Joseph J. Gaston

GASTON, HUNTINGTON

Posted By: Judy Wight Branson (email)
Date: 8/8/2004 at 11:16:17

Joseph J. Gaston has put aside business cares to enjoy in well earned rest the fruits of his former toil. For an extended period he was a dealer in farm implements at Winterset and his prominence as a business man is indicated in the fact that in 1906 he was elected president of the State Implement Dealers' Association. His birth occurred in Athens county, Ohio, December 22, 1842, his father being Rev. James E. Gaston, who was born in Ohio on the 16th of April, 1809. In the Buckeye state he was reared and educated. He was bound out as a boy and had comparatively few advantages, but he possessed a studious nature and became a well read man. He was fortunate in that when a young man he read with Alexander Campbell, the founder of the Christian church in America, and that association largely influenced his life. In 1850 he went to Monmouth, Illinois where he engaged in preaching the gospel and later he was minister of a church at Princeton, Illinois, until he came to Iowa. He was located for a time at Davenport and in 1864 removed to Des Moines, at which time there was only a small congregation in the Christian church of that city. After several years there spent he removed to Newton and afterward to Atchison, Kansas. Later he was in Charles City, Iowa, and subsequently he returned to Des Moines, where he died at the age of eighty years, after having devoted his life to the work of the ministry, his influence proving a beneficial factor in the moral development of the cities in which he lived.

Joseph J. Gaston spent his boyhood days in his parents home and attended the public schools until seventeen or eighteen years of age, after which he attended Abingdon College at Abingdon, Illinois, and later was a student in the Eureka, Illinois College. In the fall of 1865 he went to Des Moines, but after spending a few months in that city made his way to Council Bluffs, where he secured employment in a brickyard at one dollar and seventy-five cents per day. He afterward engaged in driving a freight wagon from Council Bluffs to Denver and for a time was a clerk in a drug store at Council Bluffs. Later he was in business there but his health failed and, seeking the change which outdoor life afforded him, he worked for one season on the Union Pacific Railroad He then secured a tract of wild land in Polk county, Iowa, broke the prairie and improved a farm. In 1876 he arrived in Winterset and entered the employ of William Hedge, an implement dealer, with whom he remained for seven years. He then engaged in the same business on his own account as senior partner in the firm of Gaston, Ainsworth & Company until 1894, when he sold his interest in that business and established a farm implement business independently After a year he admitted W. F. Smith to a partnership and the relation continued with mutual pleasure and profit for eleven years, on the expiration of which period Mr. Gaston sold his interest and has since devoted his entire time to dealing in real estate. He has owned considerable farm property, which he is improving and selling and m the management of his property interests he has met with gratifying and well deserved success.

On the 8th of April, 1886, Mr. Gaston was united in marriage to Miss Eleanor E. Huntington, a native of Wyoming county, New York, where she was reared and educated. She is a graduate of the Geneseo State Normal school of New York and was engaged in teaching both in the Empire state and in Des Moines becoming principal of the Franklin school of the latter city. She taught altogether for ten years in Des Moines and for three years was principal of a school. Mr. and Mr. Gaston have had no children of their own but have reared an adopted daughter, Jessie B. Huntington.

Mr. Gaston exercises his right of franchise in support of the men and measures of the republican party and never falters in his allegiance to its principles He has never desired office for himself but has labored earnestly to secure the election of his friends. Since 1866 he has been a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and he now holds membership in Evening Star Lodge A. F. & A. M., of Winterset, while both he and his wife are connected with the Order of the Eastern Star and are members of the Presbyterian church. Mr. Gaston started out in life empty-handed and the period of his youth and early manhood was one of arduous and unremitting toil. As the years have gone on however, he has wrested a comfortable fortune from the hands of fate being now one of the substantial citizens of Winterset, with important invested interests from which he is deriving a most gratifying annual income.

Taken from the book, “The History of Madison County, Iowa, 1915”