Iowa: Its History and Its Foremost Citizens
Original Edition. 3 Vols. Des Moines, IA: The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1915-1916.
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Unless otherwise noted, biographies submitted by Dick Barton.
MONTAGUE HAKES
Montague Hakes is the senior member of the firm of M. & J. R. Hakes, who have built up a business which handles about two hundred thousand collars' worth of eggs and poultry annually, and which has made Laurens a center of the poultry trade. He is also the senior member of the mercantile firm of M. Hakes & Company, dealers in general merchandise. He was born on the 24th of February, 1858, in Jones county, Iowa, a son of G. J. and Phoebe (Rundall) Hakes. The father emigrated from New York state to Jones county, this state, in 1847, and there taught school and engaged in farming until his demise, which occurred in 1895. The mother survived until 1913.
Montague Hakes was reared upon the homestead and attended the public schools in the acquirement of his early education. Subsequently he attended the State College at Ames and in 1880 was graduated from the scientific department of that institution. During the next four years he was in the employ of a railroad construction company and worked on the Oregon Short Line in Idaho, the Denver, South park & Pacific in Colorado, and the extension of the Burlington, Cedar Rapids & Northern Railway to Watertown, South Dakota. In January, 1885, he located at Laurens and in connection with his father established a general merchandise and poultry business, the firm name being G. J. Hakes & Son. On the 1st of January, 1890, the father sold his interest in the firm to his son, James R. Hakes, the name being changed to M. & J. R. Jakes. In the great fire of 1898 they sustained a loss of twenty thousand collars, but wasted no time in idle regret, beginning to rebuild immediately, and were soon doing business as usual. The increase in the volume of their trade since 1898 has been enormous, as their business in a year now often amounts to about two hundred thousand dollars, while it formerly totaled but forty thousand collars. In the fall of 1885 the firm first began to handle poultry, but only on a small scale. However, that branch of the business grew rapidly and in 1894 they secured the services of Alva Marshall, an expert caponizer, and in the same year they employed A. R. Loomas, of Fort Dodge, an authority on the best methods of dressing and handling all kinds of poultry. For several years the firm made no effort to secure poultry business outside of Laurens and its vicinity, but nevertheless they shipped about three carloads of dressed poultry annually. In 1897 they decided to develop their poultry business as rapidly as possible, as they believed by so doing they would benefit the farmers of every part of Iowa, and that at the same time they themselves would derive a good profit from their increased activity along that line. By 1900 they had extended their trade to all of the towns on the Chicago & Northwestern Rail road from Humboldt to Hawarden and to many of the towns along the Chicago, Rock island & Pacific Railway. In that year they built along the Northwestern tracks a large establishment for the handling of eggs and the dressing of poultry and sheds that accommodate many thousands of live fowl. Since 1897 they have dealt extensively in live and dressed poultry and eggs, and their annual shipments range from seventy-five to one hundred carloads. The value of the poultry, live and dressed, which they handle ranges from one hundred and fifty thousand to two hundred thousand dollars a year and they give constant work to ten men and during the busy seasons employ as many as thirty-five men. Through their enterprise and initiative Laurens has become one of the most important centers of the poultry trade in Iowa and the commercial development of Pocahontas county has been greatly stimulated by their achievement in building up such as extensive business.
The general mercantile business is now conducted by the firm of M. Hakes & Company, which is a separate concern from M. & J. R. Hakes, but of which Montague Hakes is the senior partner. The company has built up the largest business of the kind in Laurens and carries a complete and well selected line of general merchandise. From 1892 to 1900 Montague Hakes was associated with C. J. Bovee in the lumber and coal business at Laurens. He owns stock in the Marathon Savings Bank and is interested financially in the Fidelity Lumber Company of Newport, Washington, and in a fruit ranch in Grand valley, Colorado.
Mr. Hakes was married on Christmas Day, 1885, to Miss Hattie L. Arnold, a daughter of John Arnold, of Marion, Iowa, and they have four children, Byron A., Karl M., Ledyard B. and Paul L.
Mr. Hakes is a democrat in politics and in 1912 was a delegate from the tenth district of Iowa to the national convention of his party at Baltimore. For many years he was a leader in county and state politics, and he has done much in securing victory for his party. From 1885 to 1889 he was postmaster of Laurens, and from 1890 to 1895 he served upon the city council and exercised his official prerogatives in securing the betterment of the city along a number of lines. He represented his district in the thirtieth and thirty-first general assemblies of the state of Iowa and in 1908 was a candidate for congress against Frank P. Wood. He and his wife are protestants in their religious belief and can be depended upon to support all worthy causes. He is one of the foremost citizens of Pocahontas county and all who have been brought in contact with him hold him in the highest esteem and respect, while he is especially popular in the Masonic order and the Knights of Pythias, to both of which organizations he belongs.
