McWHORTER, LEROY

MCWHORTER, WARD, MILLER, BARRETT

Posted By: Jean Kramer (email)
Date: 1/10/2004 at 14:30:58

Biography reproduced from page 631 of Volume II of the History of Kossuth County written by Benjamin F. Reed and published in 1913:

LeRoy McWhorter is one of the active, prosperous and well known farmers of Portland township and operates the Maple Bluff Stock Farm, consisting of four hundred and forty acres of improved and developed land on section 9. Mr. McWhorter is a native of Illinois, having been born in Whiteside county, near Sterling, January 19, 1870. He received his primary education in the country schools of his native district and later attended the Sterling high school. He remained upon this father’s farm and assisted actively in the work of tilling and cultivating the soil for many years. His father, Hon. Tyler McWhorter, was born June 11, 1825, and reared in Franklin county, Indiana, and dates his ancestry to early days in Scotland. He received his primary education in the little log schoolhouse in Franklin county, of which his father was the teacher. He married in Indiana, November 28, 1849, Miss Rhoda Ward, a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a daughter of Elias and Rhoda (Miller) Ward, natives of New Jersey. After his marriage he followed agriculture in his native state for some years. In 1855 he moved to Illinois, making the journey by team, and settled in Whiteside county, where he purchased unimproved land and brought it in a few years to a high state of cultivation. He was one of the influential and practical farmers in Whiteside county and was a dominating force in political affairs. He was elected and served for several years on the county board of supervisors and was for one term a member of the Illinois state legislature, serving with honor and distinction. He reared his family in Whiteside county and there spent the last years of his life, passing away on May 5, 1889. His wife survives him and is a resident of Sterling.

LeRoy McWhorter dates his residence in Iowa and in Kossuth county from 1891, in which year he made his first purchase of land, buying one hundred and twenty acres, slightly improved. There was a small house upon his holdings and in this Mr. McWhorter made his home for a number of years. He married in 1892 and since that time has maintained a continuous residence upon the property where he now resides. He has built suitable barns and outbuildings, has fenced his property and tiled and improved it. He has added constantly to his holdings until his property now aggregates four hundred and forty acres of the best land in Portland township. He has planted trees and orchards, and upon the remainder of his farm engages in general agriculture and stock-raising. He also operates a model sanitary dairy, selling to the Burt Creamery Company, in which he is a stockholder. He is also interested in the Farmers Elevator Company and has been influential in the management of that thriving concern.

On March 8, 1892, in Sterling, Illinois, Mr. McWhorter was married to Miss Ethel Barrett, a native of Kansas, and a daughter of J. F. Barrett, who was a resident of that state for a number of years. He afterward moved to Wheeling, West Virginia, and later to Missouri, where he located in Sedalia. He was a railroad man and worked in the employ of the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company. The last years of his life were spent in Sterling, Illinois. Mrs. McWhorter was reared in Sedalia, Missouri, and was educated in the public schools of that city and in Sterling. She kept house for her father for a number of years and was thus engaged at the time of her marriage. She and her husband are the parents of two children: Rowena Barrett, a student in the Burt high school; and Ward Tyler.

Politically Mr. McWhorter gives his allegiance to the republican party on national issues but supports the best man, regardless of party, in local issues. He has been a resident of Kossuth county for twenty years and is recognized by his many friends as an industrious and public-spirited citizen. He is a man to whom long years of honorable activity in one section have brought general respect and esteem who, following in the worthy footsteps of his father, has kept his life upright and his record clean, and has added to the resources of his county a well improved and valuable farm.