USA > Wisconsin > Wisconsin, its story and biography, 1848-1913, Volumr VI > Part 4
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William Pitt Bartlett was reared in the atmosphere of a typical New England home, with all its culture and its high principles of conduct and character. During his youth the portion of Maine in which he lived was sparsely settled and opportunities for schooling were meagre. He applied himself thoroughly and utilized such advantages as were given him and at the age of fifteen obtained a certificate to teach. With money earned as a teacher, he paid his way through the academy of Farmington and Bloomfield, and at the age of twenty entered Water- ville College, which has since become the well known Colby College, where he was graduated after a full college course in 1853. One of his classmates in that college was H. M. Plaisted, who subsequently became a governor of Maine, and his son was governor of Maine during 1911- 12. Another schoolmate was H. W. Richardson, who for many years was prominent as the editor of the Portland Advertiser. After leaving college he became principal of the Hallowell Academy, one of the old- est institutions of the kind in the state of Maine and resigned from that place in 1855. In the meantime he had decided to make his profession in the law, and had directed his studies to that end. As his almost con- tinuous studies had weakened a not very robust constitution he came west, in order to train both body and mind for his future career of use- fulness, and in 1855 located at Watertown, Wisconsin. He was engaged in teaching in that city for nearly six months, and at the same time
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carried on his studies in law until the spring of 1856, when he was admitted to the bar in Jefferson county.
Mr. Bartlett came to Eau Claire, then a village of a few hundred inhabitants, in May, 1857. He was the first lawyer to locate in the county, and is therefore the dean of his profession in this section of the state, and it may be properly said that none among his various contem- poraries has ever attained a greater prominence or place of more use- fulness than Mr. Bartlett. His experience as a teacher and his prom- inence resulting from his membership in the bar caused him to be appointed a member of the school board within two weeks after his arrival at Eau Claire, and he was re-elected again and again until he had given twenty-nine years of service. In the fall of 1857 he was also elected to the office of district attorney of Eau Claire county, and in 1859 while still in that office, he was elected to the legislature from the district composed of Eau Claire, Clark, Pepin, Dunn, Chippewa and Pierce counties. He made a conspicuous record in the house and was chairman of the committee on federal relations, which in 1860 was one of the most important of the house committees, and was also a member of the judiciary committee. In the spring of 1860 Governor Alexander Randall appointed Mr. Bartlett judge of Eau Claire county, an office which he held for about two years. In 1861 he was again elected district attorney, and re-elected in 1863, so that he served three successive terms in that position. In 1872, when Eau Claire county had become a district by itself, he was again sent to the legislature, and during his term was chairman of the committees on federal relations and education, and a member of the judiciary committee. In 1874 came his appointment as registrar of the United States land office at Eau Claire, this appoint- ment coming from President Grant and the term continuing for four years. In 1878 President Hayes reappointed him, but he soon after- wards resigned after five years of service.
In the spring of 1884 Judge Bartlett was appointed to a vacancy in the board of regents in the University of Wisconsin. He was reap- pointed for three terms of three years each, and gave the university the benefit of his large experience and a thorough interest in affairs of education. In 1890 he was elected president of the board, and re-elected in 1893. It was his privilege during his official connection with the university to witness the enrollment of students increase from a meager four hundred to two thousand or more, and the expansion of the facil- ities and the services of the institution until it took rank among the foremost institutions of higher education in America. His total service on the board of regents was for thirteen years.
From the time he located in Eau Claire in 1857 until within recent years. Mr. Bartlett was one of the conspicuous members of the county bar. He acquired a reputation of especial note as a counselor and as a trial lawyer in chancery cases and in cases of appeal. He has been
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very successful in his practice and for many years had a large clientage which represented the best class of legal business in the northwestern part of the state. During his later years he gave considerable attention to business affairs. His investments were largely directed into the lum- ber interests of Oregon, and he was vice president of a lumber company of that state. In 1903 he was elected president of the bank of Eau Claire, and by its consolidation with the Chippewa Valley Bank, organ- ized the Union National Bank, of which he was chosen president. He held that office until about two years ago, when he resigned.
