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Books

Harlan, Edgar Rubey.
A Narrative History of the People of Iowa.
 Vol IV. Chicago: American Historical Society,  1931

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p. 49

   THOMAS HUNT JOYCE, although born in Ireland, has been an Iowan since his earliest years, and is extremely loyal to his home state and is always interested in promoting any enterprise that will further the growth or betterment of his home town of Keokuk and Iowa. His life work has not been confined to Iowa alone. Mr. Joyce is head of a group of contracting firms whose activities in railroad building and highway construction radiates over half a dozen Midwestern states.
    Mr. Joyce was born in County Galway, Ireland, May 24, 1867. In 1870, when he was three years old, he came with his parents, Patrick and Mary Hunt Joyce, to the United States, landing in New York and going directly to Keokuk. His father chose to settle in Keokuk because at that time the Government was building a large canal between Nashville (now Galland) and Keokuk, and he was to be employed by contractors in the construction work there. This canal was in later years submerged when the Mississippi River Power Company built the dam between Keokuk, Iowa and Hamilton, Illinois. When the canal was completed his family moved to a farm near Breckenridge, Illinois, where they remained four years. His father on leaving he farm took up work with the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company during the construction of the Santa Fe line between Chicago and Kansas City. When this work had been completed Patrick Joyce, with his family, returned to Keokuk and for an umber of years was engaged in the teaming and contracting business, until his death, September 1, 1901. His wife died in 1877.
    In the meantime Thomas Joyce was acquiring a common school and practical education, and was  from boyhood in touch with the great work of railway construction. He attended the Beggs School at Galland and schools in Keokuk until he was fourteen and in after years he made up for some of his deficiencies of his earlier training by attending night school classes in Keokuk. While working with his father on the construction of the Santa Fe line between Chicago and Kansas City he gained the inspiration to become a contractor. From the age of twenty-one to twenty-five he was employed by different contracting companies in Iowa and nearby states.
    In 1893 he became superintendent for the contracting firm of Cameron & McManus of Keokuk, while they had the contract for the building of a terminal and switching yards around Keokuk. In August of the same year he was taken into the partnership and the firm's name changed to Cameron, McManus & Joyce. This partnership existed for nineteen years, until the death of Mr. James Cameron in October, 1912, and Mr. Thomas F. McManus in February of 1913. The business was then reorganized by Mr. Joyce and the new partnership was called Cameron, Joyce & Company. In the new partnership the members in addition to Mr. Joyce were James Cameron, oldest son of the former partner, George E. Smith and Robert E. O'Brien. In 1918, after Mr. O'Brien severed his connection with the partnership, the company was incorporated by the following: Thomas H. Joyce, James Cameron, George E. Smith, and James M. Joyce.
    The contracting companies with which Mr. Joyce has been associated have been leaders in the contracting work for the Santa Fe, and have done work for them continuously since 1894. The grading contracts awarded to the companies with which Mr. Joyce has been associated have extended from Chicago to Kansas and through the far West.
    About eighty miles of the grading done preparatory to the laying of the double track between Chicago and Kansas City was done by Cameron, McManus & Joyce. At the time of the World's Fair in Saint Louis, the Cameron, Joyce & Company partnership did the heavy grading on the Mexico-Old Road. Another interesting contract awarded the partnership was a pipe line job for the Santa Fe, involving the handling and laying of pipe which was hauled fourteen miles from Flagstaff, Arizona, in wagons and distributed around the mountainside and then packed up by burros up the mountains a distance of from one and one-half to three miles.
     In 1926 Cameron, Joyce & Company, of which Mr. Joyce is now president, was awarded a large contract by the Santa Fe on a cut off near Mulvane, Kansas. This work involved about seven hundred thousand yards of grading. The company, together with its subsidiary companies, have also handled a number of grading jobs for the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy, the Illinois Central and the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern Railway Companies.
    In recent years these contracting companies have taken up highway paving, and have had contracts that included grading, culverts, bridge construction, and the laying of the slab in Iowa, Illinois, Missouri and Minnesota. In 1928, approximately one hundred miles of eighteen foot slab was laid, and in the construction of these highways five hundred men were employed by Cameron, Joyce Companies, as well as twenty subcontractors, who employed about thirty men each.
    In coming to a high place in the business world Mr. Joyce has brought with him and promoted the success of many others. Mr. Joyce is always interested in ambitious men, and puts opportunities in their way and has that broad and tolerant spirit which overlooks some of the ways of youth and endeavors to inspire them with high ideas and ideals. Love of work, natural leadership among men and a determination to succeed account for his record of successful achievements in business. He has been persevering, has weighed well the circumstances in connection with his undertakings, and has regarded the essentials of accomplishment above personal advantage and personal comfort.
    As a result of Mr. Joyce's steady advance in the business world he finds himself at present the president of Cameron, Joyce, & Company, Cameron, Joyce, Smith, Elder Company, Cameron, Joyce Steam Shovel Company, Hamilton Contracting Company; president and treasurer of the Scott-Edwards Printing Company; treasurer of the Tri State Roofing Company; partner in J. Burk-Coco Cola Bottling Company; director of the Keokuk National Bank, Purity Oats Company and the Southwest Box Company; chairman of the board of directors of the Super Oil Company; member of the American General Contractors Association. At the time final arrangements were being made for the building of the Keokuk and Hamilton Dam he was a director of the Industrial Association, now known as the Chamber of Commerce, and helped in the raising of $60,000 for the betterment and advertisement of Keokuk.
    Mr. Joyce is a Roman Catholic. He is affiliated with the Knights of Columbus, the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, the Fraternal Order of Eagles, the Keokuk Country Club, The Keokuk Club, the Hancock County Automobile Club, the Rotary Club, and has been interested in a number of campaigns in behalf of the Democratic candidates.
    Mr. Joyce was married, November 26, 1885, to Ella Croughan, daughter of a retired farmer of Clark County, Missouri. Their marriage was solemnized by the Rev. Thomas O'Reilly, pastor of Saint Peter's Catholic Church of Keokuk, Iowa.
    Having often felt the disadvantage of not attending school as a boy, Mr. Joyce has generously offered to his six children the advantage of a college education. His oldest daughter, Marybel, attended Saint Mary's Notre Dame and the University of Iowa. After finishing two years of college she was married to David L. Hassett in June, 1923. They now have three children, Joyce, Sallyann and Ruth. His second daughter, Ann, received her A.B. degree from Trinity College, Washington, D.C. His son Thomas received his A.B. degree from the University of Iowa. James finished two years' work at the University and then accepted a position as manager of the Super Oil Company. James also manages the farming of about five hundred acres of farm land for his father. Mr. Joyce has carried over from his childhood a great love of the farm, and his hobby is overseeing and helping his son with the farm management. Helen and John are now attending the University of Iowa.
 

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REV. E. F. JACKSON is pastor of Saint Mary's Catholic Church of Oskaloosa.  This is one of the oldest Catholic parishes in Eastern Iowa.  It was established about 1841, and the present church is the third structure used by the parish since it was organized.  The present church is more than fifty years old, and has long been one of the prominent landmarks of Mahaska County.  The congregation is recent years has been looking forward to the erection of a new church.

Many worthy and zealous priests have served the parish and Father Jackson has brought to his work there an unusual equipment, that of a highly educated priest, and he also had a thorough secular education and before entering the priesthood he graduated from medical college.

Father Jackson was born in Pennsylvania, son of J. J. and Philomena (Pilgrim) Jackson.  The Jackson family is of old American Yankee stock, and has been in this country seven generations. Father Jackson was liberally educated, and has given twenty years of his life to the Catholic ministry.  During that time he has served as pastor in many Iowa parishes.  For a time he was connected with the cathedral at Davenport and he came to Saint Mary's at Oskaloosa in 1927 from Colfax, Iowa.  Outside of his regular duties as a parish priest he has for years been connected with child welfare work under the Catholic auspices.

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HON. BERNHARD M. JACOBSEN.  For more than half a century Bernhard M. Jacobsen, capitalist, prominent citizen, president of the Clinton Thrift Bank, has been connected with this city's substantial development, and formerly served it as postmaster.  Mr. Jacobsen was fourteen years old when he accompanied his parents to Clinton, a well-educated youth of practical upbringing, who lost no time in securing employment, first in a brickyard, then in a sawmill, and later in a mercantile establishment,  his industry and thrift winning comment and approval in every case.  Ten years later he embarked in business for himself in the mercantile line, and continued, with various changes, until 1926, when he closed out his retail business.  In the meantime he had invested in valuable business property and in 1927 organized the Clinton Thrift Company.  In this undertaking Mr. Jacobsen has had opportunity to encourage and apply on a large scale his ideas of the basic business principles of industry and frugality, guided by personal integrity, and he has the satisfaction of realizing that the Clinton Thrift Company, which he founded so well, is now ranked with the  leading financial institution of Clinton County, with enviable reputation of good-will among the great masses of the populace which it serves.  Notwithstanding his constant immersion in business he has found time to consider and assist in all important civic movements and on occasion has served honorably and efficiently in public office.  In November, 1930, he was elected to Congress and is now the representative of the Second Congressional District of Iowa in the national House of Legislation, at Washington, D. C.  Bernhard M. Jacobsen was born in Germany, March 26th, 1862, a son of Bob and Magdelena Jacobsen, who came to Clinton, Iowa, when the father was fifty-two and the mother fifty-one.  The father had been a grain miller in Germany, but lived retired from business pursuits after his arrival in this country.

After the various experiences in working for others, already mentioned, Bernhard M. Jacobsen, May 1, 1886, became a dry goods and clothing merchant, and his first business enterprise was launched under the name of Nissen & Jacobsen, and this caption was retained until he became sole proprietor and conducted it under his own name until 1914.  In that year he received from President Wilson, appointment as postmaster of Clinton, and he continued to hold that office until 1928, during which time he incorporated his business under the name of Jacobsen-Thompson Company, and this was retained until the business was dissolved in 1926.  The Clinton Thrift Company is housed in the business block 242 to 248 Fifth Avenue, South, which he purchased in 1923, and which has four stores on its main floor.  Mr. Jacobsen is president of his company, and his son, William S. Jacobsen, is secretary and manager.

On May 28, 1885, Mr. Jacobsen was married to Miss Lena Trager, of Clinton, a daughter of Sebastian and Anna (Hertz) Trager, the former of whom operated barges carrying wood, on the Mississippi River.  Both parents of Mrs. Jacobson are deceased.  The following children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Jacobsen:  William S., who is in business with his father; Alma, who married Charles L. Callender, of the Cunningham Tube Company, Indianapolis, Indiana; Alvina, who is assistant manager of the Dodge Hotel, Washington, District of Columbia, has been a resident of that city since 1918;   Marvin J., who is in the insurance business at Clinton, representing the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, and the Aetna Life Insurance Company, has several times been high man in the State of Iowa for the Northwestern Mutual; and Bernice, who is the wife of Paul W. Soenksen, operator of department stores at Harvey, Illinois, and Chicago.

Mr. Jacobsen is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason, belonging to De Molay Consistory No. 1, of Clinton, and Kaaba Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Davenport.  He also belongs to the Odd Fellows, Elks, Eagles and is a charter member of the Turner Society, to which he has belonged for forty-seven years, and is also a charter member of the Clinton Rotary Club, which his son William S. served as president in 1929.  Marvin J. Jacobsen was president of the Clinton Kiwanis in 1929 and the father is also a member of the Wapsipinicon Club.  the Lutheran Church is Mr. Jacobsen's religious home.  In political faith he is a Democrat, but his concern is with material progress and purity in politics.  His own success he claims is due to the consistent effort he has made to win the confidence of his customers and  then hold it.  Also to having gone into only those things of which he had practical knowledge.  His friends claim that it is based on his honest, direct and considerate treatment of those with whom he has business relations.

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WILLIAM C. JAEGER.  The average state capital is usually found subordination industrialism and commerce to its function as a governmental center and attractive place of residence but Iowa's fair capital city constitutes a significant exception to this rule, for it has standing as one of the important centers of manufacturing and commercial enterprise in the Hawkeye State, with no sacrifice of tis prestige as the seat of government of this commonwealth.  Among the well ordered industries that have contributed much to the precedence of Des Moines is the Jaeger Manufacturing Company, of which William C. Jaeger if the president.

Mr. Jaeger was born in Burlington, Iowa, December 25, 1865, and is a son of John and Frances (Fitter) Jaeger, both native of Germany, where they were reared and educated and where John Jaeger served an apprenticeship that made him a skilled artisan at the trade of shoemaker.  The parents came to the United States in 1840, and for a time John Jaeger followed his trade in Louisville, Kentucky.  He then gained pioneer honors in Iowa, where he was long engaged in the work of his trade in the City of Burlington, both he and his wife having there continued their residence until their death and both having passed the seventieth milestone on the journey of life.  Of their family of six sons and six daughters two of the sons and three of the daughters are living:  Mrs. Emma Flynn still resides in Burlington, where her husband is employed in the shops of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad; Mrs. Tillie Wolf resides at Davenport, this state, where her husband is an estimator for the Rock Island Sash & Door Company; William C., of this sketch, is next younger; Mrs. Lydia Myers resides in Burlington, where her husband is superintendent of boiler shops; and Carl is employed in railroad shops in his native City of Burlington.  The parents were earnest members of the Lutheran Church, and the father was a Republican in politics.

