William Hall Monroe (1946)

COOK, MONROE, STRIBLING

Posted By: Pat Hochstetler
Date: 8/18/2006 at 17:06:39

The Winterset Madisonian
Winterset, Iowa
Wednesday, June 12, 1946

Pioneer Educator Dies at Colfax

W. H. Monroe, former president of the old Dexter academy and at one time superintendent of schools at Earlham, died at the Methodist hospital in Des Moines last Friday. He was 86 years of age.

Mr. Monroe had been living at Colfax for many years, where he was founder and treasurer of the Monroe Manufacturing company. Born in Illinois, he came to Iowa with his parents in a covered wagon in 1876, settling on a farm near Bloomfield.

He headed the Dexter Normal academy for several years, and served as president of Greer college at Hoopston, Ill., before going to Earlham to head the public school system there.

He is survived by a son, Paul Monroe of Colfax; a daughter, Mrs. Gladys Stribling of Des Moines; a sister, Mrs. R. R. Cook of Stuart; a brother, Frank Monroe of Kansas City, Mo.; three grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

Funeral services were held Monday at Colfax, and burial was made at Dexter.
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Earlham Echo
Earlham, Iowa
Thursday, June 13, 1946

William Hall Monroe, the eldest son of Milton Tandy and Esther Beaver Monroe, was born on February 29, 1860, near Newton, Jasper county, Illinois, and died June 7, 1846, in Des Moines. With his parents, three brothers and a sister he came to Iowa in a covered wagon in 1876 and settled in a log cabin on a farm in Davis county. He attended the Bloomfield Normal School and taught in country schools while he was completing his studies there.

He later received a masters degree from Parsons College at Fairfield, Iowa.

After teaching school for a year in Kansas he returned to Iowa to become superintendent of the Bloomfield schools at the age of 32. Two years later he became president of the Dexter Normal, and from 1891 to 1894 he was president of Greer College at Hoopeston, Illinois. At that time he was the youngest college president in the United States.

He spent two years in Ludington, Michigan, and then returned to the Dexter Normal in 1896. He later spent one year with the United States Weather Bureau as a weather observer, a position for which he trained himself. He was superintendent of the Earlham schools from 1899 to 1910. He was one of the foremost leaders in the establishment of the consolidated school system in Iowa, which was one of the first such systems in the United States.

Mr. Monroe went to Colfax, Iowa in 1910 as a general manager and treasurer of the Close-to-Nature Company, which he had established two years earlier in Earlham. He was the inventor of the Close-to-Nature House and many other products manufactured by the company. He remained as treasurer when the Close-to-Nature Company was succeeded by the Monroe Company in 1935, and was active in the management of the firm until shortly before his death.

In 1886 he was married to Laura May Clark of Dexter, who passed away in 1937. They became the parents of two children, Gladys Monroe Stribling of Des Moines, and Paul Monroe, head of the Monroe Company of Colfax. Mr. Monroe is survived in addition to his children, by one sister, Mrs. Ralph Cook of Stuart, one brother, Frank, of Kansas City, Missouri, three grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

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