BUCHANAN, ROBERT I.

BUCHANAN, BIGELOW, BURLINGAME, MINNIKIN

Posted By: Jean Kramer (email)
Date: 5/20/2004 at 15:47:53

Biography reproduced from page 317 of Volume II of the History of Kossuth County written by Benjamin F. Reed and published in 1913:

Robert I. Buchanan, one of the efficient and promising young agriculturists of Irvington township, is a native of Kossuth county, his birth having occurred in the vicinity of his present home on the 7th of October, 1891. He is a son of Robert and Elizabeth (Bigelow) Buchanan. The father, one of the well known pioneers of Irvington township, where for many years he was successfully engaged in farmnig, is a native of Scotland and when a child of about six years accompanied his parents on their removal to the United States. They located in the vicinity of Dubuque, Iowa, where he was educated and reared to manhood. In the early ‘60s he came to Kossuth county, and located in Irvington township, where he subsequently acquired some valuable farming land, at one time controlling three hundred acres. He has now retired from active work and is living in Riverside, California. The mother of our subject was born in Iowa and was of Pennsylvania-Dutch extraction. She died about fourteen years ago and was buried in Riverview cemetery. Three children were born to them but the elder died in infancy. Maggie I. married B. M. Burlingame of Irvington township.

Robert I. Buchanan was reared in very much the same manner as other farmer lads. In the acquirement of his education he attended the common schools, remaining at home until he was fifteen years of age. He then started out to make his own living and went to California, where for five years he worked in the orange groves. At the expiration of that time he returned to Kossuth county and located on his present farm on section 18, Irvington township, where he has since engaged in general farming and stock-raising.

Mr. Buchanan was married in 1910 to Miss Ida E. Minnikin, and to them has been born one child, Robert Orlando. Mr. and Mrs. Buchanan attend the local Protestant churches and in politics he is a republican. He is an energetic young man of progressive ideas and enterprising methods and in all of his transactions manifests the most absolute integrity and reliability, and his friends, of whom he has many, feel assured of his success and prophesy for him a most promising future.