The public schools of Burlington afforded William C. Jaeger his youthful education, and he was but thirteen years of age when he began working in a furniture factory in that city.  At the age of eighteen years he came to Des Moines and found employment in the furniture factory of L. Harback.  He was thus engaged seven years, and he then became associated with others in establishing the Des Moines Cabinet Company, the factory of which occupied the present site of the City Hall.  After being connected with this company three years Mr. Jaeger formed a partnership with A. Anderson in the ownership and operation of what was known as the East Side Planing Mill.  Three years later Mr. Jaeger assumed full ownership and control of this business, which he continued in the original location until 1913, when he removed the plant to the corner of Vine and West Eighth streets, where the business has since been successfully continued under the corporate title of Jaeger Manufacturing Company.  Mr. Jaeger being president and general manager, three of his sons being now associated with him in the business and providing efficient executives and coadjutors.  This corporation now controls a substantial and well ordered business in the manufacturing of store fixtures of high grade, products being shipped into all sections of the Union and all being manufactured to order, with no attention given to manufacturing of regular stock fixtures.  Recently the company has completed important equipment contracts in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Toledo, Ohio; and Indianapolis, Indiana, and the wide ramifications of the business make it contribute definitely to the industrial and commercial prestige of Des Moines.  Mr. Jaeger has proved a reliable and thorough-going business man, and has won success entirely through his own ability and efforts. His political alignment is with the Republican party, and he and his wife are zealous communicants of the Lutheran Church, in which he is serving as a deacon.  He was for many years a member of the Board of Directors of the East Side Commercial Club.

In 1889 was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Jaeger and Miss Susanna Juon, who was born in Switzerland, and who was five years of age when the family came to the United States and established residence in Polk County, Iowa, where her father, Christian Juon, became a prosperous farmer and where both he and his wife passed the remainder of their lives.

William J., eldest of the children of Mr. and Mrs. Jaeger, was born and reared in Des Moines, as were also the younger children, and he is now an executive officer with the Jaeger Manufacturing Company; Lydia is the wife of C. A. Snyder who is manager of the Roberts Sash & Door Company in the City of Chicago; Albert and Carl are associated actively with their father and their older brother in the Jaeger Manufacturing Company; Louise is the wife of Samuel Marsh, who is general manager of an electrical company in California; and Richard, youngest of the children, is, in 1929, a student in the Capital City Commercial College of Des Moines.

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WILLIAM W. JAEGER, vice president and director of agencies of the Bankers Life Company of Des Moines, has rounded out a quarter of a century of service with that company.  He started as a local solicitor, and since then has been one of the prime factors in promoting the business and prestige of the Bankers Life Company over many states and districts of the United States.

Mr. Jaeger was born at Portage, Wisconsin, August 9, 1876, son of Ernest L. and Mary R. (Peabody) Jaeger.  His father was born in Germany, in 1830, and was fourteen years of age when brought to America.  His father was a competent physician and surgeon and had served as burgomaster of his town in Germany.  When he brought his family to the United States in a sailing vessel he spent a short time at Albany, New York, and then moved to the vicinity of Toledo, Ohio, where he spent the rest of his life practicing his profession.  Ernest L. Jaeger when a young man of twenty years, in 1850, moved west to Wisconsin.  This was then one of the youngest states and was without railroad facilities, all goods being transported inland from Iliwaukee and other lake harbors with wagons and ox teams.  For many years he conducted a general mercantile business at Portage.  He always voted as a Republican, and he and his wife were the leading factors in starting the Presbyterian Church at Portage.  He was able to retire from business at the age of sixty-five, and he died in 1915, at the age of eighty-five.  His wife, who was born at Middleburg, Vermont, died in 1904.  She was born in 1835.  They were married at Portage, Wisconsin.  Of their six children only two are now living, Chauncey P. Jaeger and William W. Chauncey P. is in the assessor's office at Madison, Wisconsin.

William W. Jaeger attended the Portage High School in Wisconsin and continued his education in the Lake Forest Academy and Lake Forest College at Lake Forest, Illinois.  He was graduated Bachelor of Science in 1898, and immediately went to work as an office employee of Swift & Company, and then for a little over a year was a traveling representative of the firm.  For about one year he had charge of the Stock Yards Market of the old Schwarzschild and Sulzberger Packing Company.  Mr. Jaeger had an experience of several years, from 1900 to 1904, in the grocery business at Deming, New Mexico.

On July 1, 1904, he did his first work as a solicitor of insurance for the Bankers Life Company at Bloomington, Illinois.  He also worked at Champaign, Illinois, and he had soon satisfied himself that he had found his permanent life work.  After a year in the field he was appointed assistant manager for some twelve counties in the heart of Illinois, and about a year later was named manager for the same territory, and later organized the agency.  The company then sent him to Topeka, Kansas, to establish and develop a general agency.  His special abilities made him invaluable to the company during its period of development as a nationwide organization, and on July 1, 1915, he was made special field representative, traveling all over the country, organizing and adjusting and building up the company's sales force.  Three years later he was made regional sales manager for the ten eastern states, and on July 1, 1922, was called to the home office at Des Moines to direct the company's sales organization as general sales manager.  In January, 1926, Mr. Jaeger was named vice president and director of agencies.  He is also a member of the board of directors of the company.

He has been called a natural born leader, has a gift for inspiring men to work with and for him, and he has contributed in enormous measure to the great volume of business secured by the Bankers Life Company during the last twenty years.  Mr. Jaeger knows life insurance, knows salesmanship, is a forceful speaker, and has sometimes been called the "Billy Sunday of Life Insurance."  He has enjoyed some of those appreciated marks of recognition from the insurance world in general, having served as vice chairman of the executive committee of the Life Insurance Sales Research Bureau, and is a member of the Association of Life Agency Officers.  He is a member of the Des Moines Club, serving that club as a member of the board of trustees, and of the Wakonda Country Club, and is a director and has been prominently identified with the Des Moines Public Welfare Bureau.  Mr. Jaeger still has his membership in the Presbyterian Church at Champaign, Illinois.  Among his minor hobbies are gardening, motoring and fishing.  While in Lake Forest College his prominence in athletics made him a Five Letter man.

Mr. Jaeger married, in 1904, Georgia May Camp, who was born at Mount Vernon, Iowa, daughter of George D. and Emma P. (Platen) Camp, her father how eighty-one and her mother seventy-nine, residents of Mount Vernon.  Her father was a carriage manufacturer and afterwards joined the group of agents of the Bankers Life Company.  Mrs. Jaeger graduated in 1897 from the University of Nebraska.  Their only child, Georgia Camp Jaeger, was born in 1905 and died in 1912.

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WILLIAM J. JAHNKE is now one of the able representatives of the newspaper fraternity in the Hawkeye State, where he is editor and publisher of the Hubbard Review, a well ordered weekly paper issued in the vital little City of Hubbard, Hardin County.  This paper proves an effective vehicle for the offering of local general news, for advancing the civic and material interests of the community and county in which it is published, and for upholding the cause of the Republican party.  The Hubbard Review was founded by J. J. Parsons, in 1881, and among others who have functioned as its publisher in past years were Thomas Doal, S. S. Boyland, Mr. Manness (now associated with the Register-Tribune in the City of Des Moines), and Paul Ratliff.  Mr. Ratliff figured as editor and publisher of the paper two years and then sold the plant and business to Mr. Jahnke, in September, 1923, the latter having since continued at the helm and having brought the Review up to the high communal standard.

Mr. Jahnke was born at New Ulm, Minnesota, April 26, 1887, and is a son of William J. and Mathilda (Castor) Jahnke, the former of whom was born in Germany and the latter in Chicago, Illinois.  In his native land William J. Jahnke received his early education and there also he served a thorough apprenticeship to the trade of cabinetmaker.  At the age of fifteen years he severed the ties that bound him to home and fatherland and set forth to seek his fortune in America.  His trade fortified him for successful achievement in the land of his adoption, and as New Ulm, Minnesota, he was actively engaged in the cabinetmaking business forty-three years - until his death, which occurred in 1915.  He gained a measure of youthful pioneer honors at New Ulm and became one of the substantial business men and honored and influential citizens of that place, where he gave thirty-three years of loyal service as a member of the board of education.  He was a Republican in politics and he and his wife, who died in 1917, were zealous communicants of the Lutheran Church, they having become the parents of nine children and four of their sons having been in active service in the World war.  Herman, who was a railroad employee, is deceased; Waldemar is engaged in the shoe business at New Ulm, Minnesota; Hilding, who resides at Long Prairie, Minnesota, and is serving as a state highway engineer, was in the navy transport service, on the troop ship Missouri, in the World war period, and made many voyages across the Atlantic.  The other two brothers who were in World war service were identified with the infantry arm of the United States army.

William T. Jahnke was graduated in the New Ulm High School and thereafter completed a course in the Lutheran College at New Ulm, in which he was graduated as a member of the class of 1905 and from which he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts.  When he was a lad of fifteen years Mr. Jahnke initiated his connection with the "art preservative of all arts" by utilizing his vacation periods in acquiring practical knowledge of printing in the office of the New Ulm Journal.  He gave four years of service as a compositor for this paper, and thereafter was similarly connected with another paper in his native city during a period of eighteen months.  He next passed seven years in the office of the Hanske Herald, another Minnesota paper, and he then came to Iowa, where for six years he functioned as editor and manager of the New Hampton Courier, at the county seat of Chickasaw County.  It was at the expiration of this interval that he purchased the plant and business of the Hubbard Review, of which he has since continued the resourceful and progressive editor and publisher.

Then, in April, 1917, the United States formally declared war on Germany Mr. Jahnke promptly proceeded to Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and entered the officers training camp.  There he received commission as first lieutenant in the infantry, and thereafter he was in service at Camp Deming, New Mexico, where he was stationed at the time the armistice brought the World war to a close, he having returned to Iowa and having here received his honorable discharge, at Fort Dodge, in December, 1918.  He still retains association with his World war comrades through his active affiliation with the American Legion, and he is a past commander of Dugout Post No. 4, in his present home city.  Mr. Jahnke is actively identified with the Iowa State Press Association, is a stalwart advocate of the principles and policies for which the Republican party stand sponsor, and he and his wife are communicants of the Lutheran Church.

At Dundee, Minnesota, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Jahnke to Miss Lydia Lidtke daughter of Frederick Lidtke, a substantial citizen of that place.  The two children of this union are Marlyse and Marilyn, aged respectively nine and four years.

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JOSEPH JAMES is manifesting in his administration as mayor of the vital little City of Oxford, Johnson County, the same loyalty and progressiveness that have marked his activities in business.  Mr. James has been a resident of this county more than forty years and no citizen has more secure place in popular confidence and esteem than the popular mayor of Oxford.

Mr. James was born at Newcastle, England, May 31, 1865, and is a son of Joseph and Annie (Young) James, who continued their residence in England until the close of their lives, the death of the former having occurred in 1884 and that of his widow in 1913, and both having been earnest communicants of the Established Church of England.  Of their six children Joseph Jr., of this review, is the one surviving son, and the three surviving daughters still remain in England - Mrs. Fannie Snowball, of Harriet; Mrs. Kittie Hewiston, of London; and Mrs. Mary Bettenstadt, of Hexhal.  The father was identified with the milling industry during his entire active career.

Joseph James, Jr., immediate subject of this sketch, attended the Eildon House School in  Melrose, Scotland, and thereafter continued his studies in Croft House School in Cumberland County, England.  He then entered historic old Cambridge University, in the law department of which he completed a partial course.  He left the university in 1882, when he was seventeen years of age, and in the following year he enlisted in the British Army, in which he received commission as second lieutenant in the Northumberland Hussars.  After two years' service with this command he was transferred to the Sixteenth Lancers, with which he did loyal service in quelling insurrection on the part of Arabs in Egypt, where he remained somewhat more than one year.  On his return to England, in 1885, he resigned from the army and became a clerk for Lohden, Jacob & Company, owners and operators of a line of steamships.  By this concern he was given assignment, in 1886, to the opening of an office in Brisbane, Australia..  In this mission his voyage brought him to the United States, and upon landing in New York City he decided to forego his journey to Australia, the great island continent, and to establish permanent residence in the United States - a decision that he has never regretted, though he retains deep affection for his native land and has made several visits thereto since establishing his residence in the United States.  Mr. James arrived at Oxford, Iowa, in 1886, and in the earlier years of his residence in Johnson County he gave his attention to farm enterprise.  Thereafter he developed a substantial and prosperous business in the handling of farm produce, his operations along this line having extended widely throughout the state, though he has continuously maintained his home and business headquarters in Oxford, where he is now a carpenter and builder by vocation.  Mr. James has been signally loyal and public-spirited as a citizen and has given many terms of service a a member of the municipal council of Oxford, further evidence of his hold upon the confidence and good will of this community having been given in March, 1928, when he was elected mayor of the city.  Mr. James is a Republican in political adherency, and reared in the faith of the Church of England, he has retained the faith during his residence in the United States, as represented by the Protestant Episcopal Church, of which both he and his wife are communicants.

