BAKER, Horace W.

BAKER, GUE, WILLIAMS, JONES, YAKLE, PIERCE, BEECHER, BANDY, VAN ZILE

Posted By: Debbie Clough Gerischer, IAGenWeb Volunteer
Date: 1/3/2009 at 23:42:15

History of Iowa
From Its Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century, Vol. IV.
By Benjamin F. Gue, 1903.
The Century History Company, 41 Lafayette Place, New York City.

HORACE W. BAKER during his many years of residence at Wapello has come in contact with many interests and activities, has been a school teacher, a practicing lawyer, merchant, public official and is at the high tide of his success today. Mr. Baker is a great-great-grandson of Robert Williams, one of the earliest residents of Louisa County. This family enjoys the distinction of being perhaps the only one in the state with members of the seventh generation living in Louisa County, where the ancestor Robert Williams, is buried.

Horace W. Baker was born at Wapello, February 2, 1873. His father, William L. Baker, was born in Greenwich, New York, and was a child when his parents came out to Iowa in 1850 and settled at Wapello. He grew up there, attended local schools and finished his education in the University of Iowa. He was one of the capable early-day educators of Iowa, a profession he followed for a number of years. He died in 1925 and his wife, Matie I. Jones, a native of Wapello, died in 1878. Their two children were Horace W. and Mrs. Abbie A. Yakle, the latter now deceased.

Horace W. Baker was educated at Wapello, and graduated from high school at Morning Sun in 1893, having taught two terms of school before finishing high school. For four years he was superintendent of schools at Winfield, Iowa, remaining there until 1898, when he entered the University of Iowa for the law course. The LL. B. degree was given him in 1900, and on returning to Wapello he practiced law in association with Arthur Springer until 1905. Mr. Baker was elected and served five terms, ten years, as county auditor of Louisa County and in 1918 was called upon to take up further work in connection with this office, acting as county examiner for the state auditor's department. This was his official relationship until 1925, when he resigned to engaged in the business of collector of delinquent taxes and other accounts due the counties. Mr. Baker has some valuable farming interests, real estate investments, and is one of the owners of the Commercial Hotel at Wapello. He is a member of the Masonic fraternity, belonging to Kaaba Temple of the Mystic Shrine at Davenport, thirty-second degree, is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias and Modern Woodmen of America and a Republican in politics.

He married Miss Katharine H. Pierce of Winfield, Iowa, March 16, 1897. They have four children, Kenneth B.; Vern M.; William H. and E. Pierce. Three of their four children, Kenneth B., William Horace and E. Pierce, are members of the firm H. W. Baker Company, and are engaged in collecting accounts, having had contracts in nearly one-third of the counties of Iowa. Vern M. is connected with the American Telephone & Telegraph Company, now located in New Mexico.

Mrs. Katharine Pierce Baker is a daughter of Lyman Beecher and Lea Ann (Bandy) Pierce, who were early settlers of Des Moines County, Iowa. Mrs. Pierce came from Indiana with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. John Bandy, in 1838. Mrs. Baker represents a long line of educators, both her father and mother having been teachers in Des Moines and Louisa counties and both were students in the Yellow Springs Academy when the Civil war broke out. Lyman B. Pierce served all through the war as a member of the Second Iowa Cavalry and afterwards he wrote and published a history of his regiment. Following the war he took his family out to Kansas and for five years was superintendent of schools at Manhattan. Later he homesteaded a claim in Dickinson County, near Solomon City, Kansas. In 1876 the Pierce family returned to Iowa again located at Kossuth in Des Moines County. In 1882 they moved to Winfield, Iowa, where L. B. Pierce was active in civic and church matters. Mrs. Pierce died June 14, 1918, ad Mr. Pierce on February 20, 1922. Besides Mrs. Baker their children were: C. H. Pierce, an engineer with the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railway, living at Winfield; Grace, wife of William Price, a merchant at Winfield; J. Ed., owner and manager of one of the largest tile manufacturing plants in Iowa; and Mrs. Mary Pierce Van Zile, dean of women of the State Agricultural College at Kansas at Manhattan, a position she has held for the past twenty years.