Bateham, G. W.

BATEMAN, HORNER, MARSHALL, RICH, HAWK, RAINEY

Posted By: Gary Norris (email)
Date: 1/9/2013 at 08:08:51

The History of Poweshiek County, Iowa
Des Moines: Union Hist. Co., 1880.

BATEHAM, G.W.—Grinnell Twp—pg 884-5. Dealer in city real estate, Grinnell. Was born in County Kent, England, April 26, 1813; when very young came with his parents to America, locating in Rochester, New York, where his father engaged in landscape gardening and the nursery business, at which he continued many years, becoming quite noted in his pursuit. Here our subject was raised and educated. At the age of twenty-one he moved to Ross county, Ohio, and engaged in farming, residing in the vicinity of Chillicothe for three years, and then moved to Jay county, Indiana, resuming his former occupation, where he lived seventeen or eighteen years. In 1857 he came to Iowa, reaching Grinnell on the 8th of May, having been enabled, after leaving Montezuma, to cross all the sloughs on the ice—a circumstance unknown since that time. He then engaged in sheep-raising, increasing his herd from 450 to 700. He first located in Malcom township, bringing under cultivation over 1,000 acres of land, which now comprises seven farms, and after seventeen or eighteen years’ residence in this township he removed to Grinnell, building several houses for renting purposes. M.B. Bateham (a brother of the subject of this sketch) was a noted agricultural writer; was first editor of the Genesee Farmer, of Rochester, New York; afterward, of the Ohio Cultivator, of Columbus, Ohio, continuing in this capacity twenty years, when, having acquired a competency, he retired, engaging in the fruit business at Paynesville, Ohio; traveled extensively in Europe, corresponding with some of the metropolitan agricultural journals in the United States. Our subject was married, about the year 1837, to Miss C. Horner, with whom he lived about twenty years, and by whom he had ten children: Milton (a solider in the Twenty-eighth Iowa infantry; died in the army hospital at New Orleans), Vincent (now of Guthrie county), Elizabeth (now Mrs. Henry B. Marshall, of Chicago), James (now of Guthrie county), Eliza (now Mrs. George Rich, of Guthrie county), Caroline (now Mrs. T. Hawk, of Liscomb, Marshall county), Cassius M. (a soldier in the Twenty-eighth Iowa infantry), Isabel (now Mrs. John Hawk, of Liscomb, Marshall county) and George Thornton (now of Nebraska). In 1858 he was married to Miss Minnie Rainey, by whom he has three children: Benjamin F., Annie Florence and Milton S. Mr. B. for three years was engaged in traveling for the Cleveland and St. Louis Railroad Company (a projected road), securing the appropriation of 146,000 acres of land and $38,000, but the road was not built.