BARROWS, Charles H.

BARROWS, HARDY, RESSEGUIE, ALLEN, WHITEHEAD

Posted By: Sharon R Becker (email)
Date: 1/20/2014 at 05:49:22

History of Decatur County Iowa and Its People
Illustrated, Volumne II.
Prof. J. M. Howell and Heman C. Smith, Supervising Editors
The S.J. Clarke Publishing Company. pp. 327-28. Chicago. 1915

CHARLES H. BARROWS

CHARLES H. BARROWS has been engaged in the drug business in Lamoni since 1890 and is a registered optometrist. His birth occurred at Salt Lake City, Utah, June 15, 1863, and he is a son of Ethan and Lucy (Hardy) Barrows, both of whom are deceased. The paternal grandfather, Jacob Barrows, served in the Revolutionary war. The father, who was born in Vermont, became identified with the church of Latter Day Saints in 1835 at St. Johnsbury, that state, and was baptized by William E. McClellan, one of the first twelve. He was with the Mormons in Kirtland, Ohio, and in Nauvoo, Illinois, and went to Utah in the year 1849-50. In 1881 he joined the reorganized church, his views conflicting with those of Brigham Young, who was at the head of the original church. Mr. Barrows passed away at Salt Lake City when eighty-six years of age. He served as a member of the fifth quorum of the seventy in the old church and as an elder in the reorganized church. His wife, who was born in Massachusetts, died at Independence, Missouri, when seventy-one years old.

Charles H. Barrows resided in Salt Lake City until he was twenty-seven years of age and after attending the public schools became a student in a local academy. In his early manhood he followed civil engineering for some time, being employed in railroad work and in land surveying. In 1890 he came to Lamoni and has since been the proprietor of one of the best drug stores of the county. He is a registered pharmacist and not only has accurate technical knowledge of the drug business, but also possesses that sound judgment and enterprise which are so essential to success in any commercial undertaking. He took courses in optometry in Kansas City, South Bend, Indiana, Chicago and New York and was the first optometrist to register at Leon. He is now the oldest merchant of Lamoni in point of years of conducting business here, and for some time handled wallpaper, paint, etc., in addition to drugs and druggists' sundries. At one time the postoffice was located in his store and he served as deputy postmaster under Mrs. Resseguie.

In 1892 Mr. Barrows was married at Lamoni to Miss Jennie M. Allen, of Alton, Illinois, a daughter of James and Mary Allen and a granddaughter of James Whitehead, at one time private secretary to Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon church. Mr. and Mrs. Barrows have eight children, namely: Nina G., Allen K., Sidney C, Bessie V., Malcolm B., Donald L, Stanley W. and Lois C. The last named is an adopted child.

Mr. Barrows is a democrat in politics and is zealous in his work for the success of that party. He is now serving as an alderman. He and his family belong to the Reorganized Church of Latter Day Saints and take an active part in the work of that organization. He has met with gratifying success as a druggist and as an optometrist and during the years that he has been in business in Lamoni his patronage has steadily increased. He lives in a comfortable residence, which was formerly the home of his wife's grandfather, James Whitehead.

Transcription by Sharon R. Becker, January of 2014
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Copied from Lamoni's Passing Parade by Joseph H. Anthony
Page 173
by Jean Belzer

C. H. BARROWS

Among the early businessmen of Lamoni the name of Charles H. Barrows is one of the familiar ones. In those days when drug stores were known more or less as apothecary shops, and when the mortar and pestle hanging out in front were as significant to that line of activity as the wooden Indian to the cigar store and the barber pole to the barber shop, he opened a drug store in Lamoni and was thus engaged for many years.

When I came to Lamoni this place of business was located in the building now occupied by the Lane Dry Goods department, a one-story building at that time. It was here that I had my first contacts with him. I had not known him long when I learned that he and I had much in common for we had both previously been residents of Salt Lake City. I remember during one of our first conversations that he told me how he and some of his boy friends spun their tops on a certain sidewalk – a spot that was very familiar to me – and in turn I told him that I had lived neighbor to his father and mother, and that I often helped his father gather apples from the family orchard and upon numerous occasions had also assisted in grinding the apples to make cider, and how, when the juice had been pressed out and drained into containers he often gave me a jugful of it to take home. The relating of these and similar incidents which happened amid scenes familiar to both of us soon gave me the feeling that I had met an old friend, and through his friendly attitude toward me he encouraged me to this conclusion. It was through the associations which followed that many memorable incidents occurred that have been significant in my Lamoni experiences, and I look back to that little drug store as the center of many interesting developments.

Upon one occasion, shortly after coming to Lamoni, a friend and I visited the store in quest of certain school supplies. Of course I sought the services of the proprietor as he was the only one connected with the institution with whom I was acquainted. But he was occupied for the moment and after a friendly word of greeting he referred us to one of his young helpers who happened to be standing near by, and whom he instructed to see that we were properly cared for. The helper was a youngster probably a few years my senior, but he was clever and capable. He was a good-looking lad with brown eyes and a pleasant smile, and he lost no time in serving us promptly and efficiently. AS he finished with the last details of our purchase my friend spied a certain brand of confections in the case which looked very tempting, and not being able to control his desires, he inquired: “Isn’t there some way you could include a little of othat candy with my school supplies and put it on the bill so dad wouldn’t detect it?”

