Abram Golden

BALDWIN, GOLDEN, MOYER, STUART

Posted By: Judy Wight Branson (email)
Date: 1/2/2012 at 18:41:43

The History of Dallas County, Iowa - 1907
The Past and Present of Dallas County, pages 417 & 418

Abram Golden

Abram Golden owns and controls two hundred acres of rich and valuable land on section 32, Van Meter township. He was born in Vermillion county, Illinois, on 21 December, 1831, and was the fourth in order of birth in the family of ten children whose parents were Jacob and Aley Golden, natives of Tennessee.

The year 1830 witnessed their arrival in Illinois, where the father followed farming for about nineteen years, when death ended his labors in 1849. The wife survived him for a long period and passed away in 1874.

In his youth Mr. Golden acquired a common-school education and was trained to the work of the home farm, gaining a knowledge of and precision in agricultural methods that have made him very successful in his later years as he has carried on farm work on his own account.

In 1853 he was united in marriage to Miss Rachel J. Baldwin, who was born in Ohio, March 14, 1835. She accompanied her parents on their removal to Vermillion county, Illinois, where her father and mother died, the former passing away in 1838 and the latter in 1868.

They cast in their lot with the pioneer settlers of Vermillion county, but the father was not long permitted to enjoy his new home, owing to his early demise. The family number 12 children, of whom Mrs. Golden was the 11th in order of birth. After her marriage she went with her husband to a farm in Illinois, on which they lived for years.

In 1856 he came to Iowa, choosing Dallas county as a place of their future residents, in here they have lived continuously sense. During the first year after his arrival of Mr. Golden cultivated the land upon which the village of Van Meter now stands. He afterward purchased other property and is today the owner of two hundred acres of rich and fertile land on section 32, Van Meter township.

A glance at the place will indicate to the passerby the careful supervision and practical methods of the owner, who carefully kills his field and raises his stock. He cultivates the cereals best adapted to soil and climate and finds a ready market for his products. In his business methods he is systematic and in all of his dealings he is thoroughly reliable and energetic.

Unto Mr. and Mrs. Golden were born for daughters and a son: Emily C., whose birth occurred February 1, 1855, and who is now married and lives in Nebraska; Mary A., who was born August 7, 1857, and is married and lives in Madison county, Iowa; Rachel A., who was born November 13, 1859, and is the wife of George A. Stuart, she and her husband being missionaries in China, while one of her daughters is a student in a college in Warren county, Iowa; William M., who was born January 20, 1863, and is located in Colorado; and Aley G., who was born June 14, 1866, and is the wife of L. E. Moyer, a resident of Oklahoma.

The parents are members of the Methodist Episcopal church of Van Meter and are much interested in its work and growth. Mr. Golden votes with the republican party and has served as school director for eleven years but otherwise has not held office, preferring to concentrate his time and energies upon his business affairs, and he is now reaping the rewards of his close application and earnest labor, for as the years have gone by he has accumulated a goodly competency, so that he is now very comfortably situated in life. He has passed the Psalmist's span of three score years and ten, and in fact has reached the seventy-fifth milestone on life's journey.

He is still, however, actively concerned in caring on the farm work and has lived a life in which indolence and idleness have had no place, while in his vocabulary there is no such word as fail. His success has not come through speculation or through any fortunate combination of circumstances that has resulted from his perseverance, his wise investments and his habit of carrying forward to successful completion whatever he undertakes.