Progressive Men of
Iowa 1899
THOMPSON, Francis Marion, of
Rock Rapids, is a brother of J. K. P. Thompson,
whose sketch is included in this work, so his
ancestry need not be repeated. He was born in
Carey, Ohio, October 11, 1842, attended school
with his brother, and came with his parents from
Ohio to Clayton county, Iowa, in 1857. He was
taught music by his mother, and at the age of 15
could read music better than print. Later he was
under the instruction of George F. Root, of
Chicago. From his 15th year he devoted much of his
time to singing and did evangelistic singing after
he was converted and admitted to the church. He
was prominent in church and Sunday school work
until he, with his brother, enlisted in the
Twenty-tirst Iowa Volunteer infantry, August 15,
1862, preferring this to going to college. The
regiment was commanded by Col. Samuel Merrill, and
was in many engagements, among them those of
Hartsville, Mo., Milligan's Bend, Vicksburg
campaign, bombardment of Grand Gulf, Port Gibson,
where General Grant highly complimented the
regiment on being the first in and the last out of
the fight, Champion Hill, Big Black River Bridge,
and other engagements. In the last named fight Mr.
Thompson was one of those who carried Colonel
Merrill off the field when he was wounded. He was
never hit but once and that was by a spent ball
which struck his toe and did him no harm. The
regiment afterward went through the Texas campaign
and Mobile campaign, and up the Red river and was
present at the surrender of Gen. Kirby Smith.
While in camp at Dauphin Island at the mouth of
Mobile Bay he was afflicted with trouble with his
eyes, which became rapidly worse and resulted in
almost total blindness. In the fall of 1865 his
old colonel interested himself in the soldier boy
who had helped to carry him off the battlefield,
and sent him to Chicago, where he was for eleven
months under the treatment of a celebrated
oculist. His right eye was taken out and his left
eye partially saved, so that he saw with the use
of an artificial pupil, using a very strong glass.
During the time he was entirely blind the
government gave him a pension of $8 a month, which
increased from time to time until in 1893 he was
receiving $72 a month, but Hoke Smith, then
secretary of the interior, had this pension
reduced to $30 a month.
In 1875 Mr. Thompson
went to Rock Rapids and the next year opened the
first agricultural implement establishment in the
town. He soon traded for a farm near town, but the
grasshoppers destroyed everything and he returned
to town and went into the drug business with
George C. Wood. He objected to selling whisky, so
his partner sold out to J. M. Webb, and for the
same reason Mr. Webb sold out to Mr. Thompson. The
business was a very successful one. The strain on
his eyesight compelled him to retire from this
business and in 1887 he took his family to
California. Returning to Iowa he, with others,
organized the Doon Savings bank. In the spring of
1896 he and his brother, J. F. Thompson, together
with others, bought a 1,000-acre tract of land
near Sacramento, Cal., and were interested in
building the Sacramento, Fair Oaks & Orange
Vale electric railway. The Thompson family are
republicans and F. M. cast his first vote for
Abraham Lincoln in 1864. He is past commander of
Dunlap Poet No. 147, G. A.
R., in Rock Rapids, the poet having been named
after the lieutenant colonel of his regiment, who
was killed in the charge at Vicksburg, May 22,
1863. He is a past aid-de-camp on the department
commander's staff and past assistant
Inspector-general on the staff of the
commander-in-chief. He s a past master of Border
Lodge No 406, A. F. & A. M., past high priest
of Lyon Chapter, Royal Arch Masons, and past
excellent grand master of Third Vail Grand Chapter
of Iowa, Royal Arch
Masons.
He was married October
3, 1872, to Nettie Wiltee, daughter of Dr. A.
Wiltse, of Strawberry Point, Iowa. They have had
three children, Ella E., born June 5, 1878, who is
especially interested in music and is a graduate
of the Rock Rapids high school, and is now a
student of Cedar Rapids Business college; Genie
M., born August 11, 1880; Gertie V., born November
21, 1883. The family are all members of the
Methodist church.
THOMPSON, Col. James Knox Polk, of Rock
Rapids, Iowa, was born near Carey, Ohio August 21,
1845.
His father, Matthew Thompson, who was a
soldier of the war of 1812, was born at Head Elk,
Cecil county, Md., January 8, 1781. His paternal
grandfather, Isaac Thompson, and paternal
grandmother, Sarah Bell, were native of Belfort,
Ireland, where they were married and where their
first son, Thomas Cruse Thompson, was born. Both
the Thompson and Bell families were related to the
famous Lord Thomas Cruse, who was compelled to
flee the country for his participation in the
revolution of 1798. He sought an asylum in the
United States, where he died soon after. His
mother, Martha Spaulding Thompson, was a daughter
of Abel Spaulding, who served with distinction in
the revolutionary war, and through her is a direct
descendant of Aqulla Chase, who settled in
Newberry, Mass., in 1640, and is therefore closely
related to Bishop Philander Chase (1776-1852) and
Salmon P. Chase (1908-1873), chief justice of the
supreme court of the United States.