A local publication has made an interesting note concerning his con- nection with Masonry. According to this account, Mr. Bartlett is the only charter member of the Eau Claire Lodge No. 112, A. F. & A. M., now living. He became a Mason in Kennebec Lodge No. 5 at Hollowell, Maine, October 20, 1854, and shortly after coming to Eau Claire on May 17, 1857, he and six other pioneers, among whom were the late H. P. Putnam, D. R. Moon and - Foote, organized the first lodge in his. law office and applied for a state charter.
In politics Mr. Bartlett deserves distinction as being one of the last of the original organizers of the Republican party in this state. Since 1856, the year of the first national campaign of that party. he has been a steady and influential factor in its power and influence in national and local affairs. Mr. Bartlett was married August 15, 1861, to Miss Hattie Hart, a daughter of Edward W. Hart, of Baraboo, Wisconsin. Mrs. Bartlett passed away in August, 1912, at the age of seventy-three years. Five children, four sons and one daughter, were born to their marriage, and the three sons now living are Edward W., who graduated from the Iowa State University and is now a prominent lawyer in the state of Oregon; Frank H., who graduated from the University of Wis- consin in 1892, and is now assistant secretary of the Rust-Owen Lumber Company of Drummond, Wisconsin ; and Stanley P., who is in the lum- ber business at Coquelle, Oregon. Sumner P. was killed in 1898, during the Spanish-American war, at Porto Rico. One daughter, Mrs. Levilla Winchell, resides at Melrose, Massachusetts.
JAMES BARDON is a citizen of Superior, whose residence in Wiscon- sin for more than half a century has been accompanied by many distinctive and valuable services to his community and state. James Bardon, the eldest of the children of Richard Bardon and Mary (Roche) Bardon was born on November 25, 1844, in Wexford county, Ireland, the county noted as having made the greatest struggle in the unsuccessful rebellion of 1798, during which his grandfathers were in active service as rebels. There are records of the name Bardon in Ireland as early as the tenth century. The family came to America in 1846, first locating in Maysville, Kentucky, where they resided until 1857, when they removed to Superior, arriving there on July 6th of
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that year. Richard Bardon died January 11, 1889, aged seventy-four years, while serving his second term as county judge of Douglas county. Mrs. Mary Bardon died September 3, 1901, aged seventy- eight years.
James Bardon attended the local schools, and in early life was variously engaged in farming, road building, surveying, mining, lum- bering and in vocations usually incident to pioneering. In 1862, during the appalling massacre of white settlers in Minnesota by the savage Sioux Indians, he was a member of the State militia company, organized in Superior, and assisted in building a stockade and in other defenses for the protection of the isolated white settlers in the country about Superior and Duluth.
In 1867 he was a teacher in the district schools, and during the following two decades he owned and operated a saw mill and a shingle mill at Superior, and besides editing and publishing the village news- paper, the Superior Times, served terms as clerk of the circuit court and county treasurer. He was active in the efforts to bring railroads and industrial plants to the head of the lakes, and was an original corporator in the Duluth & Winnipeg Railroad, the Superior Street Railway, the Inter-State Bridge Company, the St. Louis River Water Power Company, and in several land and development corporations; also was president of the First National Bank organized at Superior, and later of the original Bank of Superior.
Mr. Bardon was chairman of the County Board of Douglas county in 1884 and 1885, and served several terms as supervisor in later years. He was a member of the first City Council of Superior, and has served upon the school and library boards. He was on the state committee with Senator LaFollette, Archbishop Katzer and Frederick Layton, which selected for the State of Wisconsin the marble statue of Father Marquette, the most noted figure in Statuary Hall in the National Capital at Washington. He was a delegate to the Demo- cratic National Conventions which nominated Mr. Cleveland in 1884 and 1892, and represented his state upon the notification of Committee in the latter year.
James Bardon is always active in general development, especially in looking after appropriations for harbor improvements, and in that interest usually visits Washington once or twice every year. He recently took a leading part in locating and building the County Insane Asylum near Superior. He is president of the Superior His- torical Society, and a member of the Superior Commercial Club and the Chamber of Commerce.
