Blake, Joseph (1833-1910)

BLAKE

Posted By: Karon Velau (email)
Date: 11/17/2016 at 00:37:51

Advocate Tribune newspaper, Indianola, Iowa, Thursday, Mar 1, 1906, front page
Biography of Joseph Blake, written by George E. Epps

On the bright Sabbath day Jan 20, 1833, in Nobles county, Ohio, Joseph Blake was born. Capricorn the tenth sign of the Zodiac was exerting its influence over those born at that period. Self reliance and self determination are the watch words and from this combination we get what is called our self made men. The fact is that every man worthy of the name, man, is self made. We have a class of reasoners who claim that heredity and environment are the all powerful and overshadowing factors in human destiny pervades modern fiction, that there is no such thing as personality, that every man is but a reproduction of this dead sucessors. But in the study of the life of Joseph Blake and other self made men we find abundant evidence that in every man, there is a power, a something which passes from generation to generation untouched by change, although surrounded by evil conditions and evil tendencies; it may and often does assert itself and show its power over both heredity and environment, this force we call self determination, and this is the master influence which controls our lives and makes us good or bad as we may choose. Israel Blake, the father of Joseph Blake, was born in the state of Ohio in the year 1800; his mother, Alvina Clark, was also a native of Ohio. Israel Blake was the father of twenty children, eight of whom are now living, two sons in Ohio, one in Michigan, one in Illinois, Dr. J. D. Blake and Joseph Blake, the subject of our sketch, and two daughters, Mrs. Morgeridge of Indianola, and Mrs. Sanford, of Des Moines. His grandfather, Simeon Blake, came from Maine to Ohio; in an early day was captain of the militia and a renowned Indian fighter. The Blakes trace their ancestry back to Commodore Blake, of the English navy. A Brother of Commodore Blake came to the United States in an early day and was governor of South Carolina; while governor of that state he captured a band of pirates which infested the coast of that state. Joseph’s boyhood was spent in hard work in the field and in the timber. His school days were of short duration. His sister taught the first school which he attended in the traditional log house daubed with mud, stick chimney and puncheon floor and seats made of split logs. The teacher of those days believed that there was great virture in the rod and it was frequently applied to the backs of unruly pupils. Moral suasion and magnatism were unknown terms in thehills of southeastern Ohio in those days. At the age of fourteen Joseph hired out and worked by the year for eight years. The first year he received six dollars per mouth, the second year he received eight dollars per month. In the year 1854 he was married to Miss Lucinda Wheeler. The next year, 1855, he and his wife, S. L. Burlingame and wife, and George Tuttle and wife put their goods on board a steamboat, floated down the Ohio river to Cairo, thence up the Mississippi to St. Louis, where they had to lay over five days when they proceeded up the river to Keokuk. There was an epidemic of cholora at St. Louis while they were there. On their arrival at Keokuk they hired a man to haul their wives and goods in a wagon to Greenfield township in this county. They paid him fifty dollars for the trip. The three men walked all the way from Keokuk behind the wagon. S. L. Burlingame was afterwards elected and served as county surveyor of Warren county. He died a few years ago. Mr. Tuttle lived in this county for a few years and returned to Ohio and the last Mr. Blake heard of him he was trying to preach. When Mr. Blake landed in Warren county he had about three hundred dollars. He rented a farm west of Norwalk and farmed one year. He then rented a farm north of old Greenbush in Greenfield township; after farming this place for two years the farm was offered for sale and after mature deliberation he arose from the chair, walked across the floor for a time, and communicated to his wife the fact that he had determined to become a landlord instead of a tenant. He had made up his mind to buy the farm where they lived. His determination to buy the farm met with his wife’s approval. The farm was bought, paying what they could the balance on time. The deferred payments gave them something to think about and something to work for. During the time that Mr. Blake lived at this palce Dr. B. B. C. Davis of Greenbush was enjoying a lucative practice. He will be remembered by the early settlers of Warren county as the man who afterwards died in the city of Des Moines from wounds received in an attempt by some one to murder him in his drug store. In 1863 eight years after his arrival in Warren county he sold his farm north of Greenbush at a considerable advance above the purchase price and bought 100 acres of the farm where he now lives, paying sixteen dollars per acre for land that would now sell close around the $100 mark. He has added to it from time to time until he now owns 225 acres of land with two good houses, two good barns, cribs, graineries and sheds for sheltering his stock. The farm is well stocked with horses, cattle and hogs. He has a herd of 16 head of pure bred Shorthorn cattle. Mr. Blake was the originator and breeder of a variety of Yellow corn which has been extensively raised in this section for many years known as the Blake corn. The house in which Mr. Blake now lives was once a rendezvous for runaway slaves. When Robert Boyce owned the place he was station agent on the underground railroad which was referred to in a previous article of this series. On the 7th day of March, 1873 his faithful wife exchanged the cares and toils of this life for that state toward which all human nature is tending. On the 19th day of December, 1877 he was united in marriage to Miss Nancy Adkins. Mr. Blake is not a member of any church yet he is a firm believer in that command of the Bible which says, “Be fruitful and multiply.”