On the 17th of November, 1886, the year that marked the arrival of Mr. James in Iowa, was here solemnized his marriage to Miss Florence Watson, a representative of one of the sterling families of Johnson County.  Of the children of this union the following brief record is given:  Mrs. Maude Ives resides at Rolfe, Pocahontas County; Benjamin Watson, the eldest son, is a resident of Oxford; John A. resides at State Center, Marshall County; Thomas R. is a resident of Calona, this state; and Stanley continues to reside at Oxford.

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JAMES E. JAMISON is a native of Burlington and has had many responsible connections with the business and public life of that city.

He was born in Burlington November 27, 1880, son of George S. and Ida C. (Hawkins) Jamison.  His father was born in Ireland and his mother in Indiana.  George S. Jamison came to America when a young man, and was on his way to Chicago when the great fire of 1871 occurred.  This diverted his journey to Burlington, Iowa, where he became chief night clerk in the offices of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railway.  He was one of the successful business men of Burlington and conducted an insurance agency in that city for many years.  He died October 27, 1907, and his wife in November, 1912.

James E. Jamison was educated in teh grammar and high schools of Burlington, and at the age of nineteen was messenger boy for the First National Bank.  Two years later he became an office employee of John Blaul Sons Company, wholesale grocers.  He was there four years and for two years was clerk in the Merchants National Bank.  This varied employment gave him a valuable experience for his subsequent business career.  He then took over the insurance business of his father, and has supplemented its service to keep step with the advanced progress of insurance in its application to all forms of business and industry.

Mr. Jamison married in 1922 Juanita McGuire, who was born at Kirksville, Missouri, daughter of John E. McGuire, a native of Iowa.

Mr. Jamison was a member of the Iowa General Assembly in the thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth sessions.  To fill a vacancy he served three months as commissioner of finance.  He has a World war record, having enlisted as a private in Company A of the Fifth Engineers and on July 30, 1918, sailed for France.  He was with the Engineers in the Meuse Argonne campaign and in May, 1919, returned to the United States and received his honorable discharge as a private at Camp Dodge in the same month.

Mr. Jamison is a director representing the City of Burlington in the Citizens Water Company and was a director representing the city in the McArthur Bridge over the Mississippi River until that bridge became the property of the city.  He is now one of the three jury commissioners of Des Moines County.  He is a Democrat, member of the B. P. O. Elks, Loyal Order of Moose and Ancient Order of United Workmen, and is a member of the Rotary Club.

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JOHN H. JENKS, president of the Avoca State Bank in the attractive little City of Avoca, judicial center of Pottawattamie County, has been a resident of Iowa fully half a century, has continuously maintained his home at Avoca, where he has stood exponent of loyal and progressive citizenship and constructive business activities, and he is a former representative of this county in the State Legislature.

Mr. Jenks was born on the parental home farm near Springfield, Massachusetts, September 25, 1855, and in the same year his parents moved to Illinois and established the family home in La Salle County.  Mr. Jenks is a son of Simeon L. and Sarah (Thomas) Jenks is a son of Simeon L. and Sarah (Thomas) Jenks, both likewise natives of Massachusetts and both representatives of families that were there founded in the Colonial era, the Jenks family having given patriot soldiers to the War of the Revolution.  Simeon L. Jenks became a prosperous farmer in Illinois, and there he and his wife passed the remainder of their lives.  The subject of this review is the elder of their two surviving children, and the younger, Idelet, widow of E. M. Currier, resides at Aurora, Illinois.  Simeon L. Jenks was a son of Jeremiah Jenks, who was a farmer in Massachusetts until the time of his death, the original American representatives of the Jenks family having come from their native Wales.

John H. Jenks was reared to the sturdy discipline of the old home farm in Illinois and after profiting by the advantages of the public schools of the period he was a student two years in the old Chicago University, which was the nucleus of the present great University of Chicago.  When he was twenty-two years of age he came to Iowa, in 1878, and established his residence in Avoca.  Here he was engaged in the buying and shipping of live stock during a term of years as vice president of this institution and December 16, 1901, was advanced to the presidency, the executive office of which he has since continued the incumbent.  The careful administrative policies of Mr. Jenks have been a potent influence in upbuilding the business of this bank, which is one of the substantial and influential financial institutions of this section of the state and which receives a representative support.  Mr. Jenks has made wise investment in Iowa land and is the owner of valuable farm properties in Pottawattamie County.  Mr. Jenks is a nephew of Jeremiah Jenks, who became one of the early settlers of Iowa, where he established his home at Osceola, Clarke County, and served as a pioneer county judge.

Mr. Jenks gives his political allegiance to the Republican party, and while he has no ambition for political preferment he gave characteristically loyal and effective service as representative of Pottawattamie County in the Lower House of the Iowa Legislature during the period of 1898-1900, even as he did during his several years of service as a member of the board of education of his home city.  He is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias and represented his lodge in the Iowa Grand Lodge of the order.  He attends and supports the Avoca Presbyterian Church, of which his wife is a zealous member.

At Mendota, Illinois, in the year 1881, Mr. Jenks was united in marriage to Miss Anne E. Heslet, who was born and reared in that state and who is a daughter of the late Samuel M. Heslet. Mr. Heslet was a successful teacher in the public schools of Illinois and held positions as principal of schools at Mendota, Clinton and Earlville.  He was a gallant soldier of the Union in the Civil war.  Florence M., only child of Mr. and Mrs. Jenks, is the wife of William M. Knutson, who resides in Hinsdale, Illinois, and who is Iowa field manager for the Continental Illinois Bank & Trust Company of Chicago, Illinois, besides having served as a state bank examiner for Iowa.  Mr. and Mrs. Knutson have a winsome daughter, Mary Katherine, who celebrates in 1930 her fifth birthday anniversary.

 

WALTER L. JENKINS, secretary of the Kimball Brothers Company of Council Bluffs, elevator manufacturers, has been identified with that important industry since the close of the World war, in which he saw service overseas.

Mr. Jenkins was born November 24, 1892, in Chicago, Illinois, where his parents, Lott and Virginia Daisey (Boxley) Jenkins, still reside.  His father was born in Wales, at Morristown, son of John Jenkins, who came to the United States and lived out his life here.  Lott Jenkins for many years was connected with the American Steel & Wire Company as superintendent of mills, but is now retired.  His wife as born in Spottsylvania County, Virginia, a daughter of William E. Boxley, a native of the same state.  William E. Boxley when a boy ran away from home to join the Union army, and later for number of years was engaged in the transfer business in Chicago.  After the war he went back to Virginia and became reconciled with his southern father for his act of joining the ranks of the enemy.  Lott Jenkins and wife are members of the Baptist Church and he is a Republican in politics and belongs to the Royal Arcanum.  They had a family of four children:  Edith, wife of Leland Tilton, a farmer at Ashton, Illinois; Gertrude Jane, wife of W. Lovering, who conducts an automobile accessory business in Chicago and lives on a farm at Shabbona, Illinois; Walter L.; and Dorothy Boxley, a graduate of the Crane Technical High School in Chicago now attending Chicago University.

Walter L. Jenkins attended high school at DeKalb, Illinois, was graduated in 1913 from the Northern Illinois State Normal School at DeKalb, and until the war was engaged in educational work as a manual training instructor.  He was instructor at Rupert, Idaho, until 1917.  Mr. Jenkins is a talented singer and for one year was engaged in Chautauqua work.  In 1917 he was appointed instructor in manual training at the Council Bluff's public schools, but resigned to join the Second Officers Training Camp at Fort Sheridan, and received his commission as second lieutenant of artillery in November, 1917.  He went overseas with the One Hundred Nineteenth Field Artillery, Thirty-second Division, and was in France sixteen months.  He was wounded during the great Agronne drive, and in consequence was absent from active duty for three months.  He received his honorable discharge in June, 1919, and soon afterward joined the Kimball Brothers Company at Council Bluffs and has since become secretary of the corporation.

He married in 1920 Miss Ruth Kimball, a daughter of W. H. Kimball, one of the founders of this Council Bluffs industry.  Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins have a daughter, Martha Jean, born in 1923, and a son, Walter Kimball, born in 1929.  Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins are members of the Congregational Church, but Mr. Jenkins sings in the choir of a Methodist Church at Omaha.  He is a member of the Masonic fraternity, a past exalted ruler of B. P. O.  Elks Lodge No. 531, is a member of the American Legion Post and the Rotary Club.

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WALTER P. JENSEN.  The City of Waterloo, judicial center of Blackhawk County, has long been known for the high standards maintained by the members of its bar, and one of the representative law practitioners of the city at the present time is he whose name initiates this paragraph.  Mr. Jensen, member of the firm of Mears, Jensen & Gwynne, has been here established in the practice of his profession from the time of his admission to the bar, in 1914, and his law business is one of substantial and important order - the best voucher of his technical ability and personal popularity.

Mr. Jensen was born in a pioneer log house on the farm of his father, near Rolfe, Pocahontas County, Iowa, December 1, 1880, and the date of his nativity was considerably later than that which marked the settlement of his father in that county.  He is a son of Peter Jensen, who was born in Odense, Denmark, where he was reared and educated, he having been the only representative of the immediate family to come to the United States.  Peter Jensen was a youth when he thus severed the ties that bound him to home and native land, and crossed the Atlantic Ocean to establish himself in what he believed to be a land of broader opportunities for gaining success through individual endeavor.  From New York City he continued his westward journey to McHenry County, Illinois, where he found employment at farm work.  He carefully saved his earnings, and with the same as his financial fortification he came to Pocahontas County, Iowa, and purchased a tract of wild prairie land in Des Moines Township, near Rolfe.  On this embryonic farm he erected the log house in which his son Walter P. was later born, and with ox teams he reclaimed his land to cultivation.  On the occasion of a memorable scourge of grasshoppers most of his crops were thus destroyed, and he took the twenty-eight bushels of wheat that he had saved to a mill several miles away, where it was manufactured into flour for the use of his family.  While he was absent on this mission a prairie fire destroyed all buildings on his farm except the log house, his wife having feared that the house too would burn and having taken her infant daughter to a nearby field for safety.  Mr. and Mrs. Jensen were not discouraged by these losses, and in the course of time substantial prosperity came to them as a result of their earnest efforts.  New buildings were erected on the farm and the land was placed in a high state of productiveness.  In 1902 Mr. and Mrs. Jensen retired from their farm to the nearby village of Rolfe, and there the wife died in March, 1913, at the age of sixty-eight years.  Thereafter Mr. Jensen was a member of the home circle of his son Clarence, on a farm on the opposite side of the road from his old home place, and he died in January, 1921, at the venerable age of eighty-one years.  His wife, whose maiden name was Christina Paulsen, likewise was born in Denmark, she having been a young woman when she came to the United States and her parents having passed their entire lives in Denmark.  She was the devoted helpmeet of her husband in the labors and struggles of the pioneer days in Iowa, and the names of both merit place on the records of those who did a worthy part in the civic and industrial development of this favored commonwealth.  Anna, eldest of their children, is the wife of J. H.. Pollick, of Plover, Pocahontas County; Mary s the wife of W. H. Shackelford, of San Diego, California; Clarence still resides on his farm near the old family homestead in Pocahontas County; and Walter P., of this sketch, is the youngest of the number.

Reared to the invigorating discipline of the farm, Walter P. Jensen supplemented the discipline of the little district school by a course in the Iowa State Teachers College at Cedar Falls, in which he was graduated with the degree of Master of Didactics.  He thereafter served one year as principal in the public schools at Ionia, Chickasaw County, and then followed the course of his ambition by entering the law department of the great University of Michigan.  After there continuing his studies one year he gave six years of constructive administration as county superintendent of schools in his native county, Pocahontas, and from that county he was elected, in 1913, in the Thirty-fifth General Assembly of the State Legislature, in the Lower House, of which he was made chairman of the committee on state educational institutions and a member of the important judiciary committee.  At the close of the session he returned to the law department of the University of Michigan, and in the following year he received there from his degree of Bachelor of Laws.  In the same year, 1914, he opened his office in the City of Waterloo, and here he has since continued in active general practice, with secure prestige as a resourceful trial lawyer an dwell fortified counselor.  In the year 1927 the firm of Mears, Lovejoy, Jensen & Gwynne was formed.  Mr. Lovejoy was appointed, in January, 1930, as judge of the District Court.  A sketch of Judge Lovejoy will be found on other pages of this work.  The firm now continues as Mears, Jensen and Gwynne.

Mr. Jensen is a Republican in political alignment and is significantly loyal and progressive as a citizen.  He and his wife are zealous members of Westminster Presbyterian Church in their home city, of which he has served as a trustee and in connection with which he is now a member of the board of sessions.  He has membership in the Blackhawk County Bar Association and the Iowa State Bar Association, and in 1927-28 he served as city attorney of Waterloo. In the Masonic fraternity Mr. Jensen is affiliated with Waterloo Lodge No. 105, A. F. and A. M.; Tabernacle Chapter, R. A. M.; and Ascalon Commandery, Knights Templar.  He has membership also in Blackhawk Lodge No. 72, I. O. O. F.; Helmet  Lodge, Knights of Pythias, and the local Kiwanis Club, of which he  is a past president.

