Daniel M. Harris

HARRIS, WHITE, EDGERTON, HAMLIN, VOSS, JENKINS, FOGG, CRANE, TOWNSEND, LAHMAN, TOFT, CHAPMAN, RAINBERGER, JONES, RUTLEDGE, RUSSELL

Posted By: Wee (email)
Date: 3/13/2005 at 04:41:47

Source:

History of Audubon county, Iowa...H F Andrews, editor...Indianapolis: B.
F. Bowen & Company, 1915. Reprint. LaCrosse, WI : Brookhaven Press,
2000.

Pages 118-122

Hon. DANIEL M. HARRIS

Judge Daniel M. Harris was a gentleman with whom it was a pleasure to have been acquainted. No man in Audubon county, during the period of his residence here, from 1854 to 1862, did more than he, as a citizen and public officer, for the advancement of the community. He was worthy, genial, friendly and a highly-intelligent gentleman. He was born in Dayton, Ohio, July 21, 1821. In 1837 he went to Williamsport, Tennessee, where, in 1841, he married Martha Minerva White. He was a carpenter and merchant in Williamsport, whence he migrated and arrived at Hamlin's Grove on November 8, 1854. He settled in section 36, now Exira township, improved land there and worked at his trade. In 1857 he moved to section 14, now Audubon township, and improved land there.

He was elected county judge in 1855 and held the office until 1862. It was the most important office in the county, its duties embracing many now exercised by the board of supervisors, relative to elections, taxation, roads, and the general county business, besides jurisdiction in probate matters, and concurrent jurisdiction with justices of the peace. Most of the public county records were installed under his direction, and many of the first records were written with his own hand, showing very neat penmanship, and intelligent, painstaking work, a monument to his memory. He was the first lawyer in the county, and the factotum for all kinds of legal and official business for the people of the county during the period from 1854 to 1861, inclusive, which compares favorably with that conducted at the present time. This is remarkable when it is considered that Iowa was then in its infancy and that the forms and methods of transacting such affairs were not then well settled. Lawyers and officers were then required to make their own forms of documents and legal records, without the aid of the codes, hand books of forms, practice and procedure which are now possessed.

Judge Harris was highly esteemed as a citizen and his friends were co-extensive with his acquaintance. If he had enemies, they were few and were confined to his rivals. His integrity was unquestioned. He was an eminently public-spirited man. In 1855-6 he originated the idea and assisted to build the first school house in the county, a log building at Hamlin's Grove, a private enterprise, erected by the donations and labor of the settlers. In 1856-7 he and Peoria I. Whitted erected the first public school house in the county, at the cost of two hundred and sixty-five dollars, built by subscription, at Audubon City (Hamlin's Grove).

In 1857 Judge Harris bought from David Edgerton for four hundred dollars, an unrecorded one-half interest in the land upon which the town of Exira was laid out and platted. And while the business was conducted in the name of Mr. Edgerton, Harris was the real promoter and did the business. The first sale of lots was on May 7, 1857, Mr. Harris being the auctioneer, and the sale aggregated one thousand nine hundred and fifty dollars. He reserved all of block 8 in the town for his own home lot, and in the same year built for himself the first dwelling in town. This he sold, about 1860, to William P. Hamlin, and then built for himself another dwelling, which stood where the Park hotel is located. Soon afterwards he built another building, about sixteen feet square, on block 8, for a carpenter shop, where Ernest Voss's residence is situated, and which was afterwards used for a postoffice. It was sold to the county, moved upon the public square and used for the county offices until 1874, when it degenerated into a beer saloon. The same year he originated a plan for building the first school house at Exira, and which was erected with less than one hundred dollars in actual cash. The contract price of the building was one thousand three hundred dollars. The taxpayers brought to the contractor grain, labor, lumber, etc., for which the county treasurer gave a receipt as for cash, and the contractor receipted to the treasurer for it. And so the house was erected and paid for.

Judge Harris served as postmaster at Exira from 1857 to 1861. He was elected representative to the Legislature in 1859 from the twenty-sixth district, composed of the counties of Audubon, Guthrie, Harrison and Shelby, and served in the sessions of the ninth General Assembly. He said: "I supported, as representative, all the war measures of Iowa, and was a good a real Union man as nay (sic) in Iowa. I was opposed to much of the legislation of the Republican party of that day, believing then, as I do now, that much of it was for the purpose of robbing the people of the South, whom I consider as much entitled to the protection of the United States government as the people of the North." He supported Douglas for President in 1860. It is said that at the beginning of the war, in 1861, he made a strong Union speech at Exira, at which the Democrats, and especially Uncle Natty Hamlin, were offended. John T. Jenkins, of Brayton, says, that when he enlisted in 1861, Judge Harris praised his conduct in going to war and said that it was the duty of young men to serve their country in time of its peril. His son, William J. Harris, enlisted in 1862, in Company B, Thirty-ninth Iowa Infantry, and was captured at Altoona in 1864.

The Harris home at Exira was noted for hospitality and was the favorite resort of the elite of Audubon county in early times, being the scene of gayety, festivity and pleasure. The normal condition was that the house was full to overflowing, and all comers were always made welcome and happy. The family rarely set down to the table alone at meal time.

Judge Harris moved to Panora, Iowa, in the spring of 1862, and became a member of the firm of Harris & Fogg, prominent lawyers there. At the same time he was proprietor and editor of the Guthrie County Ledger, notorious in its opposition to the Republican party and administration. In 1867 he was the Democratic candidate for lieutenant-governor of Iowa. He moved to Missouri Valley in 1868 and there conducted the Missouri Valley Times. Returning to Exira in 1873, he conducted the Audubon County Defender, and later, moved to Atlantic, Iowa, and there established the Cap Sheaf. He again removed to Missouri Valley, about 1876, and continued the publication of the Missouri Valley Times the remainder of his life.

Exceptions were taken to Judge Harris along political lines, as a newspaper editor and proprietor and politician, especially during war times and the reconstruction period. He was prominent in the Democratic party and in harmony with its doctrines, tenets and traditions. He denounced the war in strong terms, and was in sympathy with the South. His paper was considered detrimental to the Union cause. The soldiers, who were then dodging rebel bullets in the army, looked with disfavor and hatred upon those in the rear who were acting against their best interests, and regarded those who were not with them as against them. It was a desperate situation - a case of life or death to the soldiers who
were fighting in a just cause for their rights - which is now the verdict of the world, including the Southern people themselves. To err is human. Judge Harris probably lived to regret some things he said and did. Near the time of his death he published in his paper: "In looking back over the past ninety years' history of our life we feel that, with our experience, if we had the journey to make over, we would shun politics as we would a plague." In the year of his death there appeared in his paper an article from his own pen on the centennial of the birth of Lincoln, the tenor of which was all that a patriotic American could desire; but in marked contrast with the sentiments expressed in his earlier writings. He was for many years a Free Mason and an Odd Fellow. He died at Missouri Valley, October 9, 1911. Mrs. Harris died in 1898.
Their children were as follows: Mary Isabella, married John Crane; William James, married Flora Townsend; Daniel Webster, never married; Clarinda Campbell, married John Lahman; John Wiley, married Hattie Toft; Robert Henry, married Frances Chapman; Ellis Nathaniel, married Essie Rainberger; Edwin Freeman, married Emma Jones; Virginia Tennessee, married Will Rutledge; Emma Eudora, married Charles Russell.

NOTE: Edwin's middle name was "Truman"...not "Freeman". - Wee