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Progressive Men of Iowa
1899
 BENNETT,
Albert T., is a native of Massachusetts, having been
born at Mention, in that state, October 8, 1855, at
which place he resided until May, 1869. The name of his
father was Russell Bennett, who died in 1860. His
mother's maiden name was Roba M. Farnsworth, a native of
northern Vermont.
In the summer of 1869 he came with his
mother to Carroll county, settling on a farm near the
present town of Templeton. His mother continued to
reside there until her death in 1889. His early
education was obtained in the public schools. From 1874
to 1881 he taught school winters working on his mother's
farm during the summers.
In the spring of 1881 he entered the law
office of Hon. O.
H. Manning, then lieutenant-governor of the
state, a talented and successful lawyer and financier,
who is now private counsel for a number of Illinois
corporations at Chicago. In April, 1882, Mr. Bennett was
admitted to the bar, and in June of that year located at
Manning, where he has since resided. In addition to his
law practice he is engaged in the banking business,
being owner and manager of the Bennett bank at Manning.
He is an active member of the republican party, and is
now serving his fourth term as chairman of the
republican central committee of Carroll county.
He was married December 20, 1883, to Miss
Clara J. Ayrhart, of Dedham, Iowa. They have one child,
Ralph A. Bennett, born May 6, 1886.
 COLCLO, Croton Cortice, one of the editors of
the Carroll Sentinel, has been for some years an
influential democrat in northwestern Iowa, and at one
time postmaster of Carroll. He was born November 2,
1852, in Findlay, Ohio. He was the son of J. H. Colclo,
a farmer, and his wife, Hannah Jane Cretsinger. They
were of the well-to-do middle class and were not known
to fame. Their son was educated in the district school
and afterwards completed the course in the high school
in Carroll, Iowa. The family moved to Winterset, Iowa,
in 1854, and in 1856 settled in Carroll county, and has
resided there ever since. When they went to Carroll they
took up a homestead and went through all the privations
of pioneer life in making of it an attractive home.
Our Mr. Colclo began to earn money on his
own account at an early day by farm work, and he has a
distinct recollection of the way he earned his first
dollar by following a man who marked out the rows with a
single shovel plow, the boy dropping the corn by hand,
and it was then covered by a man with a hoe. He taught
school in the country, worked on the farm, and worked
his way through the Iowa Agricultural college,
graduating with the class of '77. He was a member
of the Bachelors'Debating society and filled the
position of president of that society, which was one of
the leading literary organizations of the college. He
was also a member of the Delta Tau Delta Greek Letter
society, and was an active working member of this
society, and never failed to perform his part
therein.
Mr. Colclo was elected county
superintendent of schools in the year 1881 and served
three and a half years, resigning to accept the Carroll
post office under President Cleveland's first
administration. He held this appointment from 1885 to
1888, and resigned it to again accept the county
superintendent, which he held for two years, then
engaged in the newspaper work by purchasing a half
interest in the Carroll Sentinel one of the best weekly
papers in the state. He and his partner, J. L. Powers,
proceeded to carry on the daily which had been started
by their predecessors, but they found after six years of
experience that the town was not large enough to sustain
a daily, and it was discontinued. The paper is now a
semi-weekly, issued Mondays and Thursdays. Mr. Colclo cast
his first vote for Samuel J. Tilden for president, and
has been enthusiastic in the support of the democratic
party ever since. He was a delegate to the democratic
national convention in Chicago in 1896. He is an
advocate of bimetallism and supported Bryan. He is still
hopeful of the success of the cause. He is a member
of the Masonic Lodge and the Eastern Star and the
Knights of Pythias. By early training and associations
he is a Presbyterian. He was married November 21, 1890,
to Mrs. Sadie E.
Snyder.
 DAVENPORT, Francis M., of Carroll, was one of
a large family of children born to Joseph Davenport and
Rebecca Coverston Davenport, in their home in Ohio, of
which state both his parents were natives. His
birthplace was Gallia county, Ohio, and his natal day
May 1, 1840.
Both of his parents were of
large families, nearly all of whom lived to a ripe old
age. The family came to Iowa in 1847 and settled in
Mahaska county, near Oskaloosa, where his father died in
1884 at the age of 70 years. His mother died in 1892 at
the age of 76. Mr. Davenport was a pupil in the country
district schools until he was 19 years of age, when he
entered college and completed the classical course in
the Iowa Wesleyan university, at Mount Pleasant. He was
graduated in 1864, after which he studied law one year
in the University of Michigan, at Ann Arbor. Returning
to Iowa he spent eight months in the law office of
Seevere & Cutta, of Oskaloosa, and was admitted to
the bar October 20, 1869. He then began the practice of
his profession in Oskaloosa. The firm with which he
studied law was composed of Judge W. H. Seevere, who was
subsequently a member of the supreme court of Iowa for
thirteen years: and of M. E. Cutta, who for five years
was attorney-general of Iowa, and at the time of his
death a member of congress.
Mr. Davenport early learned
the good lesson of independent self-support and earned
by his own efforts all the money he had. He was very
successful in his practice in Oskaloosa for a period of
eighteen years, retiring from 1887 to 1892. He was city
solicitor in Oskaloosa for a term of two years,
declining a second term. He is a loyal democrat, and has
been chosen at various times to represent his party on
their ticket, but democratic victories were few in the
county, and although Mr. Davenport always ran ahead of
his ticket and was deserving and popular and a strong
man in his party, he was not elected to office. The
contest of 1880 is well remembered in Mahaska county,
where Mr. Davenport was the democratic candidate for
circuit judge in the Sixth judicial circuit. He received
twenty-two votes more in his home county than the
combined vote of the democratic and greenback candidates
for president of the United States; and in the county
where bis opponent lived he ran 157 votes ahead of his
ticket. In 1892 he became a resident of Carroll, and
resumed his law practice. In 1896 he was a
candidate for county attorney of Carroll county, but was
counted out by the judges of election and the board of
canvassers. He contested the election and a court of
contest, organized under the statutes, tried the case
and declared him elected by twenty-seven majority. But
on appeal to the higher courts he was defeated upon a
technicality, the higher courts refusing to count the
ballots.