June 9, 1909, recorded the marriage of Mr. Jensen to Miss Anna I. Moody, who was born at Plainfield, Bremer County, Iowa, a daughter of Clark B. and Nettie (Rogerts) Moody, her mother being of English ancestry, established in America in the Colonial days.  Representatives of the family were patriot soldiers in the War of the Revolution and thus Mrs. Moody is eligible for and affiliated with the Daughters of the American Revolution, as is also her daughter Mrs. Jensen.  Capt. J. Mr. Roberts, maternal grandfather of Mrs. Jensen, was in command of a company that gave valiant service in defense of the Union in the Civil war.

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HERBERT C. JEPSEN is a native of Nebraska, but has lived nearly all his life in Clinton County, Iowa.  The chief feature of his business career has been his capable service as cashier of the Gooselake Savings Bank.

Mr. Jepsen was born on the homestead of his parents in Cuming County, Nebraska, September 8, 1890.  His parents, Fritz and Christine (Theimen) Jepsen, were born and married in Germany and about 1882 came to the United States.  They were then young people about twenty-five years of age.  Their first location was in Clinton, Iowa.  Leaving there, they went to Nebraska and took up a homestead in Cuming County.  After about ten years they returned to Clinton County, in 1894, and his father bought a 240 acre farm.  He is now living retired in the City of Clinton.  In the family of the parents were the following children:  Herbert C., Hans, Herman, Warner, Fritz, Olga, who married Carl Wiese, of Clinton County, and Lenora.  

Herbert C Jensen had all his educational advantages in Clinton County.  After completing his schooling, when about nineteen years of age, he spent a year in the service of the I. & I. Interurban Railway at Clinton.  For fifteen months he clerked in a grocery store, and in 1914 entered the Gooslake Savings Bank, starting as a clerk, but since the first tow years of his service has held the post of cashier.

Mr. Jepsen is a good community man, and the records of the town of Gooslake show that he has filled with ability the offices of mayor, seven years as treasurer of the school board, and during the World war was in training camp at Camp Dodge for eight months.  He is now township committeeman of the Republican party and is a member of the German Lutheran Church.  Mr. Jepsen married, June 20, 1918, Miss Viola Wiese, daughter of Elizabeth (Dohse) Wiese, of Clinton County.  They have two sons, Donald and Herbert C., Jr.

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ALDIS A. JOHNSON, physician and surgeon at Council Bluffs, is a member of the Council Bluffs Clinic, and he engaged in private practice here after a number of years as a professor in the medical department of the University of Nebraska.

Doctor Johnson was born at Maysville, Mercer County, Pennsylvania, but grew up in Trumbull County, Ohio.  His parents, Austin and Cornelia (Post) Johnson, were both born in Pennsylvania.  His father died in 1925 and his mother resides in Ohio, at the age of seventy-nine.  Of their eight children five are living, one son, Frank L., Johnson, having lost his life in Turkey during the World war.  The family are members of the Christian Church and the father was a Republican and member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

Dr. Aldis Johnson grew up on an Ohio farm, was educated in public schools and completed his literary education in Ohio State University, where he was graduated Bachelor of Philosophy in 1908.  Following that he spent two years in Cornell University and two years in Western Reserve College of Medicine in Cleveland, graduating M. D. in 1912.  For two years after graduating he was resident pathologist in the Cleveland City Hospital and then came west to the University of Nebraska as instructor in the school of medicine.

Doctor Johnson in 1917 prepared for service in the World war, joining Colonel Macrea's Mobile Hospital No. 1, with which he was overseas for sixteen months.  Doctor Johnson received his honorable discharge April 16, 1919, and for two years after the war resumed his professional duties at the University of Nebraska.

In 1921 he moved to Council Bluffs and since that time has been associated with the clinic, as specialist in diagnosis and general medicine.  Doctor Johnson is a member of the Pottawattamie County, Iowa State and American Medical Associations, is a member of the Iowa State Clinical Society and the Missouri Valley Medical Society.  He is everywhere regarded as one of the most capable men in his line in Southwestern Iowa.

Doctor Johnson married, April 30, 1919, Miss Mary A. Simon.  She was reared and educated at Piqua, Ohio, and graduated in the same class as her husband from Ohio State University.  They have a son, Aldis A., born in 1923.  Doctor and Mrs. Johnson  are members of the Congregational Church.  He is a Scottish Rite Mason and a member of the B. P. O. Elks.

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ALFRED R. JOHNSON, D. D. S.  The progress made in the filed of dental science within a few years, comparatively speaking, has kept pace with that of medicine, and side by side they have continued their beneficent work to cure the ills of humanity.  Both sciences are well and ably represented at Clinton, Iowa, and one of the younger professional men whose scientific work is attracting attention is Dr. Alfred R. Johnson, dental surgeon.  Doctor Johnson's practice has seemed most acceptable to the public ever since his arrival at Clinton, and, highly educated and thoroughly qualified, he bids fair to become still better known and more widely appreciated.

Dr. Alfred R. Johnson was born at Clinton, Clinton County, Iowa, November 22, 1904, and is a son of Carl A. and Charlotte (Nelson) Johnson.  Carl A. Johnson was born near the City of Stockholm, Sweden, where he received a public school education and learned the trade of carpenter.  When about twenty years of age he immigrated to the United States and came directly to Clinton, where he secured employment at his trade, and for many years has been one of the most trusted employees of the Chicago & Northwestern Railway, being employed in the car shops.  He married Charlotte Nelson, who was born in the same locality in Sweden, and who was also about twenty years of age when she came to America, marrying Mr. Johnson at Clinton.  They are the parents of five sons and five daughters, all of whom are living:  Herbert, Alma, Violet, Bert, Paul, Mabel, Lillian, Vivian, Hartie and Alfred R.

Alfred R. Johnson attended the public schools of Clinton, being graduated from the high school as a member of the class of 1922, and in 1924 entered the State University of Iowa, graduating from the dental department of that excellent institution in June, 1929.  He had a brilliant college career and during 1927 and 1928 was president of the Psi Omega fraternity, and a member of the Students Council, and during 1928 and 1929 was president of the Association of students of Dentistry, a national organization.  On July 22, 1929, he bought the office and practice of Dr. H. P. Fischer, who retired after having practiced at Clinton, for the past thirty-seven years.  Doctor Johnson maintains modernly equipped and perfectly appointed offices at 2320 North Second street, and in addition to retaining Doctor Fischer's practice in its entirely has been successful in attracting many other patients.  He is a member of the Clinton County Dental Society, the Iowa State Dental Society and the American Dental Association.  Fraternally he is a Blue Lodge Mason, and his religious faith is that of the Swedish Lutheran Church, while politically his is a Republican, without aspirations for public life.

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ANDREW J. JOHNSON, of Clinton, represents one of the old established industries along the Mississippi River, the manufacture of pearl buttons.  From the standpoint of personal experience he is now one of the oldest men in that business in Iowa.

Mr. Johnson, who is manager of the Clinton branch of the Pioneer Pearl Button Manufacturing Company, was born in Germany, February 18, 1873.  His parents, Eilert and Mary Johnson, died when he was a child, and at the age of sixteen he and the brother accompanied an uncle to the United States.

Mr. Johnson acquired all his formal schooling in Germany and has been steadily at work ever since coming to this country and his industry and ability have brought him to a place among the honored business men of Iowa.  For the first three years he was in America he worked at Concordia, Missouri.  In 1892 he went to Muscatine, Iowa, being then about nineteen years of age.  After one year on a farm he was employed for two years with the Muscatine factory of the H. J. Heinz Company.  Then, in 1895, he started to lean the business of manufacturing pearl buttons.  His apprenticeship was served in the Muscatine branch of the Pioneer Pearl Button Manufacturing Company.  For a time he worked with Mr. Boepple, originator of the pearl button industry at Muscatine.  Mr. Johnson not only mastered the technique of his craft but early in his experience showed executive ability and enterprise to take an independent part in the industry.  In 1905 he established at Davenport the Tri-City Button Company.  He was at Davenport until 1909 and in 1910 he started the factory of the Fremont Pearl Button Company at Fremont, Wisconsin.

Mr. Johnson in 1919 returned to Iowa and at Lyons established the factory known as the Clinton branch of the Pioneer Pearl Button Manufacturing Company.  Here in 1926 he installed the new cutting machines, owned and patented by his company.  These represent a great advance in the process of manufacturing, since each machine is capable of being operated with a minimum of training and experience on the part of the operative.  At the Clinton factory only the blanks are cut and weekly shipments are made to the main factory, now located at Poughkeepsie, New York, where these blanks are finished into pearl buttons.

Mr. Johnson married, October 5, 1897, Miss Ida Sell, of Muscatine, daughter of Fred and Lena Sell, farmers.  To the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Johnson were born six children, Louis, Arthur, Lillian, Elmer, who is deceased, Ernest and Pearl.  Mr. Johnson is a popular member of business circles in Clinton, belonging to the Chamber of Commerce, is a member of the Modern Woodmen of America and the Baptist Church.

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DAVID NICHOL JOHNSON, county attorney of Louisa County, has been an able lawyer of this section of Iowa for over a quarter of a century.  His success as a lawyer has been the accompaniment of a fine mind and character, and at all times he has been faithful to the discharge of his duties and obligations as a citizen.

Mr. Johnson was born in Clearcreek Township, Keokuk County, Iowa, May 12, 1877.  His father, William Johnson, was born in Richland County, Ohio, and was a child when the family moved to Iowa in 1854, being early settlers in Keokuk County.  William Johnson was a brave soldier of the Union during the Civil war, being a captain of a company in the Thirteenth Iowa Infantry.  He was wounded at the battle of Shiloh, but remained with the colors until the end of the war.  After the war he was a farmer and merchant, and died in 1922, at an advanced age.  He married Helen Marquis, of Keokuk County, Iowa, who died in 1881.  Of their five children the two now living are David N. and Mrs. Eva Keifhaber of Manitoba, Canada.

David Nichol Johnson was reared on a farm in Keokuk County, attended public schools there until 1897, and in the meantime had helped his father and also hired out as a farm hand.  For two years he taught school in Keokuk County, and teaching paid part of his expenses while in the University of Iowa, where he took the law course and graduated June 12, 1901.  After graduating he taught two years in Keokuk and Washington counties and in 1903 formally launched himself in the practice of law at Columbus Junction, during the first year having an associate Fred M. Molesberry.  He then practiced alone, and remained at Columbus Junction for seventeen years.  While there he served about ten years as justice of the peace and was secretary of the school board for five years.  He was also secretary of the local fair association two years.

Mr. Johnson was elected for his first term as county attorney in 1920, and at that time he moved his home from Columbus Junction to Wapello.  He has also served as city recorder of Wapello.  In 1926 he was again elected county attorney and in 1928 reelected, and gives most of his time to the work of his office.  He is a member of the Sons of Veterans, the Knights of Pythias, the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Mr. Johnson married, September 6, 1899, Miss Mamie Goeldmer, of Clearcreek Township, Keokuk County.  She died December 14, 1917, the mother of three children:  Everett G., of Chicago; Mrs. Alice Stegal, of Muscatine; and Miss Evelyn.  The son Everett is an accomplished musician, and organized a well known orchestra, called the Chicago Cadet Band.

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EMMONS JOHNSON.  It was nearly seventy years ago that Emmons Johnson, a young man of sterling character and exceptional talent, came to Iowa and established his residence in the little frontier village that was the nucleus of the present City of Waterloo, the vital metropolis and county seat of Blackhawk County, and it was in this city that his death occurred after he had attained to the patriarchal age of ninety-two years, his mental and physical powers having been remarkably vital and commanding up to the close of his long and useful life.

Mr. Johnson did much to advance the civic and industrial development and progress of Iowa and long had special prominence and influence in connection with banking enterprise in this state, his splendid character and powers having well equipped him for leadership.  He was one of the most venerable and highly honored pioneer citizens of Iowa at the time of his death.

Emmons Johnson was born in Ellicottville, Cattaeraugus County, New York, January 23, 1835, and his death occurred April 5, 1927.  He was a son of Dr. Elisha, who was born November 8, 1793, and Herma (Jewett) Johnson.  His paternal grandfather, Noel Johnson, was born October 12, 1765, in Rhode Island, and was one of the earliest settlers in Cattaraugus County, New York, where he passed the remainder of his life.  His wife was Mary Weaver, who was born June 17, 1770.  Dr. Elisha Johnson was reared and educated in the old Empire State and became one of the influential physicians of his day and generation in Cattaraugus County, where he was long and successfully engaged in the practice of his profession and where he passed the closing years of his life in the village of Otto.  His wife, Herma Jewett, was a daughter of Salmon and Ellen (Cole) Jewett and a granddaughter of Caleb and Hannah (Curtis) Jewett.  Caleb Jewett was born January 16, 1741, and died, in Litchfield, Connecticut, February 8, 1820, he having served as a patriot soldier in the War of the Revolution, in Colonel Burot's regiment of the Continental Army.  His son Salmon was born October 27, 1770, and was venerable in age at the time of his death.