Hon. William Lloyd Harding submitted by Roseanna Mary Zehner
The Hon. William Lloyd Harding, lieutenant governor of Iowa, has been the representative of Sioux City and Woodbury County in the state legislature and throughout his entire life has been identified with the interests of the commonwealth, for he is one of the native sons of the state, his birth having occurred upon the old homestead farm in Osceola County, Iowa, on the 3 rd of October, 1877. He comes of Welsh-English ancestry, although the family was established on American soil at an early period in the history of the country. The paternal grandfather, Curtis Harding, spent his entire life in Pennsylvania . The father, Orlando Boardman Harding was born near Tunkhannock , Pennsylvania , in 1848, and is now a resident of Sibley , Iowa . Throughout his entire life he has followed the occupation of farming and for many years resided in Osceola County upon a farm which he made rich and arable through the care and labor which he bestowed upon it. He dates his residence in Iowa from 1871.
Upon the old homestead farm in his native county William L. Harding was reared and in the public schools of that locality acquired his preliminary education. His decision concerning a business career led him to become a student in the law school of the State University of South Dakota, from which he was graduated in June, 1905. Immediately afterward he opened a law office in Sioux City , where he has continuously practiced his profession. In no profession is there a career more open to talent than that of the law and in no field of endeavor is there demanded a more careful preparation, a more thorough appreciation of the absolute ethics of life or of the underlying principles which form the bases of all human rights and privileges. Unflagging application and intuitive wisdom and the determination to fully utilize the means at hand are the concomitants which insure personal success and prestige in this great profession, which stands as the stern conservator of justice. Possessing all the requisite qualities of an able lawyer, Mr. Harding gradually and steadily worked his way upward and soon was in command of a large clientele. His strong mentality enabled him to readily grasp not only the salient points in his case but also in his opponent's argument, thus enabling him to meet the defense upon its own ground. He never underestimated the strength of an adversary�which is so often a weak point in a lawyer�and his name soon found its place upon the court records as one whose efforts were usually crowned with success.
As a lawmaker as well as a lawyer Mr. Harding has become widely and prominently known. From the beginning he has been a stalwart republican in politics and in 1906 was called to represent his district in the state legislature, where he discharged his duties with such ability and fidelity that he was reelected in 1908 and again in 1910. Still higher political honors awaited him, for in 1912 he was chosen lieutenant governor of the state, which office he is now filling. As such he presides over the senate and his rulings indicate his thorough familiarity with parliamentary procedure. He is a most fair and impartial presiding officer and one whose loyalty to the best interests of the commonwealth is never questioned.
On the 9 th of January, 1907 , Mr. Harding was married in Meriden , Iowa , to Miss Carrie May Lamoreaux, who is the daughter of Henry H. Lamoreaux, a banker of that city. They now have a little daughter, Barbara Esther, born January 14, 1915 .
J. C. C. Hoskins came to an honorable old age; in fact was almost a nonagenarian when called to the home beyond. As a pioneer of Sioux City his name should be engraved upon the pages of Iowa's history, but he was not only a resident, he was also one of the active business men of the county and a supporter of all those projects which tend to promote public progress, upbuilding and advancement.
He was born in Lyman, Grafton county, New Hampshire, January 18, 1820. His father, Samuel Hoskins, engaged in the practice of medicine. He married Harriet Byron, daughter of Caleb Cushing, of Orange, New Hampshire, who late in life removed to Chelsea, Massachusetts, where he passed away in 1873. In tracing the ancestral line of J. C. C. Hoskins it is found that he is descended from early Massachusetts families, represented in America since an early period in the colonization of the new world. The Hoskins family was represented at Scituate, Massachusetts, in 1634, while the Cushings lived at Hingham in 1635, as did the Hawke and Lincoln families, all of whom were ancestors of Mr. Hoskins. The Reeds were in Weymouth in 1635; the Cobbs on Cape Cod before 1640; and John Drake came over with Winthrop, while his cousin, Thomas Drake, settled in Weymouth in 1653. Mr. Hoskins also traced his ancestry back to the Cottons of Boston, the Sawyers of Lancaster and Newburyport, and the Wainwrights and Ambroses of Essex county. In fact there seems no one of his progenitors who came to this country after 1700, save his great-grandfather, John Church, a Presbyterian elder from the north of Ireland, who arrived in 1752, and the Huguenot, Jacques Pineaux, the father of Dolly Pineaux, his great-great-grandmother, famous to this day among her descendants for her personal beauty and her magnificent golden hair.
