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Muscatine County, Iowa Genealogy Trails

Biographies

Charles H. Abbott

Charles H. Abbott was born in Concord, New Hampshire, January 25, 1819. After completing his education he started west, stopping in Michigan. In 1850 he came to Iowa and settled in Louisa County, but later removed to Muscatine, where he engaged in farming, banking and real estate business. Upon the organization of the Thirtieth Iowa Volunteer Infantry in the summer of 1862, Mr. Abbott was appointed colonel of the regiment and at once took command. He participated in the Battle of Chickasaw Bayou, and while leading his regiment in the assault upon Vicksburg, May 22, 1863, was killed.

[Iowa Biography By Benjamin F. Gue, 1903 - Transcribed by AFOFG]

Miss Ida Joe Brooks

Educator, physician and surgeon, born in Muscatine, Iowa, 28th April, 1853. She is the daughter of Rev. Joseph Brooks. When she was very young, her parents moved to St. Louis, Mo., and she there entered the public schools, beginning in the primary department of the Clay school, when Dr. William T. Harris began his career as a teacher. Her father removed to the South after the war, and Miss Brooks went to Little Rock, Ark., in 1870. Two years afterwards, in conversation with a friend, she warmly argued that women should earn their own money, and he made a wager that she would not do it herself. As a joke, he found her a school in Fouche Bottom, where the gnats were so thick that a smudge had to be kept continually burning. She accepted the position and taught there faithfully and well. In 1873 Miss Brooks, with a liking for the work, began to teach in the public schools of Little Rock. The following year she was made principal of the grammar school, and in 1876 she was made principal of the Little Rock high school. In 1877 she was elected president of the State Teachers' Association. In the same year her father died, and the family came to shortened means, but were sustained by the independence and noble work of the daughter. In 1881 the Little Rock University was opened. Having become a Master of Arts, she was placed in charge of the mathematical department, where she taught until, in 1888, she entered the Boston University School of Medicine, a course which had for years been her desire. She was graduated there with high honors, and afterwards took a post-graduate course on nervous diseases in the Westborough Insane Hospital. She spent one year as house officer in the Massachusetts Homeopathic Hospital, being assigned half the time on the surgical and half the time on the medical work. That was an unusual appointment. Returning to Little Rock in September, 1891, she began the practice of her profession and from the start won recognition and patronage. Dr. Brooks is an earnest woman suffragist and a thorough temperance advocate.

(American Women Fifteen Hundred Biographies, Vol I, Publ. 1897, Transcribed by Marla Snow)

Mrs. Mary Ryerson Butin

Physician, born near Wilton, Iowa, 17th August, 1857. She lived on a farm until her eighteenth year, and then took up her residence in the village of Wilton Junction. There, with alternate schooling and teaching, she succeeded in nearly completing the course in the academy in that place, when its financial embarrassments necessitated the closing of its doors. Entering the high school, in one year she was graduated therefrom with the highest honors. At the age of twenty-one she felt the responsibility of choosing her life work. From her earliest remembrance she had heard her mother say that she was to be a doctor. The mother was farseeing and discerned that opening for woman and her fitness for her work. Though timid and sensitive as to the opinions of others, after deliberation she decided that her duty lay in that direction. She turned with keen perception of its responsibilities from the pleasures of a young girl's life and began the study of medicine, with the help and encouragement of the family physician and his partners. She entered the medical college in Iowa, City, a co-educational institution, which at that time had enrolled a membership of ninety men and ten women. From that college she came forth a firm opponent of co-education in medical colleges. The following year she attended the Woman's Medical College in Chicago, Ill., from which she was graduated in the spring of 1881, afterwards entering the South Side Hospital as resident physician. Her duties were so arduous, the lack of nurses making it necessary for her to supply that position sometimes, that, after four months' service, she resigned and returned home for rest. While on a visit to her brother in Dorchester, Neb., her practice became so extensive as to cause her to settle there, where she gradually overcame all opposition among physicians and people to women practitioners. There she met and became the wife, in May, 1883, of Dr. J. L. Butin, a rising young physician. Before she had been in the State a year, she became a member of the Nebraska State Medical Society. She was the first woman to enter that society and was received in Hastings, in 1882. Placed upon the programme for a paper the next year, she has ever since been a contributor to some section of that society. She was elected first vice-president in 1889. She has been a contributor to the Omaha "Clinic" and other medical journals, and was State superintendent of hygiene and heredity for the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, county and local. Untiring in devotion to her profession, she has been ready to lend her aid to all progressive movements, and she has battled and conquered much of the prejudice against woman in the field of medical science.