He was married in 1884 to Miss Emma W. Conan, a native of Watertown, Wisconsin, and with his wife and only daughter, Miss Winifred E. Bardon, resides at 225 West Fifth Street, East End, Superior.
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THOMAS BARDON. A prominent banker and business man of Ashland, with varied interests both in this state and elsewhere, Thomas Bardon is one of the men whose character and activities naturally give him a position of leadership, and in both business and civic affairs, his has been an active and useful part in Ashland for many years. The home of the family has been in Wisconsin for more than fifty-six years, and for nearly thirty years Mr. Bardon has been president of the Ashland National Bank.
Born in Maysville, Kentucky, on the twenty-second of October, 1848, Thomas Bardon is a son of Richard and Mary (Roche) Bardon, both of whom were natives of Wexford, Ireland. From Ireland the parents came to America in 1844, living for some years in New York City, and in 1847, going to Maysville, Kentucky, where the father spent ten years in the leather and shoe business. In 1857 the family came to Wisconsin, arriving in Superior on the sixth of July. Richard Bardon during the first of his active years was not only a good busi- ness man, but participated in public affairs, serving as clerk of the county courts and later as county judge. Several years before his death he retired from business activities, and he and his wife died in Superior. His political support was always given to the Demo- cratie party. The seven children of Richard and Mary Bardon are all still living.
Second in age among the children, Thomas Bardon was nine years old when the family moved to Wisconsin, and his education began in the Kentucky schools was continued at Superior, where he graduated from the high school. His early choice of vocation was that of civil engineering, for which his studies and practical experience well pre- pared him and from 1867 until 1871 his professional ability was em- ployed during the preliminary construction of the Northern Pacific Railway. In 1872 Mr. Bardon located in Ashland, which has been his home now for more than forty years. His early business activities were directed to real estate, dealing chiefly in timber and iron land, and in that way he laid the foundation of his present prosperity. In 1885 a group of local citizens including Mr. Bardon organized the Ashland National Bank, and since its doors were opened for business, Mr. Bardon has held the office of president. Outside of banking his interests are of such varied nature that they cannot be easily enumerated. They include investment in copper mines in Arizona, iron mines in both Wisconsin and Minnesota, and in timber properties along the Pacific coast.
Mr. Bardon has never been entirely a banker or business man and has always known how to use money as well as how to make it, and how to live as well as how to work. His alert mind and broad inter- ests are well indicated by some of his connections with literary and historical bodies. He has membership in the Mississippi Valley His-
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torical Association, is a life member of the Wisconsin Historical Society, belongs to the National Geographical Society and the Wis- consin Archeological Society. His citizenship has always been of the most public spirited character, though he is in no sense a politician, and has worked for the good of the community, rather than for his personal honor. Mr. Bardon served as chairman of the town board one term, and as mayor of Ashland for four terms; his administra- tion of city affairs having set a high standard of efficiency and scrupu- lous honesty.
Mr. Bardon is President of the Shattuck Arizona Copper Co., one of the rich, active shipping mines at Bisbee, Arizona, employing a large force of miners. He is Vice President of the Northern Chief Iron Co., a corporation owning the fee to valuable iron mines on the Gogebic Iron Range in Wisconsin, from which royalties are collected.
He is also President of the Cuyuna Iron & Land Co., a Minnesota corporation, with properties on the Cuyuna Iron Range, in that state. He is a member of the firm of Bardon, Kellogg & Co., a merchandise concern of Ashland.
In 1884 Mr. Bardon married Jennie Grant, of Winona, Minnesota. They are the parents of two children: Belle is now the wife of George H. Quayle, of Cleveland, Ohio; Thomas, Jr., having graduated from Yale University, is now attending the law school of the Univer- sity of New York, in New York City, and is also engaged in the work of his profession, in a prominent law office of that city.