William Hoskins, an ancestor in the paternal line, was at Scituate in 1634, was a freeman of Plymouth colony in 1638, an esquire in 1642, and bore the reputation of being a well-to-do man of religious character. His son William, together with William Reed and Thomas Drake, was a member of the colony that purchased Bristol county from the Indians and settled at Taunton, whence his numerous descendants have gone out far and wide into the northern and middle states. William Hoskins came from Norfolkshire, England, and was a wheelwright by trade. A contemporary biographer continues with the ancestral history of Mr. Hoskins: "His descendants down to the grandfather of Mr. J. C. C. Hoskins have been mechanics or farmers of the middle class. Few of them have been needy, fewer have been rich, few of them ignorant, but not many of them college bred, very few merchants or lawyers and fewer clergymen or physicians, much disposed to have their own way, tolerably ready to hear argument and be led by reason, but quick to oppose any show of assumed authority; in every conflict for individual freedom, since the days of Henry VIII at least, they have fought against prerogative and oppression. None of the family have held important public offices, but many of them were respectable and influential in their neighborhoods. His maternal ancestor, in the eighth degree, Matthew Cushing, with a numerous family, some of whom were already adults, came also from Norfolkshire. He settled at Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1635. The Cushing family was old and wealthy in Norfolk, and had large landed possessions there. Their history is well known back into the fifteenth century, and there (as in this country since) they were men of education and influence and wealth. The descendants of Matthew Cushing had, previous to the year 1800, furnished more than thirty graduates to Harvard College, and a more considerable number of very eminent clergy and lawyers and judges, than any other New England family. Among them history commemorates Thomas and John Cushing, who took very prominent parts in bringing on and prosecuting the war of independence and William Cushing, who, already associate justice of the United States court, declined the chief justiceship when tendered to him by President Washington. Nor has the Cushing family lacked men of distinction in the present century. Witness Caleb Cushing, of Newburyport, Judge Cushing, of Boston, and the late chief justice of the state of New Hampshire.
"His parents reared a family of eight - five sons and three daughters - all of whom exemplified the character of their paternal ancestry by a respectable mediocrity of ability, so far as the accumulation of wealth and extended influence go, and their maternal ancestry by a considerable fondness for reading and literature, which doubtless led to the college education of the subject of this sketch. Three of the sons - all that were physically able - also proved that the family hatred of oppression retained its ancient strength, by enlisting at the very outset of the war against slavery, and fighting for freedom until all were free. So in the Revolutionary war his grandfather Hoskins and four brothers fought from the beginning to the end.
"His father led a hard life in a hard country among the granite outliers of the White mountains, but he was always honored and respected by all that knew him, and when he died, in 1873, at Chelsea, Massachusetts, where he went to live in his old age, he was much mourned through the whole circle of his acquaintances. Not less beloved nor less widely mourned was his wife, who, after her husband's death, came to Sioux City, where she had a home with her son, J. D. Hoskins, until she died in August, 1882."
During the boyhood of J. C. C. Hoskins his father engaged in the practice of medicine in a rural community, where his patients usually paid in farm produce. The boy had comparatively few advantages, yet was eager for a college education. His desire for this was never quenched, yet in the beginning it seemed impossible of fulfillment. However, by working at farm labor in the summer and teaching school in the winter, he eventually saved enough to meet the expenses of a college course and at the age of twenty-one was graduated from Dartmouth with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. He later received the degree of Master of Arts from the same institution. He gave a note to his father for six hundred dollars payable on demand. He possessed but one suit of clothing and little else of this world's goods when he applied for the position of principal of the academy at Lebanon, New Hampshire, which had recently been taken over by the Universalist church and was called The Lebanon Liberal Institute. He was engaged at a salary of four hundred dollars per year and entered upon his duties in September, 1841. Subsequently his salary was increased to five hundred dollars and many men who afterward won distinction in professional life or political circles were among his students. His earnings as a teacher enabled him to discharge his financial obligations to his father, but in 1846 his health failed and he was obliged to abandon teaching.
