Daniels, William Fowler 1826 – 1893

DANIELS, PRESTON, CARY

Posted By: Joy Moore (email)
Date: 6/3/2015 at 07:59:50

Iowa Plain Dealer February 16, 1893, P5 C3

OBITUARY.

DANIELS—Feb. 2, 1893, Wm. F. Daniels, of Jennings, La., aged 67 years.

William Fowler Daniels was born near Hamilton, Ont., March 12, 1826. While a child of 2 years, his parents moved to Wayne, Junction, Mich., near the then frontier post of Detroit, his father becoming a citizen of the new republic, and one of the pioneers in the settlement and civilization of Michigan. The parents died while he was young, and the homestead passing to strangers, the family, a sister and 7 brothers, moved to Illinois, the subject of this sketch obtaining work in a saw mill at Harrison. Here he met, and March 14, 1848, was married to Mary Gertrude Preston, who with two sons and two daughters survive him. In the early 50’s he located at Foreston, Ill. During his stay he was interested in building the Illinois Central R’y. After its completion he removed to Morrison, Ill., and engaged in mercantile business, later becoming interested in building the Fulton & Dixon R’y. Meeting business reverses, in 1855 he again energetically turned his face to the west. Leaving his family he crossed the Mississippi, and after considerable search located a claim in Howard, one of the northern tier of Iowa counties. Next summer he brought his family to a point on the upper Iowa river to a settlement of two log houses, there then being but half a dozen white families and only one other settlement in the county. The ”town” was called Foreston. Soon abandoning his claim, because of a dislike to leaving his family several miles from a white face with only Winnebago Indians for neighbors, he and his brother, the late J. A. Daniels, erected the first grist mill in the county, and in fact the first in the northwestern part of the State. During the winter of 1856-7, known as “the hard winter,” owing to extreme cold and unusually heavy snow, placing an almost total embargo on travel unless by snow shoes, he run this mill without shelter, the machinery having been hastily put in position so late in the season as to make the erection of any kind of a building practically impossible even if the logs could have been obtained. The whitec{sic} in the vicinity subsisted exclusively during the winter on corn meal ground in this little mill, and bacon, wheat flour and the most common groceries were unobtainable. During the next summer, in company with his brother, the late J. A. Daniels, he added a saw mill and built the first frame house in the settlement. Among the early settlers was S. L. Cary, a brother in-law, and without these two names the history of Howard county and northern Iowa cannot be written. The little village prospered until the breaking out of the civil war, when it was drained of its young men, among them two brothers of Mr. Daniels; a constitution broken by hardship and toil and privation of a frontier life prevented his acceptance by the authorities. During the war and for a short time after he was engaged in milling, merchandize and farming. Three different times during his ownership of the mill, it was swept entirely away to its foundation by floods, and insurance being an impossibility in those days, he saw the labors of a lifetime go down with the waters, leaving him with nothing but undaunted courage, patient submission to the Divine will, and a determination to do his best; and with all the trials, the later ones leaving him burdened with debts that would have discouraged many, no complaint was heard from his lips, but always patient submission. When finally he sold his mill soon after the war he had the satisfaction of having paid all his debts. The McGregor Western R’y having reached the eastern border of the county he was employed to appraise right of way. The road having left Foreston on one side he engaged in mercantile business at Lime Springs, continuing till 1880. When the town incorporated he was elected its mayor, but owing to ill health did not qualify, although later he was elected and served.

Broken in health, he sought to avoid the rigorous climate of the north, and in 1882 located here at Jennings and conducted a successful lumber business up within a few days of his death.

His death was sudden and unexpected, at 11 o’clock on the evening of Feb. 2, 1893, after an illness of 5 days. The close of his life was typical of his character: calm and peaceful; his only regret being for her who had for nearly half a century shared his joys and sorrows, his toil and privation, and who must henceforth bear alone the burden he so long shared. For him the end was but laying down a burden, and it closed the life of a gentle, kindly old man, whose creed was the Golden Rule, and whose life of nearly three score and ten exemplified that creed by his daily life. The clay which covers him rests over a bosom in which harbored no unkind thought.

During his later years he was a member of no church, but with an abiding faith in his Heavenly Father he accepted the Bible as a message to him, and passed away certain of a glorious immortality. As an evidence of his faith and trust, these unfinished lines, found in his desk, are given:

The river lies near the base of the hill—
The hil;{sic} which we all must descend;
At the river the earthly journey must cease,
Earthly strivings and worry must end.
The dust will return to the earth as it was,
In the long, quiet rest that is broken no more;

The unfettered spirit to its Giver return,
In the bright spirit land on the opposite shore.
The land our spirits ran dimly perceive,
With eyes that are opened by spiritual birth,
The land where he gathers his workers home,
And shields them from all ills of earth.
--Jennings Times.