CHARLES M. MERRILL. President of the Eau Claire Grocery Com- pany, Mr. Merrill is now recognized as one of the foremost among the larger merchants and business men of northern Wisconsin. A little more than thirty years ago he was a clerk in a store, subsequently be- came a traveling salesman, and after a long and thorough experience in all departments of business, he reached the point where he took an independent part in business life. He is a merchant who thoroughly understands all the details of his business, is a social organizer and extender of business and has built up the Eau Claire Grocery Com- pany to be one of the strongest firms of the kind in the state.
Charles M. Merrill is a native of Utica, New York, where he was born April 25, 1857, a son of Milton H. and Sarah L. Hardiman Mer- rill. The father was born in Utica, New York, in 1830 and died Feb- ruary 6, 1912. The mother was born at Hadley, in Hampshire, Eng- · land, in 1828, and passed away July 28, 1893. The parents were mar- ried in Utica, and Charles M. Merrill was the oldest of their four chil- dren, the others being as follows : Nettie L., the wife of J. M. Brunt, of Decorah, Iowa; LaMott; and William D. The father was a prominent man in New York State. For a number of years he was superintendent of a transportation company on the old Erie Canal, and in the fall of Vol. VI-3
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1857 came west and located at Decorah, Iowa, where he was engaged in the produce business and as a farmer during the rest of his active career. He had the distinction of being a delegate to the first Whig con- vention held at Albany, New York, and after the dissolution of the Whig party he became a Republican.
Mr. Charles M. Merrill was an infant when the family came west and located at Decorah, Iowa, and his youth in that state was spent in an almost pioneer environment. After he had gained his education in the Decorah schools and the Decorah Institute, he began his career as a teacher and taught for four years in his home county. Then he became a clerk in a general store, and in 1881 went upon the road as a traveling salesman for a wholesale drygoods house. This experience continued with various promotions, and changes for the better, until 1905, at which date he accepted the presidency of the Eau Claire Grocery Company of Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
Mr. Merrill is affiliated with Eau Claire Lodge No. 112, A. F. & A. M., and with Eau Claire Chapter No. 36, R. A. M. In politics he is a Republican. He was married on Christmas day of 1881 to Miss Ida A. Fletcher, who was born at Bluffton, in Winneshiek county, Iowa.
ALBERT MICHAEL NEWALD. Definite success and prestige as one of the representative younger members of the bar of Milwaukee indicate the secure status of Mr. Newald, who is known for his excellent intel- lectual and professional attainments and his marked civic loyalty and public spirit. He is a scion of old and honored families in Wisconsin, where both his paternal and maternal ancestors established their resi- dences in the pioneer epoch, and he is one of the well known and dis- tinctively popular members of the bar of his native city, with the civic and business affairs of which the family name has been long and worthily identified.
Mr. Newald was born in Milwaukee on the 11th of April, 1884, and is a son of M. D. and Emma (Wirth) Newald, the former of whom was born at Hamilton, province of Ontario, Canada, and the latter of whom was born near the city of Milwaukee, their marriage having here been solemnized on the 5th of November, 1882. He whose name initiates this review was named in honor of his paternal grandfather, Michael Newald, who is a native of Germany and who established his home in Wisconsin in an early day, having come to this state from the Dominion of Canada. Both he and his wife passed the closing years of their lives in Milwaukee and they were honored by all who knew them.
Edward Wirth, maternal grandfather of him to whom this sketch is dedicated, was long numbered among the prominent and highly es- teemed citizens of Milwaukee, and here his death occurred on the 14th of July, 1904. His widow, Mrs. Caroline Wirth, still resides in Mil- waukee. Edward Wirth was born in Gemünden, Germany, on the 28th
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of February, 1834, and in 1852 he came to Wisconsin and established his residence in Milwaukee, where he passed the residue of his long and use- ful life. He became one of the most prominent and extensive horse deal- ers of the state, having been originally a member of the firm of Wirth Brothers and later the head of the firm of Wirth, Hammel & Company, which gained high reputation as the most extensive concern in the west in the business of dealing in horses. Mr. Wirth retired from active busi- ness a few years prior to his death. He was a man of impregnable integ- rity and of most genial and companionable personality and was widely known in the states of the middle west and was long one of the most progressive and public-spirited of the representative business men of the Wisconsin metropolis.
