USA > Wisconsin > Wisconsin, its story and biography, 1848-1913, Volumr VI > Part 41
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Katherine Louisa, the eldest of the children, was born on the 16th of December, 1860, and died in Biltmore, North Carolina, on the 13th of February, 1909, where she had gone for her health. She was a member of the Plymouth Congregational church of Milwaukee for a number of years.
Samuel Owen Buckner, the second in order of birth of the five children, was born at Wellington, Lafayette county, Missouri, on the 30th of April, 1862, and in his native state he gained his early edu- cational discipline in private schools. In June, 1880, the family home was established in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and he had previously initiated his association with the line of enterprise in which he has since continued and along which he has achieved un- equivocal success and prestige. His first work in the domain of life insurance was in the capacity of office boy for his father, and he continued to be associated with his father's activities in the office, in April, 1886, when he succeeded his brother Thomas A. as a clerk in his father's office, his brother having at that time gone into the
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field as a solicitor for the company. It has already been noted that in 1894 he succeeded his father in charge of the Wisconsin business of the New York Life, and he now has supervision of the business of the company throughout a district extending from Lake Michigan into the far Canadian northwest. He celebrated in 1911 a quarter of a century of continuous service with the great corporation with which he is now most prominently identified, and in addition to having personal charge and direction of the Wisconsin branch of the New York Life he also supervises the work done from the gen- eral offices of the company in St. Paul and Minneapolis, Minnesota, Grand Forks, North Dakota, and. Winnipeg, Canada.
Samuel O. Buckner is a popular and progressive business man and a loyal citizen of the Wisconsin metropolis, and is ever ready to lend his cooperation in the furtherance of measures and enterprises projected for the general good of the community. He holds member- ship in the Merchants' & Manufacturers' Association; is president of the Milwaukee Art Society; has been for many years a member of the Young Men's Christian Association; and though his interests center in his home and his business to the exclusion of activity in club affairs, he is a member of the Town and City clubs. Both he and liis wife hold membership in Plymouth Congregational church, of which he was a trustee. While the. demands placed upon his time and at- tention in the directing of the work of the New York Life Insurance Company in his extended and important jurisdiction have been in- sistent and while he has gained in this field a high reputation for effect- ive generalship and fine administrative ability, Mr. Buckner has found especial satisfaction in promoting the interests of the Milwau- kee Art Society, of which he has been president since February, 1911 (or one year from the time of its organization), and the mem- bership of which has increased under his zealous regime from sev- enty-five to fully six hundred. He also inaugurated a campaign in which twenty-five thousand dollars was raised to purchase a perma- nent home for the society, after which the building was remodeled and extended fifty feet to make it adequate to meet the needs of the society, these later improvements being made at a cost of $10,000. From a statement made by him in the autumn of 1911 are taken the following pertinent extracts :
"The people who are interested in the Milwaukee Art Society are not all artists, nor are they all critics of art. What that society has among its membership, and what should increase its membership and influence, is the spirit that recognizes in all branches of art the ele- ments of higher, nobler taste and cultivation. Art must be the hand- maid of all advancement in civilization. The work for an art society to do is educational. The ultimate goal for the Milwaukee Art So- ciety is the establishment of an art institute, like that in Chicago,
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which had its beginning under similar auspices." It may be said that for his earnest and effective work in this one connection alone the city of Milwaukee owes to Mr. Buckner a debt of perpetual gratitude.
On the 21st of November, 1894, was solemnized the marriage of Samuel O. Buckner to Miss Zaidee Eddy Withington, who was born in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, on July 1, 1876, and who is a daughter of James and Kate (Eddy) Withington. Mr. Withington was born at Muscatine, Iowa, in 1854, and he was engaged in the wholesale lumber business at Big Rapids, Michigan, at the time of his death, which occurred in 1887. For many years he was engaged in the lumber business at St. Louis, Missouri. In 1874 he wedded Miss Kate Eddy, who was born and reared in that city, where her father, the late Joseph Eddy, was for many years a representative wholesale dry goods merchant and an influential citizen. Mrs. Buck- ner passed a part of her girlhood in Washington, D. C., where she attended a private boarding school, and after leaving the national capital her home was in Chicago for two years, at the expiration of which she came with her mother to Milwaukee, where she has since resided and where she is a popular factor in the representative social activities of the community. Mr. and Mrs. Buckner have one daugh- ter, Margaret Tully Buckner, who is a student at Milwaukee-Downer College, as a member of the class of 1914.
