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p. 57
CHARLES W. CHAPMAN is a native Iowan, son of one of
the pioneers of Dubuque, and the greater part of his business
career has been spent in Waterloo, in the lumber business.
He was born June 14, 1862, at Dubuque. His grandfather,
William H. Chapman, was born in the City of Enniskillen,
located partly on the river that connects the upper and lower
Erne in County Fermanagh, Ireland. He was of Scotch ancestry.
on coming to the United States he located in Pittsburgh, and
was in the tobacco trade there the rest of his active life. He
married Mary Dunlap, who was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania,
of Scotch-Irish ancestry. She died at Pittsburgh. They reared
a family of sons named Thomas, John James, William S., Joseph,
Robert and Charles. Charles entered the Union army in the
Civil war as captain of Company K, Sixty-third Pennsylvania
Infantry, and was killed in a skirmish near Alexandria,
Virginia.
The father of Charles W. Chapman was born at Pittsburgh,
June 14, 1831, grew up and there received his early education
and in 1856 came to Iowa, locating at Dubuque and clerked in
the old Julien hotel there until 1859. Dubuque was then one of
the front doors of Iowa, most of the country to the west being
sparsely settled and the greater part still owned by the
Government and for sale at $1.25 an acre. Dubuque was a depot
for great quantities of supplies that were sent into the back
country by wagon. In 1859 Mr. Chapman became ticket agent for
the Illinois Central Railroad, recently completed to Dubuque.
He served in that capacity until 1876, when he resigned to
become division freight agent of the Milwaukee & St. Paul
Railroad at Dubuque. Later he went to Fairport, Ohio, as
manager of the Fairport Warehouse & Elevator Company of the
Baltimore & Ohio Company and lived there until his death in
1912. He married Catherine Cassidy, who was born in Baltimore,
daughter of James and Edith (Porter) Cassidy, natives of the
North of Ireland and of Scotch ancestry. Her parents on coming
to the United States lived for a time in Baltimore, then in
Pittsburgh, where her father held the office of clerk of court
for many years, and both died there, her mother when upwards
of ninety years of age. Catherine Cassidy was one of four
children. The others were Edward T., Edith Anne, and William
H. Catherine Cassidy Chapman died in Ohio at the age of
sixty-seven. Her children were Edith P., Charles W., Henry
James, May D., Joseph, Edward T., and Oliver.
Charles W. Chapman attended public school in Dubuque, and
after graduating from high school worked in a lumber office
and in that way learned the details of the business which he
has followed ever since.
His home has been at Waterloo since 1901. He started in
the lumber business there on a small scale and has kept his
enterprise growing and increasing to meet the demands of one
of the larger and more progressive cities of Iowa. Mr. Chapman
is a member of the Masonic fraternity, and his father was also
a Mason and at one time grand master of the Grand Lodge of
Iowa. Mr. Chapman and family are members of Grace Methodist
Episcopal Church.
He married, in 1889, Neva Powers, who was born at Cedar
Falls, Iowa, daughter of Joseph P. and Jennie (Hammill)
Powell. They have had four children, James H, Joseph P.,
Marion and Charles W. James H., in the lumber business at
Waterloo, married Gwynette Sampson, of Waterloo, and they have
three children, Charles, Margaret and Jean. The second son,
Joseph P., married Lela Stone and has two children, Joseph and
Lucy. Marion is the wife of Jackson McCoy, and their three
children are Robert, Louise and Jane.
Charles attended Amherst College three years and went to
France in May, 1917, immediately after America joined in the
war, served with the French army in the LaFayette Escadrille
until December, 1917, and was then transferred to the United
States army, being attached to the Ninety-fourth Squadron, and
lost his life in battle May 3, 1918. He is buried in the La
Fayette Memorial at St. Cloud Park, Paris. He was only
twenty-three years old when he fell in battle.
p. 241
REV. JEREMIAH F. COSTELLO
as a Catholic priest has done all his work in Iowa, where he
is pleasantly remembered in several communities. He is now
pastor of Saint Patrick's Church in Council Bluffs.
Father Costello was born in County Kerry, Ireland, October
21, 1883, seventh among the ten children of Thomas and Mary
(O'Connor) Costello. Both parents were born in Ireland and his
mother is still living in that country. His father, and Irish
farmer and contractor, in prosperous circumstances, died in
1914, the day the great World War started. Of the children six
came to the United States; Rev. William M., president of Root
College of Jacksonville, Illinois; John J., a fire marshal at
Chicago; Mrs. Bradley, wife of a clothing merchant at Hickman,
Kentucky; Marie, wife of Daniel Martin, a hotel man at
Carlinville, Illinois; Jeremiah F.; and Michael, a priest at
Granite City, Illinois.
Jeremiah F. Costello was educated in Saint Michael's
College at Listowel, Ireland, and finished his preparation for
the priesthood in the All Hallows Seminary. He was ordained in
1910 and a first assignment of duty came from Bishop Davis of
Davenport, who appointed him assistant at Saint Francis Church
at Council Bluffs, where he remained until 1914. He was then
appointed the first pastor of Mondamin in Harrison County,
Iowa, remained there three and a half years, and from March 1,
1918, to October, 1927, was priest at Audubon, where his
pastorate was marked by the building of a church and parochial
residence. In 1927 he became pastor of Saint Patrick's Church
at Council Bluffs, and has become a leader of a fine
congregation, made up of 150 families. The parish has as
substantial church, priest's residence, and is a growing
religious community. Father Costello during the World war was
a four-minute speaker. He is a fourth degree Knight of
Columbus.
p. 70
HARRY F. CARLON is manager of the Carlon
Construction Company, a business that was established by his
father, the late George H. Carlon, at Oskaloosa nearly half a
century ago. This is one of the largest firms of its kind in
the Middle West, and was a pioneer in the use of cement in the
building industry.