M. D. Newald, the father of Albert M. Newald, has been actively identified with the business of buying and selling horses and other enter- prises for the long period of thirty years and now controls a most ex- tensive business in 'this line, his individual operations being conducted under the title of M. D. Newald & Company and his being definite prece- dence as the best known and most successful horse dealer in Wisconsin, in which field of enterprise he is an acknowledged authority. He is a substantial and popular man of affairs, liberal, charitable and reliable in all his dealings, and has shown a loyal interest in all that touches the welfare of his home city and state, where his circle of friends is virtually coincident with that of his acquaintances. He served as a member of the Wisconsin National Guard for a period of five years, at the expiration of which he received his honorable discharge, and in the time-honored Masonic fraternity he has received the thirty-second degree of the An- cient Accepted Scottish Rite, besides which he is actively identified with the Milwaukee Athletic Club and the local Jewish Charities organization.
Albert M. Newald is indebted to the public schools of Milwaukee for his early educational discipline, which included the curriculum of the West Division high school. In pursuance of his higher academic educa- tion he entered historie old Harvard University, in which he was grad- uated as a member of the class of 1906, with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. In preparation for the work of his chosen profession he pursued the prescribed course in the Harvard Law School, in which he was grad- uated in 1908 and from which he received the well earned degree of Bachelor of Laws. Mr. Newald early exhibited marked oratorical and dialectic ability, and he represented the West Division high school of Milwaukee in an interscholastic debate, besides which, in the spring of 1905, he was captain of the debating team of Harvard University in the victorious contest with the debating team of Yale University. Through his ability and earnest application Mr. Newald made an admirable rec- ord as a student at Harvard, where he won scholarship honors, besides which he was president of the Harlan Law Club during his senior year in the Harvard Law School. He has continued a most earnest and
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appreciative student along professional lines and in the domain of gen- eral literature, this being distinctively shown through his having accu- mulated one of the largest and most select private libraries in the city of Milwaukee.
In the summer of 1908 Mr. Newald was admitted to the bar of his native state. In initiating the active work of his profession Mr. Newald entered the law office of the well known Milwaukee firm of Bloodgood, Kemper & Bloodgood, but five months later he severed this association, on the 1st of February, 1909, and engaged in the independent practice of his profession. Energy, ability and close application have character- ized his endeavors in his exacting vocation and he has thus won success and prestige and has attained to a place among the able and popular attorneys of the younger generation in the Wisconsin metropolis, where he controls a substantial general practice and has served as legal repre- sentative of various corporations and important estates. His well ap- pointed offices are located in Suite 524 Caswell Block, and he is an active and popular member of the Milwaukee County Bar.
At the age of twenty-one years Mr. Newald identified himself with the Masonic fraternity, in which he is affiliated with Milwaukee Lodge, No. 261, Free and Accepted Masons. He is well fortified in his convic- tions concerning matters of governmental and economic polity. He holds membership in the Order of B'nai B'rith and also in the Harvard Club in his native city. Both he and his wife are popular factors in the social activities of the community.
In the spacious parlors of the Athenaeum at Milwaukee, on the 16th of December, 1912, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Newald to Miss Pearl Evelyn Levy, who attended Wellesley College from 1909 to 1911 and who is a daughter of the late Henry L. Levy, to whom a memoir is dedicated on other pages of this volume, so that further reference to the family history is not demanded in the present connection.
WILLIAM H. SMITH. The origin of every large industrial or com- mercial enterprise is usually found in a single individual, some man possessing the initiative, the persistent energy, and the ability which are necessary for the founding and creation of large undertakings. In the city of La Crosse, the Smith Manufacturing Company is considered one of the permanent institutions of the city, a concern which has been in existence for half a century, and the activities of which furnish employ- ment and the means of livelihood to hundreds of the inhabitants of La Crosse. The company is now a family concern, and the business is maintained by descendants of the original founder, who was William H. Smith.
William H. Smith was born in Stafford, Tolland county, Connecti- cut, February 5, 1824. With his parents he moved to Syracuse, New York, in 1830, where he spent his boyhood days, and attended the com-
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