Thomas Aylette Buckner, a second son of the honored subject of this memoir, was born at Bloomington, Illinois, on the 18th of Janu- ary, 1865, and much of his early education was received in a private academy, of which his uncle, William Aylette Buckner, was president, at Independence, Missouri. On the 7th of April, 1880, when but fif- teen years of age, he assumed the duties of office boy in the Milwau- kee office of the New York Life Insurance Company, and he advanced rapidly through all the grades of service, under the able and solicit- ous direction of his honored father. He worked in the field as a so- licitor, later was made cashier of the company's office in Kansas City, an agency of which he later became director, and on the 15th of February, 1892, he was appointed general inspector of agencies. His admirable work in the service of the New York Life has been on a parity with that of his father and his brothers, and on December 12, 1900, he was elected fourth vice-president of the great corporation with the affairs of which the family has been long and prominently identified. On the 13th of May, 1903, he was elected vice-president of the New York Life Insurance Company, to succeed George W. Per- kins, who had resigned to associate himself with the financial house of which J. Pierpont Morgan is the head. Mr. Buckner has also been a member of the board of trustees of the company since April 10, 1901. He has shown marked ability along constructive and develop- ment lines, is a remarkable reader of character, and he has risen to
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high position with the New York Life through his own well directed endeavors. In a sketch of this order it is unnecessary to give data concerning the great company with which the Buckner name has been so conspicuously and worthily concerned, for the status and benignant functions of the New York Life Insurance Company are known throughout the civilized world, this being one of the greatest life insurance companies in America, and one whose reputation has ever been unassailable.
The 7th of April, 1912, marked the thirty-second anniversary of Mr. Thomas A. Buckner's connection with the New York Life, and the insurance experts of the world concede that in this field he has no superior as an executive officer. While acting as cashier he placed a large amount of business annually and was known as a master of the rate book. As agency director, supervisor and inspector of agen- cies, he was second to none. As vice-president of the New York Life he has to do with the company's affairs in all parts of the world. Both he and his wife are members of the Presbyterian church, their home being in Riverdale-on-Hudson, New York City.
June 4, 1889, marked the marriage of Thomas A. Buckner to Miss Myrtie Lewis, and they have two children,-Thomas A., Jr., and Mary O.
Tully Scott Buckner, the third son of Walker Buckner, was born on the 2nd of December, 1866, and died in St. Paul, Minnesota, on the 22nd of September, 1886. He was one of the organizers of the Junior department of the Milwaukee Young Men's Christian Associa- tion and was president of the same at the time of his death.
Walker Buckner, Jr., the youngest of the five children was born at Independence, Missouri, on the 16th of March, 1871, and received the advantages of the public schools of Milwaukee, from which he was graduated at the age of fourteen years, and entered the office of his father, under whose direction he received his initial experience along business lines, so that he has been identified with the New York Life Insurance Company from his boyhood days. At the age of nineteen he was put in charge of the company's business in the state of Minne- sota, with headquarters at St. Paul, where he remained four years, during which time the company's business made great progress under his management and thereby demonstrated a remarkable ability as a life insurance manager for one of his age. His great success at St. Paul was recognized by his company by locating him at St. Louis, Missouri, with the title of Inspector of Agencies, a most important position for one of his age, where he supervised a large field of the company comprising a number of states during the eight or nine years in which he continued there. His success warranted his com- pany in sending him to Paris, France, in 1904, with the title of Super- intendent of Agencies, and put him in charge of the business of the
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New York Life in Europe. In 1911 he was made second vice-president of the company, and he still resides in the city of Paris, retaining the general supervision of the business of the company in Europe. He has been a resident of Paris since 1904, and during the intervening years he has reorganized the entire agency system of his company throughout Europe, and made a record that has been accorded the highest praise by the other officers of the company in New York, causing him to be recognized as one of the most able and successful life insurance executive officers of his day.
