Rogers, Edward D.

ROGERS, HUTCHINS

Posted By: Roseanna Zehner
Date: 7/25/2006 at 12:27:56

ROGERS, EDWARD D.

Edward D. Rogers is a successful farmer whose home is in the township of Doon, Lyon County, and whose honorable and useful career as a high minded and independent agriculturist shows him a good citizen and a faithful husband and father, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1845. His father, Patrick Rogers, was born in Ireland and about 1830 came to this country with his wife and one child, settling in the western part of Ohio. Seventeen years later the family removed to Dubuque, Iowa, where they lived some years and then removed to Clayton County.

Mr. Rogers grew to manhood in Clayton County, where he was bred to farm work and given somewhat limited opportunities for schooling. At one time he attended school in a log house, and walked two miles for that purpose. He remained at home until he reached the age of twenty-five years, when he started out for himself as a blacksmith, and followed that trade in Elkader, Lansing, and at other points in Allamakee and McGregor Counties.

In 1869 Mr. Rogers and Miss Della Hutchins were married. She was born in Pennsylvania and came of English and Scotch parentage. Before her marriage she was a successful schoolteacher in Clayton County where her parents were old settlers, and where she was reared to womanhood. Mr. and Mrs. Rogers are the parents of a family of eleven living children: Michael, Edward, Annie, Mary, Emmet, Theodore, Frank, LeRoy, Nora, Stella and James. Fannie, the fifth child in order of birth, is dead.

Soon after marriage Mr. Rogers began farming in Clayton County, a vocation for which his experiences as a youth and at home had peculiarly fitted him. Although he had to confront many obstacles and do a vast work, he built up a fine place of four hundred and forty acres, all but forty of which he had in cultivation. The forty being reserved for its natural timber.

In 1892 Mr. Rogers came into Lyon County and bought the north half of section 19, Doon Township. This place was gradually opened up and improved by him until 1898 it became the home of Mr. Rogers and his family. Here he had a house, 16 by 26 feet, two stories in height, with an addition 16 by 20 and 12 by 12, a barn, 40 by 52, a granary 18 by 32, a wagon shed 18 by 32, cattle sheds, and corn cribs as the farm requires. There is on this place also a splendid grove, and the beginnings of a fruit orchard. Mr. Rogers has put his Clayton County farm into the hands of his two oldest sons for operation, and they are meeting with fine success. At home Mr. Rogers is devoting himself both to stock and grain farming, and along both lines meeting with substantial profit. He is regarded as a sound and practical businessman, and is widely known as a landed proprietor, owning in addition to his Iowa property a large tract of land in Wilkins County, Minnesota. In political matters he is a Democrat, but is not a working politician in any sense, preferring to care for his farming interests, and devotes himself to his own land.

Source: Compendium of History Reminiscence and Biography of Lyon County, Iowa. Published under the Auspices of the Pioneer Association of Lyon County. Geo. Monlun, Pres.; Hon. E. C. Roach Sec’y; and Col. F. M. Thompson, Historian. Geo. A. Ogle & CO., Published, Engravers and Book Manufacturers. Chicago, 1904-1905

Transcribed by Roseanna Zehner, Darlene Jacoby and Diane Johnson