By his first wife Mr. Blake was the father of twelve children, by his last wife, eight children, making a total of twenty children. It will be remembered that his father, Israel Blake, raised a family of twenty children. Some would say he inherited this tendency from his father; but I am inclined to think that he was simply desirous of fulfilling the command of the scripture. His two oldest sons, Benjamin and Andy are dead. The other eighteen are now living. George is living in Nebraska, Eli lives in Oklahoma, Elmer in the Dakotas, the other fifteen are living in Warren county. Mrs. Tom Sever at Wick, his son John, and daughter, Jane, are living on a farm southwest of Indianola. Son Grant lives in Lincoln township. Anderson lives on his farm west of his father. Mrs. Gerry Butterfield lives in Palmyra. Mrs. Lewis Goldizen lives in Palmyra township. The others are unmarried and live at home. The Blake boys are all good workers and years ago when they were all at home they were the best ball players in the township and there was enough of them to make a nine in a ball game and some to spare. Mr. Blake has lived three score and ten and three years which makes him past seventy three years of age. When he had been here forty years he returned to the county of his birth in Ohio. The bottom lands which were rich and productive in his boyhood he found covered with clay and soapstone which the rains had washed from the hills and then he realized how wisely he acted when he came to the west and settle in grand old Warren county, Iowa. Many changes have taken place in the fifty years that Mr. Blake has lived in Warren county. Many of the sloughs and swales of fifty years ago which bred miasma and mosquitoes have been ditched and tiled and transformed into productive soil. Indianola, then a village of a few hundred inhabitants is now a city of beautiful homes, electric lights, waterworks, and paved streets, the seat of a great college which is sending out strong men to storm the castles of ignorance and evil. The railroads have brought us in touch with the great markets of the world and the products of our farms, our horses, our cattle and hogs, our corn and wheat and other products of our soil have placed a bank on each corner of the square at Indianola and one in nearly every village in the county to hold our accumulation of wealth. The old log schoolhouse has served its purpose and passed away and the old school master with his shaggy brow and his rod, the emblem of his authority, has been laid in the shade. And in their stead we have the modern school building with comfortable seats and desks, blackboards and charts presided over by a smiling schoolmarm, who guides, directs and controls the youth under her charge by the force of thought and magnetism instead of the rod. Mr. Blake seems like giant oak standing alone in a field where the timber has been removed. All of his neighbors have passed over the river or moved away. Dillon Maxwell, John Hooper, Sol Dillow, George Dodd, Jonathan Wright, John Wright, Omer Goldizen, Jacob Moon, Smith Parker, John Morris, S. Farley, Zeke Webster, Mart Long, G. H. Nicholls, C. R. Simons, John Adamson, G. D. Haworth, Mahlon Haworth, Alfred Reynolds, Thomas Cosand, Joseph Barnett, and Hiram Moon have died within the last twenty-five years. The above named men were the immediate neighbors of Mr. Blake. But it seems that Joseph Blake is determined to live as long as he can and it was determination that has made him what he is. He has been troubled for some years with some ailment of the stomach which has baffled the skill of the doctors. At one time he had been suffering intensely with one of those attacks of his ailment and the family were looking hourly for him to pass away when the mail brought a letter from his brother in Michigan who had been suffering with blood poison caused by a scratch from a barbed wire. The doctors wanted to remove his arm, but he would not submit to an operation and recovered, and wrote to Jos., telling him that he heard he was sick and admonished him not to surrender to the grim monster but to fight for a new lease of life. The reading of the letter awakened the latent powers of his being. He sat up in bed and he still lives, a practical demonstration showing what a determined man can do. Mr. Blake is not a college graduate nor a man of much learning but his experience, his observation of men and the affairs of life has furnished him with a store of useful knowledge. He is well posted on the live issues of the day and is not afraid to express his views, to fight for what he thinks is right. He is well versed in party platforms and party principles. He affilated with the republican party until the antimonopoly party was organized and merged into the peoples party or populist. He was an admirer and supporter of Jas. B. Weaver and W. J. Bryan. He has one son named for Gen. Weaver and one for W. J. Bryan. Mr. Blake is for the man who stands for the people. He believes that President Roosevelt is trying honestly to serve the people under the constitution. And so when we come to class him politically we must say that he is a man without a party but a man for all that. He will dare all. Do what he can. Let fate itself find him no slave; make death salute him at his grave and say, “Here comes a man.”