Transcribed from
The United States Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and Self-Made Men.
Iowa Volume
Chicago and New York:
American Biographical Publishing Company
1878
One of the early settlers and best business men of Wayne
county, Iowa, is Hartley Bracewell, banker, of Corydon.
He made the first entry of land in Warren township, in the
southwestern part of the county, eleven miles from the county
seat, when there was not a house between his lands and
Corydon. There were then but few voters in the county,
and he has lived to watch its settlement and growth for
twenty-four years, he himself having been one of the leaders
in improving the county.
Mr. Bracewell is a native of
Yorkshire, England; was a son of John and Mary Starkie
Bracewell, and dates his birth on the 3d of March, 1822.
The Bracewells were originally from Scotland; moved to West
Riding, Yorkshire, two or three centuries ago, and became a
numerous family, the town of Bracewell being named for them.
The youth of Hartley was spent on his
father's farm. His opportunities for study were limited,
yet he succeeded in obtaining a fair business education by
attending a night school; and on coming to this country in
1849 he taught a district school six months in Green county,
Illinois. He then worked on a farm one season in the
same county, and thus procured the funds for purchasing forty
acres of land, to which he added a little later forty acres
more; farmed in Illinois four years, and in June, 1854, came
to Wayne county, entering lands and locating as before
indicated. The land office was then at Chariton, Lucas
county, and when he asked the proper officer to open his map
of Wayne County, Warren township showed a clean white page,
not an entry having been made. Mr. Bracewell, who had
previously entered eighty acres of woodland in Jefferson
township, now entered one hundred and sixty acres of prairie,
improved it, and remained on it till 1869, when he moved into
Corydon. Here he was a merchant for four years, a miller
three, and for the last two has been cashier of the Wayne
County Bank, in which he is a stockholder. He owns other
property in Corydon, and three well improved farms in the
county; has been an eminently successful business man, and has
a splendid reputation.
Mr. Bracewell was elected to the
general assembly in 1859, and reelected in 1861, serving in
the regular sessions of 1860 and 1862, and the extra sessions
of 1861 and 1862. He held various township offices
before becoming a member of the legislature, and has also been
president of the school board of Corydon, being an active and
very useful citizen. He has been a life-long democrat.
A member of the Methodist Episcopal
church since early manhood, and a local preacher more than
thirty years, his life has always been above reproach.
He is kind-hearted and obliging, and a good friend to the
suffering and needy.
In July, 1844, Miss Margaret
Broughton, of Yorkshire, England, became the wife of Mr.
Bracewell; they have one son, Broughton Bracewell, a farmer in
Wayne county. Mrs. Bracewell has been a ture helpmeet of
her husband, and is a worthy christian mother.
Francis M. Everett, the
leading surgeon in Wayne county, Iowa, and a gentleman of
thorough professional polish, is a native of Mason county,
Virginia, where he was born, on the 14th of October,
1840. His father, Warren D. Everett, a native of New
York state, was a physician, who removed to Iowa in 1848, and
died at Corydon on the 7th of October, 1864. The maiden
name of Francis' mother was Partha J. Morris. This
branch of the Everett family are remotely related to Alexander
H. and Edward Everett. In the infancy of the subject of
this sketch the family moved to Monitor county, Missouri, and
five or six years later to Knoxville, Marion county, Iowa.
Francis received an academic
education in the preparatory department of the Iowa Central
University at Pella; commenced reading medicine with his
father at Peoria, Wayne county, in 1860; attended lectures at
Keokuk, and graduated in 1863, practicing in Corydon since
that date. During this period he attended two more
courses of lectures at Keokuk, and during the latter course,
held four years ago, he was assistant demonstrator of
anatomy. It is almost needless to say that the
opportunities thus enjoyed at Keokuk have been of incalculable
benefit to him, and given him a high and wide reputation,
especially in surgery, which he makes a specialty. His
rides extend all over Wayne county, and into the adjoining
counties of Decatur, Lucas and Appanoose, in this state, and
into Putnam county, Missouri, the line of which state is
twelve miles from Corydon. His acquaintance is very
extensive, and he is much respected both as a professional man
and private citizen.
Dr Everett has been on the local
school board at different times - the only civil office which
he would accept, he giving his time exclusively to the study
and practice of medicine and surgery. The secret of his
success lies in his untiring industry. He is as diligent
in his studies as was Dr. Richard Rush.
Politically, the doctor is a
democrat; religiously, a Baptist. He is a deacon on the
Corydon church, and the purity of his life has never been
questioned. He venerates the christian as well as the
medical profession.
He is a Master Mason, but devotes
very little time to the order.
