Daniel J. Townsend (1856-1936)

TOWNSEND

Posted By: Karon Velau (email)
Date: 3/23/2022 at 17:36:03

Daniel John Townsend
(December 9, 1856 – March 27, 1936)

There are in every community men of great force of character and exceptional ability, who by reason of their capacity for leadership become recognized as foremost citizens, and bear a most important part in the development and progress of the locality with which they are connected. Such a man is Dr. Townsend, who is prominently identified with the interests of Lohrville and surrounding country, having made his home here since the establishment of the town. The Doctor was born in Bureau County, Illinois, December 9, 1856, and is a son of John and Sarah J. (Valentine) Townsend, now living at Gowrie, Iowa. The father was born in Vermont, January 18, 1826, and the mother in New York state, October 5, 1835. The former spent his early life in the Green Mountain state, and when he was twelve years of age his parents moved to Erie county, New York. He was married, May 15, 1855. In the spring of 1856 he went west and located at Pond Creek, Bureau County, Illinois. He purchased a piece of land in Manlius township, of the same county, from the government, at two dollars and a half per acre, where he lived until the fall of 1866, when he sold his Illinois possessions and came to Iowa. He rented a farm twelve miles south of Fort Dodge, near Tysons Mills, now known as Lehigh. One year later he entered a tract of river land on section 9, Sunmer township, where he made his home for five years, and then purchased a farm near the village of Gowrie in the same county. He gave his time and attention to the improvement and cultivation of this place until his retirement from active labor, when he and his wife moved to the village where they now live. Although past the alloted span of life, they are still hale and hearty, and bid fair to live for many years yet, enjoying the esteem and respect of those who know them. The father served in Company K, Fifty-seventh Regiment, Illinois Volunteers, in the war of the Rebellion. In his political views he has always been an ardent Republican, having cast his vote for Fremont in 1856, and has voted for every Republican candidate for president since that time. Four children were born to this family, the subject of our sketch being the oldest. The others were : George E., a physician residing at Austin, Colorado ; Emmett E., a contractor at Fort Dodge, Iowa ; and Ellen E., who died at the age of thirty years, at Gowrie, Iowa. Reared in Bureau County, Illinois, Dr. Townsend acquired his early education in its public schools, and after coming to Iowa he attended the public schools of Webster Countv. He earned his first money when fourteen years old, driving a breaking team consisting of five yoke of oxen hitched to a twenty-eighth inch breaking plow, in Lost Grove township, Webster County, his compensation for this work being eight dollars per month. The winter he was eighteen years of age he began teaching school. His first school was in a district where another teacher had failed and the school was considered a hard one to handle, but he succeeded in controlling the incorrigibles so successfully that the school board retained him at an advance in salary of ten dollars a month above the usual contract price, and at the end of the term the board re-employed him for the following year. He taught in all sixteen terms of school, including the principalship of the Dayton schools. During the time he was teaching he began the study of medicine under the direction of O. E. Evans, M. D., of Gowrie, Iowa. To the efficiency of the instruction and good advice of Dr. Evans, Dr. Townsend gives great credit for his success in his chosen profession. He attended a course of lectures at the College of Physicians, at Keokuk, during 1879-80, and afterward attending at Chicago and graduating at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, at Des Moines, March 4, 1887. Since graduating he has taken three courses in clinical medicine and surgery. In the fall of 1887 he became a member of the Central District Medical Association, and in 1888 a member of the Iowa State Society. In 1890 he was a delegate from the State Medical Society to the American Medical Association, which met at Nashville, Tennessee ; was a delegate a second time to the American Association, at Atlanta, Georgia, in 1896; and again a third time, in 1901, the Anierican Association meeting that year being held at St. Paul, Minnesota. He was one of the delegates appointed by Governor Leslie M. Shaw to represent Iowa in the International Association, for the investigation of tuberculosis, at London, England, in July, 1901.