On the 11th of December, 1894, was solemnized his marriage to Miss Eva May Orton, of Milwaukee, a daughter of John J. Orton, one of the prominent early lawyers of Milwaukee, and they have four children,-Tully Orton, Walker Thornton, John Jay and Lewis Pro- basco.
Mr. and Mrs. Buckner are active members of the American Church of Paris. They are both interested patrons of art and music and their home is often open to the American students of those subjects, and they have, for some years, on the evening of Thanksgiving Day and Christmas entertained at dinner forty or fifty of them.
Walker Buckner, of Paris, France, in January, 1913, had con- ferred upon him by the King of Italy the "Order of Commander of the Crown of Italy," the first information concerning which he received in a telegram from the Italian Minister of Commerce and Agriculture, Mr. Nitti, and which was confirmed by a letter dated January 25th from the latter, the translation of which is as follows:
"I take pleasure in announcing to you that His Majesty, the King, deigning to adhere to the wish expressed by me, has appointed your good self, of his own free will, Commander of the Crown of Italy. I reserve to myself the forwarding to you of the relative Diploma after your good self will have returned the enclosed blank with the required data filled in, and in the meantime I am pleased to transmit to you the insignia of the Honorary distinction conferred upon you."
The insignia referred to in the above letter of the Italian Minister which was presented to Mr. Buckner is a beautiful enamel and gold maltese cross, about two inches in diameter. This order carries with it the privilege of wearing a small rosette in the button-hole bearing the Italian colors, red and white. This decoration came as a great surprise to Mr. Buckner as he had not in advance received any word concerning it, although it is understood that it was conferred upon him as evidence of both satisfaction and appreciation of the Italian Government of the negotiations which Mr. Buckner conducted in the year 1912, on behalf of the New York Life Insurance Company, which resulted in all of the business of his company in Italy being trans- ferred to the Italian Government.
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HOEL HINMAN CAMP. The late Hoel H. Camp, who died at his home in Milwaukee, May 22, 1909, at the age of eighty-seven, was a resident of the city for more than half a century, and one of the pioneer bankers. He was born at Derby, Orleans county, Vermont, January 27, 1822. His father, Hon. David Manning Camp, had an active part in the organization of the first state senate of Vermont, served several terms as lieutenant governor and his portrait now hangs on the walls of the Vermont Senate Chamber. The late Milwaukee banker gained his early experience in business in New England, and in the winter of 1852 sold out his interest in Vermont, and established his home in Milwaukee. After one year in the wholesale grocery trade, he became cashier, and one of the stockholders in the Farmers & Millers Bank. In 1863, the year in which the National Banking Act was passed, he became one of the organizers of the First National Bank of Milwaukee, No. 64, under National Bank Act, that being the first in the state to take out a charter under the new law. His service as cashier continued until 1882, and on the reorganization under a new charter, Mr. Camp was elected president, and remained at the head of the institution until April, 1893. With the consolidation of the First National and the Mer- chants Exchange Bank, he retired from the presidency, though a director until 1900. In 1893 Mr. Camp organized the Milwaukee Trust Com- pany, served as president from January, 1894, until January, 1901, and finally retired from banking in the latter year.
A thorough business man and practical banker, Mr. Camp was long a student of finance. Among the various articles contributed by him to the current press were some addresses read before bankers' associa- tions. Before the American Bankers' Association in August, 1879, he read a paper on "History of Western Banking." He foresaw the dangers threatened by the free-silver issue, and called attention to the ruinous results of unlimited free coinage in a paper read before the Milwaukee Bankers' Club in October, 1887.
In practical charity and the broader phases of civic and commercial life, he also had a part. In 1886, he organized the (Milwaukee) Charity Relief Association, which provided a large fund, the interest from which was to be loaned to the deserving poor, so that they might help themselves without the stigma attaching to ordinary charity. Mr. Camp was a trustee of the Chamber of Commerce gratuity fund, a trustee of the State Hospital for the Insane, for many years actively concerned with the Milwaukee Associated Charities, and was a director in the Northwestern National Fire Insurance Company of Milwaukee. In politics he was a Republican. Throughout his residence in Milwaukee, his active membership was with the Protestant Episcopal church, for part of the time with St. Paul's church, and for many years with the St. James church.
