, who is presi- dent of the Wisconsin Lakes Ice & Cartage Company and who is known as one of the most progressive, public-spirited and popular citizens of the Wisconsin metropolis. A man of fine presence, of genial and buoy- ant nature and of sterling character, he has won inviolable place in the confidence and esteem of the community in which he has resided from the time of his nativity to the present and in which he has done much to further civic and industrial advancement and prosperity. His cirele of friends is coincident with that of his acquaintances and he is essentially one of the representative business men of his native city, so that there is all of consistency in according to him specific recognition in this publication. As a preliminary estimate is produced the follow- ing extract from a well written and appreciative record concerning Mr. Kopmeier:
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