The earlier education of Emmons Johnson was obtained in the village schools of Otto, New York, and thereafter he continued his studies in academies at Springville and Fredonia, that state, besides which he was a student for a time in Brown University, having in the meanwhile taught in rural schools and by this means provided for the advancement of his own education, his final course of study having been historic old Amherst College.

Mr. Johnson was twenty-five years of age when, in 1860, he made his way to Iowa, with Waterloo as his destination.  He proceeded to the terminus of the railroad and thence came by stage to Waterloo, which was then a mere frontier village of a few hundred population, the greater part of the site of the present modern city having at that time still been Government land, and such land having been for sale at the rate of $1.25 an acre.  For a  time Mr. Johnson was employed on a pioneer farm near Waterloo, and he next engaged in the grain business, he having in this line later transferred his headquarters to Independence, Buchanan County, and having erected the first grain elevator at that place.  Upon his return to Waterloo he became one of the principals in the Leavitt & Johnson Bank a private institution, and later established the Johnson & Leavitt Bank at Waverly, Bremer County.  It was in the year 1866 or 1867 that Mr. Johnson thus removed to Waverly and established the first bank in Bremer County and built the first substantial brick residence in Waverly.  He there remained until 1871 and in the meantime served as a member of the State Senate.  In 1871 he sold his interest in the bank at Waverly and resumed his association with banking enterprise in Waterloo, as a member of the firm of Leavitt, Johnson & Lusch.  A few years later Mr. Lusch sold his interest to his interest to his associates, and the latter continued their bank as a private institution until 1898, when it was reorganized and chartered as the Leavitt & Johnson National Bank.  In October, 1891, was organized the Leavitt & Johnson Trust Company, and in 1900 Mr. Johnson purchased Mr. Leavitt's interest in this institution, of which he continued chairman of the board of directors until he was nearly ninety years of age, he having been also the organizer of the Waterloo Savings Bank.

The name of Mr. Johnson ever stood for all that was careful conservative and reliable in banking operations, and his policies and his personal integrity commanded to him uniform popular confidence and esteem.  He was a man of thought and action, and he made his life count worthily in its every relation.  His political allegiance was given to the Republican party ad he was signally liberal and public-spirited as a citizen.  His religious faith was that of the Congregational Church, of which both he and his wife were charter members and he was also a member of the Chicago Board of Trade in 1876-1877, living in Evanston.

Mrs. Johnson, whose maiden name was Lucy Leland, was born at Morrisville, Madison County, New York, a daughter of Uriah and Maria (Chamberlain) Leland and a granddaughter of Joshua Leland, who was born at Sherburn, Massachusetts, his great-grandfather, Henry Leland, having been among the first settlers in that locality and records show that, as owner of the site, of eighty acres, Henry Leland laid out the town of Sherburn in 1654, much of the land that he owned in that district being still held by his descendants.  Joshua Leland became one of the pioneer settlers in Madison County, New York, and his son Uriah was the first white child born in that county.  The Leland family has been one of prominence in America, as one generation has followed another, and there has been published a comprehensive genealogical history of the family.  Mrs. Lucy (Leland) Johnson long preceded her husband to the life eternal, her death having occurred February 22, 1892, when she was fifty-eight years of age.  The children of Mr. and Mrs. Emmons Johnson were five in number:  Elbert Leland, Lewis E., Marian Louise, Walter Emmons and Alice Lucy.  The daughter Marion Louise, to whom the publishers are indebted for the data for this memoir of her honored father, is the widow of James D. Easton, to whom a tribute is given in the following sketch, and she still resides in Waterloo.  The younger daughter, Alice Lucy, is the wife of David H. McKee, of Waterloo.

In March, 1895, Emmons Johnson married the widow of James Kellogg, of Rochester, New York, who was Ella Harriet Clark, a native of New York State.  She lived in Waterloo for thirty-two years, dying December 26, 1928.  No children were born to this union of marriage.

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GEORGE M. JOHNSON, M. D.  For more than two decades Dr. George M. Johnson has been engaged in the general practice of medicine and surgery at Marshalltown, where through a display of talent, natural and acquired ability, sincerity and a pleasing personality, he has inspired confidence and built up a large and lucrative practice.  His experience has been broad and comprehensive, and both as a professional man and a citizen he is accounted one of the valuable members of Marshalltown's population.

Doctor Johnson was born at Clinton, Connecticut, October 10, 1875, and is a son of Dr. George O. Johnson.  His father, who is now deceased, was born in La Grange, Ohio, where he was well educated for the profession of medicine, and for some years was engaged in practice at Clinton, Connecticut.  He came to Iowa in an early day, engaged in practice at Wyoming in Jones County, Iowa, where his work was largely of a country practice character, but finally he settled at Maquoketa, Jackson County, Iowa, where he continued to make his professional headquarters for over a third of a century.  During his long residence in Iowa he was well and favorably known in his calling and was a member of the Jackson County Medical Society, the Iowa State Medical Society and the American Medical Association.  In his later years he removed to the Oklahoma Territory and engaged in practice there.  At the time Oklahoma was admitted as a state to the union he was elected a member of the first State Legislature as senator from Caddo County.  He passed away at Guthrie, Oklahoma, while serving his second term as senator in the Stare Legislature.  Gurthrie at that time being the capital of the state.  His wife, who was born in New York State, was taken by her parents to Geneseo, Illinois, at an early date, and was there reared, educated in the public schools and married.

After attending the grade and high schools at Maquoketa, Iowa, Dr. George M. Johnson entered the Iowa State University in 1893 and took two years of academic work and two years of premedical work.  In 1897 he entered the famous Rush Medical College, Chicago, where he pursued a medical course of two years and was graduated with the degree of Doctor of Medicine.  He immediately commenced the practice of his profession at Maquoketa, where he remained until 1908, in which year he settled permanently at Marshalltown, where he has wince remained and now maintains commodious, well-equipped and well-appointed offices in the Masonic Temple.  Doctor Johnson occupies a high place in his profession and is equally proficient in all its departments, therefore having taken up no specialty.  He has the esteem of his fellow practitioners for the manner in which he observes the ethics and amenities of the calling, and is a member of the Marshall County Medical Society, the Iowa State Medical Society and the American Medical Association.  At the outbreak of the Spanish-American war he was made first lieutenant of Company M. Forty-ninth Regiment, Iowa National Guard, and in 1898 went to Cuba, subsequently being honorably discharged and mustered out of the service in May, 1899.  In 1905 he was commissioned a captain in the Iowa National Guard, but resigned in 1908, because of the pressure of his professional duties.  When the United States was drawn into the World war Doctor Johnson immediately enlisted in the Medical Corps, and in July, 1917, received the commission of captain.  He was serving at Fort Riley, Kansas, when he developed a severe case of ulcer of the stomach, and was sent to Chicago, where he was confined in a hospital for four months.  When discharged therefore he was declared unfit for further duty and received his honorable discharge December 24, 1917.  Doctor Johnson is a member of the Congregational Church, and with other active members of the Chamber of Commerce is active in civic work.  He belongs also to the Lions Club and for twenty years has been a member of the official board of the Young Men's Christian Association of Marshalltown.

At River Forest, Illinois, Doctor Johnson was united in marriage with Miss Marjorie A. Millikin, whose father was one of the pioneer Congregational ministers of Iowa, and whose brother is Robert A Millikin, former noted scientist of the University of Chicago, who is now identified with the faculty of the California Institute of Technology.  Three children have been born to Doctor and Mrs. Johnson:  Harriet M., born in 1904, at Maquoketa, Iowa, who was an art teacher in the Des Moines public schools for two years.  She married Charles A. Mosher, and resides at Aurora, Illinois.  Marjorie N., born in March, 1908, is attending Ames College.  Janet G., born January 15, 1915, is attending public school at Marshalltown.  Doctor Johnson is now serving his third term as a member and third year as president of the Marshalltown school board, and is a great friend of education.

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HARRY S. JOHNSON, former clerk of the District Court of Linn County, is a member of the Cedar Rapids bar, where he has practiced since 1913.  Mr. Johnson is a World war veteran and one of the men of his generation who have become prominent in the professional and civic life of the state.

He was born on a farm near Dixon, Illinois, August 17, 1888, and was five years of age when his parents moved to Iowa.  He spent his boyhood at Clear Lake, graduating from high school there in 1908, and after that for one year attended the Memorial Military Academy at Mason City.  Mr. Johnson as a boy learned to depend on his own efforts and he worked his way through college.  He is well  known in baseball circles, and while in school he played professional baseball during the summer vacations.  For two years he was with the Columbus team in the Nebraska Stare League.  Mr. Johnson graduated LL. B. from Drake University in 1913 and is a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity of that university.

When he began practice at Cedar Rapids, in 1913, he was member of the firm Peck & Johnson, and during 1915-16 of the firm Crosby, Fordyce & Johnson.

He left his law work to join the colors May 1, 1917, entering as a private, and when honorably discharged, February 8, 1919, was first lieutenant in the One Hundred Twenty-sixth Field Artillery, Thirty-fourth Division.  After his military service he resumed practice at Cedar Rapids as member of the firm Fordyce & Johnson.

Mr. Johnson was elected and served three terms as clerk of the District Court.  He was in that office from January, 1921, to December 31, 1927.  While clerk he reorganized the filing system and put his office on a thorough efficiency basis, so that he is credited with having handled more business at less cost than any previous clerk in the county.  Since 1928 Mr. Johnson has carried on a general civil law practice, with offices in the Higley Building.

He still keeps up his interest in baseball and since 1926 has been president of the Cedar Rapids Baseball Club.  He is a member of the Linn County, Iowa State and American Bar Associations, the American Legion, is a trustee of the B. P. O. Elks, is a thirty-second degree Scottish Rite Mason, member of El Kahir Temple of the Mystic Shrine, and the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

Mr. Johnson married at Des Moines in December, 1920, Florence Wagner.  She is a graduate of Drake University and Northwestern University and was a teacher until her marriage.  They have one son, Lawrence Hanford Johnson.

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IRVING C. JOHNSON was born and reared in the City of Oskaloosa and now has standing as one of the representative members of its bar.  In choosing his field of professional endeavor Mr. Johnson emulated the example of his honored father, the late Judge J. Kelly Johnson, who was long a leading lawyer in this city and who served with distinction on the bench of the District Court.  The subject of this review is known for the amplitude and exactness of knowledge of law and precedents and for the efficiency of his service as counselor, besides which he had made a record of success as a resourceful trial lawyer.  He is retained as attorney for the Johnson Abstract Company and other corporations, and his law business is one of substantial and representative order.  He has been engaged in the practice of his profession in Oskaloosa more than thirty years, and has continuously maintained his office in the building at 121 High Avenue, East.  He is a popular and influential member of the Mahaska County Bar Association and the Iowa State Bar Association, besides having membership in the American Bar Association.  He has been content to give undivided allegiance to his profession and thus has had no desire for political office, though he is a staunch advocate and supporter of the cause of the Republican party.

Mr. Johnson was born in Oskaloosa, judicial center and metropolis of Mahaska County, on the 1st of June, 1872, and is a son of Judge J. Kelly Johnson and Ann E. (Gruwell) Johnson, the former of whom was born in Greene County, Ohio, August 22, 1841, and the latter of whom was born in Columbiana County, that state, she being a daughter of Dr. J. P. Gruwell, who was likewise a native of Ohio and who was long in active practice as a physician and surgeon, he having been of English and French lineage and his wife having been a birthright member of the Society of Friends.

Judge J. Kelly Johnson was a son of Abijah and Elizbeth (Bailey) Johnson, the former of whom was born in Warren County, Ohio, a representative of one of the sterling pioneer families of that section of the Buckeye State, and the latter of whom was born in Virginia, whence she accompanied her parents to Ohio.  Abijah Johnson gained success both as a farmer and a merchant.  In 1854 he moved with his family from Ohio to Crawfordsville, Indiana, and there he continued to the mercantile business until 1865, when removal was made to Oskaloosa, Iowa.  He continued as one of the honored pioneer citizens of this community until 1881, when his impaired health led him to remove to California, where his death occurred in the following year, his wife having died in that state likewise.  They became the parents of eight children:  Sylvia B., J. Kelly, Micajah D., Rebecca O., Overton A., Warren C., A. Henry, and Anna.  Of the number Warren C. is the only survivor.

