Dodge, Nathan P.

DODGE

Posted By: Volunteer (email)
Date: 3/5/2010 at 23:52:19

NATHAN PHILLIPS DODGE.

Among the most prominent and reliable citizens of Council Bluffs is Nathan Phillips Dodge, who has been identified with that city fop more than half a century. He has always been an active business man ready to give aid and encouragement to any enterprise he thought beneficial to the city.

A republican in politics, yet his duties and inclination influenced him in refusing to enter the field for public honors, hence he has held no public office except treasurer of the city and school district and trustee of a state institution. As a member of the Congregational church he has been a liberal contributor to church and benevolent objects; has often represented the church in its national councils and was a delegate to the International Councils in London in 1891 and Boston in 1899. He is also a corporate member of the American Board of Foreign Missions.

Mr. Dodge was born in Peabody, Essex county, Massachusetts, on the 20th of August, 1837. He was educated in New England, attending the public schools. When Mr. Dodge was sixteen years of age he came to Iowa and joined his older brother Grenville, who was a civil engineer. During the summer of 1854 the party of which he was a member was engaged in locating the line of the Mississippi & Missouri Railroad, now the Rock Island, between Iowa City and Des Moines, which had been completed to the Mississippi river the year previous. In the fall Mr. Dodge returned home to assist his father in closing up his affairs and in the following March they both came west, crossing Iowa in an open wagon, on their way to Council Bluffs, which they reached about the first of April, 1855. They did not locate here, however, but crossed the Missouri river into Nebraska and proceeded twenty-three miles northwest of Omaha to the Emigrant Ferry Crossing of the Elkhorn river, where the older son had already located. There Nathan Dodge staked out a claim adjoining his father's and brother's, which he owns today.

The Dodge cabins marked the extreme western limit of civilization. The next white settlement being the Mormon colony in Utah about one thousand miles west. The Indians in the region when they settled were far more numerous than the white men. One tribe of about two thousand Pawnee Indians was located across the valley on the west side of the Platte river in sight of their claims. The Indians becoming hostile, the Dodges were forced to leave their Elkhorn farms in the fall and return to Omaha, which had been founded the year previous. They took up their residence in the only available house in the village, a log cabin, where they remained during the winter, being joined by the mother and sister on their arrival from Massachusetts. Gov. Izard sent out a company of militia to the relief of the Elkhorn settlers and this company occupied the cabins which had been vacated and under their protection Nathan Dodge gathered the crops and brought them to Omaha.

It was in February, 1856, that Mr. Dodge returned to Council Bluffs to make it his permanent home, accepting a position in the banking and land office of Baldwin & Dodge, a firm composed of John T. Baldwin and Grenville M. Dodge. He remained with them four years, when he succeeded to the business. Three years later, in 1863, Caleb Baldwin, then chief justice of the supreme court of Iowa, resigned and joined him, and the firm was again Baldwin & Dodge, but formed by brothers of the original firm. This partnership continued five years or until Judge Baldwin resumed the practice of law in 1868, after which Mr. Dodge carried on the real estate and banking business alone until November 1, 1870, when he organized the Council Bluffs Savings Bank. He served as president of this bank for thirty-two years, resigning in 1902, on account of impaired health. The real estate business he still continues under the name of N. P. Dodge & Company, W. W. Wallace being his partner.

During the early settlement of western Iowa this real estate branch of his business was very large, as he reptesented the men who had entered many of the lands as well as the railroads, who had obtained grants from the government. It is safe to say he has sold more lands in Pottawattamie county to the actual settler than any other agent. His dealings in city property were likewise very large during those earlier years.

In 1864 Mr. Dodge was married to Susanna C. Lockwood, a daughter of Isaac Lockwood, of St. Louis, and they became the parents of five children, of whom two sons and two daughters are still living. John Lockwood and Nathan Phillips, Jr., are both graduates of Harvard University and also prepared for the legal profession in the Harvard Law School, while the daughters, Caroline Louise and Ellen, now Mrs. E. H. Scott, are graduates of Smith College, in Massachusetts, Caroline having graduated at the Law.. School connected with the. New York University, and is practicing law.

1907 History of Pottawattamie County