Howser, Robert C.

HOWSER

Posted By: Karon Velau (email)
Date: 6/29/2021 at 12:07:51

History of Warren County, Iowa from Its Earliest Settlement to 1908, by Rev. W. C. Martin, Clarke Publishing Co., Chicago, Illinois, 1908, p.657

ROBERT C. HOWSER
Rev. Robert C. Howser, has devoted the greater part of his life to the work of the farm which George Washington said, "Is the most useful and most honorable occupation of man." He has also found time to aid in the pro­motion of moral interests in the communities in which he has lived, as a local preacher, and his upright life may well serve as an example to others, while his career proves that success and an honored name may be had simultaneously. He is now living in Indianola, while since 1895 he has made his home in Warren County and in the state since 1875. Ohio claims him as a native son for his birth occurred in Clermont County, February 7, 1849.
His father, Jonathan N. Howser, was likewise a native of the Buckeye state, where he was reared and followed the occupation of farming. He was married in Ohio to Miss Margaret J. Dillman, a native of that state, and they removed from Ohio to eastern Illinois settling in Champaign County, where Mr. Howser opened up a farm in 1860. Prospering in his undertaking he added to his original holdings until he was owner of seven hundred acres. The work of improvement was carried on along the most progressive lines and he continued to reside upon his farm there until called to his final rest when seventy-three years of age. His wife's death which occurred when she was sixty-five years of age was due to an accident. They were the parents of six children, five of whom reached manhood and womanhood.
Robert C. Howser was reared, on the home farm and as his age and strength increased he worked more and more largely in the fields, devoting the summer months to farm labor, while in the winter seasons he attended the public schools, also spending three months in a college. He continued on the home farm until his twenty-fifth year and was engaged in breaking prairie in Illinois and in all the work incident to its cultivation and improvement. In 1875 he arrived in Page County, Iowa, where he made investment in two hundred and forty acres of land near Northboro. This was raw land on which he broke the sod, also fenced the place and made good improvements. He erected a dwelling there together with other substantial buildings, set out a good orchard and made the place his home for twenty years, its neat and thrifty appearance indicating his careful supervision and practical progres­sive methods.
On the 2d of April, 1879, Mr. Howser was united in marriage to Miss Pris­cilla E. Hahn, a native of Knox County, Illinois, and a daughter of Edward I. Hahn, a farmer of that state. Her parents died in Illinois during her girlhood days and she was reared by her grandmother in Iowa. Mr. Howser began his domestic life upon a farm and as the years have passed has continued in the work of the fields, meeting with well merited success by reason of his carefully directed labor, keen discrimination in business affairs and unfaltering perse­verance. He has also been a local preacher since 1885 and has been an earnest worker in behalf of the church. He continued to reside in Page County until 1895, when he removed to Indianola for the. purpose of educating his chil­dren. Here he has a good home property and is most pleasantly located.
Unto Mr. and Mrs. Howser have been born two sons and a daughter: O. C., the eldest, is a graduate of Simpson College and is now located in Poinsett County, Arkansas, where he follows farming and stock-raising. He was married in Indianola to Miss Mary Cook and they have a large farm of sixteen hundred acres, which is owned by his father, Robert C., and which is largely devoted to the raising of cotton. They employ forty cotton pickers in the season and the business is proving profitable. Robert E. Howser. the second son also attended Simpson College, is a graduate of the law de­partment of the Northwestern University at Chicago and is practicing law in that city, having been associated with Baldwin Brothers, attorneys, since 1904. He was married in Indianola to Miss Vivian Brackney, a daughter of Joseph Brackney of Indianola and they have one child, Elizabeth. Olive Jessie, the only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. R. C. Howser was graduated from the high school of Indianola in 1908.
Rev. Howser has preached in this locality as a local minister for about ten years and he yet occasionally fills a pulpit. He has always given his political support to the Republican Party where questions of national or state importance are involved, but at local elections when there is no issue before the people, he votes independently. He has been road supervisor, township clerk and school director, filling all of those posi­tions in Page County. He has frequently been a delegate to the Republican county conventions and has also been a delegate to the Sunday school conven­tions at Des Moines. Almost throughout his entire life he has been connected with the Methodist Episcopal Church, of which his wife is also a member and in the Sunday school work they have taken an active and helpful interest. Mr. Howser came to Iowa when a young man and has here reared his family, witnessing the development of the state as the years have gone by and it has been transformed from a frontier district into one of the richest state in the Union, leading all others in the production of corn and in the number and character of its public schools. Of her record in other ways Iowa citizens may well be proud and at all times Mr. Howser has given his aid and his influence in support of those measures which are a matter of civic virtue and civic pride and promote the welfare of the commonwealth.