Mr. Hoskins then turned his attention to civil engineering and was first employed on the construction of the Cochituate water works at Boston, Massachusetts, beginning the preliminary survey in June, 1846, and remaining until the completion of the works in the fall of 1848. He had charge of the Newton and Brookline tunnels until they were dwell under way and was then deputed to make a survey for what is now the Brookline old reservoir. When the survey was approved he took charge of the construction work and so continued until its completion. In 1849 he was connected with Thomas S. Williams, who had been appointed superintendent of the Sullivan Railroad in New Hampshire. Not long after Mr. Williams was made superintendent of the Boston & Maine Railroad and left Mr. Hoskins in charge of the Sullivan Railroad for some months. Later the latter joined the former in Boston and was engaged on the construction of the Boston & Maine Railroad until June, 1850, when an engineer of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad engaged him for the excavation and construction of its tunnels. On the 15th of June, 1850, he found himself near the western end of the railroad on the Monongahela river. He was then engaged to relocate a portion of the western division with the instruction to lay as good a line as possible and to get as near the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania as he could without touching that state. That task successfully accomplished, he was then given charge of the tunnel division and when the work was well under way was transferred to the preliminary survey of the Northwestern Virginia Railroad, which is now the main line of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, crossing the Ohio river at Parkersburg, West Virginia. At that time there had been no work so difficult undertaken in the United States. In one hundred miles there were twenty-two tunnels and a ruling grade of eighty feet per mile. For nearly six months Mr. Hoskins directed the efforts of a corps of sixteen men, covering a broad extent of rugged country. He located sixty-five miles of the road and superintended the construction of thirty-seven miles, including the central and most difficult portion. The work was begun in the summer of 1852 and a train made the initial trip to the Ohio river on Christmas day of 1856. Mr. Hoskins left his position in January, 1857, and, declining an advantageous offer from the Texas Railroad Company, started for the far west. He had become interested in the shaping of events in Kansas and, accompanied by his wife, started for that state April 7, 1857, going from Parkersburg, Virginia, to St. Louis by steamer, the trip covering eight days.
Leaving his wife with relatives in St. Louis, Mr. Hoskins then proceeded by rail to Jefferson City and thence to Lexington, on to Kansas City, and to Leavenworth, Weston, St. Joseph, Omaha and Council Bluffs, arriving in Sioux City, May 5, 1857. Fellow passengers informed him that Kansas had settled her difficulties and would doubtless be a free state and he intended to settle there, but his cousin, John C. Flint, urged him to go to Sioux City before making a permanent location. Mr. Hoskins recognized the advantages and opportunities here offered, purchased lots and a house on Nebraska street and there resided for many years. Sioux City was then a frontier village, having no communication excepting by river trip to St. Louis, occupying fourteen days. There was no railroad within three hundred miles and across the river was Indian territory, while to the east there was no settlement of any kind for more than a hundred miles, nor none to the north until Pembina was reached. Sioux City was a town of log cabins, board shanties and tents, yet people believed in its future and were eagerly buying lots.
Mr. Hoskins had been married July 10, 1856, to Miss Clarissa Virginia Bennett, of Weston, Lewis county, Virginia, the second daughter of Hon. James Bennett, an influential lawyer who had often represented his district both in the lower and upper houses of the Virginia legislature. Mrs. Hoskins remained in St. Louis while her husband went on the prospecting trip and when Sioux City had been determined upon as their future home he returned and brought his wife to northern Iowa, where they arrived on the 5th of June, 1857. He also bought some supplies, a few floor boards, a window and a door and in a little cabin sixteen feet square, on Nebraska street, they set up housekeeping until a small frame house was built, there continuing to reside until the spring of 1864, when the property was sold. Two of their eight children were born in that primitive home.
The last work which Mr. Hoskins did as a civil engineer was when he made the preliminary survey for the Sioux City & St. Paul Railroad in the autumn of 1866. He became the first president, as well as chief engineer, of that road and was very prominent and influential in public affairs. In 1858 he was chosen township assessor and city engineer and continued in office until 1871. He made profiles and advised street grades which were adopted in 1858 and revised and readopted in 1871. At different times he was called to public office, being appointed to fill vacancies in the position of county sheriff and also of mayor. He was for three terms a member of the school board and for one year was county superintendent of schools and never ceased to feel the deepest interest in the cause of education. He was also postmaster of Sioux City for nearly sixteen years, retiring from the office in the spring of 1878. He aided in founding the first two national banks of Sioux City and was a director of one of these for several years. He was also founder and one of the directors of the First Savings Bank; was president of the Sioux City Building Fund Association for many years; and in 1864 aided in organizing the J. M. Pinckney Book & Stationery Company. He was one of the founders of the Unitarian church of Sioux City and one of the founders and honorary president of the Sioux City Scientific Association, now the Sioux City Academy of Science and Letters. He became a member of the Odd Fellows lodge in the early '50s and remained a member until his death. In fact, there were few important business or public interests of Sioux City with which he was not connected from the earliest period of its development, and he aided in laying broad and deep the foundation upon which its present prosperity has been built. Mr. Hoskins was survived by his wife and the following children: Dr. S. B. Hoskins and Mrs. Mary H. Wakefield, both living in Sioux City; Dr. J. B. Hoskins, of Allen, Nebraska; Mrs. Helen E. Johnson, of Los Angeles, California; and Mrs. Lucy M. Ayres, of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Mr. Hoskins passed away in Sioux City, August 13, 1909. For a number of years prior to his death he had lived retired, enjoying a rest which he had truly earned and richly deserved. All who knew him recognized his worth, appreciated his splendid qualities and respected him for his upright life and what he accomplished. His history, indeed, forms an integral chapter in the annals of Sioux City and of the development of the northwest. |