At the time of his death the late Mr. Camp was one of the oldest of Vol. VI-23
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the pioneer bankers of Wisconsin, and the last and only survivor of the original trustees of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, and there have been few in Milwaukee whose connection with banking inter- ests was more prolonged. His record for consecutive banking was probably unequalled, except in the case of Charles Ilsley.
In 1848 Mr. Camp married Miss Caroline R. Baylies of Montpelier, Vermont. Her death occurred in 1859. The two children of their mar- riage are: Minnie, widow of Edward D. Nelson of Ishpeming, Michi- gan; and Robert, now president of the First Savings and Trust Com- pany of Milwaukee, the institution originally founded by his father. In 1861 Mr. Camp married Miss Anna S. Bigelow, of Burlington, Ver- mont. She survives him. The children of the second marriage are : Anna, widow of John S. Van Dyke, Jr., of Milwaukee; Thomas E .; Julia F., at home with her mother; Mary B., wife of George E. Keiser of Mil- waukee. Thirteen grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren sur- vive and honor the memory of the late pioneer banker.
JOHN WILLIAM PETERSON LOMBARD. For nearly forty years a Wis- consin banker and fifty years in the banking business and now presi- dent of the National Exchange Bank of Milwaukee, Mr. Lombard be- gan his career as a messenger in a Chicago bank and has been through all the grades and responsibilities of organized finance. And besides being president of one of the best known institutions of the Milwaukee financial district, he is president of the Milwaukee Clearing House Association ; is treasurer of the Colby Bessemer Iron Company ; trustee and director of the American McKenna Process Company ; director of the Stephenson National Bank of Marinette; and director in the Can- ada Land & Fruit Company in the Isle of Pines.
John William Peterson Lombard was born at Truro, Barnstable county, Massachusetts, August 3, 1849, and is descended from several prominent colonial lines in New England. His father, Lewis Lombard, was born in 1801 and died in 1879, and his mother, Sarah (Gross) Lombard, was born in 1805 and died in 1856. Mr. Lombard is in the eighth generation of descent from Rev. John Mayo, Nicholas Snow and William Lumpkin, all men of prominence in early Massachusetts; is in the seventh generation from Governor Robert Treat of Connecti- cut and Governor Thomas Roberts of New Hampshire, and in the sixth generation from Lieutenant James Lewis, of Massachusetts-all of these ancestors having been active in colonial wars. Another ancestor was David Snow, who fought under Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga. (A more complete statement of the ancestry will be found in the Year Book for 1896 of the Illinois Society of the Sons of the American Revolution. )
Mr. Lombard was reared and educated in his native state, attend- ing the schools of Truro and a private academy there, and the high
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school at Somerville. He determined to work out his business destiny in the west, and on arriving in Chicago became a messenger in the old Fifth National Bank. He was with that institution and other Chicago banks for ten years, at the end of which time he was paying teller in the National Bank of America.
Between 1873 and 1891 his residence was in Marinette, Wisconsin, where he first held the post of cashier in the Stephenson Banking Com- pany, and later vice-president of that bank and its successor, the Stephen- son National Bank. Since 1891 Mr. Lombard's activities have been centered in Milwaukee, and since that year he has been identified with the National Exchange Bank, becoming its second vice-president, then vice-president and now president of the institution. In 1906 he was elected president of the Milwaukee Clearing House Association.
Mr. Lombard was married June 24, 1875, to Miss Sarah Josephine Brown, daughter of Jonas and Ann (Case) Brown, of Milwaukee. Their two children were Edmund Burke, who died in infancy, and Marinette, now Mrs. Richard S. Powell, of Iron Mountain, Michigan. Mrs. Powell was born in Marinette and was educated in the Milwaukee Downer College and at Wellesley College. The Lombard residence is at 205 Prospect avenue.
