Spencer, Leonard S. (1826-1917)

SPENCER

Posted By: Karon Velau (email)
Date: 12/14/2016 at 01:50:12

History of Warren County, Iowa; Containing a History of the County, Its Cities, Towns & Etc., by Union Historical Company, 1879, p.672

SPENCER, LEONARD S., farmer and stock-shipper, Jefferson Township, Sec. 3; P. O. Lothrop; born in Trumbull county, Ohio, October 17, 1828, and lived in that State until twenty-six years old; came to Warren county, Iowa, in September, 1854, where he has lived since; taught the first school in the district that he lives in, which was organized in 185; married Miss Catherine C., daughter of John Wheeler, a native of Ohio, March 18, 1855; has a family of one son and two daughters: Charles R., Paulina A. and Anna M.; has a farm of 100 acres; was appointed postmaster in Feb., 1855, by Postmaster-general Campbell, and held the office for eighteen years at Lynn, which is now changed to Lothrop on the railroad; was elected representative in this county in 1863; Mrs. Spencer's father, John Wheeler, was born in Somerset county, Maine, Nov. 27, 1805, and lived there till eleven years old, when he came with his parents to Washington county, Ohio, and was married in that State to Miss Hannah Hutchings, a native of Maine, in 1826; have a family of five sons and one daughter: Robert, Enos, James, America, William W. and Catherine C. (now Mrs. L. S. Spencer); has a farm of 100 acres.

The Advocate-Tribune newspaper, Indianola, Iowa, Thursday, May 14, 1885, p.4
PIONEER SKETCHES, by L. S. S.

