First National Bank of Nevada, Iowa, but he also devotes much attention to dealing in grain and lumber. He ranks among the leading citizens of this county, is in every respect a self-made man, and is a shrewd, honest and successful man of business. His birth occurred in Sterling, Whiteside County, Ill., March 27, 1842, his parents, Ira and Melissa (Brooks) Silliman, being born in Vermont and Ohio, in 1813 and 1817, respectively ; they died at Como, Ill., in 1872, the latter's death occurring two months prior to that of her husband. Elijah Silliman, the paternal grandfather, was born in the " Green Mountain State," and died in Pennsylvania. Rothmer J. Silliman is the second of six children, two now living, and his education and rearing were received at Como, whither his parents had moved in 1846. In 1860 he began life for himself as a book. keeper for Simeon Sampson, a grain dealer at Sterling, Ill., but two years later gave up this calling to engage in farming in Whiteside County, an occupation which he continued to follow for ten years. In 1873 he removed to Wisner, Cumings County, Neb., and a spending three and a half years there engaged in the grain and lumber business, he, on April 18, 1877, came to Nevada, Iowa, and purchased the business interests of George A. Kellogg, a well-known lumber merchant of this section. In 1878 he purchased the Amouth Elevator, which was built in 1876, one of the first and largest in the county, and in 1889 Mr. Silliman shipped 147,000 bushels of corn and oats from Nevada. In January, 1882, he was elected president of the First National Bank of Nevada, and since May, 1888, he has been interested in the banking business at Cambridge, this county being associated in this enterprise with his son, Homer N. Silliman. His vote has always been cast in the interests of the Republican party, and for eight years he has been a member of the Nevada school board, of which he is now the president. Mr. Silliman has always attended strictly to the details in every enterprise in which he has been engaged, and as a result is one of the leading business men in the county. He and his wife belong to the Methodist Episcopal Church, in which he is now serving his third term as superintendent of the Sunday-school, and socially he is a member of the I. O. O. F. His marriage, which occurred on November 9, 1864, was to Miss Lucy Newman, who was born at Elkhorn Grove, Carroll County, Ill., October 16, 1842, and to their union the following family of children have been born: Homer N., Edwin R., Mahala, Emma, Alice and Ira A.
William Smay, proprietor of the Pleasant Hill Creamery and store at Smaysville, was born in Marion County, Ind., in 1842, being the second child of Absalom and Mary A. (Sours) Smay. The boyhood of William Smay was passed on his father's farm in Indiana, but at the age of thirteen years he accompanied his parents to Iowa, and this State has since continued to be his home. He remained at home with his father, assisting him in his farm labors, until he had attained his twenty-first year, and then commenced life on his own responsibility by engaging in agricultural pursuits. He purchased the farm on which he now lives, comprising 160 acres, in 1869 (at that time there was but one school-house in the township, and only thirteen families), and immediately commenced tilling it, and followed farming and sorghum-making for about fourteen years, turning out about 4,000 gallons of No. 1 molasses yearly. In 1879 he started a creamery (the second in this county), beginning on a very small scale, and made about 300 pounds per day in summer, and half that much in winter. Gradually increasing in his business as his patrons gained confidence in