Capt. Henry Wilson, Jr. (1841-1915)

WILSON, BARRINGTON, KRAIGER, WINTER, CROW, CREELMAN, HOOD, PAXTON

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 10/24/2010 at 14:21:38

From Nevada Representative June 22, 1915

OBITUARY

HENRY WILSON

Capt. Henry Wilson Jr., late of Ames, Iowa, was born at Halifax, Nova Scotia February 4, 1841 and died at Ames June 18, 1915, aged 74 years, 4 months and 14 days. He was of Scotch parentage, and he was taken with his family when he was a small child to Chelsea, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, where he war reared and had his home until, after reaching mid-life, he removed to Iowa and located at Ames, which was his home for the remaining half of his life. He was just turned twenty years of age when the civil war broke out, and he promptly enlisted on May 23, 1861, in Company H of the First Massachusetts Volunteers. In this command he served for the full term of three years, being mustered out May 25, 1864. In the meantime he had been in or near the most of the great battles in the Virginia theater of war from Bull Run to Gettysburg serving for the most part as a corporal. In the meantime his father and brother enlisted and served in the Massachusetts 5th, and the brother was killed in the operations south of Petersburg. After the war he made a home for years for two or three sisters at Chelsea, was in the employ of the Chelsea Oil company and got some of his recreation in the Massachusetts National Guard, wherein he achieved the rank and title of "captain" and gained a measure of good-will that was testified to upon his removal west by the presentatio of a gold watch which he carried for the rest of his life. In 1876 he and one of his employers prospected through this region, and in August of 1878 with the latter's backing he located at Ames and engaged in the grain business, the firm being Wilson & Hayden. In this business he continued until the end of 1886, when, having been elected clerk of the courts for Story county, he removed temporarily to Nevada. Before the end of his second official term he purchased in 1890 the Ames Intelligencer, of which paper he was the publisher for a little more than four years. He disposed of the paper in 1894 and went into the Union National Bank of Ames, of which he was cashier, until his paralytic stroke cut him off from all business activities at the very end of 1913. Since that time he had been an invalid, sometimes better and sometimes not so well but never offering any real prospect of substantial recovery. In the years of his residence at Ames he held various municipal offices and he served as mayor in 1881-83 and in 1894-96.

Capt. Wilson was three time married, although his first marriage was when he was nearly 37 years of age. He was first married early in 1878 to Anna Barrington of Boston, who came with him to Ames the following summer and who died there in January, 1883. His second marriage occured during the years of his residence at Nevada, this wife being Sara Kraiger, who was a teacher in the Nevada high school and to whom he was married at Solon in June of 1898, after he had disposed of the paper. he was again married in June 1899 to Martha Winter, a school teacher of Ames, who was privileged to have with him his years of most assured properity and who has borne with notable cheer and bravery the burdens incident to his long and hopeless illness. He had no children, and his nearest surviving relatives are a sister, Mrs. W. E. Crow, at Halifax; a half-sister, Miss Elizabeth Wilson of St. Paul and a half-brother in Boston. Miss Wilson and a double cousin, Mrs. A. B. Creelman, also of St. Paul, have been in attendance upon the funeral, as have relatives of Mrs. Wilson from away, Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Winter of Rockford, Illinois; Mr and Mrs. E. O. Hood of Battle Creek, Iowa, and Dr. H. W. Paxton of Lake View.

The funeral Monday afternoon was conducted by ------ Mason City, formerly of Ames. The honorary pall bearers were men of Capt. Wilson's own age and time and the actual pall-bearers young business men of Ames. The Grand Army post of Ames attended to the body and paid the last tribute to their late comrade.

Capt. Wilson was a man of notable ability and character and a representative citizen of Story county. He was of Scotch ancestry and of New England rearing, and in his make-up he was true to both. he was of sterling integrity, of directness of speech and of strict fidelity to whatever is best in public and private affairs. His nomination for county clerk was made in the days shen the county convention was the arbiter of all matters political and when the veterans of the civil war were at the maximum of their political power. The balloting was protracted, the Ames delegation being for C. M. Soper, who afterwards attained and long held the clerkship, while Nevada was trying to give a sixth term to Capt. Smith; but the old soldiers figured that Capt. Wilson's time had come, and they rallied from the outside and put him over the line. It was a triumph that meant something and that served greatly to identify him with the county as a whole, and the confidence thus manifested was never shown to be misplaced. Indeed, he was a true man in all the relations of his life; and the better he was known the more was he admired and believed in. It is hardly in one's heart to wish that his brave and cheerful struggle with a long and hopeless illness could have been further protracted; but there is abundant honor for his life and sincere tribute at his death.