LEONARD S. SPENCER
[Most of our readers have doubtless recognized the initials over Pioneer Sketches as those of one of the oldest, most prominent, and respected pioneers of the county, Mr. L. S. Spencer. At our request Mr. Spencer has consented to give a sketch of his own life. Of course it would not contain any comments upon his character or praise of the career of upright manliness, of which the bare surface facts are recounted. More than that, Mr. Spencer has hampered us somewhat by his reluctance and modesty on the subject. Fortunately, under these circumstances, it is not necessary that much should be said. Our readers know him, and respect him as one of the bettering influences in both the business and social affairs of the county. He has been active in church and school affairs especially. And the full force of his life has been cast for what a clear practical judgment has told him is right. We hope he and his good wife may be long spared to our county. It needs them, and more like them.]
October 17, 1826, in the county of Trumbull, in the Buckeye state, is the time and place where the subject of our sketch was born. Ohio was not then what it is now in population, power, and wealth. At that day a great portion of her surface was covered with heavy timber; her population was scattering; her education facilities limited, only here and there a log school house, perhaps now and then a frame standing in the forest or amid the stumps where the trees had been but shortly cut down and logged up, put into heaps, and burned. Her settlers for a general thing were poor, with now and then one that was well fixed. Churches were a rare thing; most societies worshiping in the school houses, with their four and six weeks appointments. Many of the roads newly cut out and full of stumps, many of them only a cow path or blazed trees. This consisted of having the outside bark hewn off on both sides of the tree in the direction traveled by a footman going through with an ax so those that came after could follow the same path as their predecessor, if they would only watch the blazing on the trees. In the wet portion of the season even where the roads were chopped and cleaned out the stumps were so thick and the settlers so few they could not be worked. The mud in the clay country would become so deep that they often became impassable. Instead of the streams being well bridged they had to be forded if crossed at all. Cows and all other cattle during the summer were turned out upon the big pasture to rove where they pleased, and often they did not feel disposed to come up to the house to be milked. Nearly every man that had a cow to turn out put a bell on the leading animal, if he had more than one, so they could be found by the sound of this bell, during the day or night. How many times when a boy has the subject of our sketch been sent after the cows in the woods to find them and drive them up for the nights milk. After finding them two or three miles from home, being long after dark before he would find them, and the only way to get along in the dark was to follow the sound of the bell; for after the cows were found they were scarcely any trouble to drive home. Miles and miles have we followed the bell after dark in the dense forest with the wolf howling on all sides. Such was the condition of the country even in the great state of Ohio, where our subject was born. Fifty-eight years has made a vast change in the Buckeye state; not only in that state but in the whole north-west. As we have said our subject was born in the back woods of Trumbull county. At the age of three years his parents moved from this county to what was then Georga county. This county then contained the most of what is now Lake county. Georga county was then very new. Schools were scarce, but at the age of four years our subject was sent to one of these schools, and for two years he spent nine months under the pedagogue of the times. As his parents were very poor he was then taken out of school and put to work upon the farm during the summer. During the winter they were so far from the school house and the snow so deep and the weather so cold he could not attend school. At the age of eight years his father made another move, onto a new farm that was covered with very heavy beech, maple, ash, and poplar timber. Upon this place they had not lived over eight or nine months when the mother was taken sick and died; leaving six children, the youngest an infant. In about a year the father married again; a widow lady, she having two children. As is often the case the children could not or did not agree. This caused disturbance between the parents. As the father wished to see his children come up in the world with respectability and with an education, and being very poor and not able to do as he wished to do by them he made up his mind to put his own children out where they might receive greater advantages than he was able to give them. At the age of ten years the subject of our sketch left his father’s cabin for a strange roof. Here he was to have the benefits of a good school during the winter months – four months out of twelve to go to school. On the first winter, after being in school but a few days, he was taken sick with the fever and for three months he was confined to his room, and a great part of this time to his bed. From this time on for three years following he was unable to attend school during the winter. During the summer he had very good health, but as soon as cold weather commenced he was confined to the house. Our subject remained at this one place until his majority, attending school but a very little until the last winter before his majority, when he went nearly every day for the four months. Such was his desire for an education that he tried for two years or more to go to school, but health would not permit, and the desire for an education had to be abandoned. After working upon a farm by the month during the summer and teaching during the winter for some four years, he concluded to travel and see the country. He made two trips into the southern and eastern states, and while on these trips he managed to be under pay and see the country at the same time. He also came out into Illinois and spent one winter, and into Michigan, looking for a country in which to settle for life. At last the Iowa fever caught hold of him, and in the fall of 1854, in September, he landed in Warren county and settled where he now lives. Here was another new country to settle, but not very like the one settled when a boy of ten years. Jefferson [township] was at that time but thinly settled. He has seen Warren county from a child, a youth, to nearly manhood. He came here a single man, not knowing when he left the shores of Lake Erie to seek his home in the “Great West” where he should turn up. At the time of leaving his adopted father’s roof his mind was for the soil of Minnesota; but after making his father a visit in the northern part of Illinois, to which place he had emigrated since our subject left home in 1854, he heard the “Three River” country of Iowa so highly spoken of that he turned his footsteps thither and came to Des Moines, from there to Warren county. As we have said in previous numbers, Des Moines was then but a “burg” and tough at that. Shortly after his coming here he became acquainted with a young lady who he thought would make a good helpmate. While boarding at her father’s, during the winter, and teaching school in the district, she being one of his pupils, she consented to become a “partner for better or for worse” for life. He was married March 18th, 1855, “Squire Allen tying the bridal knot. It was so well tied that it has remained without any serious interruption from that day until the present. “ The bride’s name was Clarinda C. Wheeler. She was born in Noble county, Ohio, February 1838. Three children have been born unto them, one son and two daughters. The son is married; daughters are single. Our subject has seen Iowa from its infancy to childhood; from childhood to nearly manhood; has spent the best part of his life upon her soil, seen the wild prairie turned into the use of the agriculturist by the hardy hand of toil, seen her school houses arise to give light to the feet of the youth, seen her churches spring up and give light and civilization to all that may accept her invitation to the Gospel of Christ, and may it grow brighter and brighter until the perfect day. May Iowa’s youth grow up in the path of the light of her educational advantages. Our subject has depended upon his farm for a livelihood, although he has been engaged in the live stock trade for several years. He had tried to do his duty as a citizen, has taken an interest in the welfare of the country, to see it prosper. In August 1877, while on his road home from Chicago, where he had been with stock, he was wrecked at “Little Four-mile,” on the C.R.I. & P.R.R. and was badly hurt. He was not able to get home until New Years, being nearly four months in Des Moines. From this injury he has never recovered, perhaps never will. He has never been able to do much labor since; yet he has the ambition to go as long as he can go. He, like all of the rest of the pioneers of the early days, will soon take his departure and follow his predecessors, and his devoted partner, also, will go within a few years.

