Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1915
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 644
HON. PHINEAS CADWELL

So long as there remains a pioneer, or the son or grandson of a pioneer, in Harrison county, the above name will be recalled in recounting the men of influence and integrity in this part of the state. As a citizen and as a leading light in the Reorganized Church of the Latter-Day Saints, Phineas CADWELL will be remembered as long as the longest. The CADWELL family is still numerous in this section. It had its origin in Scotland, and was largely represented in the American Revolution.

Phineas CADWELL was born in 1824 in New York state, and in 1842 became a resident of the then wild section near Racine, Wisconsin. In 1854 he came to Harrison county, Iowa, and settled in section 36, Magnolia township, and at one time owned an even thousand acres of Harrison county land, but parted with most of it before it had come to be of great value, as compared with today's prices. All in all, he had possessed seventeen hundred acres in his own name, but as the years sped by he parted with many of his broad prairie tracts, giving each of his children good pieces. In 1874 Mr. CADWELL, in association with his brother-in-law, started banks at Logan and Woodbine. Neither of these proved a financial success, and his last years were not as successful as his earlier years had been.

Politically, Mr. CADWELL was a supporter of the Republican party and in 1871 was elected to a seat in the Iowa Legislature. In 1861 he was elected a director of the state agricultural society, and was a member of the society for twenty odd years. He also was president of the Harrison county agricultural society for about twenty years. In his religious faith Mr. CADWELL held to that of the Reorganized Church of the Latter-Day Saints (sometimes styled Mormons), and was firm in all the teachings of this sect, save in the matter of polygamy, which latter tenet the members of the reorganized body earnestly denounce as wicked and sinful in the extreme. Mrs. CADWELL died in Logan, Iowa, September 1, 1891, and Mr. CADWELL passed from earthly scenes February 26, 1904, at the age of seventy-nine years.

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