Joseph Marine

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The subject of this sketch is one of those quiet, unpretentious men whose name are not seen in the papers nor on the ballots of political parties, who pursue “the even tenor of their way,” and whose industry, in the mass, is the prime factor in making the wheels go round. Mr. Marine owns a good sized piece of land in the matchless farming state of Iowa, and this he has worked industriously for many years and still works in person, though now in the seventy-first year of his age.

Though unobtrusive in manners and inclined to attend strictly to his own business, while letting that of others alone, Joseph Marine is recognized by his intimate friends as a man of sterling worth and blameless life. The family came originally from New Jersey in the persons of Moses and Ellen (Monroe) Marine, who settled first in Ohio and came west to Iowa in 1854. The father was a farmer and followed that occupation for a livelihood until his death in 1870, two years after his wife had departed from the scenes of earth. They had the unusually large number of fifteen children, of whom only Moses, Joseph, Alexander, Sarah and Maria are now alive, those dead being Robert, Samuel, John, Nichols, William, Washington, Ilof, Mary, Margaret and Louise.

Joseph Marine, who was the seventh of this numerous family, was born August 25, 1832, in Belmont county, Ohio, and spent his boyhood at home. In 1850, when about eighteen years old, he caught the western fever and crossed the Mississippi into the great state of Iowa, but in two years felt such a longing for a sight of the old Buckeye home that he could not resist the pressure to return to Ohio. However, he did not long remain in his native state, but, again turning his face northwest, came back to Iowa, and from that time until now has been one of its most steadfast citizens.

In 1855 Mr. Marine was married to Lucy, daughter of William and Mary Foster, to which union an only son, Alexander Lincoln, was born. Mr. Marine owns a farm of two hundred and forty-nine acres, which he work himself, despite his more than three-score and ten years of age. He and his wife are both devoted Christians and regular attendants of the Methodist Episcopal church, of which they have long been members.