On the 21st of October, 1861, Miss Fidelia
C. Barlow, of Wayne county, Iowa, was joined in wedlock with
Dr. Everett, and they have had five children, four of them yet
living, and all are being educated in the Corydon graded
school.
Dr. Everett has quite a taste for
agriculture and horticulture, and has a plesant homestead of
one hundred and fifty acres adjoining the town on the south,
with a fine orchard. He has a competency, and while
comfortable himself likes to make other people so.
Robert F.
Parsons, M. D., Allerton
Robert Fernale Parsons,
twenty-four years a medical practitioner in Iowa, is a native
of the Granite State, being born in Effingham, Strafford
county, on the 13th of April, 1821. His parents were
Charles Moody and Martha Fernale Parsons, both of English
descent. The Parsons family were early settlers in
Maine. The maternal grandfather of Robert was in the
continental army, and his paternal grandfather was a sailor,
and comanded a privateer in the second struggle with the
mother country.
Charles M. Parsons immigrated from
New Hampshire to Maine about 1828, and was a cabinet-maker at
Waterville; went from there to Richmond, in the same state;
followed the sea four years, and then removed to Bangor, the
son, during this period, attending district schools.
In 1836 the family came as far west
as Painesville, Ohio, where the subject of this notice
attended an academy for about two years. In 1841 Robert
moved to Coshocton county, and the next year commenced the
study of medicine with Dr. E. Mast, of Rochester, in that
county, subsequently attending lectures in the medical
department of Western Reserve College in Cleveland; commenced
paractice in 1848 at Rochester, Coshocton county; followed the
profession there and in Independence, Richland county, until
1854, when he removed to Iowa and located at Brighton,
Washington county. There he was in practice for
twenty-two years. Washington county was sparsely settled
at the time Dr. Parsons located there, and his rides extended
over a radius of fifteen or twenty miles. During this
long period at Brighton his labors were very trying to his
physical system, and in 1876, with health partially impaired,
he removed to Allerton and started the drug business,
intending to go out of the country practice. This he has
done, but has a fair practice, all that he could desire, in
the city of Allerton. He has a pleasant homestead of six
acres, selected two years ago, on the western line of the
city, and is preparing to raise all kinds of small
fruits. He is making it an Eden of beauty.
Dr. Parsons was originally a whig;
gave enthusiastic support to Mr. Lincoln, both by vote and
voice, during the civil war, but latterly has affiliated with
the democratic party.
He is very liberal in his religious
views. He is a member of the blue lodge in the Masonic
fraternity.
In March, 1849, he was united in
marriage with Miss Lucinda Draper, of Rochester, Ohio, and
they have had eight children, only five of them living.
All are single except Alice, the eldest daughter, who is the
wife of O. H. Wood, of Albia, Iowa. Albert E., the
eldest son, is a graduate of the literary and law department
of the Iowa State University, and an attorney in
Allerton. The other three, Ellen T., Fred and Ernest are
being educated at home.
Hon. Lloyd
Selby, Corydon
One of the most successful
business men and prominent citizens of Wayne county, Iowa, is
Lloyd Selby, a merchant in Corydon since 1856. He was
born in Licking county, Ohio, on the 26th of November, 1833,
and comes from an old Maryland family. His father, John
Selby, a mechanic in his younger years, is living with his son
in Corydon, and is now in his eightieth year. The mother
of Lloyd was Clarinda Herrick, whose father died in
Janesville, Wisconsin, a few years ago, aged ninity-three
years.
Lloyd had a very ordinary
common-school education. At fourteen he was employed in
a store at Johnstown, and he was made the commercial business
his life-work. When of age he left Licking county, came
to Corydon, Iowa, and has here been in trade twenty-two
years. He has carried on farming and stock-raising by
proxy while merchandising, and is no doubt the best business
man in this vicinity. He has three well improved farms
in Wayne county, others in the states of Missouri and Kansas,
and is a heavy stockholder in the Wayne County Bank, located
at Corydon, which is the county seat. He has been its
president since its organization in 1875. He has one of
the best homesteads in the county, one-fourth of a mile east
of the city limits, and is a hospitable, christian gentleman.
Mr. Selby was elected state senator
in 1873, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Hon
M. Read, and served in the fifteenth general assembly, doing
good work on four or five committees. He has been quite
active at times in the Corydon school board, and has held
other local offices, being a practical, energetic and
serviceable citizen, ready for any work that will advance the
interests of the town or county.
He is a Royal Arch Mason; a member of
the Methodist Episcopal church, and a man or pure and noble
qualities of character.
In January, 1862, he was joined in
wedlock with Mrs. M. L. Miller, daughter of James May of
Pennsylvania, and they have two children.