The young clerk’s brown eyes twinkled knowingly. “It might get by as miscellaneous,” he suggested.

“We’ll try it,” replied my friend and a few minutes later we were trudging toward home with our newly acquired school books and partaking generously of the candy, enjoying every bit of it. What the word “miscellaneous” meant, neither of us had the least idea, but apparently it had turned the trick perfectly and youth rarely thinks seriously of the future.

“Who was the young fellow in the drug store?” I asked a few minutes later. “He certainly knew how to take care of everything.”

“Why, don’t you know him,” he replied, “his name is “Seeds” Blair. He is a swell guy.”

Later that evening we learned that the word “miscellaneous” had not paid the debt. “Seeds” had done his duty as a salesman, but as buyers we found we still had the debt to pay and we did it next day as with calloused and aching hands we tried to perform an acceptable job of hilling up the potatoes in the garden of my friend’s father.

In those days the drug store was the center in interest for most of the young fellows of Lamoni as they were at that time broadening their lines of merchandising, which gradually made of them dispensers of more favorable items than medicines and pills. And when C. H. Barrows installed his ice cream fountain – which by the way, was the first in town – it really become the social center of Lamoni. There one could buy a glass of soda or any of the regular fountain drinks at five cents a serving. Ice cream was also served plain or in sodas, but cones, sundaes or any of the frozen dainties or lollypops you see today had not been thought of at that time. Yet we felt that with the advent of a fountain in Lamoni we were really breaking into the city class.

Then, too, at the drug store we found all of the popular magazines of the day, and of course, those in which the boys were mostly interested were the popular weeklies of that period: Tip-Top Weekly, Diamond Dick, Nick Carter and many others of varying degrees of prominence to fire the imagination of the youngsters of that period. And while C. H. Barrows, (Charley as most everyone called him) kept all of these periodicals in stock in an effort to keep abreast of the demand, yet he deplored the fact that the boys persisted in reading them rather that some of the magazines and books he considered more worth while; and he often took us to task upon this matter. He, personally, was a serious student in his reading and his thinking, and he felt we were grossly wasting our time in reading what he termed trivial and worthless reading matter.

There was one weekly periodical especially that he, as well as many of the parents of the town, objected to very strongly. In this series, the stories were written around the unusual adventures of a young inventor-hero named Frank Reed, who conceived many unheard of inventions which performed a multitude of miraculous feats; mechanical men that performed with precision and accuracy unknown to humans, ships that sailed under water or in the air, horseless carriages and wagons that traveled with the speed of the wind which were used for both commercial and military purposes, wireless telephones and many other equally fantastic and impossible contraptions. At least this is the way they were classified by many of that generation; and when one stops to consider that in a period of approximately fifty years all of these items as well as numberless others, have changed completely from the ridiculous and impossible to the essential and practical side of man’s thinking, we are made to wonder as to the practicability of any human method of reasoning. It seems that any man who thinks ahead of the crowd is always criticized as impractical and fantastic.

The fact that Charles Barrows objected to the type of reading matter mentioned above does not imply that he had closed his mind to progress. On the contrary, he was deeply interest in new developments, and when the phonograph reached the stage where it became recognized as something more than a mere novelty he accepted the agency for them and stocked quite an elaborate display of both machines and records. These were the first models of the original Edison phonograph which used the cylindrical, soft-wax records that eventually gave way to the more practical disc type generally used today. This type of machine, in spite of its many apparent disadvantages, was the forerunner of a great and thriving industry, and to C. H. Barrows goes the credit for installing the first and probably the only stock of this kind in Lamoni.

To know Charlie Barrows personally and to converse with him was always an interesting experience. At times he presented a rather gruff exterior, but once that shell was penetrated, a more friendly and companionable person never lived. His knowledge upon almost any subject seemed unlimited, and while some of his theories were considerably over my head, yet many of them were not; and often I recall certain bits of his wisdom that I still consider of real value. He had some very definite ideas about diets which at the time I could not accept seriously, for they were mostly out of line with my habits of eating, but with the passing of time I have often wonder3ed if probably they were not more practical than I was willing to admit. One of them recommended that every person endeavor to forego some of the foods he though the most desirable and in their place force himself to partake of certain quantities of the foods he naturally disliked. Is it possible that such a program might possibly produce more nearly normal figures in the human race generally and reduce the demand for diets, reducing pills an weight-gaining formulas?

On the whole Charles H. Barrows was a man whose personality radiated much that was worth while. His family and his religion meant much to him, and I think that in word and deed he tried as sincerely as any man of my acquaintance to carry his religion into his daily life. If human beings today are rewarded for honest Christian effort as occasionally they were in scriptural time - like Enoch of old - then Charles Barrows was thus rewarded, for while kneeling at the family alter he said: “Father, it is pleasing to come to Thee in prayer” . . . then silently and without suffering he departed from earthly activity to join those who had preceded him in the search for that richer life which lies beyond the shadow.

To think of Charles Barrows is to think of many things I consider very much worth while. He was a moral pillar of strength in the community, a friend who counsel was a great encouragement, and a man of wisdom in Lamoni’s passing parade.