George H. Cunningham is
numbered among the representative merchants and
honored and influential citizens of the vigorous
little village of Monona, where he is engaged in the
hardware and implement business, with a large and
well-equipped establishment that is at all times
prepared to meet the demands of an extended and
representative patronage. Mr. Cunningham is one of
the well poised and substantial business men of the
younger generation in his native county and
consistently finds individual recognition in this
publication.
He was born in Giard
township, this county, on the 8th of September, 1888,
and is a son of Isaac and Frances (Collier)
Cunningham, both of whom were born in Holland. Isaac
Cunningham came to the United States about the year
1866, and established his residence in the State of
New York. About a decade later he came to Iowa and
established his home in Clayton county, where he
purchased a farm, in Giard township. There he
continued his successful activities as an
agriculturist for many years, and he and his wife now
reside in the village of Monona, where he is living
virtually retired and in the enjoyment of the goodly
rewards of former years of earnest endeavor. He is a
Republican in politics and continues to take a lively
and discriminating interest in the issues and
questions of the hour, with well fortified views
concerning governmental and economic policies. He is
a trustee of the local lodge of the Independent Order
of Odd Fellows and both he and his wife are zealous
members of the Methodist Episcopal church. They are
numbered among the honored pioneer citizens of
Clayton county and in the gracious environment of an
attractive home and surrounded by a host of loyal
friends, they may well feel that their lines are cast
in pleasant places. Daniel H. the eldest of their
children, is a prosperous farmer in Monona township;
Mae F. is the wife of George Hazlett, of Giard
township; William died at the age of 31 ; Carrie P.
is the wife of James Campbell, of Colton, South
Dakota; James is a resident of Monona; George H., the
immediate subject of this review, was the next in
order of birth; and Hazel remains at the parental
home.
After completing the
curriculum of the public schools of Monona, George H.
Cunningham further fortified himself by an effective
course in the Toland Business College, in the city of
La Crosse, Wisconsin. He passed the ensuing four
years as a bookkeeper in the city of St. Paul,
Minnesota, and then became a traveling commercial
salesman for the Huber & Furman Drug mills, of
Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, with which concern he
continued his successful work for four years.
In July, 1915, Mr.
Cunningham returned to his native county and
established his residence in Monona, where he
purchased the hardware stock and business of the firm
of Furguson & Licht. With marked circumspection
and progressiveness he has since carried forward this
enterprise, and his establishment is well stocked
with heavy and shelf hardware, stoves, ranges, etc.,
with a well equipped department devoted to plumbing
and heating appliances, for the installment of which
he has the best of facilities, besides which there is
special attention given to the sale of gas engines,
windmills, and farm implements. Mr. Cunningham is
primarily a business man and though he is
emphatically progressive and loyal in his civic
attitude and a staunch advocate of the policies and
principles of the Republican party, he has manifested
no ambition for public office of any kind. Both he
and his wife hold membership in the Methodist
Episcopal church of Monona and are popular factors in
the representative social activities of the
community.
On the 23d of August, 1910,
was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Cunningham to Miss
Jessie E. Foster, daughter of Bartley and Eva (Wheat)
Foster, of St. Paul, Minnesota, and they have two
children- Eva Francis, who was born August 10, 1911,
and Daphne Lorayne, who was born April 4, 1915.
source: History of
Clayton County, Iowa; From The Earliest Historical
Times Down to the Present; by Realto E. Price,
Vol. II, 1916; pg. 77-78
-OCR scanned by S. Ferrall