Judge J. Kelly Johnson was in his thirteenth year at the time of the family removal to Crawforsville, Indiana, and in that state he received the advantages of Wabash College and Battle Ground Institute.  Thereafter he was a student in the law department of the University of Michigan during one session, and in 1865, when twenty-four years of age, he came with his parents to Oskaloosa, Iowa.  Here he became a student in the law office of J. R. Bancroft, and subsequently h attended a law school in the City of Des Moines.  He was admitted to the Iowa bar in 1867, and he then engaged in the practice of his profession at Eddyville, Mahaska County, where he formed a law partnership with Henry C. Clements, a personal friend who had been a fellow student in the law school of the University of Michigan.  Judge Johnson was chosen city attorney of Eddyville, and this office he retained until 1868, when he found a broader field of professional endeavor by engaging in practice in Oskaloosa.  Here he formed a partnership with George W. Lafferty, and their professional alliance continued until his election to the bench of the District Court in 1883.  In 1869 Judge Johnson had been appointed city attorney of Oskaloosa, and by subsequent election he retained this office six years.  He represented Mahaska County in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth General Assemblies of the State Legislature, and in the latter was chairman of the house committee on constitutional amendments.  In 1882 he was elected to the bench of the District Court of the Sixth Judicial District, and in the election of 1886 he had no competing candidate.  He was again elected in 1890, and was thus serving his third consecutive term at the time of his death, November 12, 1894.  Judge Johnson was a man of dignity, urbanity and unfailing courtesy, his legal learning was broad, and his rulings on the bench were signally fair and impartial, while he ever strove to temper justice with mercy, as he knew well the springs of human thought and motive and was kindly and tolerant in his judgment of humanity.  His political allegiance was given to the Republican party, and he and his wife were earnest members of the Friend's Church, their marriage having been solemnized April 27, 1871.  Mrs. Johnson survived her husband more than thirty years and her death occurred in Los Angeles, California, March 7, 1928, when she was in her eighty-seventh year.  Judge Johnson was but fifty-three years of age at the time of his death.  Of the seven children two died in infancy, and of the five surviving the eldest is Irving C., of this review:  Mrs. Elizabeth J. Esgen resides in Los Angeles, California; Carl remains in Oskaloosa; Alice is the wife of John C. Bradbury, and they reside in Oskaloosa; and Emily is the wife of J. E. Duffy, of Redondo Beach, California.

Erving C. Johnson was graduated from the Oskaloosa High School as a member of the class of 1888, and in the fall of the same year he here entered Penn College, in which institution he was graduated in 1892 and from which he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts.  In the following year, after completing effective post-graduate work in Haverford College, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he received from that institution the degree of Master of Arts.  Upon his return to Oskaloosa he began the study of law under the preceptorship of his father and later continued his studies in the office of Seevers & Seevers, one of the leading law firms of the city at that time.  In May, 1895, he passed a successful examination in Des Moines and was duly admitted to the bar of his native state.  He has since been engaged in the independent or individual practice of his profession in Oskaloosa, and is now one of the veteran and honored members of the bar of his native county.   He gave six years of service as referee in bankruptcy for the southern district of Iowa, and retired from this office in 1908.  He has been for thirty years a trustee of his academic alma mater, Penn College, is secretary and a director of the Hawkeye Lumber Company of Oskaloosa, is a director of the Willapa Lumber Company in the State of Washington, is a director of the Mahaska County State Bank, and is a former president of the Rotary Club of his home city.  He and his wife are active members of the First Presbyterian Church of Oskaloosa.

October 19, 1899, marked the marriage of Mr. Johnson and Miss Mary Hortense Burnside, daughter of William and Hannah (Henderson) Burnside, who gained pioneer honors in Iowa, Mr. Burnside having been born in Guernsey County, Ohio, June 4, 1842, a son of James and Mary (Wilkin) Burnside, representatives of sterling pioneer families of the Buckeye State, and Mrs. Mary (Wilkin) Burnside having been of Scotch-Irish ancestry.

William Burnside was a youth when he accompanied his parents to Iowa, and at the age of twenty years he here enlisted for service as a soldier of the Union in the Civil war.  He became a member of Company A, Twenty-fifth Iowa Volunteer Infantry, August 20, 1862, and with this command he served until January 23, 1864, when he was transferred to the Fifty-first United States Infantry.  He continued in service some time after victory had crowned the Union arms and was mustered out at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, June 16, 1866, with the rank of first lieutenant.  Mr. Burnside lived up  to the full tension of conflict at the front and took part in many engagements, including the siege and capture of Vicksburg.  After receiving his honorable discharge he returned to Iowa, where he advanced his education along varied lines, including his study of law and the taking of a virtual commercial course.  In 1868 Mr. Burnside engaged in the real estate and abstract business in Oskaloosa, and finally he purchased the lumber business which eventually became the first unit of the present Hawkeye Lumber Company, which was incorporated in 1901 and of which Mr. Burnside continued the president until his death March 12, 1911, this being one of the leading lumber concerns of Iowa, with headquarters in Oskaloosa and with numerous branches.  Mrs. Burnside survived her husband and died in Oskaloosa, January 6, 1925.  Their marriage occurred on Christmas day of the year 1868, and all of their seven children survived the honored father:  Ralph H. is a resident of Portland, Oregon; Charles H. resides in New York City; Mary H. is the wife of Mr. Johnson of this review; Margaret H. is the widow of Ralph Hinshaw, of Oskaloosa; Miss Elizabeth H. likewise resides in this city; John H. is a resident of Denver, Colorado; Alice H. is the wife of Howard Hockett, of Whittier, California.

Mr. and Mrs. Johnson have two children.  J. Kelly, named in honor of his paternal grandfather, was graduated as an electrical engineer from Columbia University, New York City, where he remains as an instructor in electrical engineering.  Miss Hannah Grouvelle Johnson was graduated from the Oskaloosa High School, thereafter continued her studies tow years in Penn College, then completed a course in the University of Chicago, in which she was graduated, and later graduated from Columbia University upon completing a library course.  She is now an efficient and popular member of the executive staff of the  Frick Art Reference Library in New York City.

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JACOB JOHNSON is one of the best known citizens of Denison, where he has had his home for a quarter of a century.  He spent a number of years in educational work, and is now city clerk of Denison.

Mr. Johnson was born in Denmark, January 31, 1883, and was about a year old when his parents, A. P. and Marie (Anderson) Johnson, came to America and settled on a farm in Grundy County, Iowa.  His parents lived out their lives in that rural community, where his father died at the age of seventy-two and his mother at seventy-three.

Jacob Johnson, who has never married, was educated in district schools and in 1905 graduated from the State Teacher College of Cedar Falls with the Master of Didactics degree.  In the fall of the same year he began teaching at Denison, and was a school man there for twelve years, and for one year was superintendent of schools at Dow City in Crawford County.

At the time of the World war Mr. Johnson joined the colors and was in training with the Coast Artillery Corps, being stationed at Fort Scott for seven months. After his return to Denison he was deputy sheriff of Crawford County for a year and in 1920 was appointed city clerk and has given a faithful and capable service in that position for ten years.  Mr. Johnson is affiliated with the Blue Lodge and Royal Arch Chapter of the Masonic fraternity and is a member of Denison Post No. 8 of the American Legion. 

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RAYMOND E. JOHNSON is measuring up to the full responsibilities involved in directing the fiscal affairs of his native state, and is giving a most efficient and popular administration as state treasurer of Iowa.

Mr. Johnson was born at Wilton Junction, Muscatine County, Iowa, on the 26th of March, 1886, and is a scion of the third generation of families that were founded in the Hawkeye State in the pioneer period of its history, as is evident when it is noted that his father, Silas L. Johnson, was born in Cedar County, and his mother, Nellie (Bell) Johnson, in Scott County.  Silas L. Johnson is the earlier stage of his active career was engaged in the cattle business at Wilton Junction, and thereafter he served fully twenty years as cashier of the American Savings Bank at Muscatine, in which city both he and his wife continued to reside until their death.  Of their five children Raymond E., of this review, is the eldest of the three surviving; Bessie L. is the wife of Robert R. Vernon, who is now a member of the faculty of the college conducted by the Y. M. C. A. in the City of Chicago, he having been graduated from Morningside College at Sioux City, Iowa; Mildred is the wife of Frederick Wollett, a traveling salesman, and they reside in the City of Peoria, Illinois.  The late Silas L. Johnson was a Republican in political alignment, and he was county treasurer of Muscatine County during the period of 1894-1900.  He was affiliated with the Masonic fraternity, and both he and his wife were earnest members of the Methodist Episcopal Church.  His father, Paul W. Johnson, was born and reared in Ohio, and became one of the substantial pioneer farmers of Cedar County, Iowa.  paul W. Johnson was a son of William Griffith Johnson, who likewise was born in Ohio, and who was a representative of one of the early pioneer families of that commonwealth.  The family name of his wife was Drake, and their marriage was solemnized in 1779.  Thomas Bell, maternal grandfather of the present state treasurer of Iowa, was born in the State of New York, came to Iowa in the '50s, and here reclaimed and developed one of the productive farm estates of Scott County.

In the Muscatine public schools Raymond E. Johnson continued his studies until the had duly profited by the advantages of the high school.  In 1908 he was appointed deputy treasurer of Muscatine County, and in 1910 he was made county treasurer, an office he retained until 1920, he having served five consecutive terms and his resignation having occurred when he accepted the office of secretary of the state executive council of Iowa, a position he retained from February 1, 1920, until January 1, 1925, when he resigned to assume his present office of state treasurer, in which he is now serving his third term and he has been re-nominated for reelection in the autumn of 1930.  Virtually the entire active career of Mr. Johnson has been one of close association with fiscal affairs, and his record has been one of loyalty, efficiency and consecutive advancement, showing that he has well merited the popular confidence that has retained him in executive service of this order.  Incidentally he has been active in political affairs in his native state during a period of somewhat more than twenty years.  He has been influential in the councils and campaign work of the Republican party of Iowa, he and his wife are active members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and in the Masonic fraternity he is affiliated with both York and Scottish Rite bodies, as well as the Mystic Shrine.  He is a past eminent commander of DeMolay Commandery No. 1 of Knights Templar at Muscatine, this being one of the oldest Commanderies in the state, and he is affiliated also with the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and the Improved Order of Red Men.

May 22, 1907, recorded the marriage of Mr. Johnson and Miss Edna I. Ryan, of Grandview, Louisa County, she being a daughter of Charles H. and Nettie (Lockwood) Ryan, who now reside at Muscatine, where the father is living retired, he having been born in Pennsylvania and having long been a resident of Iowa.  Mr. and Mrs. Johnson have two children:  Charles S. is twenty-one years of age and is assistant state bank examiner, and Janet, seventeen years of age, is a student in the Des Moines High School.

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ROBERT N. JOHNSON.  In the profession of law at Fort Madison, Iowa, the firm of Johnson & Martin is recognized as one of major importance, its senior member, Robert N. Johnson, being one of the experienced and sound attorneys of Lee County, with not only personal clients but for years representing banks trusts, estates and corporations as legal advisor.  Mr. Johnson has also been active in local politics in Lee County, and to a large extent has been a moving force in much of the substantial development at Fort Madison during the past quarter of a century.  This is his native city and here his interests are settled, family, profession, property and social connections.  He is a member of the Chamber of Commerce, is a past president of the Rotary Club, and for twenty years has served as attorney for the school ward.

Robert N. Johnson was born at Fort Madison April 6, 1875, a son of Nelson Johnson, a native of Ohio, born near Norfolk, that state.  Although his educational opportunities were meager, being limited to the common schools, he carried on his own studies into the higher branches and became so well educated through his own efforts that he was able to become a school-teacher of some note.  After he came to Iowa he taught school at Newton, and later served as superintendent of schools at both West Point and Fort Madison, and some of the sons of Iowa who later rose to distinguished positions in this state, as well as in other ones, were among his pupils.    In 1877 he organized the Johnson English Training School, and operated it until 1912, five years prior to his death in 1917.  He married Miss Nancy Jane Porter, of Kentucky, who survived her husband until 1925, when she, too, passed away.  They had two children:  Robert N., who is the younger; and Mrs. Sarah Johnson Casey, of Fort Madison.  During the many years Nelson Johnson resided at Fort Madison he was held in high respect by his fellow citizens, and many of the early cultural efforts that were put forth by the people were either inaugurated by him or received his effective support.

After attending the common schools of Fort Madison Robert N. Johnson entered his father's training school, and completed its course in 1893.  For one term thereafter he taught school, but his father's profession did not appeal to him, and he therefore entered the law office of J. D. Hamilton as a stenographer, and remained with him until 1895, during which time he acquired the rudiments of the legal profession, and continued his law studies in the law college of the University of Michigan, which he entered in 1895.  In 1898 he was graduated from that great institution of learning at Ann Arbor, with the degree of Bachelor of Laws, and returning to Fort Madison, established himself in practice.  It was not long before he began to attract attention because of his ability, and in 1905 he was appointed deputy county attorney, and served in that capacity for four years, during that time handling some important litigation, but in 1910 he returned to private practice.  However, when there arose a need for his services in 1920, he once more accepted appointment as deputy county attorney, and served for six years.  With the formation of his present partnership, in 1923, with C. C. Martin, the onerous requirements of his practice necessitated his relinquishment of public duties, and he is now devoting himself to the work of the firm.  During the World war, as might have been expected from the character of the man, Mr. Johnson was very active in all local war work, and was particularly useful as a four-minute speaker, his earnest sincerity and logical deductions bringing forth hearty responses wherever he addressed meetings held to raise money for patriotic purposes.  From the time he cast his first vote he has been a warm supporter of the Republican party and its principles and candidates.

