W. B. Thomas 1853-1944

THOMAS

Posted By: N. Wagner (email)
Date: 12/23/2007 at 10:00:26

W. B. Thomas, 90, died at 2:30 a.m. Friday, Feb.4, after an illness of six or eight weeks, starting with flu, but having largely the character of an old age breakdown. He spent the final weeks in the West Union hospital.

Mr. Thomas was in earlier life a clothing merchant, but retired from that business after a comparatively short time. He was for many years vice president of the State Bank of West Union, and for a time its president.

He served two or more terms as city councilman, and was a member of the West Union campaign committee during the county seat battle of 1922.

Mr. Thomas was at the time of his death the oldest man in West Union. He had made his home here for 87 years.

With his death goes the last survivor of one of the earliest and most prominent pioneer families of this community. His father, George H. Thomas, a Mexican war veteran, was assigned by the government a farm in Iowa county (now a part of the Amana colony) and moved west from the ancestrial home to Maryland to occupy it.

W. B. Thomas was born at Solon, Iowa, in that vicinity May 22, 1853. A year or two later the family moved to Auburn, Fayette county, where George H. Thomas started a store, but within a year or two, about 1856, the family came to West Union, and the elder Thomas was engaged in merchandising here until his death about 1906. He was the outstanding merchant of that period in northern Fayette county.

Fayette County Union, February 1944