Sylvester, Lanham T.

SYLVESTER, JOHNSON, GARDNER

Posted By: Volunteer Transcriber
Date: 10/22/2009 at 18:41:12

Sylvester, Lanham T.

It is found very often in this country of ours that the captain of industry, the statesmen, in short, the so-called leaders of men, possess no higher ability than thousands of other citizens. They have simply taken better advantage of their circumstances than their fellows. And this truth runs through every occupation. The farmer who rises above his fellow farmers does so by taking advantage of conditions, which others over looker fail to grasp. Lanham T. Sylvester, of Linn Grove Township, Jasper County, has always been classed with the best and thriftiest of the locality in point of skill in farming and stock raising.

Mr. Sylvester was born in Logan County, Illinois, October 9, 1848, and he is the son of Dixon and Ann (Johnson) Sylvester, both natives of Delaware, the father born in 1808 and the mother in 1813, and they grew up and were married in that state. In 1845 they immigrated to Logan County, Illinois, and bought eighty acres and there they remained until 1852 when they came overland in two wagons to Jasper County, Iowa. They had been very successful in Illinois, for when they came to that state from Delaware they brought their earthly effects in a one-horse cart. He first bought sixty acres in Linn Grove Township, which was timbered land, also, two hundred acres of prairie land. Here he prospered and at one time owned three hundred and twenty acres. He was a member of the Christian Church. His family consisted of the following children: Mary Elizabeth, William Henry, Henrietta, Celina, Charles Hamilton, Lanham T., of this review, Joseph B., Emanda M., Dixon N., Silas Marian and Emma.

Lanham T. Sylvester, of this review, attended the township schools and he has lived on the farm that his father entered from the government, since he was four years old, buying the home place after the father's death, and he is now the owner of four hundred acres of productive and well-improved land on which he is carrying on general farming and stock raising on an extensive scale. He built a large, well-arranged and attractive house in 1892 and he also has a number of large, convenient barns and such outbuildings in general, as his needs require. He still has the deed to the original eighty acres which his father entered and which he now owns, the instrument bearing the signature of President Franklin Pierce.

Mr. Sylvester is a Democrat, but he has never sought public office. He was reared in the Christian Church and from that belief he has never departed.

Mr. Sylvester was married on November 9, 1889, to Rosa Gardner, who was born in Illinois, December 4, 1861, the daughter of John J. and Hannah Gardner. The Gardner family moved from North Carolina to Union County, Indiana, in 1818, when that country was a wilderness. Mrs. Sylvester's parents went to Illinois in early life and remained some time, later returning to Indiana, when their daughter Rosa was six months of age, locating in Union County, Indiana. Mrs. Sylvester came to Iowa in 1874 and to Jasper County in 1882 as a schoolteacher, and, liking the country, she located here. One child has been born to Mr. and Mrs. Sylvester, Leslie, whose date of birth was September 24, 1896. Past and Present of Jasper County Iowa B. F. Bowden & Company, Indianapolis, IN, 1912 Page 1052.