On January 3, 1900, Mr. Johnson was married to Miss Mabel Josephine Morrison, of Fort Madison, Iowa, and they have five children, namely:  Margaret Mary, who is a Sister in the Convent of Saint Joseph, Ottumwa, Iowa; Sara Marie, who resides at Fort Madison; Robert N., Junior, who after completing the law course at the University of Iowa is now employed as a lawyer in the United States Department of Justice; Virginia and Mary, both of whom are residents of Fort Madison.

During the twenty years that Mr. Johnson was connected with the school board as its attorney he spared no effort to advance the cause of education, and he has always favored increasing the school facilities and improving them that there may be no one denied the advantages of a good education.  To those who are ambitious to succeed in life he advises them to make up their mind definitely and conclusively as to what line they desire to work along, then to fight it out, good or bad, until the obstacles are overcome.  He is known as a man of high character and one who lives up to his promises, whether they are made personally or professionally, is full of enterprise and energy, and never relinquishes his effort until success has been attained.

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VERNON JOHNSON.  Aside from any distinction which may attach to him as a member of one of the pioneer families of Fremont County, Vernon Johnson, of Sidney, has gained prominence as one of the leading members of the legal profession of the county, and at various times has been the incumbent of official positions in which he has shown marked executive capacity, being at present president of the school board of Sidney.  He is a man of broad views and practical principles, which combine to make him a valuable and constructive citizen.

Mr. Johnson was born on the old home farm in Fremont County, June 2, 1881, and is a son of L. L. and Viola Jane (Carr) Johnson.  His paternal grandfather was John Nelson Johnson, who was born in North Carolina, where he was reared and educated, and in young manhood took up a homestead in Fremont County, where he passed the remainder of his life, dying in 1866.  Mr. Johnson was a man of great industry and accumulated some 1,500 acres of land, which, in those early days, was taxed at only twelve dollars.  L. L. Johnson was born in the same house in which his son was later to be born, in 1859, and passed all of his active career as an agriculturist in Fremont County, although he is now retired and living at Minneapolis, Minnesota.  He has always been active in the Presbyterian Church.  A Republican in his political views, he had the full confidence of his fellow citizens and for seventeen years served in the capacity of township assessor.  Mr. johnson married Viola Jane Carr, who was born at Wayne, Indiana, a daughter of John Carr who was born in Virginia, and went thence to Indiana, following which he came to Iowa about 1866 and spent the rest of his life in farming in Fremont County.  Mrs. Johnson also survives, and she and her husband are th parents of six children:  Vernon, of this review; Dr. W. C., who is engaged in the practice of surgery at Los Angeles, California; Dr. C. O., a veterinary surgeon of Silver City, Iowa; Hon. Clyde C., a prominent member of the  bench and bar of Columbia Heights, Minnesota; Dell, who is connected with the Iowa State Highway Commission; and James W., of Ames, Iowa, one of the chief engineers of the department of materials and tests.

The early education of Vernon Johnson was acquired in the country schools of Fremont County, following which he took a course in the high school at Thurman, and following his graduation was principal of the public schools of Hastings, Iowa.  After three years he entered the law department of the Iowa State University from which he was graduated in 1913, and in 1914 commenced practice at Sidney.  In the same year he was elected county attorney, and held that office from 1915 for six years, at the end of which time he resumed private practice, in which he continued to be engaged with constantly growing success.  Mr. Johnson is recognized as  a reliable and capable lawyer, who has a high standing in his profession, and is a member of the Fremont County Bar Association, the Iowa State Bar Association and the American Bar Association.  In addition to his extensive practice he has a number of other interests and is a member of the board of directors of the Fremont County Savings Bank of Sidney.  His religious connection is with the Presbyterian Church, of which he has been a trustee for several years.  Fraternally Mr. Johnson is a York Rite Mason and Shriner and a member of the Knights of Pythias.  A Republican in his political allegiance, he has long been active in his party, and was a member of the central committee thereof in 1920.  At present he is serving capably as president of the school board of Sidney, and during the World war was food administrator for Fremont County, and active in all the drives.

In June, 1907, Mr. Johnson was united in marriage with Miss Margaret M. Hixson, who was born and educated at Memphis, Missouri, and is a daughter of L. W. Hixson, who spent his life in agricultural pursuits in Missouri.  They have no children.

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ALLEN JOHNSTON, who came to Iowa in 1855, was one of the great men of his generation, inventor, manufacturer, creator of business industry, and directly and indirectly credited with giving to the City of Ottumwa the enterprise that have been the most productive of industrial prosperity there.

He was born in a log cabin in Muskingum County, Ohio, October 24, 1848, and died at Ottumwa, Iowa, April 3, 1930.  He was a son of John and Marian Johnston, his father of Scotch-Irish and his mother of English and Welsh ancestry.  His father was a weaver, whose business was seriously interfered with by the coming of the power loom, and who was living on a little rented farm when his son Allen was born.  Later he bought a small tract of land in the hills of Ohio, and in 1855 the family decided to come West.  A brother of John Johnston had moved out to Monroe County, Iowa.  John Johnston sold his Ohio farm for about eight hundred dollars and started West in October, 1855, with three horses and two wagons, and the family lived in the wagons through the winter.  Allen Johnston grew up in the country about a mile from Blakesburg, Iowa.  He was always fond of outdoor life, and as a boy he earned money trapping quails and fur-bearing animals.  He had no formal schooling until he was eight or nine years of age, and though the duties of the farm kept him from regular attendance, he pursued his studies with a system that made it possible for him to keep up with his classes even though absent, at times two weeks or more.

Allen Johnston from boyhood exemplified his greatest gift, that of intellectual curiosity and keen powers of observation, accompanied by a restless desire to improve on the conventional ways of doing things.  There were few Iowa farms in that time which contained work shops, and all he had to do with was a few of the simplest tools.  As a boy he made his own sled and skates, and his first practical invention was a hazelnut huller, consisting of a wooden cylinder revolving in a hollow log, both being studded with nails, and as the cylinder revolved the nails tore the husks from the hazelnuts.

At the age of nineteen he went to Ottumwa to study dentistry with his brother, W. T. Johnston.   His brother at that time was the local agent for the Singer Sewing Machine Company.  Allen Johnston attended school for a few months in Ottumwa.  He helped his brother sell sewing machines, and early became interested in experimenting on improved attachments, the first issue of his genius being an embroidery attachment, on which he and his brother took out a patent.  Subsequently he devised a ruffler, which immediately became popular and for half a century has been one of the standard attachments of all sewing machines.  They started the manufacture of the ruffler at Ottumwa, the equipment consisting of a few files and chisels and a punch press, the power for which was supplied by a hand power grindstone.  Subsequently several Ottumwa men became financially interested, including W. T. Majors, J. T. Hackworth and J. G. Hutchison, and also A. G. Harrow.  Money was invested in new equipment, and the Johnston Ruffler Works became one of the industries that did most to give character to the City of Ottumwa as a manufacturing center.  Mr. Johnston had to defend his patents through extensive litigation, since many imitations were made in Rufflers, and eventually he sold the business to a competitor in New Haven, Connecticut.  It was during a business trip to England in the interest of the Johnston Ruffler Works that Capt. J. G. Hutchison met on shipboard a representative of Jon Morrell and induced the Morrell Company to establish its plant in Ottumwa.

Mr. Johnston patented 130 inventions.  He was the founder of the Cutlery Works of Ottumwa an din later years his manufacturing interests were chiefly represented by the Johnston Pressed Gear Company and the Johnston and Sharp Company.  He had been practically retired from active business for some years, but the things he accomplished before he retired have placed his name permanently among great American inventors.  Mr. Johnston fully half a century ago conceived the idea of making a flying machine.  He succeeded so far as to construct a machine that lifted its own weight using a propeller much the same as in use today.  However, that was long before the era of internal combustion engines, the only available source of power being steam, and Mr. Johnston finally gave up further experimenting, realizing that a flying machine would not be practical until a lighter power source was developed.

The Johnston family are members of the First Presbyterian Church, and the fine old home on Court Street in Ottumwa is one of the landmarks of the city.  Mr. Johnston married, February 8, 1872, at Oskaloosa, Iowa, Miss Elizabeth Wiley, of an early Iowa family of Scotch-Irish ancestry, daughter of Dr. John H. and Angeline (Antrobus) Wiley.  Three children have been born to their marriage.  The daughter Stella is the wife of Mr. Frank W. Sharp, of Ottumwa, and has six children, named Margaret E., Allen W., John H., Helen A., Angeline and Elizabeth.  Roy Wiley Johnson, also of Ottumwa, married Jessie Fair.  The second daughter, Alice M., is the wife of Leon Emmert.

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GEORGE A. JOHNSTON.  Within nearly two decades of professional activity at Creston, judicial center of Union County, Mr. Johnston has gained secure vantage ground as one of the able and representative members of the bar of this county, and his practice is now of substantial and important order, the while he is valued as a loyal, liberal and public-spirited citizen.

Mr. Johnston is a scion of families that were founded in the southern part of our national domain in the Colonial period of American history, and his father grained pioneer prestige in Iowa. Mr. Johnston was born in Wayne County, this state, July 1, 1877, and is a son of Andrew Duncan Johnston and Sarah Jane (Tedford) Johnston, the former of whom was born near Madisonville, Tennessee, and the latter in the State of Indiana.  Andrew D. Johnston was a son of Samuel Johnston, who likewise was born in the Madisonville district of Tennessee and whose father had become the owner of one of the large and valuable plantations in that part of Eastern Tennessee, as well as owner of a large retinue of slaves.  Samuel Johnston's wife, whose family name was Duncan, was conscientiously opposed to slavery, and he thus was led to refuse his heritage of slaves, other property having been given him instead, while his younger brothers became the owners of the old home plantation.  He came with his family to Iowa in the year 1854, and here he and his wife passed the remainder of their lives, with secure standing as sterling pioneers of the Hawkeye State.

Andrew D. Johnston came with his parents to Iowa in 1854 and the family home was established in Louisa County, where he continued his association with farm enterprise until the outbreak of the Civil war brought to him a higher duty.  He enlisted as a member of Company C, Eleventh Iowa Volunteer Infantry, proceeded with this command to the front, and in his service of three years and eight months he lived up to the full tension of conflict, through participation in major and minor engagements.  After the close of the war he removed to Wayne County, where he became a prosperous farmer and where he and his wife passed the remainder of their lives, secure in the high esteem of all whom knew them.  He was commander of his post of the Grand Army of the Republic and at the time of his death, was a Republican in politics, and he and his wife were members of the Presbyterian Church.  Mrs. Johnston, as before stated, was born in Indiana, and she was a daughter of William H. and Polly M. (Orr) Tedford, who were born and reared in Tennessee, where their marriage occurred and whence they later removed to Indiana, from which state they came to Iowa as pioneers of the year 1854.

After completing his high school studies George A. Johnston, dependent largely upon his own resources, found ways and means to follow the course of his ambitious purpose, that of preparing himself for the legal profession.  In the law department of Drake University, Des Moines, he was graduated as a member of the class of 1912, and his admission to the bar of his native state was virtually coincident with his reception of the degree of Bachelor of Laws, and his initiating the practice of his profession at Creston, which fine little city has since continued the central stage of his law practice, extended into the various courts of Iowa, including the Supreme Court and the Federal courts.  He has long controlled a substantial and representative general practice.  He served four years as county attorney and his political allegiance is given to the Republican party.  In addition to his home place in Creston Mr. Johnston is the owner of a fine stock farm in Union County, the same being devoted in large measure to the breeding and raising of Hereford cattle and Belgian draft horses.  He is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity, has membership in the Union County Bar Association and the Iowa State Bar Association, and his wife is an active member of the Methodist Episcopal Church in her home city.

The year 1899 recorded the marriage of Mr. Johnston to Miss Sadie Frances Fisher, who was born and reared in Ringgold County, this state, and whose father, S. H. Fisher, came to Iowa in 1866, from Illinois, he having become one of the substantial farmers in Ringgold County.  Neva Jane, eldest of the children of Mr. and Mrs. Johnston, is the wife of Donald F. Henry, a farmer and stockman near Shannon City, Union County; Paul Fisher, the elder son, is an ensign in the United States navy and at the time this writing, in the fall of 1929, is in service in Chinese waters; Mildred is the wife of Hulan A. Shay, and they reside at Creston, where he is assistant manager of Armour & Company; and Elton Andrew is in service as a member of the United States Marine Corps, with which he is at present stationed in Nicaragua.

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ROBERT J. JOHNSTON, who died October 30, 1924, was a conspicuous citizen and business man of the City of Humboldt, Iowa, for many years. He was a banker and frequently was elected to public office.  His interest in public affairs was completely shared by Mrs. Johnston who as mayor of the City of Humboldt has been given an amount of publicity which makes her one of the interesting women of the nation.  She well merits her distinctions.  Mrs. Johnston is a remarkable personality, vigorous, practical-minded, dispatches a large amount of business every day and has a horizon of intellectual interests that would be unusual even in a woman whose life had been completely centered in books rather than in practical affairs.

