Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1915
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 660
JACOB T. STERN

No nobler character ever lived within the borders of Harrison county than the man whose name heads this memorial. He usually was known as Father STERN and was the father of the well-known Almor and Willis L. STERN, of Logan. He was proprietor of Linnwood Farm, at Harris Grove, where he settled April 30, 1857.

The STERN family is descended from good old Quaker stock, and Jacob T. STERN was born in Chester county, Pennsylvania, July 2, 1814, the son of John and Phoebe STERN, who reared a family of fifteen children, twelve of whom reached manhood and womanhood. Jacob T. STERN attended school with the noted traveler and poet, Bayard Taylor. He was left an orphan at the age of six years and was placed in a Quaker family of wealth, with whom he remained nine years. He mastered the plasterer's trade, followed this for a time and then turned his attention to agriculture, farming in Pennsylvania until 1853, in which year he came west as far as Florence, Nebraska, soon thereafter arriving in Harrison county, where he became a highly successful, scientific and practical farmer. In 1841 Mr. STERN married Millicent B. FLETCHER, who was born in England in 1820. To this union were born five children, Amy Ann, Ettie R., Ernest, Almor, Willis L.

Mr. STERN voted with the Republican party, always being able to give a good reason for doing so. Both he and his estimable wife were of the Friends (Quaker) faith. He was the founder of the now numerous farmers' clubs found within Harrison county, as he organized the first one in his home township La Grange. For more than a third of a century he was the local weather forecaster and crop reporter for the Government, under direction of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington, D. C. After his decease his wife took the daily observations, and when she passed away the son, Willis L., took the instruments and has ever since kept the record. Father STERN was a fine writer, and his articles were seen in many eastern and western papers and magazines. In the days of the abolition sentiment (before the war) he was a strong anti-slavery advocate and a vigorous debater on that theme. He also was a conductor on the underground railroad and helped many a slave escape to the north into Canada. He was a personal friend of Frederick Douglass, who sent him congratulations on his golden wedding anniversary, which was celebrated September 30, 1891. He died in the nineties, mourned by the entire community, for indeed Father STERN was one of the world's noblemen.

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