Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1891
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 751
JAMES H. MATHER

James H. MATHER, who has been identified with the history of Harrison County since December, 1881, settled on his present place on section 34, of Cass Township, where he owns one hundred and sixty acres of land, which he purchased a year previous to moving here. It was wild land, but now has been subdued, and one hundred and forty acres of the tract are now under a high state of cultivation, while the remainder provides its owner with a valuable pasture and meadow.

M Mr. MATHER was born January 5, 1858, at Salt Lake City, Utah, and is the son of James and Margaret (HOLT) MATHER, who now live in Redlands, San Bernardino County, Cal. The father was born in Scotland, August 29, 1826, and came to America about 1853, and immediately went to Utah, where he was married. He reared a family of six children, of wham our subject is the oldest. His mother was of the number, with her parents, who made the trip across the plains, with the hand-cart caravan of the Mormons who went to Salt Lake and endured the hardships co-incident with that journey and wearisome march, the equal of which has never before been recorded in history. The father of our subject went across with an ox-team train, in 1853, made up by another company of Mormons.

Our subject attended school at Galesburg, Ill., where he received a good business education, leaving school at the age of fourteen years. His parents left Salt Lake, Utah, in 1863 and moved to California from Illinois in 1891.

When eighteen years of age James H. came to Shelby County, Iowa, on account of his health, and to see relatives living there, and with whom he made his home until he was married, December 8, 1881, to Elizabeth A. HALLIDAY, who was born in Nebraska, and the daughter of Henry and Alice (GARRETT) HALLIDAY; she was the oldest of a family of five children by her father's second wife.

When our subject came to Shelby County, he taught school for four years, two terms of which were in Harrison County, before he was married, and in this way he laid the foundation for his present comfortable home, which presents an appearance of systematic order. The place contains a fine orchard of one hundred bearing trees, while cattle, swine and horses constitute the chief elements of this man's farm. When our subject seemed prospering, and all bid fair for many years of home happiness, the angel of death stole down and called his beloved companion from the home circle---she died May 3, 1891.

Politically Mr. MATHER votes with the Republican party and has served his township as Justice of the Peace, Trustee and Township Clerk and in 1890 was Republican nominee for Clerk of Court for Harrison County, being defeated by W. T. HOWARD.

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