Thomas Read

BARDRICK, BOWLSBY, JONES, LOWDEN, NEVILLE, READ, STURMAN

Posted By: Judy Wight Branson (email)
Date: 10/11/2005 at 13:52:09

“History of Madison County Iowa and Its People”
Herman A. Mueller, Supervising Editor
Chicago, The S. J. Clarke Publishing Company, 1915

By many years of well directed labor as an agriculturist Thomas Read accumulated a competence that enabled him to spend the evening of his life in honorable retirement at Winterset. He was born in Bedfordshire, England, on the 8th of October, 1835, a son of John and Ann (Sturman) Read, also natives of England. In 1855 the family emigrated to the United States and made their way direct to Iowa, arriving at Winterset on the 8th of July. They settled upon a farm in Lincoln township, this county, the following year and for many years resided there but eventually removed to Winterset, where they lived retired until called to the great beyond.

Thomas Read grew to years of maturity and received his education in his native land, as he was a young man of twenty years when he accompanied his parents to the United States. Although at the outbreak of the Civil war he had not been in this country many years he had thoroughly identified himself with the interests of his adopted land and was convinced that the north was in the right. He therefore enlisted on the 11th of October, 1861, in Company I, Fourth Iowa Cavalry, and served with this command until mustered out on the l0th of August, 1865, at Atlanta, Georgia.

Sixteen days later he arrived home and soon turned his attention to farming. He purchased one hundred and twenty acres of land in Scott township, only twenty of which was broken, and for a time he and his wife lived in a log house which was already upon the place. His first care was to break his land and put it under cultivation and as the years passed he added improvements to his place until it became one of the valuable farming properties of his locality. He erected good buildings and divided his land into fields of convenient size and beautified the grounds around his residence. As he was not only energetic but efficient, directing his labors wisely, he accumulated a competence which enabled him to retire in December, 1910, and he took up his abode in Winterset, where he resided until his death, which occurred on the 2nd of April, 1913. His widow still makes her home in that city.

In 1864, while home on a furlough, Mr. Read was united in marriage to Miss Ann Elizabeth Bardrick, who was born in Sangamon county, Illinois, January 5, 1847. Her father, Charles Bardrick, was a native of Bedfordshire, England, but emigrated to America in his young manhood and was married in Danville, Illinois, to Miss Caroline Neville, a native of Virginia. They settled on a farm in Sangamon county, Illinois, and there Mr. Bardrick passed away. His widow, who subsequently remarried, died in Linn county, Missouri.

Following the death of her mother Mrs, Read came to Madison county and made her home with her grandparents, George and Ann Bardrick, who had removed here from England, settling in Douglas township in 1852. To Mr. and Mrs. Read were born the following children: Mary J. is now the wife of J. J. Lowden, a farmer of Madison county, and they have three children: Grace, the wife of J. E. Jones; Ernest Edward; and Frank L. Mrs. Anna H. Bowlsby is a teacher of Madison county and has two children, Edith E. and Bessie B. Charles W., a Methodist Protestant minister, now resides in Arkansas. He married Fannie Osborn and has four children, Thomas, Florence, Maggie and Mabel. Asahel is represented elsewhere in this work. John Henry, deceased, completes the family.

Mr. Read was a consistent member of the Methodist Episcopal church and for many years served upon the official board.

His widow is also a member of that church and has aided in much of its work. The life of Thomas Read was such that his memory is held in the highest honor and there are many who feel that in his death they sustained the loss of a friend who was true and loyal.

Madison Biographies maintained by Linda Griffith Smith.
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