ANDREW MANN McCORMICK

Andrew Mann McCormick, who is now successfully engaged in the furniture and undertaking business in Tipton as a member of the firm of McCormick & Wills, was born in this city on the 25th of February, 1879, and is a son of Alexander McCormick, whose birth occurred in County Cavan, Ireland, November 4, 1839. During his infancy the latter was taken by his parents, George and Jean (Stewart) McCormick, back to their old home in Scotland, locating in Linlithgowshire, where he was reared and educated. George McCormick made three different attempts to come to the United States but each time was shipwrecked and never reached the shores of this country. On one of the voyages he lost a son and daughter and again another daughter was drowned. He was a tailor by trade, and both he and his wife died in Scotland. Of their eight children only three are now living, these being Alexander, the father of our subject; Mrs. Margaret Machelson, of Glasgow; and Mrs. Mary Ann Innes, of Tipton, Iowa.

During his youth Alexander McCormick served a three years’ apprenticeship to the shoemaker’s trade and for several years followed that occupation in Glasgow, Scotland; Dublin, Ireland; and Liverpool, England, after which he returned to his old home in Scotland, where he continued to work for three years. In 1863 he married Miss Margaret Scott, by whom he had one child, but both mother and child died prior to his emigration to America in the fall of 1869. He came direct to Iowa and has since made his home in Tipton, working at his trade, having been at his present location since 1878. He has employed three men at one time and has also dealt in ready-made shoes but is now principally devoting his attention to repair work. In 1871 he again married, his second union being with Miss Margaret Mann, who was born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in January, 1839, and came to this country with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. William Mann, in the spring of 1869. The children born of this union are: W. G., who is now a linotype operator in the Republican office at Cedar Rapids; Alexander, thirty-six years of age, who is today the smallest man in American and has been offered excellent positions with several circus companies but has always declined; Jane, who is assistant principal of the high school in Mechanicsville; Mary, who died at the age of fourteen years; Andrew McCormick, whose name introduces this sketch; and Margaret, who was assistant principal of the schools at Lake Park at the time of her death.

Reared in Tipton, Andrew Mann McCormick is indebted to the public schools of this city for the educational privileges he enjoyed. After attending the high school he began his business career as clerk in the grocery store of W. R. Fields, where he remained for five years. At the age of sixteen he joined the National Guards and when the Spanish-American war broke out enlisted April 26, 1898, in the United States service, becoming a member of Company F, Forty-ninth Iowa Volunteer Infantry, under Captain Louis J. Rowell. He accompanied the regiment to Cuba but they were never called upon to participate in any engagement. After thirteen months of service Mr. McCormick was mustered out May 13, 1899. He now holds the office of first lieutenant in Company F, Fifty-third Iowa National Guard.

After the war Mr. McCormick was engaged as street car conductor in Cedar Rapids for one year and on his return to Tipton entered the employ of S. F. Witmer, who was engaged in the furniture and undertaking business and for whom he worked for eight years. He was later with that gentlemen’s successors, Kingsbury & Hammel, for one year and then with F. W. Casterline. On the 11th of January, 1909, he formed a partnership with Oscar Wills and they have since engaged in the same line of business under the firm name of McCormick & Wills. They carry a large and complete line of furniture and have built up an excellent trade in the undertaking business.

On the 12th of October, 1904, Mr. McCormick was united in marriage to Miss Lucy Dysart, a native of Granville, Illinois, and a daughter of C. W. Dysart. Unto Mr. and Mrs. McCormick were born two children, Martha J. and Elizabeth Margaret, but the latter died at the age of ten months.

The republican party finds in Mr. McCormick a stanch supporter of its principles and on that ticket he was elected in 1908 to the office of coroner of Cedar county, entering upon its duties January 1, 1909. He holds membership in the Presbyterian church and fraternally is identified with several different orders, including the Knight of Pythias, Rathbone Sisters, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Masons, and the Order of the Eastern Star. He is quite prominent in business, social and military circles and is today regarded as one of the leading citizens of Tipton.