Viewed in the light of what he has accomplished, Theodore Hart well well deserves a place on the honor roll of successful and self made men. He began life a poor boy in humble circumstances, and by dint of his native abilities, energy, perseverance and thrift, has achieved a success of which he may justly be proud, and attained to a position commanding the respect of all who know him. He is a native of Jeffersonville, Indiana, and was born April 23, 1835, to Ephraim and Sarah Hartwell. He traces his paternal lineage to one William Hart well, who immigrated from England in the year 1636. His great-grandfather, also named William , was a soldier in the Revolutionary War. His father, who was a successful farmer in Indiana and a man of considerable local prominence, died when Theodore was a mere infant, and soon afterward, in 1836, his mother, whose death occurred on June 19, 1892, moved to Buffalo Township, in Scott County, Iowa, where she lived some four years, supporting herself and family by hard work. In 1840 she was married to Mr. Peter Wilson, a Scotchman by birth, and with him settled on a farm in Blue Grass Township. Theodore made good use of the meager educational advantages then afforded in the new County, first attending school in an old log school. house near the Mississippi river in Buffalo Township. Later he attended the district schools in Blue Grass Township whenever opportunity offered during the intervals when his help was not required on his step father's farm, and in this way and by reading such books as he could procure, he acquired a fair English education. At the age of nineteen he went to Marshall County, Iowa, and there entered eighty acres of Government land, seventeen miles northwest from Newton Center, intending to improve it. He, however, changed his plans and soon returned home and went to work on his step-father's farm. By thrift and economy he soon began to accumulate property and before many years owned one hundred and twenty acres, bought with his own earnings. To this he has added eighty acres left him by his step-father, twenty-four acres which he purchased and forty acres left to him by his mother, making two hundred and sixty-four acres in all. Besides this he owns seventeen acres of island property, and a timber tract of thirty acres located in Muscatine County, Iowa. During all his life Mr. Hartwell has taken commendable interest in public affairs and has been honored by his fellow-citizens with numerous positions of con fidence and trust. He has been school director some thirteen years, and has been Township trustee several years. In political matters he has always affiliated with and supported the Republican party, but has strong prohibition proclivities, and was nominated on the Prohibition ticket for the State Legislature a few years ago. He, however, declined the nomination, having no ambition for office and finding in his more legitimate sphere ample scope for the exercise of his abilities.
Mr. Hartwell is a man of genial, social temperament, strongly attached to his friends, and in all his relations bears himself as a whole souled, large-hearted and conscientious man. He is progressive in his views, and in whatever he engages works with determination and a will. He has a strong, well-developed physique and, with his frank, open countenance and cordial greeting and manly character, commands universal respect. In dealing with his fellow -men his single motto is that expressed in the Golden Rule.
On November 21, 1856, he married Miss Verronique Pilloud, a daughter of Mr. Laurent Pilloud, a well-known farmer of Blue Grass Township. Of three children born to them, viz, Peter, Laurent and Elmer, the last-named alone survives and now has the management of his father's farm.
BIOGRAPHIES