A. W. McCallum

MC CALLUM, ORR, TOWNSEND, BURRIS

Posted By: Volunteer Transcriber
Date: 3/6/2007 at 08:29:23

Biographies from the 1914 "Past and Present of O'Brien and Osceola Counties of Iowa"

A. W. McCALLUM.

A native son of Osceola County who has never wandered from the limits of his native heath is A. W. McCallum, formerly clerk of the district court and now a prominent abstracter of titles in Sibley. He is a man of force of will and, with a laudable ambition, has forged to the front in a responsible and exacting calling and earned an honorable reputation in his chosen line of business. His life has been one of hard study and research from his youth and the position to which he has attained is evidence that he possesses qualities of a high order.

A. W. McCallum, the son of Daniel D. and Angelina M. (Orr) McCallum, was born April 22, 1873, in Osceola County on a farm in what is now Ocheyedan township. Daniel D. McCallum was a native of Canada and his wife of Wisconsin. Daniel D. was the son of Daniel McCallum, a native of Scotland. He first settled in Canada and in 1856 located in Clayton County, Iowa. Daniel D. homesteaded on section 14 in Ocheyedan Township, Osceola County, in June, 1872. He had been married two years previous in Grant County, Wisconsin, to Angeline M. Orr. He had served in the Civil War, enlisting in Company I, Twenty-seventh Regiment Iowa Volunteer Infantry, and later in the Twelfth Regiment Iowa Volunteer Infantry. He served altogether fourteen months. He resided on his homestead in Ocheyedan Township for seven years and then moved to Sibley and engaged in the practice of law. He served two years as judge of the old circuit court and served for several years as county attorney, holding this position at the time of his death, August 10, 1895. His wife was born in 1840 and is still living and now makes her home with her son, A. W., in Sibley. Daniel D. McCallum and wife were the parents of three children: A. W., whose history is here briefly delineated; Mary L., deceased, and Mrs. Florence A. Townsend, of Murdo, South Dakota.

A. W. McCallum was born in a genuine old-fashioned sod house. It was built by his father in 1872, when he homesteaded his farm. In this he lived for only the first year after his birth, accordingly does not have a very vivid remembrance of his first home. He was educated in the Sibley schools, but most of his education has been acquired from wide and extensive reading since leaving school. He has been an omnivorous reader all of his life and has never given up the habit of being a student. Early in life he began to take a part in public affairs and when only twenty-four years of age was elected as clerk of the district court of his county. Retiring from this four year office, he engaged in the abstracting of land titles and in this line of business he has been continuously engaged since that time. To be a successful abstracter demands the closest scrutiny of details and a preciseness which only conies from good training. It is not too much to say that Mr. McCallum has all of those qualities which are necessary for the successful abstracter. Mr. McCallum was married in 1902 to Beulah Burris. Fraternally, Mr. McCallum is a member of the Ancient Free and Accepted Masons and the Knights of Pythias. Mr. McCallum is a man of strong character and courteous demeanor, a man who has earned the respect and admiration of all of those who have been associated with him in any way.

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