The Carlon family came to America from the North of
Ireland. There were four brothers of the name who crossed the
Atlantic to America in Colonial times. One of these brothers
was a soldier in the Revolutionary war. The ancestor of the
Oskaloosa family was Robert Carlon. Little is known of his
brothers and their descendants. Robert Carlon settled in
Pennsylvania. His son, B.F. Carlon, was born in that state and
married Zenebia White, a native of Pennsylvania and of Scotch
ancestry. She died when her son, George H. Carlon, was four
years of age, and B.F. Carlon subsequently moved with his
family to Monmouth in Western Illinois, where he married
Elizabeth Stubbs. B.F. Carlon was a mechanic and builder, and
that has been a traditional occupation of members of the
family for three generations or more. B.F. Carlon died in
1902, at the age of seventy years.
George H. Carlon was born in Mercer County, Pennsylvania,
July 20, 1850, and was reared in Monmouth, Illinois, where he
attended public schools. He learned the trades of machinist
and engineer, and did some building work at Monmouth and later
at Bloomington, Nebraska. It was in 1881 that he established
his home at Oskaloosa and entered upon the business of a
building contractor. In 1884 he began the manufacture of
paving and building cement, at a time when comparatively
little use was made of the material, which his now so
universally a factor on all kinds of building construction. It
was the enterprise of George H. Carlon, started in Oskaloosa
in 1881, that proved the foundation of the present Carlon
Construction Company, which for many years has been more than
a local organization, its activities extending well over the
West.
The first work in his line of business which George H.
Carlon did at Oskaloosa was assisting in the construction of
the present county courthouse. He remained a figure in the
commercial and civic life of Oskaloosa for nearly half a
century, always willing to exert himself in behalf of some
movement for the general welfare of his home city. For a
period of fifteen years he was a member of the Oskaloosa
school board and he gave freely of his time and money to
social, civic, educational and church matters. He was from
1887 an active member of the Oskaloosa Methodist Episcopal
Church and served on the building committee when the new
Central Church was erected. He was a member of the Masonic
bodies, including the Lodge, Knights Templar Commandery,
Shrine and Eastern Star, and the Knights of Pythias.
George H. Carlon died April 8, 1927, at the age of
seventy-seven years. He married, March 17, 1874, Miss Arrah
Margaret Sweger, daughter of Samuel Sweger. Her father was a
contractor and builder at Kirkwood, Illinois, and sided
January 30, 1906, at the age of eighty-two years. George H.
Carlon and wife had a family of six children; Charles H., who
is married and lives at Saint Louis, where he is a manager of
the branch office of the Carlon Construction Company; Harry
F.; Minnie, who died at the age of thirteen; Trixie, who died
when four years old; Bessie F., the wife of Arthur E. Smith,
of a pioneer family of Oskaloosa, and they reside in Canada;
and Nina R.; wife of Blair Haun, a druggist of Des Moines.
Harry F. Carlon was born at Oskaloosa January 2, 1880,
and since early manhood has been regarded as one of the most
progressive business men of his native city, exemplifying his
father's worthy characteristics in his generous support of
civic, educational and religious movements. He attended public
schools at Oskaloosa, graduate from high school in 1897, and
has given thirty years to the business founded by his father.
When he entered the firm the name was changed from George H.
Carlon & Son to the Carlon Construction Company. He is now
manager of the home office at Oskaloosa, and gives a general
supervision to the work of the firm in many cities and other
localities throughout the Middle West.
Mr. Carlon is a veteran of the Spanish-American war. He
enlisted in Company F of the Fifty-first Regiment of Iowa
Infantry, which was mustered into the Federal service as the
Fifty-first Iowa Volunteers. In October, 1898, he accompanied
his regiment to the Philippines, and returned home in
November, 1899. He spent ten months in the Philippines, and
altogether was with the colors for twenty-two months.
Mr. Carlon at the present time is president of the
Oskaloosa school board. He is a member of the Chamber of
Commerce, the Rotary Club, is affiliated with Tri-Luminar
Lodge No. 18, A. F. and A. M., and other Masonic bodies,
including the Shrine, and is a member of the Knights of
Pythias. He is a member of the Iowa State Historical Society
and is a trustee of the First Congregational Church, of which
his family are members. He is also serving on the Board of
Trustees of the Y. M. C. A. Mrs. Carlon shares with him his
interest in church and educational affairs.
Mr. Carlon married Lulu May Evans, daughter of Benjamin
and Delilah (Cox) Evans. Her people were early settlers of
Oskaloosa, where her father was a coal operator. Mr. and Mrs.
Carlon have two sons, George Benjamin, born in 1910, a
graduate of the Oskaloosa High School, now attending Grinnell
College; and Robert Franklin, born in 1912, attending high
school. |
