Ankeny, Dr. Augustus L. 1828-1887

ANKENY, KIMMEL, PERIN, NIXON

Posted By: Michael Kearney (email)
Date: 10/5/2002 at 10:48:31

Wolfe's History of Clinton County 1911 p. 464-466 The history of a county or state, as well as that of a nation, is chiefly a chronicle of the lives and deeds of those who have conferred honor and dignity upon society. The world judges the character of a community by those of its representative citizens and yields its tribute of admiration and respect to those whose works and actions constitute the record of a state's prosperity and pride. Among the prominent citizens of Clinton county, who were well known because of their success in professional, civic and social circles, was the late Dr. A.L. Ankeny, a man in whom there was such a union of sterling characteristics that he easily won and retained the confidence, good will and esteem of all who knew him. Augustus L. Ankeny was born in Brownsville, JoDaviess county, Illinois, March 13, 1828, the son of John and Mary (Kimmel) Ankeny, a prominent pioneer family of Illinois, having located there in 1818. John Ankeny kept the first hotel in Kaskaskia during the first session of the Legislature of that state, that town then being the capital. He and two sons participated in the Black Hawk war of 1832. During that war, Chief Peppernong, of the Pottawatomies, came to the home of John Ankeny at night and warned the family, who were there alone, entreating them to flee for safety. Augustus L. Ankeny, the subject, was then the youngest and a small child. The vicinity of the Ankeny home was at that time overrun with hostile Indians. A.L. Ankeny spent his boyhood days in Jo Daviess county, Illinois, remaining there until he was fourteen years of age. He was an ambitious lad and studied such books as he could obtain, and when he entered Mt. Morris College, in Ogle county, Illinois, he made a splendid record. He turned his attention to the science of medicine, studying at Elizabethtown, near Galena, Illinois, and later entered Rush Medical College at Chicago in the winter of 1848 and 1849, and was graduated from that institution. He came to Lyons, Iowa, in April, 1850, and was therefore one of the pioneer physicians of Clinton county, and he underwent the usual privations and hardships of the country doctor in the new settlements of the West, traveling on horseback over rough and unfrequented roads. He soon had all the practice he could attend to and took a position in the front rank of practitioners in this locality, which he maintained until his death, on November 24, 1887, his office being at Lyons and Clinton. He was well equipped in every way for his profession and kept well abreast of the times in his calling and was very successful. In 1851 Doctor Ankeny married Valeria M. Perin, the daughter of Noble and Sarah (Nixon) Perin, who were among the very early settlers of Iowa, having come to Clinton from Indiana in March, 1837. Noble Perin's ancestry is traced back to John Perin, who came from England to Braintree, Massachusetts, landing there from the ship "Safety" August 10, 1635, and from that remote day to the present the Perin family has been a prominent one in many walks of life in America. Noble Perin continued to reside in Clinton county until he met death in an explosion of the steamboat "Potosi" at Quincy, Illinois, September 27, 1844. He was a man of many sterling traits and was prominent in the early Mississippi river days. His widow survived over a half century, dying at the remarkable age of ninety-four years in June 1906. She was descended from the famous Nixon family of South Carolina, an early number of which is credited with having been the man who read the Declaration of Independence to the people in Independence Square, Philadelphia, in 1776. The following children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Noble Perin: Sarah Gregory, Valeria M., Samuel Thomson, Nancy E., Mary A., Elizabeth J., Noble and Rachael R. In the third generation descendents are numbered in Iowa among the Millers, Seamans, Lambs, Bonneys, Givens and Vosbughs. A three-column sketch of Mrs. Perin, by Welker Given, was published in the Des Moines Register and Leader, February 18, 1906, from which we quote: "Taking up her home on the banks of the Mississippi near the Iowa end of the Northwestern Railroad bridge, Mrs. Perin, while remaining under the same roof, was in succession a resident of Michigan, Wisconsin Territory, the territory of Iowa and finally the state of Iowa. When she was born, the three future great men of the century, Lincoln, Darwin, Tennyson, were little chaps, three years old. She lived to see them rise to perform their great works and pass away long before. She reads the papers as carefully as she did fifty years ago and with the same glasses used for three decades. Her hearing is perfect, her form full and unbent, her nerves without a tremor, and if all women resembled her, house-maid and cooks would find on one to hire them." She was for sixty-four years a resident of Clinton county.