The late Robert J. Johnston was a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was born January 13, 1856.  His parents, John and Jane (Porter) Johnston, were natives of Pennsylvania and Canada respectively.  Robert J. Johnston was a young man when he came west and settled at Humboldt.  For a time he was deputy county treasurer, and left that office to take up banking as a career.  In 1888 he was made cashier of the Humboldt State Bank of Humboldt, and was closely identified with that institution until he sold his interests in 1917.  During the last seven years of his life his time was taken up in looking after his private affairs.  Politically he was a staunch Republican.  Among other public offices he was mayor and member of the city council and served in the Thirty-seventh and Thirty-eight General Assemblies of Iowa.  For many years he was a member of the Iowa State Fair Board and served for two years, 1899-1900, as president of the Iowa State Fair Association.

Mr. Johnston and Miss Mary H. Stoddard were married at Humboldt in 1888.  Mrs. Johnston is a native of Minnesota.  Her parents, James G. and Mary (Barr) Stoddard, were pioneers of that state.  Her father was a farmer, had a store at Red Wing, Minnesota, and after coming to Humboldt County, Iowa, again located on a farm. He died in 1871 and his widow subsequently married S. H. Brewer.

Mrs. Johnston attended school at Humboldt and Fort Dodge.  She represents some of the oldest of Colonial New England families, and for many years has been prominent in patriotic organizations. She had five ancestors who were soldiers in the Revolutionary war, three of them by the name of Morgan.  She is also a descendant of Elder Brewster of the Mayflower Pilgrims.  In the paternal line she is a descendant of John Stoddard, who came from England in 1640 and received a grant of land from Connecticut.  Mrs. Johnston for many years has been prominent in both the state and national bodies of the Daughters of the American Revolution, was state regent of Iowa, and treasurer general of the national society (1917-1920).  She is also state treasurer of the Society of Colonial Dames, is national treasurer of the Daughters of Runnemede, and is treasurer national of the Daughters of 1812.  She is serving as grand treasurer of the Order of the Eastern Star in Iowa.  Mrs. Johnston maintains a business office in the Doan Building, where she administers her official responsibilities as mayor and also looks after the Johnston estate.  Mrs. Johnston in 1930 was nominated for a third successive term as mayor of Humboldt.

Every few days the Iowa press publishes some current comments and anecdotes about the redoubtable mayor of Humboldt, and these newspaper stories, of course, furnish little substantial matter for biography.  One of these picture of her as an official and one of many that have been portrayed to the public outside her home community is contained in a two-column article in the Des Moines Register written by a staff writer who describes her appearance as "tall, determined and austere; blue-eyed and gray haired and with a curtness in manner that is more a mannerism than a confirmed attitude.  As an official she employs occasionally the masterful methods of a top-sergeant, severe, direct, unequivocal," and then goes on to quote one of the comments of her fellow townsman to the effect that "she bosses us around all our lives, and when we die we have to go to her for a burial permit, for she is secretary of the cemetery association."

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RUFUS SHERMAN JOHNSTON, president of the Louisa County National Bank of Columbus Junction, is one of the most important citizens in this section of Southeastern Iowa. His name has been closely associated with the county for forty years as a farmer, business man and promoter of the material and civic interests of the community.

Mr. Johnston was born at Columbus City in Louisa County, October 4, 1864.  His father James Harvey Johnston, was born in Tennessee, and settled near Columbus Junction, Iowa, in 1856.  He was an early settler, and his enterprise and industry made him one of the leaders in the farming industry of the county.  He died in June, 1890.  His wife, Miss Esther A. Orr, was also born in Tennessee, and died in 1913.  Of their four children two are living, Rufus Sherman and Mrs. Laura Gilkey, whose home is in Pennsylvania.

Rufus Sherman Johnston finished the work of the public schools at Columbus Junction in 1881 and for three years pursued the liberal arts course in the Eastern Iowa Normal School, graduating A. B. in 1886.  He played on the college baseball team and was valedictorian of his class at graduation.  While in school he was associated with his father's farm.  After graduating he clerked for a time in Blair's Book Store, and in 1887 resumed his place on the farm.  For forty years he has owned and supervised valuable farming interests in this section of the state and has been a leader in farm organizations.  From 1896 to 1903 he was secretary of the District Fair Association, and he served ten years as a member of the Iowa State board of agriculture.  Mr. Johnston in 1891 became a partner of E. G. Amuryl in a hardware business at Columbus City, and was active in that until 1896.  He has been on the board of directors of the Louisa County National Bank since 1890.  Since 1913 Mr. Johnston has been in the automobile business, as a partner in the local Ford agency, and they also handle the Durant cars.

Mr. Johnston was county supervisor of Louisa County from 1906 to 1912, and has served as a member of the local school board for over thirty-six years, several times being president of the board.

He married, March 6, 1896, Miss Louie Colton, of Columbus City.  They have three daughters, Dr. Helen Johnston, of Des Moines, Edith, of Columbus Junction, and Pauline, of Columbus Junction.

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CECIL C. JONES is one of the prominent younger men in the profession of medicine and surgery at Des Moines, and ranks among the first in the state as an eye, ear, nose and throat specialist.

Doctor Jones was born at Topeka, Kansas, May 27, 1892, son of William C. and Ella (Cain) Jones, his father a native of Indiana and his mother of Kentucky.  William C. Jones, still a resident of Topeka, has spent a great many years in the service of the Rock Island Railway Company and is superintendent at Topeka.  He is a Republican in politics, a member of the Masonic fraternity and Woodmen of the World, and both he and his wife, who is now deceased, were active in the Methodist Episcopal Church.  They had a family of three sons:  Dr. Cecil C.; Russell, connected with the Rock Island Railway at El Reno, Oklahoma; and Howard, a practicing attorney at Topeka.

Cecil C. Jones attended school in Topeka, and came to Iowa for his professional training at the University of Iowa, from which he was graduated M. D. in 1920.  For two years he was an interne in the State Hospital, and had one year of study abroad at Vienna, where he came under instruction and attended clinics for special training in eye, ear, nose and throat.  His practice has been limited to his specialty.  Doctor Jones has his offices in the Equitable Building at Des Moines.  He is a member of the American Academy of Oto-Laryngology and is a member of the Polk County, Iowa State and American Medical Associations.  He has membership in the Wakonda Club and is a Sigma Nu and Phi Rho Sigma.

Doctor Jones married in 1923 Elsie Laurine Johnson, who was born at Wall Lake, Iowa, and was educated in Morningside College at Sioux City, Iowa, and the University of Iowa.  Mrs. Jones is a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

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CLYDE E. JONES is one of the prominent younger members of the Ottumwa bar, and like many other forceful men in the professions and in business in Iowa today a background of service during the World war was in a manner his introduction to the serious affairs of life.

Mr. Jones was born at Agency, Iowa, February 20, 1895.  Three generations of the family have lived in this section of Iowa.  His grandfather, Levi Jones, was born in Wales, and after coming to the United States lived in Pennsylvania and later moved out to Agency, Iowa.  The father of Clyde E. Jones is Edward R. Jones, who was born in Pennsylvania, in 1860, and was brought to Iowa about 1869.  For many years he has been one of the well known farmers and stock men of Agency.  He married Harriett Verdow.

Clyde E. Jones was graduated the Agency High School in 1913 and followed this with four years in the University of Iowa, in the school of Liberal Arts.  He took the Bachelor of Arts degree in 1917, and his scholarship record earned him election as a Phi Beta Kappa.  His junior year in law was spent in the George Washington University at Washington, D. C., and in 1919 the University of Iowa conferred upon him the degree LL. B.  He is a member of the Phi Alpha Delta legal fraternity, and his scholarship record earned him membership in the Order of the Coif.

In the meantime he had enlisted at Ottumwa and was in training, being finally in the Replacement Camp at Camp Forrest, Georgia.  After being admitted to the bar he settled down to the general practice of law at Ottumwa, where he has offices in the Ottumwa National Bank Building.  He is a member of O. B. Nelson Post of the American Legion and has been prominent in various fraternal organizations.  He is a York and Scottish Rite Mason, member of the Shrine and Grotto, belonging to the Consistory and Kaaba Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Davenport.  He is a past exalted ruler of Ottumwa Lodge No. 347, B. P. O. Elks, is a past district deputy grand exalted ruler of the South East District of Iowa, and president of the Iowa State Association of Elks.  He is also a member of teh Knights of Pythias, and his family are members of the First Methodist Episcopal Church.

Mr. Jones married in Chicago, March 20, 1919, Miss Verl E. Brown, of that city.  Her parents, John W. and Clara (Shehan) Brown, came from Pennsylvania.  Mr. and Mrs. Jones have two daughters, Barbara Jean and Margot Dean.

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JOHN C. JORDAN, president of the Iowa National Bank at Ottumwa, is a member of a family that on the whole has supplied as much good material to the business affairs and citizenship of Iowa as any other that could be mentioned.

His father was William A. Jordan, one of the Iowa pioneers who came from Indiana the year before Iowa Territory was admitted as a state.  He had the qualifications of a school teacher, but in Iowa became a merchant at Lancaster,  then the county seat of Keokuk County.  Subsequently he was a merchant at Richland and later at Eddyville.  William A. Jordan married Maria McGraw, who was born in Ohio, removing with her parents first to Indiana and later to Iowa, where settlement was made in Keokuk County.  She died in 1910, at the age of eighty-one years.

It was in 1868, sixty years ago, that the home and center of activities of the Jordan family were transferred to Ottumwa.  William A. Jordan was a merchant at Ottumwa and acquired a wholesale boot and shoe business, which he subsequently turned over to his son Walter B.  He lived in Ottumwa until his death in 1873, passing away at the age of fifty-four.

All of his sons became prominent in business in Iowa and elsewhere. Their names were Walter B., Jacob W., Albert C., John C., Charles L. and William G.

William A. Jordan also had six daughters, all of whom are married and living, as follows:  May, wife of Ira A. Myers; Ada, Mrs. Ben W. Ladd; Ida, Mrs. George F. Hall; Kitt J., Mrs. Claude Myers; Inez, Mrs. M. B. Hutchison; and Eva, wife of Emmett R. Work.

All the sons were keen, able men.  Walter B. after leaving the business he had taken over from his father became a post trader in the Dakotas and Montana in the early '70s, and should properly be credited with having done much toward the founding of Miles City in the latter state.  Later he was in business at Saint Paul and Minneapolis, and saw his sons prosperously fixed in the business life of those cities.  Jacob W. Jordan was a merchant in Ottumwa until 1902, when he retired.  He died in 1910.  His brother, Albert C., left Ottumwa when a young man, lived at Marshalltown for a number of years, but died and is buried at Ottumwa.  Charles L. Jordan was connected with the Jordan interests in Ottumwa, and died during the '80s.  William G. Jordan was for some years in the wholesale drug business at Des Moines, and later in Minnesota was associated with his older brother in the wholesale grocery business.  He is now living retired at Pasadena, California.

John C. Jordan was reared and educated at Ottumwa, leaving school at the age of sixteen.  He went to work in his father's establishment, and has had a consecutive connection with the commercial life of Ottumwa for over forty years.  He has been president of the Iowa National Bank since 1904.  Mr. Jordan has been a member of the city council and for twelve years on the school board.  He was a Democrat until the free silver campaign of 1896, in which year he identified himself with the gold wing of the party and has since acted independently.

He married in 1881 Miss Nellie Butler.  They had four children:  Ethel, wife of Merrill C. Gilmore; Oscar W., who died at the age of twenty-seven, in 1912; Charles B. and Frank R.  The two younger sons enlisted and were in training at the time of the World war.

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PAUL S. JUNKIN is president of the Fairfield Ledger Company, publishers of the Daily Ledger at Fairfield.  In Jefferson County the Ledger has been a power in the newspaper field since pioneer times, and the Ledger is also almost unique in the history of Iowa journalism from the fact that it has been owned and published by one family continuously for eighty years.  In that time there has been four representatives of the family who have had the chief responsibilities of the publication.  Mr. Junkin's father carried the paper on for many years, and before Mr. Paul Junkin took charge one of his brothers was head of the business and also a nephew.

Paul S. Junkin was born at Fairfield, August 12, 1867.  He grew up and attended school there, and completed his education in Parsons College, attending the preparatory academy for three years and then taking the full four years' collegiate course.  He was graduated in 1889.  During his college career he was pursuing a practical vocational course, learning the newspaper business under his father and brother, then owners and editors of the Ledger.  Mr. Paul Junkin then launched out into a newspaper career for himself, purchasing and for one year conducting the Orange City Herald.  In 1900 he went to Corning as owner and editor of the Union Republican.  Later he was editor and owner of the Creston Daily Advertiser and also had interests in the Bedford Times-Republican, Chariton Herald-Patriot, Albia Republican and Fort Madison Daily Democrat.  Upon the reorganization of the Iowa Press Association Mr. Junkin was honored with election as its first president, and served two terms in that office.

Mr. Junkin left the newspaper field in 1919 to engage in manufacturing at Fort Madison, Iowa, and later was appointed and served as receiver for the Perfection Tire and Rubber Company.  Then, in 1924, he returned to Fairfield and acquired the controlling interest in the Fairfield Ledger.  July 1, 1930, he became postmaster of Fairfield, being the first occupant of the fine new Postoffice Building, and disposing of a controlling interest in the Ledger to his nephew, Don McGiffin.

 

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