ATHERTON, Frank G 1854-1940
ATHERTON, WESTLER, LONG, PATTERSON, GILLMORE
Posted By: Diane Scott (email)
Date: 8/14/2010 at 15:26:42
#1 of 3:
Osage man, 84, wanted to join union army when Seven!
Frank G. Atherton Recalls Period of Pioneering in Iowa
Osage – “Take your horse and buggy days”. “I remember the covered wagon days”, said Frank G. Atherton, 84, of Osage, on Thursday, as he reminisced of an era of the past -- an era in which he came to Iowa in a covered wagon, an era in which he demanded of his parents that they allow him to enlist for duty in the Union army during the Civil war -- at the ripe “old” age of seven.
Atherton, retired editor of the Clear Lake Mirror, has in his possession a letter sent his father Thomas M. Atherton, from Buffalo, N.Y., to Scranton, Pa., and dated January 1, 1856. The yellowed document is one of several mementos the pioneer has of a day gone by.
The elder Atherton, who was registrar of wills in the county at Scranton at that time resigned his position to take his family westward. The Athertons went as far as Prairie Du Chien, Wisconsin by train, then crossed the Mississippi by iceboat. From the river they traveled across prairie land to West Union, by oxen and covered wagon.
After a month in West Union, they were attracted to Mitchell County by a land boom there, and it was there that they spent most of their lives. In 1869, the Athertons moved to Osage.
Frank Atherton well recalls the many tribes of Winnebago Indians who traversed the countryside at that time. “They stopped at houses, begging, and didn’t scare anyone but the housewives,” he recalls. He remembers also River.
Regretful is the pioneer that his parents refused to give him permission to join the Union army when hostilities broke out in 1861. “Of course, I was only 7 at the time,” he remarks with a smile on his face.
[Mason City Globe Gazette, Tuesday September 26, 1939]
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FRANK ATHERTON FORMER CLEAR LAKE EDITOR DIES
Funeral for Pioneer Newspaperman to Be Conducted Tuesday
Clear Lake – Word was received here Monday of the death of Frank G. Atherton, 85, former editor of the Clear Lake Mirror, at Rochester, Minn., Sunday morning at the home of his nephew, Isaac Patterson. Mr. Atherton, who was spending the winter with his nephew, had gone to the bathroom, and dropped dead.
Funeral services will be held at 2 o’clock Tuesday afternoon at the Champion funeral home in Osage, where he lived most of the year. Burial will be at Osage.
Mr. Atherton was married October 10, 1878, to Miss Mollie Hannah Westler at Berwick, Pa. They lived first at West Superior, Wis., then at Osage and Clear Lake where Mr. Atherton published newspapers. They had no children. Mrs. Atherton died April 5, 1938.
For 27 years Atherton was owner of the Mirror. On May 29, 1938, he sold the newspaper to Ralph W. Anderson of Ringsted who later sold it to T. J. Farnam.
He was born in Pennsylvania.
[Mason City Globe Gazette, Monday, February 26, 1940]
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#3:
1900 US Census: Osage, Mitchell, Iowa:
Frank G. Atherton born December 1854 Pennsylvania; Mollie H. born March 1859 Pennsylvania
According to the 1925 Iowa Census his parents were Thomas Atherton and Elizabeth Gillmore
Mitchell Obituaries maintained by Sharyl Ferrall.
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