William McLeran

MCLERAN, GLEASON, BLANCHARD, SPENCER, VAN COURT, CHIDISTER

Posted By: Marthann Kohl-Fuhs (email)
Date: 5/13/2009 at 15:08:01

1889 BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY OF
SHELBY AND AUDUBON COUNTIES, IOWA
W. S. DUNBAR & CO., PUBLISHERS
113 ADAMS STREET, CHICAGO

pages 791-792

WILLIAM McLERAN, proprietor of
McLeran's stock ranch, one mile west
of Audubon, is one of Audubon
County's thorough-going, successful citizens,
of whom no reasonable man ever has aught to
complain. The best and truest index to any
man's character and life is the general
opinion entertained of him by his nearest
neighbors, and those with whom he dealt
from day to day. Mr. McLeran's success as a
stock-grower and farmer comes largely from
the fact that he has always been thorough-
going and painstaking, and never afraid to
do hard work himself. In a volume of this
character, which is to be handed down from
generation to generation, it is indeed fitting
that some record be here made of one who
has gained a competency for himself and
family wholly by virtue of his own industry
and unremitting zeal. His has been a life to
which one may refer any young man as a
good one to pattern after, with all assurance
of abundant success. It requires more real,
true manhood, and genuine worth for one to
begin life unaided by friends and wealthy
relatives than it does to have ready capital
to commence on; however, the strongest
characters of American history have been
forged and wrought by boys who have been
obliged to carve their own way to final suc-
cess. Mr. McLeran, who has been a citizen
of Audubon County since 1879, is a native
of the old Green Mountain State, Vermont.
He was born October 24, 1824, in the town
of Barnett, Orleans County; his parents were
William and Eliza (Gleason) McLeran; his
Grandfather McLeran was also named Will-
iam; he served as a soldier in the war of
1812, and lived to an advanced age. William,
Jr., died when eighty-one years old. The
mother of our subject was of English descent,
born in Massachusetts, and died at Rochester,
New York; her remains now rest at Barnett,
Vermont. Mr. McLeran passed his youth
and received his education at Barnett, Ver-
mont, living at home on the farm until he
was about twenty years of age, at which
time he engaged in railroad business in New
England and Pennsylvania, both as a con-
structor and an operator; he ran the second
locomotive ever built in the United States.
it was of a crude and curious design, and
has for years been on public exhibition in
the city of Philadelphia; it was among the
curiosities at the Centennial Exposition of
1876, where Mr. McLeran last saw it. In
1851 he was married to Miss Betsey Blanch-
ard, the third daughter of Simon and Betsey
(Spencer) Blanchard. She was born .Decem-
ber 9, 1829, at Peacham, Vermont, where
she grew to womanhood. There she obtained
an excellent education, graduating from the
county academy, operated on the endowment
plan; it was accounted one of the best edu-
cational institutions of New England at that
time. After leaving school she at once began
teaching, and followed it for several years,
becoming a very popular and successful
teacher. Three years after his marriage Mr.
McLeran emigrated with his wife to Illinois;
at first he rented land near Rock River for a
year, after which he bought eighty acres in
Bureau County, of that State; here he re-
mained for nearly a quarter of a century,
twenty-four years, during which period he was
successful as a farmer and stock-grower, his
attention being especially directed to swine-
growing. Mr. and Mrs. McLeran are the
parents of nine children, eight of whom still
live -- Abbie, wife of E. D. Van Court; Si-
mon B.; Helen M., wife of F. H. Chidister,
of Aurora, Nebraska; Fannie C., now at-
tending school away from home; Walter
Palmer, at home; George Ralph, at Com-
mercial College at Omaha, Nebraska; Her-
bert Morris, at home attending school; and
Charles Stuart, at home. The deceased,
named Bessie Blanchard, died in infancy.
Upon selling out in Bureau County, Illinois,
in March, 1870, Mr. McLeran removed to
Audubon County, purchasing at first a quar-
ter section of land of the Rock Island Rail-
road Company. He now has a fine farm of
beautifully rolling prairie land, located on
sections 19 and 30, township 80, range 35,
west, and in the civil township of Leroy,
which is one mile west from Audubon, the
county seat. The first season he was in the
county he had 400 acres broken, besides at-
tending to the erection of a fine frame resi-
dence that would do honor as a city house,
He is at present as comfortably situated as
any farmer in his county, and is steadily in-
creasing his possessions by thrifty farming
and stock-growing. He now has hundreds of
fine cattle, hogs and horses upon his farm.
His premises are well adapted to stock-grow-
ing and feeding, as he has established a fine
system of water-works, by which a wind-
mill becomes the power in pumping water to
a large tank in the stock-yards and barn.
He grinds and mashes all the large corn crop
he produces, after which it is judiciously fed
to stock. He makes a special point of de-
horning all his horned stock, and has become
especially successful in the feeding of young
stock. Everything about the place displays
the art, so often lost sight of by farmers,
that of order. In political views Mr. Mc-
Leran is what might be termed conservative;
however, in State and National politics he
always votes the Democratic ticket. He has
never aspired to public office, but always
tells those who seek to press him into such
positions, which he might ably fill, that his
office is in his cattle yards. As one views his
large possessions, and sees how successfully
all parts are carried on, and then pauses to
think of the fact, that when he landed in Illi-
nois in 1854 all his earthly possessions were
found in his most estimable wife and two
children, and $123, it goes without saying
that all has come from patient toil and
frugal management.