Robert Henderson Countermine

COUNTERMINE NAIRN

Posted By: Connie Swearingen (email)
Date: 4/12/2010 at 22:13:52

Woodbury County History 1984

Robert H and Elizabeth (Nairn) Countermine
By Peggy Troy

Robert Henderson Countermine, a pharmacist and businessman in Sioux City and Salix, ca 1895-1930, was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on May 27, 1870. He was the second of three children of William Countermine, a farmer, and Ellen (Dougall) Countermine. Robert was named the story goes, for his mother’s cousin, Robert Henderson a Scottish published and a book dearler.

Countermine was a name that had evolved from the German name ‘Contermann’. Robert’s great-great-great-great grandfather, Johann Fridrich Contermann, had come to America about 1700 from the German Palatinate and had settled in New Paltz. New York. By about 1830, Robert’s grandparents, James and Sarah (Morrison) Countermine, were spelling the name ‘Countermine’ and living in Schenectady County, New York. Other descendants of Johann Friedrich Contermann, as they moved to different areas, gradually began spelling the name in other ways such as Countyman, Cunderman, Kunterman, and Counterman.

Robert H Countermine was also descended from Samuel Wakeman, who had come to America from Bewdley, England, in 1631 on the ship Lion, and had been a founder of the first church of Roxbury, Massachusetts. The Wakemans and the Contermann/Countermine family, were very proud of their involvement with the church. IN 1876, the year Robert H Countermine turned six, his father’s brother, John Donnan Countermine, was graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary and became a Presbyterian minister. By 1901, Robert had three Countermine uncles and a brother who were Presbyterian ministers. (Robert’s brother, James Willard Countermine, became the first minister of (Morningside Presbyterian Church in Sioux City in 1901.)

R H Countermine’s parents moved to Iowa from Schenectady County about two years before he was born. They farmed in Linn County until Robert was about ten years old. Cannon noise had partially deafened William Countermine in the Battle of Gettysburg (1863) of the Civil War, and he had received leg and arm injuries there, but there’s no indication that this kept him from doing a good job as a farmer. About 1880, the family bought another farm, in nearby Benton County. Benton County was the birthplace of Robert’s sister, Sarah Jannette (1874) and the place where their mother died (1890).

With the growing tradition of Countermines becoming clergymen. Robert was expected, he said later, to follow suit. But he chose chemistry and pharmacy instead. About 1893, the year his family moved from Benton to Cherokee County, he enrolled in the Des Moines College of Pharmacy. He graduated about 1895 and headed for Sioux City to work as a pharmacist for the C E Nichols Company. About a year later he took a similar job with H S Bauer there.

About 1898, R H Countermine moved t Salix to be a pharmacist with N J Devin & Company. There he met Elizabeth Nairn, a teacher who was the youngest daughter of Magdalene and John Nairn. (John Nairn was an early pioneer in the area and founded ‘Nairn’s Mill’ in Lakeport Township in 1870.) Robert and ‘Bessie’ were married on June 6, 1900, at ‘The Elms’, the Nairn home near Salix. After their marriage, they moved to Sloan.

The Salix/Sloan area was the birthplace of R H and Elizabeth Countermine’s five children: John (1901-1901), Douglas (1903-?), Madalen Elizabeth (1905-1968), Isabel Margaret (1908-1978), and Doris Anna (1910-1910). Apparently shortly after the death of Doris Anna in 1910, the family moved to Sioux City. There R H Countermine worked for the Tolerton-Warfield Company and Robb-Ross Manufacturing Company. At Robb-Ross he was a chemist and developed a line of processed foods.

After Elizabeth Nairn Countermine’s death in 1919, the three surviving Countermine children were cared for in Sioux City by their aunt, Margaret Robertson ‘Maggie’ Nairn. R H Countermine was remarried in 1921 to Dr Elizabeth Mochrie of Sioux City. This marriage ended in divorce. In 1926, Robert Countermine became a sales executive with the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company in Sioux City, and later he became general sales manager of the Doud Milling Company at Denison, Iowa. He spent much of the 1930’s and 1940’s in Mankato, Minnesota, and died in 1946 in Sioux City.

The two daughters of R H and Elizabeth Nairn Countermine (Madalen and Isabel) lived in Woodbury County for many years. Madalen married Darrell ‘Dick’ Wilkins, a banker, about 1931, in Sioux City. Later in the 1930’s the Wilkins family moved to Moville, Iowa, and then lived in the Washington, DC, area and in Evanston, Illinois. Mr Wilkins was Illinois-Iowa director of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Isabel, Robert and Elizabeth’s younger daughter, was married to Thomas V Swanson in Sioux City in 1935. Mr Swanson was a long-time employee of Northwestern Bell Telephone Company, first in Sioux City and after 1948 in Des Moines.

Madalen and Dick Wilkins had two daughters, Constance, born 1932, and Marian ‘Penny’, born 1934. Connie a secretary, is married to attorney Davis ‘Bill’ Duke; they live in Ft Lauderdale, Florida. The Duke’s children are Andrew Patterson Duke, born 1957, Bryan Wilkins Duke, born 1960, and Elizabeth Ann Duke, born 1964. Madalen and Dick Wilkins’ younger daughter, Penny, is a reading education specialist and private tutor and is married to James Mitchell Willson, Sr, a civil engineer in Phoenix, Arizona. The Willsons’s children are James M Willson, Jr, born 1959, Jeffrey Coale Willson, born 1961, and Judith Anne Willson, born 1963.

Thomas and Isabel Swanson’s daughters are Mary Elizabeth, born 1936, and Margaret Ann ‘Peggy’, born 1937. Mary, an artist, is married to E Dean Jones, a marketing executive; they live in Monroeville, Pennsylvania. Their children are E Dean Jones II, born 1963, Margaret Nairn Jones, born 1964, Thomas Martin Jones, born 1968, and Sarah Mattsson Jones, born 1972. The younger daughter of Tom and Isabel Swanson, Peggy, is a writer who lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with her husband, Ronald L Troy, executive director of Big Brothers, Big Sisters of the Midlands, and son, Eric Ronald Troy, born 1972.