WILSON, HENRY L, HON.
WILSON, DRYNAN, GALLOWAY, CRESWELL, WHANNELL, BROWN, LOVEJOY, MCDONALD, KENNEDY, TOWNSEND
Posted By: Gordon Felland (email)
Date: 12/18/2009 at 22:19:32
Important business interests have been owned and controlled by Hon. Henry L. Wilson, who has also figured in a prominent connection in state interests and affairs. He has represented his district in the general assembly and has thus left the impress of his individuality upon the history of Iowa legislation as well as upon the history of its material development and progress.
He is now at the head of the Osage Stone Company and makes his home in the city of Osage.
He was born in Crystal township, Tama county, Iowa, July 12, 1858, a son of West and Margaret (Drynan) Wilson, both of whom were natives of Scotland. They were reared and married in Ayrshire and in 1846 left the land of hills and heather to come to the United States. Making their way to Connecticut, they lived near Norwich for ten years, and the father there engaged in farming.
In 1856 he brought his family to the west and established his home in Crystal township, Tama county, Iowa, and there he carried on farming until 1904, when he moved to Traer where he lived to the time of his death, which occurred in 1907, when he had reached the advanced age of eighty-six years, his birth having occurred in 1820. His first wife passed away in 1860. They had a family of nine children: Janet, who was born in Scotland and is deceased; Jane, who became the wife of Robert Whannell; Margaret, a twin sister of Jane, now the wife of William Brown and, like her sister, living in Traer; James W., a resident of California; Agnes, the wife of John Galloway, of Reinbeck, Iowa; Katherine, the wife of William Creswell, also of Reinbeck; W. D., living at Grundy Center; Henry L., of this review; and Grace, who died at the age of three years. The last two were born in Tama county.
Following the death of his first wife the father married Barbara Kennedy and they became the parents of four children: Sarah, who now lives in Scotland; John, a practicing physician of California; Christina, the deceased wife of William Townsend; and Dalton K., who is living in Waterloo, Iowa. The mother of these children passed away in 1893 and in 1895 Mr. Wilson wedded Margaret McDonald, who survives him and is now a resident of Chicago.
Henry L. Wilson, whose name introduces this review, began his education in the district schools of his native township, where he pursued his studies until 1876 and then spent two years in the public schools of Traer. For a year he was a student in a private academy at Traer and thus completed his education. He afterward conducted the home farm for his father for a year and then purchased an interest in a meat market in Traer, conducting the business for a few months. At the end of that period he sold out and began buying live stock.
He carried on live stock operations at Cleves, Abbott, Beatnan, Gladbrook and Conrad and eventually at Manly Junction, Iowa, and from the last named point drifted to Osage, where he has since remained. He kept buying live stock all over this section of the state until elected sheriff and he shipped the first live stock out of Stacyville and in partnership with the late Edwin Burke the first out of Riceville after the railroads were built through those towns.
It was in 1890 that Mr. Wilson was elected to the office of sheriff, to which position he was reelected in 1891 and again in 1893 as the candidate of the democratic party. He made a capable official, being prompt and fearless in the discharge of his duties and he retired from office as he had entered it—with the confidence and goodwill of all law-abiding citizens. He then returned to the live stock business, on which he concentrated his energies, operating extensively in his section of the state until 1906, when he sold out to Roscoe Gray. He then gave his attention to the cultivation of land which he had previously purchased and feeding cattle, in which business he still continues. In the '80s he had a meat market in Osage, which he conducted for a few years. In 1915 he bought a cold storage plant, which he still owns, and in 1915, in association with Dr. M. A. Hansen, he organized the Osage Stone Company and began the development of their quarries. They are now shipping ten thousand tons of "sugar rock," an extra high quality of limestone, and they also make crushed rock for streets. This is one of the largest enterprises in Osage. It will thus be seen that Mr. Wilson has improved many business opportunities which have come his way. He is constantly alert and watchful, eagerly embracing every indication that points to success, and his activities have largely furthered legitimate trade and commercial activity in this section of the state. He is a man of determined purpose in whose vocabulary there is no such word as fail, and as the years have gone by he has carried forward to successful completion whatever he has undertaken.
Mr. Wilson has also been a most active figure in political circles and is a man fearless in the expression of his honest convictions. His position is never an equivocal one. While in early manhood he staunchly supported democratic principles and in 1892 was chairman of the democratic county central committee, he became convinced that the interests of the country might better be promoted through the endorsement of republican principles and he became a stanch advocate of the latter party. In 1900 he served as chairman of the republican county central committee of Mitchell county. He was made a member of the city council of Osage in 1902, occupying the position for two years, and in 1914 he was elected on the republican ticket to the thirty-sixth general assembly, and endorsement of his excellent service came to him in reelection in 1916, so that he became a member of the thirty-seventh general assembly. He was elected each time by a good majority and became an active working member of the house. He was made chairman of the house committee on dairy and food, and was a member of the committees on appropriations, roads and highways, railroads, constitutional amendments, insurance, public accounting, public health, schools and textbooks, municipal corporations, telephones, printing, and land titles, and was also named by the speaker as one of a committee of three members to investigate the finances of the state.
On the 30th of April, 1895, Mr. Wilson was united in marriage to Miss Ethel Lovejoy, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. George B. Lovejoy, who was born in Rock township, Mitchell county, in November, 1872. They have become the parents of four children: Mary A., who is teaching in the high school of Osage; and Margaret J., Katherine E. and Henry L., who are in school.
Mr. Wilson is a member of the Masonic lodge and chapter of Osage, also of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Modern Woodmen of America. He first came to Osage on the 26th of January, 1883, and a few months later became a permanent resident and has been more or less closely associated with the city throughout the intervening period. For years he was a director of the Farmers National Bank and The Eureka Telephone Company and from 1904 to 1908 he was associated with T. M. Atherton in the ownership and publication of the Press. There is no feature of public life in the community with which he has not been identified on the side of progress and improvement, and at all times he is actuated by a most public-spirited devotion to the general good.
Source: History of Mitchell and Worth Counties, Iowa, 1918, Vol. II, pages 108-112
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