Howe, Henry

HOWE

Posted By: Joyce Hickman (email)
Date: 12/26/2008 at 13:52:59

Henry Howe

(From the 1883 History of Pottawattamie County, Iowa, by J. H. Keatley, p.28, Council Bluffs)
Henry Howe & Son, new and second-hand store, Council Bluffs. Henry Howe has been a resident of Pottawattamie County for about sixteen years. He was born in Ohio in 1822, and lived in that State till 1846, when he moved to Indiana, where he resided about ten years; he then moved to Harrison County, Mo., where he resided during the late war. While there, and prior to the breaking-out of the war, he had a debate with Rev. Isaac Plank on the Bible position of slavery. Mr. Howe taking the ground that the Bible did not uphold slvery while Mr. Plank maintained that it did. This debate caused so much excitement that Mr. Howe was arrested, and, after having a trial of two days before a Justice of the Peace, was bound over to wait the action of the Grand Jury, but no bill was found against him. During the war, he was not in the regular service, but was Captain in the State Militia for some time; his early life was spent on the farm; during the war, he published a paper in Bethany, the county seat of Harrison County, Mo., but about he close of the war he sold out his printing office and came to Council Bluffs, where he engaged in the trust business, which he followed for five years; he also followed farming for some time, his farm and residence being just outside the city limits; he began his present business in October, 1881, keeping all kinds of new and second-hand furniture, his stock being worth from $15,000 to $20,000; he owns the store building and residence adjoining it; his son, A. B. Howe, is now in partnership with him. Mr. Howe has been married three times. In Ohio, in 1842, he married Miss Amanda Roby, who died in Indiana in 1850; his second wife, whome he married in Indiana, was Miss Elizabeth Irwin. In Iowa, in 1868, he married Mrs. Lodema Irwin, his present wife. He has nine children living, five sons and four daughters; he has been a member of the United Brethren Church since he was sixteen years old, and when twenty-four years, became a local preacher, and has since continued to perach the Gospel; he traveled on a circuit for two years; he has been a Republican since the organization of that party.