with that order for nearly fifty years. He has now passed his seventy-fifth milestone on life's journey.
Mr. Thompson has retired from active practice of the. law. However, he maintained an office as an advisory attorney. His has been a most useful, active and honorable life, the community in which he has lived profiting greatly by his labors, his beneficent purpose and his public spirit. He has ever been fearless in defense of his honest convictions and his has been an unblemished character, and throughout Story county no man is held in higher esteem than Frank D. Thompson, after half a century's residence within its borders.
JAMES M. Hall.
The success that has been attained by James M. Hall, a general merchant of Collins, is proof of his ability in a line in which he has met with close competition and which has called for rare discrimination and wise management. His store is pronounced by competent judges one of the most complete of the kind, outside of the larger cities, in this part of the state.
He was born in Wayne county, Indiana, August 15, 1852, a son of Henry and Dinah (McClay) Flail, both of whom were natives of Pennsylvania. Henry Hall was left an orphan in his boyhood and was reared in the family of Newton Claypool, moving to Indiana with his benefactors. He learned the tanner's trade and, having decided to seek his fortune in the west, came to Iowa in 1854 and settled near Mitchellville, where he worked upon a farm. He was a man of good habits and of energetic purpose, and he soon acquired sufficient capital to purchase a place, upon which he lived until his death, which occurred in the eighty-eighth year of his age. He was a stanch advocate of the republican party and became a prominent factor in the politics of Polk county, holding various township offices and also filling the office of county supervisor.
James M. Hall came with his parents to Iowa in his infancy and was educated in the public schools of this state. He began his business career in a grocery store which his father owned in Peoria, continuing in that establishment until he reached his twenty-second year, when the business was sold to Lee Donnell. After four years' service under Mr. Donnell, Mr. Hall turned his attention to farming and four years later, having decided that nature had not designed him as an agriculturist, he entered the employ of the mercantile firm of Baldwin & Maxwell, at Iowa Center. He made such a good impression upon the firm that at the end of six months he was sent to a branch store at Clyde, Iowa, where he remained for four years, being a portion of the time in charge of the business. He was next called to the Maxwell store and there continued until 1888, when he resigned and came