On the 15th of May, 1884, Dr. Townsend was married to Myra M. Hawthorne, a native of Upper Kent, Carlton County, New Brunswick, and the daughter of George H. Hawthorne and wife. Dr. and Mrs. Townsend have four children, all living. Their names and dates of birth are as follows: Blanche, December 8, 1885; Orville J., January 18, 1888; Irwin, February 3, 1895 ; and Dewitt, July 14, 1899. Dr. Townsend has been identified with almost the entire growth and development of Lohrville; there was but one building, and that a farm house, on the farm which is now the site of a live, thrifty town, when he located here. On Thanksgiving day of 1881 he was one of a party of eight — all strangers — who met at Gowrie and were anxious to come to Lohrville. As there were no trains running they secured permission to use a handcar, on which they all crowded and worked their passage westward. This little party consisted of two physicians, two merchants, two harnessmakers, one lawyer and one blacksmith, all of whom located at Lohrville, except one of the harnessmakers, and four of them still make their homes here. They are Drs. Townsend and Craig and Attorneys Towers and J. M. Stephens. J. J. Flanigan erected the first building in Lohrville and occupied it as a saloon. It is now owned by Mrs. Quinn and is occupied as a restaurant by M. O. Wheatley. Enos Ralston soon after built the City Hotel and John Morrison built a saloon where the Wilson House now stands. The first fire in Lohrville was the burning of Morrison's saloon in the fall of 1882. The buildings erected the first fall and winter the town was in existence in addition to those mentioned were as follows : A hardware store and drug store, erected by L. W. Johnson ; a general store, by O. M. Hollingshead ; a meat market, by John Back ; a general store, hardware store and hotel, by A. W. Safely ; a general store, by Hopkins & Wilkinson ; a restaurant, by J. H. Griffin; a drug store, by J. W. Allison ; a general store, by Adams & Drydcn ; a livery, by A. O. Garlock; a saloon, by William Baldwin; and a bank, by S. G. Crawford & Company. One of the queer combinations that sometimes occur in the building up and organizing of business in new towns in the west was shown here during the winter of 1881-1882. J. M. Stephens and J. J. Flanigan conducting a saloon and shoe store in the same room. The town was incorporated during the winter of 1883 and S. G. Crawford was elected mayor. The following spring Dr. Townsend was elected as a member of the council, a position to which he was re-elected several terms. He was elected mayor in 1897 and again in 1898, and served until March. 1900. He was a member of the school board from 1890 to 1900, being president of the board for several years. He entered the campaign of 1899 as a candidate for state representative with J. C. Lowry, of Pomeroy, and R. A. Horton. of Manson, as candidates for nomination against him. About the middle of the campaign Mr. Horton withdrew and the contest was a spirited one from that time until the primaries, when the votes were counted and it was found that Dr. Townsend had three hundred and one more than Mr. Lowry and consequently received the nomination, which in that strong Republican district meant election. In 1901 he was again a candidate for the same office and received the nomination of his party without contest, and was re-elected, thus serving in the twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth general assemblies of the legislature, where he made a record for careful, conservative work, of which he may justly feel proud. As a Republican he has always taken a lively interest in promoting the welfare of the party, and his official duties have been creditably and satisfactorily discharged. He is a member of the Repubilican Grant club of Des Moines. Iowa. Dr. Townsend also belongs to the following civic societies : Zerrubbabel Lodge, No. 240, A. F. & A. M. ; Cypress Chapter, No. 99, R. A. M. ; Rose Croix Commandery, No. 38, K. T. ; Lohrville Lodge, No. 469, I. O. O. F. The last named lodge was organized at Lohrville, August 3, 1882, with the charter members as follows : D. J. Townsend, H. R. Howell, James Herring. B. F. Howell and Daniel Lowe. The Doctor is a public spirited and progressive citizen and gives his support to all measures for the public good and welfare of the community in which he lives.
[Source – Biographical Record of Calhoun County, Iowa, by S. J. Clarke, 1902, p.223]