In 1898 he was chosen one of
the democratic candidates for district judge of the
Sixteenth judicial district This district is composed of
Carroll, Crawford, Calhoun, Greene, Ida and Sac
counties. The district having a large republican
majority he was again defeated, though he ran far ahead
of his ticket, not only in his home county, but in the
entire district.
Mr. Davenport is one of the
leading lawyers in his part of the state and is so
recognized by the legal profession and the public
generally. He is one of the referees in bankruptcy under
the federal bankruptcy act of 1898, holding his
appointment from the federal court for the southern
district of Iowa. In his new home, he is loved and
respected, as he was in his former one. as a man of
honor and integrity, loyal to his friends and a good
citizen.
On May 1, 1870, Mr. Davenport was
married at Mount Pleasant, Iowa, to Miss Martha M.
Griffith. They have one son, Warren, born August 17,
1874. Mr.
Davenport is, and has been for over forty years,
a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, and besides
being a member of the bar, is not a member of any other
organization, fraternal or
otherwise.
 POWERS, John Leslie. Carroll county and the
city of Carroll has a very popular and influential daily
and weekly newspaper, known as the Sentinel, edited by
Messrs. Powers &
Colclo.
John L. Powers. the senior
editor, was born on a farm near Woodville, Sandusky
county, Ohio, March 21, 1863. He is a son of Charles
Powers, merchant and farmer, born in Columbia county,
N. Y., in
1819, who moved to Perrysburg, Ohio, in 1836, casting
his first vote there in 1840 for Martin Van Buren; went
to Woodville the same year to engage in mercantile
pursuits, adding farming in 1854. He was always a
democrat, and was appointed postmaster at Woodville by
President Pierce, and held that office until elected to
the legislature by the democratic party in 1859. He
served in the lower house during the stirring session
just preceding the war, and when James A. Garfield,
Jacob D.
Cox, and others afterwards famous, were in the
senate. He went south after the battle of Shiloh to look
after the Sandusky county soldier boys who were in that
battle, returning north on the hospital boat, where he
served as nurse to the wounded soldiers. He removed from
Woodville to Perrysburg in 1869, where he died in 1871,
leaving some property gained by industry and frugality.
His wife, Lydia Ann Banks, was born at St. Johns,
Ontario, in 1829, and was also a pioneer of the Black
Swamp country. She married Mr. Powers in 1847, and is
the mother of eight children, Helen A., George P., Julia
N., Charles A., James Freeland, Edward Adorns, John L.
and William Howard. All are living but Julia, who died
in infancy.
Mrs. Powers is now living with her youngest son
at Pawtucket, R. I. She is of a long-lived family; her
maternal grandmother lived to be 95 years old, and her
mother is now living, hale and hearty, at the age of 88.
She was born on the same day as Abraham Lincoln,
February 12, 1809.
Mr. Powers received a common
school education, but he has learned more from following
the reading habit and keeping his eyes and ears open as
he went through the printing offices in which he was
employed. He started to learn the printer's trade March
15, 1875, just before he was 12 years old, in the office
of the Buckeye Granger, in Perrysburg, Ohio, at $2 a
week. Three years there and two in the Bee office in
Toledo fitted him to travel, so he took to the road and
worked in various Ohio offices, among them the Cleveland
Leader, Herald and Plaindealer. He held cases on the
latter paper when the office was still fresh with the
fragrance of the gentle humor of Artemus Ward, who,
years before, had delighted with his wit the
Plaindealer's entire office force, as well as the
readers of that paper.
Mr. Powers came to Iowa at
the age of 19 to take cases on the Marshalltown Times -
Republican, afterward being employed in the job
department He returned to Ohio in 1883 and took a
position in the mail type room of Nasby's Toledo Blade,
remaining there only a few months, when he returned to
Iowa, and in the winter of 1883-4, with others, founded
the Marshall County News, of which Old Grizzly Chapin
was the editor. In the summer of 1884 he sold out and
took a position as foreman on the Statesman. He remained
there nearly five years, when he went to Carroll and
purchased of Mike Miller a half interest in the Carroll
Sentinel. This partnership continued until January,
1891, when Mr. Miller sold his interest to C. C. Colclo, and the
present firm of Powers & Colclo has since controlled
that paper.
Mr. Powers says he was born a democrat and
expects to die one. He has generally voted for his
party's nominees, but in 1884 voted for that great
statesman, James G. Blaine. He has been a delegate to
several state conventions of the democratic party, and
to various congressional, judicial and other minor
conventions. He was appointed postmaster at Carroll by
President Cleveland, and took charge of that office in
May, 1893, holding it until October, 1897. He is a
member of the Masonic and Knights of Pythias lodges,
serving in several of the official positions of the
latter, and also as secretary of the former during 1898.
He was secretary of the Enterprise club, an association
of local business men, is vice-president of the Boos
Shoulder Brace association, a local manufacturing
corporation, and always takes an active part in the
promotion of all the interests of his
city.
He joined the Presbyterian
church when a boy, but now usually attends the Episcopal
church, of which his wife is a member. He was married
October 14, 1885, to Miss Luella A. Osman, of
Marshalltown.
They have four children, Charles Osman, Gretchen,
Frederick Dodge, and John Leslie,
Jr.
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