(American Women Fifteen Hundred Biographies, Vol 1, Publ. 1897, Transcribed by Marla Snow)

Albert Maurer

Albert Maurer, prominent merchant of Great Falls and one of the leading men of his community, is a native born Iowan, born in Muscatine county on the 25th of April, 1874. He is the son of Benedict and Elizabeth (Marolf) Maurer, both natives of Switzerland.

The father came to America when a young man and settled at Milton Junction, Iowa, where he lived the life of a pioneer farmer, and passed away there at the age of sixty- seven in the year 1887. The mother, who came to America as the bride of Benedict Maurer, died at Great Falls, Montana, at the home of her son, Albert, and is buried by the side of her life-partner in the cemetery at Milton Junction. She was seventy-three years of age when she died, and was the mother of eight children.

Albert, the fifth child born to his parents, was educated in the public schools of his home town, later attending the high school at Muscatine. His education was finished at the Wilton Collegiate Institute, and he was twenty-one years of age when he concluded his schooling. During his school days his father had conducted a mercantile establishment at Wilton Junction, and in this house Albert received the early business training which was of such value to him in later life. After leaving college he studied telegraphy, and for some years was employed by the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific as an operator, and later was agent for that company at various points, giving five years to that service. He then resigned his position with the railroad company and came west, arriving in Great Falls in July, 1890. After a short period, he, with John B. Maurer, an older brother, purchased the business of J. H. Johnson & Company and established the business which has grown from a small concern to the largest mercantile house in Great Falls. They dealt in general merchandise, and by careful management and the exercise of the natural business ability which was theirs by birth and training, the brothers prospered from the beginning. The partnership continued unbroken until in September, 1896, when Albert Maurer purchased the interest of his brother John and has since conducted the business alone. The business aggregates a yearly amount of $60,000, and is constantly growing. In addition to his mercantile interests, Mr. Maurer is engaged with his brother, John B., in a livestock business of extensive nature in the Teton county region, and in that also is prospering in a most agreeable manner.

Mr. Maurer is a Republican, but not active in political affairs. He is a Lutheran in his religious faith.

[History of Montana, Volume 3, distributed by Barb Z., transcribed by C. Danielson]

Thomas E. Randall

Thomas E. Randall, Eau Claire, was born in the town of Parsonsfield, York Co., Me., June 6, 1813. He was not quite a year old when his parents, John and Sarah Hanson Randall, moved to the town of Baldwin, now Sebago, Me., where they lived until he was nine years old, when they went to what is now the town of Maxfield, Penobscot Co., Me., where he lived until he was twenty-one years old, chiefly engaged in lumbering, for his father. He was educated in the public schools and China Academy, and is a graduate of the latter institute, which is situated in the town of China, Kennebec Co., Me. After graduating and reaching the age of twenty-one, he went to Elizabethtown, N. J., and taught school there four months. He was then engaged as foreman of public works, grading hills in Jersey City (or three months. He was employed for a year on the New York & Erie Railway, doing the first work on that road as superintendent for a firm of contractors employed in its construction. In the Fall of 1836, he came to Illinois and engaged in the construction of the Illinois & Michigan Canal, as superintendent for contractors until June, 1837, when he obtained a position in the engineering department of the Illinois Central Railway, remaining there four months. He was then employed for six weeks on the Northern Cross railway, from Danville to Quincy. He afterward was engaged in farming in Muscatine Co., Iowa, for nine years. In 1845, he came to Eau Claire County. He was married in Rockingham, now a part of Davenport, Iowa, March 17, 1843, to Maria Jane Foster, who was born at Michigan City, Ind. She was a daughter of John Foster, and died April 29, 1869. They had seven children, four of whom died. The three living are Elba Howard, Mary A. and Charles E. Mr. Randall's present wife was Mrs. Mary A. Hall, nee Johnson, who was born in the town of Harreford, Lower Canada, and when eleven years of age moved with her parents to Vermont, near Burlington, where she was reared. Mr. Randall has several times been Justice of the Peace, and member of the School Board, and, since coming here, has been prominently identified with the business interests of the place.

[History of Northern Wisconsin (Eau Claire County, Wis.) 1881, pages 330-331; submitted by FoFG mz]

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