History of Warren County, Iowa from Its Earliest Settlement to 1908, by Rev. W. C. Martin, Clarke Publishing Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1908, p.886
LEONARD S. SPENCER
In the fall of 1849 L. S. Spencer came to Iowa and in 1854 he took up his residence in Warren County, where he has since made his home, being promi­nently identified with the upbuilding and development of this section of the state during the years which have since come and gone. He taught the first district school in Jefferson Township, but his time and attention have been devoted principally to agricultural pursuits, his home being on section 3 of that township.
A native of Ohio, Mr. Spencer was born in Trumbull County, October 17, 1826, and is a son of Gehial Spencer, who was born in Rutland County, Vermont, and was a young man on his removal to Trumbull County, Ohio. There he married Elizabeth Blackburn, a native of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, and after following farming in the Buckeye state for some years, he removed to McHenry County, Illinois, where he entered land and improved a farm. Later he came to Iowa, where he and his sons engaged in farming until his death. His first wife died in Ohio, and he subsequently married again, having two children by the second union. L. S. Spencer is one of the four living children by the first marriage, the others being Nathan, now a resident of Minnesota; Mrs. Hannah St. John, of Lake County, Ohio; and Mrs. Mary Woodruff, of Marengo, Illinois.
L. S. Spencer was reared by foster parents from the age of eleven years, until he attained his majority. He grew to manhood in Lake County, Ohio, where he acquired the greater part of his education. He also attended school in Kingsville, Ashtabula County, and later engaged in teaching in Ohio for four winter terms. In 1849, as previously stated, he came to Iowa, and spent two winters in Washington County, teaching school a part of that time. He then returned to Ohio, but later made a trip through Illinois and Iowa and finally located in Warren County in 1854. He entered forty acres of land on section 3, Jefferson Township, where he now resides, and he subsequently added to his property until he owned one hundred and sixty acres of land but has since disposed of a part of this, still retaining seventy-five acres near Prole, where he makes his home. He has fenced the land, set out an orchard, and erected good buildings, so that he now has a well improved farm, which he keeps under a high state of cultivation. In connection with farming he also carries on stock-raising.
Mr. Spencer was married in this County, March 18, 1855, to Miss Clarinda C. Wheeler, also a native of Ohio, who was born in Morgan County, February 9, 1838, and was a daughter of John Wheeler, one of the early settlers of this county. After a happy married life of thirty-seven years, Mrs. Spencer passed away on the 8th of April, 1892, leaving three children, namely: Charles R., a carpenter, and joiner of Highmore, South Dakota; Palona A., who is with her father; and Mrs. Anna May Stoner, a resident of Highmore, South Dakota.
Originally Mr. Spencer was an old line Whig in politics, casting his first presidential vote for Zachary Taylor, but in 1856 he supported John C. Fremont and has since affiliated with the Republican Party. In 1873 he was elected to the lower house of the state legislature to fill a vacancy. He is a member of the Odd Fellows lodge at Indianola, and although reared in the Presbyterian faith, he and his daughter now hold membership in the Methodist Episcopal Church, to which his estimable wife also belonged. For twenty years he served as secretary of the school board of his district, and has ever taken an active interest in educational affairs, doing all in his part to promote the moral, intel­lectual and material welfare of his community. As one of the pioneer teachers of the county, he taught six winter terms in Jefferson Township, opening school here in a little log cabin. During those early days he knew almost every man in the country, and can remember Des Moines as a little crossroads village, when the surrounding country was mostly wild and unimproved, and the settle­ments wildly scattered. He served as the first postmaster at Linn, having the office at his own house, when the village was a stage station on the road between Des Moines and Council Bluffs, and he held that position for eighteen years. Widely known he is universally respected and esteemed and is justly entitled to representation in the history of Warren County's pioneers and leading citizens.