1890 Buchanan and Delaware Counties History pgs. 551-554
HON. JOSEPH
GRIMES.
Delaware county has many worthy men whose excellent
services in behalf of the common good have entitled them to the grateful
remembrance of her people, but there is probably none who better deserves
such remembrance than does he of whom we
here write. Mr. Grimes has been a resident of the county
for forty-four years, a considerable portion of which time has been spent in
the service of his fellow-citizens, in one official capacity or another; and,
whether in office or out, he has always labored with a willing hand and an
earnest heart for the people of his adopted
county, doing a vast amount of
work of a public kind for which there was
no statutory salary, and much, also, for which the stipulated pay was no
adequate compensation. The lives and services of such men-and
such men are to be found in every county-pass into the commonwealth
of the community where they
reside, becoming the heritage of the people of that community and their
descendants, while unhappily the names of the doers of the good deeds too
frequently fade from memory and are no more.
Possibly this brief biographical
notice will serve to perpetuate the name of one whose name is eminently worthy
of perpetuation.
In the village of Candor, Tioga county,
N. Y., on the twenty-first day of July, 1815, Joseph Grimes was born. Like most
of the native-born citizens of that locality, he traces his ancestry to the New England states, and back of them to England and to Ireland. His father was Moses Grimes, and
his mother's maiden name was Ruth Ketcham. Moses
Grimes was born in Vermont, being a son of Thomas and
Elizabeth Grimes, natives of
Ireland and England, respectively. Thomas and Elizabeth
Grimes passed the greater part of their married lives in Vermont, the father dying there. It may be
worth mentioning that he, like the patriotic son of Ireland that he was,
offered his services to the United States on the declaration of hostilities
between it and England in 1812, and faithfully served his adopted country
through the war of that date. After his death his widow, following the fortunes
of her enterprising children, moved to Washington county, N.
Y., where she died at an advanced age. Moses Grimes was reared in his native
State of Vermont, but left it when a young man, and going to Washington county,
N. Y., settled in the village of Argyle, where he met Ruth Ketcham,
who was a native of that place, and a daughter of William Ketcham,
an early settler both of Washington and Tioga counties, N. Y. They were married
in Hebron, N. Y. From Argyle, Washington county, N.
Y., Moses and Ruth Grimes moved to Candor, Tioga county, that state. There they
subsequently lived and died, the father in August, 1845, aged
sixty-three, and the mother in December, 1871, aged seventy-eight. The
father was a farmer and miller, a man of industrious habits, and possessing
some means. He and his wife were a home-loving,
God-fearing pair, and, as near as it is possible for ordinary human flesh and
blood to do so, led blameless lives, both in the sight of man and their Master.
They gave their membership early in life to the Congregational church, and they
always strove to keep the faith, not only in matters relating to church polity,
but in the teachings and practice of those splendid truths of the Christian
religion, which lie deeper than any of the churches, creeds or other dogmas,
founded or formulated by man.
It was in a
home presided over by people of this sort that the subject of this notice
passed his youth, being daily taught the value of the homely virtues of
honesty, industry, sobriety, and the practice of that highest rule of conduct
known to the ethics of man: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto
you." Young Grimes' school advantages were of the ordinary kind. He got
the rudiments of a good, common, English education, which he was afterwards
enabled to improve upon by reading and study when occasion offered for such
recreation and improvement. September 6, 1838, he married Miss Melissa A. Phelps,
of Tioga county, N. Y., and with what small means he
could muster settled to farming near Candor, where he was born and reared. He
resided there till 1846, when he joined the great tide of emigration that was
then steadily streaming towards the West, and coming as far as Iowa, settled in Delaware county,
entering, under the government laws of that date, a tract of land consisting of
eighty acres lying in section 19, Colony township. He took up his residence on
this, but remained on it only a short time, moving the following year across
the line into Clayton county, where he built a sawmill at what is now
Otisville. He was engaged in the mill business at that place for three years.
He then returned to Delaware county,
locating on a farm in Colony township, for which he had traded in the meantime.
He resided there till 1861, when he sold his place and moved to Michigan to
look after some property interests he had there, and, as he thought at the
time, to make that state his future home. But he did not take kindly to the change,
and, therefore, returned shortly afterwards to Delaware county, purchasing another farm in
Colony township, on which he resided until 1879. At that date he quit the farm
entirely and moved to Colesburg, where he has since
resided. He still owns farm land, however, in Colony township,
and is in a general sort of way connected with the farming interest of the community
where he resides, but not to the extent that he was in former years. Mr. Grimes
has had the usual experience that falls to the lot of settlers in a new
country. He has met with some prosperity and has suffered some reverses. What
he has, however, in the way of property, represents the fruit of his own toil,
it having come to him in response to hard, persistent labor and close,
economical management.
Having
executive abilities of more than the ordinary kind, and legislative abilities
of no mean order, and being, withal, a man of marked popularity, he, as we
mentioned in the opening paragraph of this sketch, has spent a
considerable part of the time he has been a resident of Delaware county in offices
of one kind and another. While residing in Clayton county
he was elected justice of the peace of the township in which he lived, and
served until leaving the county. April following his return to Delaware county he was elected justice of
the peace of Colony township, which office he held for
twenty-one consecutive years. In 1858 he was elected to the legislature from Delaware county,
being a member of the first general assembly that was held after the capital
was removed to Des Moines. In 1861 he was elected a member of
the board of county supervisors, and held that position for four years. In 1868
he was elected to the state senate from Delaware county,
and served four years. In all these positions Mr. Grimes discharged his duty with
zeal and fidelity, winning the gratitude of those whom he served, and the
esteem and hearty commendation of all with whom he came in contact. Mr.
Grimes went from the whig to
the republican party on the organization of the latter, and in all party
contests he was elected on one or the other of these tickets. He has never
belonged to but one social order, that one being the Independent Order of Odd Fellows,
in which he has held a membership for thirty years.
Mr. Grimes
has raised to maturity a family of four children, having lost one, a daughter,
Sarah R. who died at the age of about thirty years, being the wife of Miles C.
Nichols, a farmer of Delaware county, Iowa. His eldest, Ralph M., is now an
honored citizen of Kearney, Nebr., having held the responsible
position of treasurer of Buffalo county, of
which Kearney is the county seat, and being now deputy treasurer of the county.
Frank A., the second eldest son, is a farmer and miller,
residing at Colesburg; Emma E. is the wife of S. W.
Martin, of Hancock county, Iowa, and Elmer E. is a miner, residing
in Colorado. All of these are married and have
families.
If the
public is prepared to bestow any honor, as it certainly ought to, on the name
of the subject of these lines, it should in justice also remember the less
pretentious services of the good wife, whose active sympathy and hearty
cooperation have enabled him to so well perform the duties which have fallen to
him. Mrs. Grimes, like her husband, is a native of New York, having been
born in Albany county, July 15, 1818, and being the daughter of Asa and Sarah (Nichols) Phelps, both of whom were also born
and reared in New York, and there spent their lives, dying in Tioga
county. She is a worthy representative of a worthy family, as the good
deeds and exalted virtues of her parents live in her so, by the care she has
taken in the rearing of the children committed to her guardianship, the same
deeds and virtues live in her offspring and will continue to live in them and
thus enrich her posterity as they will elevate and ennoble the race when she
shall be no more.
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