Politically Mr. Lombard is a Republican, but has never aspired to any office. He is a life member of the Wisconsin State Historical So- ciety and a trustee of the Milwaukee Downer College. He is also a member of the Mayflower Society of Wisconsin, the Society of Colonial Wars, and the Sons of the American Revolution. His recreations are golf and motoring, and his club membership includes the following : The Milwaukee, Milwaukee Country, Milwaukee Town, Milwaukee Ath- letic, Milwaukee Bankers, Milwaukee Yacht Club, Blue Mound Coun- try Club, the Phantom, and the Pilgrim Club of Provincetown, Massa- chusetts.
JAMES JENSEN came to America in 1889 as a young man of eighteen years. He left his native land, Denmark, and unaccompanied by parents or friends, made his way to these shores, locating first in Truesdale, Wisconsin, where he identified himself with farming activities for about two years. He came to Kenosha in 1891, and here served four years as a mason's apprentice, after which he was employed by James Tulley for the following six years. Mr. Jensen then identified himself with the contracting business, which he has followed practically since that time, with splendid success. In 1909 he engaged in the fuel business, and since that time he has handled six thousand tons of coal annually. His yard and office is located at the corner of Valentine and Park streets, and is well equipped for the proper handling of the immense fuel business he conducts. Mr. Jensen is also interested in various other business enterprises in the city of Kenosha. and is the owner of
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a number of valuable farms adjacent to the city and in and about the county, which he personally superintends. His lands are all highly. improved, and his places equipped in the most approved modern manner, so that his farm property yields him handsome returns annually.
Mr. Jensen is a member of the Danish Brotherhood, the Order of Moose and the Fraternal Order of Eagles. Politically, he is bound to no party, but votes in accordance with the dictates of his conscience and mentality.
Mr. Jensen was married in 1895 to Miss Katie Smith, a daughter of Fred and Mary Smith, of Kenosha county, and to them four children have been born : Cecelia M., Tenny, Leslie and Jeannett.
FRED C. HANNAHS. There is special propriety in according to Mr. Hannahs specific recognition in this publication, not only by reason of the fact that he is one of the leading business men of the city of Kenosha, where he has been the dominating factor in the upbuilding of the splendid industrial enterprise conducted under the corporate title of the Hannahs Manufacturing Company, but also by virtue of his being a native son of Kenosha county and a scion of one of its best known pioneer families.
Fred C. Hannahs was born in Kenosha county, Wisconsin, on the 23d of September, 1856, and is a son of Thomas J. and Sarah (Sanborn) Hannahs, both of whom were residents of Kenosha at the time of their death and the names of both of whom are here held in lasting honor, as they represented the best of the New England and New York pioneer element which had a most important part in furthering the early develop- ment and progress of this favored section of the Badger state. Thomas J. Hannahs was born in the state of New York and was a son of Chauncey Hannahs, who came to Wisconsin in 1837, more than a decade prior to the admission of the state to the Union, and who became one of the early settlers of Kenosha county. He located in the old town of Southport, now known as Kenosha, and here he secured a tract of wild land, from which he reclaimed a productive farm, besides which he otherwise contributed in generous measure to the civic and industrial development and upbuilding of the county. He was a citizen of prom- inence and influence in the pioneer community and here both he and his wife passed the residue of their lives, secure in the high regard of all who knew them. Thomas J. Hannahs was a boy at the time of the family immigration to Wisconsin and he was reared to adult age on the old homestead farm, near the present city of Kenosha, the while he availed himself duly of the advantages of the pioneer schools. At an early age he entered as an employe the Kenosha iron foundry, and he became a specially skillful mechanician, as is evident when it is stated that he was the man who made the first practical thimble-skein ever devised. He continued to be actively identified with mechanical pur-
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suits during his entire business career. His death occurred in the year 1881 and his wife survived him by several years. They became the parents of two children, of whom the elder is Fred C., of this review, the younger being Ada J., who is the wife of John Dupont, of Kenosha. The marriage of the parents was solemnized in Kenosha county and Mrs. Hannahs was a native of Vermont, whence she came with her parents to Wisconsin when she was a child.
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