COOLIDGE, John T. 1827-1907
COOLIDGE, SLOAN
Posted By: S. Bell
Date: 6/29/2012 at 17:30:52
[Waterloo Daily Courier - Friday, July 19, 1907, Waterloo, Iowa]
DEATH CALLS AGED CITIZEN
President J. T. Coolidge of Security
Savings Bank Passes AwayJohn T. Coolidge, one of Waterloo's most prominent business men, and a time honored resident of this community, passed quietly away last evening at his residence on Third Street, at twenty-two minutes after eight o'clock.
J. T. Coolidge was eighty years old on the twenty-ninth day of last January and was a hale and hearty man until two days before his last illness, which was due to old age and the accompanying diseases. He complained of considerable pressure on the lungs In his few hours of sickness, but because of his years an operation of any kind could not be thought of.
He was born on a farm in the-outskirts of a little town called Philadelphia, Jefferson County, near Watertown, New York. His parents were Quakers, and two brothers, Charles and Thomas, and a sister Asenath survive him in New York near the old home. One brother, Evan Coolidge, lives in this city. Mr. Coolidge had three children of a former wife, who have passed away and are buried in Ann Arbor, Michigan. There are no children of the present wife, Mary B. Coolidge who resides in Waterloo at the Coolidge home.
His first business experience was in the capacity of a dry goods clerk for the Keeler & Cole in Watertown, and afterwards went into partnership forming the firm J. T. and S. A. Coolidge in the same town, the junior member of the firm being a younger brother, who died some time ago. From Watertown he went to Evansville, Indiana, in 1863. The brother, Evan, now residing in Waterloo, went to Wisconsin at about the same time.
It was in 1876, the year of the Centennial, that he came to Waterloo from Evansville, where he had carried on a successful dry goods store and started up a similar business in December of the same year, under the name of J. T. Coolidge £ Co. Then in 1997 he quit the dry goods business, after twenty-one years of the most prosperous trade in the one location the store being from the first in the building next to the First National Bank. The store had a wide reputation and had the largest and most successful trade of any in this community at the time.
Words will not express the capabilities of Mr. Coolidge as a business man His record of success will always stand as a shining mark in the community for all time to come. He was successful because he treated all alike; honesty and square dealing of the strictest kind with everyone and anybody, was always his motto and was one of his many characteristics, which lead people to put trust in all transactions of such a noble character.
In 1900, with the organizing of the Security Savings Bank, he was elected to the office of president, which position of trust he has held until his death. He became an active member of the Presbyterian church with his first arrival in the city from New York, and has figured as a very beneficent giver to that and other institutions of good in Waterloo. In the erection of the present city hospital, he was the liberal giver of $5,000, a sum which practically assured and made possible the worthy institution for the city at the time the project was started.
The time for the services and tie funeral have not been definitely arranged but is known that the remains of one of Waterloo's most prominent respected and long to be remembered citizens will be laid to rest in the family lot at Ann Arbor, where the first wife and children are buried.
-------------------------
Burial was in Forest Hill Cemetery
Note: This researcher feels the paper may have got the wives names mixed up.
His wives were:
Mary Sloan Coolidge, Daughter of Daniel D. Sloan and Julia R. Sloan (died 1863)
Henrietta M. Coolidge February 14, 1825- October 22, 1891
Children were Charles (died 1973), Julia (1858-1882) and Susan M. (ca 1862-1887}
Black Hawk Obituaries maintained by Karen De Groote.
WebBBS 4.33 Genealogy Modification Package by WebJourneymen