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EMSLEY H. FRENTRESS, eldest son of Frederick N.
Frentress, a sketch of whom appears elsewhere in this
volume, was born in Jo Daviess county, Ill., August 14,
1868. His father moving to Delaware county, Iowa, two
years later, young Frentress' childhood and youth were
spent in that county. He grew up on the old homestead in
Honey Creek township, where his parents still reside, and
received the usual educational advantages accorded to the
youth of that locality. He quit the farm in his twentieth
year and, entering the employ of the Greeley Co-Operative
Creamery Company, was with them for something like a year,
at the end of which time he began buying and shipping
poultry to New York city, Boston and other places in the
East. He followed this successfully until recently, when
he returned to his native county, Jo Daviess, in Illinois,
where he took charge of his father's farm in that county,
which he is now conducting. Mr. Frentress is an
intelligent young man, industrious, well read and
possessing sound ideas on many questions beyond those with
which he is daily concerned in the pursuit of his calling
as a farmer. For a man of his age he possesses an
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exceptionally comprehensive
knowledge of the political matters of the day and he is free and
outspoken in his opinions on all public questions. He is an
uncompromising republican in his political faith, and defends
his principles with spirit and understanding when occasion
demands. As a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows he
enjoys the esteem and confidence of the entire craft wherever
known.
Frederick N. Frentress was born in Jo Daviess county, Ill.,
March 29, 1835, and was reared a farmer. He worked on the home
farm until twenty-three years of age, in the meantime receiving
a good common school education that qualified him for all the
practical business affairs of life. In 1858 Mr. Frentress went
to California by way of the isthmus, and continuously until 1863
was engaged in mining, when he enlisted in Company H, First
California cavalry, and for three years served in Arizona, New
Mexico and Texas, as well as at other points, under General
Canby. His experiences in Indian skirmishes were innumerable,
but the first real battle in which he took part was that of
Valverde and the second at Apache Canyon, where he received a
slight wound. He was mustered out at Fort Selden, N. Mex.,
received his pay papers at Fort Bliss, and drew his pay at Fort
Leavenworth. This is not the place to laud the memory or extol
the virtues of the preservers of the Union. An honest and
patriotic people will ever hold the splendid services of the old
soldiers in grateful remembrance, wherever and in whatsoever
capacity those services were performed. But we may say in this
connection that the hardest service was not necessarily seen by
the soldiers in the East. Those men who enlisted on the Western
frontier and who from the time of their enlistment until the
close of the war were in almost daily conflict with bands of
hostile Indians, and who subsisted much as they could upon the
further confines of civilization, rendered a service to their
country, which entitles them to the highest encomiums of honor
and which will embalm their memories forever with that of the
general soldiery of the land. When we speak and write of
freedom, prosperity, equal rights, the dignity of labor, the
glory of the Republic, we should remember these volunteer
soldiers of the West who dropped the pick in the mines and
marched as cheerily to wounds and to death as did the brave sons
of the North, who left the peace of their homes and the pursuit
of their several callings for the same purpose. On his return to
Jo Daviess county, Ill., January 6, 1867, he resumed farming on
the old homestead. November 13, 1867, he married Miss Frances
V. Frentress, who was born March 9, 1848, and who is a daughter
of Albert and Angeline Hall, of New York State, who had settled
in Illinois about the year of 1845. In 1870, Mr. Frentress, with
his bride, moved to Dubuque, Iowa, and a year later came to
Delaware county. Here Mr. Frentress settled on a tract of one
hundred and sixty acres, which had been willed to him by his
father. But it was raw land, and all the labor required to
bring it to its present state of excellent improvement has been
the work of his own hands, he now having one hundred and twenty
acres under cultivation, the balance being in timber. Mr.
Frentress also gives some attention to dairying, milking about
fifteen cows. His inheritance in Jo Daviess county, Ill., he
rents out.
Reverting to the family of Mrs. Frentress, it may be
stated that her parents, who were of Scotch descent, removed
from Illinois to Wisconsin, where her father engaged in mining
until 1852, when he started on his way to California, via
Panama, but died at sea. Her mother, a native of Oneida county,
N. Y., still survives, and is a resident of East Dubuque, Ill,
having married, about 1856, for her second husband, Moses
Gillman. Her age has attained sixty-nine years, with a promise
of a more prolonged life. Beside her daughter, Mrs. Frentress,
Mrs. Hall has living two sons: Charles V., at Coggon, Iowa, and
Henry A., at Marshalltown.
To the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Frentress have been born
ten children, in the following order: Emsley H., August 14,
1868; Nellie E., June 24, 1870; Albert E., October 22, 1871;
Diadema A., March 26, 1874; Sabra D., April 2, 1876; William T.,
September 5, 1879; Frances H., November 8, 1880; Augusta B.,
February 19, 1884, Llewellyn C., May 11, 1886, and Mary O.,
August 29, 1888.
Mr. Frentress has never held a public office. He is a
republican; he is received and accepted by all brothers and
fellows as a Mason, and is also a member of A. C. Hopson Post,
G. A. R. In his younger days, Mr. Frentress, possessed of the
spirit of the times, did considerable roving, making, in
addition to his trip to the Pacific coast, two visits to the
Sandwich Islands, during which he was also in China, and on his
return to California he went down the Pacific coast to
Valparaiso and Talquahuana, and to within three hundred miles of
Cape Horn. He mined all over what are now the western states and
territories when they were practically part of the unknown
world, and he had many experiences and adventures which sound
strange to the ears of the plodding men and women of this day,
whose longest trips from home scarcely ever reach beyond a State
fair, and whose travels are by the easy and expeditious methods
of the age of steam and electricity. |