He first attended
school in a log schoolhouse in Ohio, where
everything was of the rudest and most primitive
character. His education was carefully
superintended by his mother, who was a prominent
educator of her time, to whom he went to school
for several years. He came to Iowa in November,
1867, and settled in Clayton county, then a
sparsely populated frontier county. The trip from
Ohio was made in a covered wagon and consumed more
than forty days. In the year 1869 he commenced the
study of law under the tutorage of S. T. Woodward,
of Elkader, while carrying on his regular farm
work, and was admitted to the bar In May, 1873,
and soon thereafter removed to his present
location. In June of that year he opened the first
law office Lyon county. He was actively engaged in
practice until 1893, and was conspicuous in all
the prominent cases litigated in that
section.
His business was not confined to that
county alone, but extended to adjoining counties,
and his collections covered a radius of more then
100 miles.
He was council for the board of supervisors
during the stirring period of the defalcation of
the treasurer of the county, during the settlement
of which scenes having the smack of life in the
woolly west were enacted. In 1876 he formed a
partnership with his brother, T. C. Thompson, and
the same was continued until 1880, when it was
dissolved by mutual consent. He organized the Lyon
County bank in 1877 under the style of J. K. P.
Thompson & Co. The bank was reorganized in
1889, and the capital increased to 125,000, with
Hon. William Larrabee and others as special
partners, and O. P. Miller as
general partner. The capital stock was increased
from time to time until it reached its present
amount, $100,000. Mr. Larrabee retired in 1893,
the interest of the other special partners having
been previously purchased by the general partners.
He enlisted August 18,
1862, as a musician in Company D, Twenty-first
Iowa volunteers, and served throughout the war
with as much distinction as comes to the average
soldier. He was engaged in the following battles:
Hartsville, the running of the blockade at
Vicksburg, bombardment of Grand Gulf, Port Gibson,
was in the forefront when the pickets were fired
upon, Champion Hill, the charge at Black River
Bridge, assault and siege of Vicksburg, when he
was under fire for forty days and nights. He was
severely wounded in the assault on the works of
Vicksburg, and was at the time within a few feet
of his commander, General McClennan. After the
surrender of the city, he was sent to Jefferson
barracks hospital, and rejoined his regiment at
Matagorda Bay the February following. He also
participated in the Mobile campaign, was in the
siege and assault of Ft. Blakely and Spanish Fort,
the surrender of Mobile and the capture of Kirby
Smith, having taken part in seven hard-fought
battles, and participated in the most noted
campaign of this or any other
age.
He is a charter member
of Dunlap Post No. 147, Department of Iowa, G. A.
R., which he was instrumental in having named
after his lieutenant-colonel, who was killed while
gallantly leading his command on the works of
Vicksburg. He is past commander of his post, and
past commander Department of Iowa, G. A. R.,
having served in that capacity during the years of
1896-6. He also served on the staff of
Commander-ln-chief Vezy, and as aid of several
commanders of Iowa. He was appointed
lieutenant-colonel in the Iowa national guard on
the staff of Governor Larrabee, again on that of
Governor Jackson, and promoted to the rank of
colonel by Governor Drake In February, 1896, which
rank he now holds.
His father was an
old-line democrat, but the son did not embrace the
faith of the father. He cast his first vote for a
republican, and has several times managed with
consummate skill the campaigns of his county as
chairman of the central committee. He was
elected recorder of the county in 1875, and held
the office for one term, although he had been in
actual charge of the office since 1873, and was at
one time in charge of all the county offices. He
was nominated for the office of representative by
the republicans of the Seventieth district, and
was defeated by Hon. William Barrett, the
democratic nominee, by only a few votes. There
were only thirty-three votes cast against him in
his own county. He is a member of all the Masonic
orders, past eminent commander, a member of the
Knights of Pythias, and a Son of the American
Revolution.
In nearly all of these orders he holds high
official positions. He is a member of the
Congregational church and a trustee of Iowa
college. He was instrumental in establishing the
Vicksburg National Military park, and has been a
member of the provisional board of directors of
the organization from the
beginning.
He was married to Miss
Celestia A. Fobes, at Elkader, Iowa, November 18,
1869, who is also of revolutionary ancestry; her
great grandfather served with great valor in the
revolutionary war. They have
three children, two daughters and one son: Lily
Foster Thompson Parker, Leta May Thompson and Hoyt
Fobes Thompson. They are all graduates of the Rock
Rapids high School. The older
daughter was a student at Cornel1 college. The second
daughter graduated from Iowa college, where the
son is now a student. He will soon enter
Princeton.
Colonel Thompson has
been closely identified with the development of
northwestern Iowa, and especially with Lyon
County, having become a resident thereof a few
months after Its organization, and has borne a
conspicuous part in its settlement. He bore
evidence of his faith in its future oy large
investments in her rich soil, and by tenaciously
clinging thereto. The result more than justified
his faith.
VAIL, Alexander M., M. D., of Rock
Rapids, is a son of Alexander Vail, a hatter
during his earlier years in the city of Newark, N.
