Gardner, Samuel C.

GARDNER, MERRITT, YOUNG

Posted By: mjv (email)
Date: 3/30/2021 at 14:28:52

Samuel C. Gardner is engaged in general farming and stock-raising on section 7, Cedar Township. He was born in Franklin County, Ohio, Feb. 9, 1832, and is a son of William M. and Aner (Merritt) Gardner, the former a native of Virginia and the latter of Maryland. He was reared on a farm, and received his education at Oberlin College, Ohio. On leaving college he followed teaching in Ohio for 12 years. In 1855 he came to Washington County, Iowa, and for three years taught the public school at Lexington, Cedar Township. When the call was made for men to suppress the Rebellion, he enlisted in the 25th Iowa Infantry and served till the close of the war. He was in the siege of Vicksburg and the battle of Jackson. In the second battle of Jackson he received a severe wound in the foot by a cannon ball, which disabled him from further active service in the field. He was then sent to Madison, Wis., and was discharged at the close of the war.

Returning home, Mr. Gardner went into the mercantile business at Lexington, Washington County, and continued in that business for eight years. Having lost his health by too close confinement in the store, in 1872 he moved to his farm on section 7, Cedar Township, which he purchased in 1857. His first purchase was fifty acres of raw land, which he improved and to which he has added by subsequent purchase, until he now owns 200 acres of fine land under a good state of cultivation. He was married, in 1866, to Miss E. J. Young, a native of Indiana, and daughter of John A. and Nancy Young. By this union there are two children – Howard B. and Aner E. Mr. and Mrs. Gardner are members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

On coming to this county, Mr. Gardner was in very limited circumstances, but by close attention to his business, coupled with energy, he has acquired a fine property, and is now numbered among the well-to-do farmers of Washington County. Possessed of a fine education, and being a constant and systematic reader, he has acquired knowledge of all matters of public interest to a degree second to but few in the county. His father died in Ohio in 1880, at the age of seventy years, and his mother in 1876, also at the age of seventy years. They were members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Source: Portrait and Biographical Album of Washington County, Iowa (1887). Excerpt from Biographical Sketch of Samuel C. Gardner, page 238.