H. B. Miner
Among the men who have been active in inaugurating and shaping
the agricultural and political development of Allamakee county
since pioneer times is numbered H. B. Miner, whose residence in
this section of the state dates from 1856. A spirit of
enterprise, initiative and progress, has actuated him in all the
varied activities of his career, making his business attainments
of a high order and his work in politics a credit and a benefit
to the community where he has so long made his home. For thirty
consecutive years he served as surveyor of the county and he has
held other important official positions, his work being
distinguished by the same energy, progressiveness and public
spirit which dominate his character and influence all the phases
of his public and private life.
Mr. Miner was born in Jefferson county, Ohio, January 24, 1840,
and is a son of Thomas E. Miner, a native of Virginia, who grew
to manhood in that state. After a period of able service in the
War of 1812, the father went to Ohio, settling in Jefferson
county, where he engaged in farming. He there married Miss Fannie
Coyle, a native of Maryland, and they began their wedded life on
the farm in Jefferson county, where nine of their children were
born. In 1856 the family removed to Allamakee county, Iowa, where
they were numbered among the pioneers, Waukon being at that time
nothing more than an insignificant crossroads village., The
father entered one hundred acres of land in Linton township and
with the help of his sons cleared this property, broke the soil,
fenced the fields and opened up a new farm which in time became
one of the valuable places of the section. He spent the remainder
of his life upon the homestead, dying November 3, 1872. He had
survived his wife two years and both are buried in the Council
Hill cemetery.
H. B. Miner acquired his education in the public schools of
Jefferson county, Ohio, and in 1856, when he was sixteen years of
age, came to Iowa with his parents, settling in Allamakee county,
where he has since resided, being today one of the honored
pioneers. He helped clear, improve and develop his father’s
farm at a time when there were but three families in Linton
township and amid the inconvenient and often hard conditions of
pioneer life grew to manhood. Having supplemented a course in the
Ohio public schools by two years’ attendance at the Richmond
(Ohio) Presbyterian Seminary he was unusually well educated for
those days and when he began his independent career turned his
attention to teaching, having received his first teachers’
certificate as early as 1860. He followed that occupation only
during the winter months, spending his summers assisting with the
work of the farm. He later engaged in agricultural pursuits on
his own account and his early training made him a practical, able
and successful farmer. He continued to reside upon his property
until 1899 when he removed to Waukon, where he has since made his
home.
Being a far-sighted, discriminating and progressive man, Mr.
Miner has been carried forward into important relations with the
public life of the city and is considered today one of the
leading figures in local republican politics', having always been
a stanch supporter of the principles and policies for which that
party stands. He cast his first vote for Abraham Lincoln in 1864
and has voted for every republican presidential nominee since
that time. He has himself taken an active and prominent part in
local politics, his public career beginning while living on the
farm, when he served as township assessor and also as township
treasurer. During this time also he studied surveying, becoming
very proficient at that profession, in which he has continued to
engage in a public or private capacity since that time,
accomplishing much important work along this line. In 1879 he was
elected county surveyor of Allamakee county and served so
efficiently, conscientiously and capably that at the end of his
first term he was returned to office and he thereafter served for
thirty years--a conclusive evidence of the value and importance
of his labors and their acceptability to the public at large. Mr.
Miner’s friends are fond of saying that the only way he
could be gotten out of this office was to be legislated out, for
his service ended when the office of county surveyor was
abolished in Iowa. He has, however, continued his work in a
private capacity, having been since connected with important
surveying projects in Allamakee and Clayton counties. He is in
great demand for surveys calling for careful, expert and prompt
labor and is particularly proficient in running and establishing
lines and corners. In addition to holding the office of county
surveyor he has also served as deputy county treasurer and he has
made his name a synonym for high ideals of political morality and
for earnest, capable and discriminating work in the public
service.
Mr. Miner was married in Clayton county, March 17, 1864, to Miss
Hattie E. Bywater, a native of England, born near Leeds, and a
daughter of George Bywater, who came of old and honored English
ancestry. He was an expert flax dresser by trade and was sent to
America in the interest of a large English company engaged in the
manufacture of fine linens. He located at Lansingburg, near Troy,
New York, where he bought and dressed flax for his employers, and
where he and his wife died. His daughter was reared and educated
in that state and later went to Madison, Wisconsin, where she
spent some years, but in 1862 came to Monona, Iowa. She had
fitted herself for teaching and followed that occupation in
various schools in this part of the state, holding a position in
the same district school of which her husband had previously been
teacher. Their oldest son later taught in that institution as did
also two of their daughters. Mr. and Mrs. Miner became the
parents of five children: Dr. Frank D. is in active practice of
dentistry in Hazelton. Dr. Cora R. is also a dentist by
profession, practicing in Waukon, for some years. Addie F., a
graduate nurse of Wesley Hospital, Chicago, is now superintendent
of Sheridan Park Hospital on Belmont avenue in Chicago. Willis H.
is a county engineer of Allamakee county. The oldest child in
this family, Fannie, died in 1879 at the age of fourteen. All the
surviving members acquired excellent education's, supplementing
the usual public-school course by attendance at college. The
parents are members of the Methodist Episcopal church and while
on the farm Mr. Miner served as Sunday school superintendent for
five years.
Fraternally Mr. Miner is a member of the Masonic order, belonging
first to Clayton Lodge, No., 70, and now to Waukon Lodge, NO.
144, F. & A. M. He is probably one of the best known and most
influential residents of Waukon, where he has resided for so many
years and where his work as a private citizen and as a public
official has commended him to the trust, good-will and confidence
of all with whom he has come in contact.
-source: Past & Present of Allamakee County; by
Ellery M. Hancock; S. J. Clarke Pub. Co.; 1913
-transcribed by Diana Diedrich
Return to 1913 biographies index