J. Following the election of Buchanan, however, he
foresaw the possible destruction of the
manufacturing industries of the east, and so, in
1857, removed to Illinois and settled on a farm
near Kewanee, where he lived until 1865. He died
November 1, 1894, while visiting the doctor, at
the advanced age of 90 years. The mother, Sarah
Sebring Vail, was a woman whose life was one of
great activity in the work of benevolence. She
died at the age of 62. King George I of Great
Britain granted a tract of land in the Orange
mountains in New Jersey to the early ancestors of
the Vails, and there several generations of the
family passed their lives. Among the descendants
of these was Judge Stephen Vail, of Patterson,
N.
J., who was the
father of Alfred Vail, said to be the originator
of the Morse system of electric telegraphy. Little
is known of the mother's antecedents except that
they were natives of Holland.
Alexander M. Vail was
born at Greenbrook, Summerset county, N. J., May
9, 1848. His educational advantages were limited;
he attended country school during winter and by
hard study evenings when engaged as a clerk at an
early age. He started to learn the tinner's trade
at 14, but was induced to abandon the idea by his
mother, and entered the service of his brother,
who owned a clothing store. After four
years in that capacity be made a tour of Kansas
and Nebraska, but finding no place to his liking
returned to Kewanee, 111. He went to Chicago
shortly after the big fire, and from there to Red
Oak, Iowa, where he was engaged for a time in
clerking, but the company failed and he was thrown
out of employment. After working at various places
he, in 1877, took up the study of medical
electricity and
hydropathy.
In the fall of 1879 he
went to Chicago and began a regular course in
medicine and surgery. While there he assisted
Dr.
L. G. McIntosh in perfecting the electric
battery now known as the McIntosh battery, and by
his practical genius aided in bringing out one of
the best and most extensively used batteries now
in use by physicians. He graduated from the
Chicago Medical college in 1882. During his junior
year he took second prize, consisting of a medal
and a $10 gold piece, in an oral contest in
anatomy, and the next year received a like prize
for the best dissection. Following
graduation he engaged in practice in Red Oak, in
partnership with Dr. F. M.
Hiett, where he remained one year; removed to Rock
Rapids in 1884 and went into the drug business
with Dr. A. McNab, practicing the while; sold out
in 1887 and devoted his whole attention to
practice.
While there he established a reputation in
the treatment of diseases of women and children,
and his success with tuberculosis by the iodine
method, a discovery of his own, has attracted wide
attention.
In 1886 he assisted in
organizing the Medical Association of Northwestern
Iowa, and in 1887 was delegated a member of the
American Medical association, which then met in
Chicago. In 1894 he succeeded in organizing the
Lyon County Medical society. He is a member of the
National Association of Railway Surgeons, and is
local surgeon for the Illinois Central railway. He
is a republican and prohibitionist, but regards
the latter as a moral rather than a political
question. He is a member of the I. O. O. F., and
has filled most all the offices in his home lodge;
was district deputy grand master for one year. He
is highly prominent in the work of the M. W. of A.,
having assisted in organizing one of the strongest
lodges in any small town in the state. He was
married to Miss Ida F. Burrough, of Tecumseh,
Mich., September 8, 1886. They have no
children.
VOGT, Louis, at present engaged in the
practice of law at George, Iowa, was born at
Rockton, 111., January 3, 1870, and is, therefore,
but 29 years of age. As his name would indicate,
he is a German, his parents both being descendants
of honored members of that sturdy race. When 4
years old he came to Iowa with his parents, who
settled at Shell Rock in Butler county. Later they
removed to Sanborn, O'Brien county, where the
boyhood days of Mr. Vogt were
passed. He commenced business for himself at the
age of 11, as boot-black, which was continued, in
connection with his school work, for three years;
also acted as messenger boy and did any and all
odd jobs which he could find to do. By this means
he was enabled to enter the Northern Iowa Normal
school at Algona, when 16, where he remained one
year. He then secured a position as brakeman on
the railroad, and for two years served in that
dangerous and arduous work. He later learned the
printer's trade, and when 19 years of age,
conducted a weekly newspaper at Lake City, Col.
His knowledge of typesetting served him well in
later years, for it was by working spare hours in
a printing office that he paid his way through one
of the leading law schools of the country. We have
reference to the Northern Indiana School of Law,
at Valparaiso, from which he graduated June 3,
1891. During his class days he was a member of the
Star Literary society, taking an active part in
the debates and entertainments of that
organization. In 1891, he commenced the practice
of law at Clarkes, Neb., but later went to Silver
Creek, Neb., and in the fall of 1892 returned to
Iowa and engaged in the newspaper business at
Sanborn, where he established the Sanborn Sun. In
1894, however, he resumed the practice of law at
George, where he has built up a lucrative
practice.
Politically, Mr. Vogt is, and has ever
been, a democrat. He was a candidate for county
attorney of Merrick county, Neb., on that ticket
in 1892, and ran for the same office in Lyon
county, Iowa, in 1896, but was defeated in both
instances because of the decided republican
strength in those counties. He was married to Miss
Jennie McKeever, of Sanborn, June 3,
1896.
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