HARRY A. NORTHUP.
To write the personal records of men who have raised themselves from humble circumstances to positions of responsibility and trust in a community is no ordinary pleasure. Self-made men, men who have achieved success by reason of their personal qualities and who have left the impressions of their individualities upon the business and political life of their community; men who affect for good such institutions as are embraced in their spheres of usefulness unwittingly, perhaps, built monuments more enduring than marble obelisks or granite shafts. Such a man is Harry A. Northup, the present auditor of Audubon county, Iowa, member of the firm of Northrup Brothers, dealers in grain and live stock, one of the best-known citizens of Audubon county.
Harry A. Northup was born on February 7, 1876, on a farm in Johnson county, Iowa, son of Nathan and Harriet (Sherlock) Northup, the former of whom was a native of Vermont, and the latter a native of England. Nathan Northup was born in 1817 and died in 1891. He was reared in Vermont and in early manhood migrated to Ohio, where he married, and in the sixties came to Iowa, locating in Johnson county, where his wife died and he married, secondly, Harriet Sherlock, who was born in England in 1835, the daughter of Thomas Sherlock, who located in Johnson county, Iowa, upon coming to this country, where he spent the rest of his life. Nathan Northup came to Audubon county in 1882, settling on a farm of eighty acres in Douglas township, where the remainder of his life was spent.
To Nathan and Harriet (Sherlock) Northup the following children were born: Ernest, deceased; Edwin, who lives at Vallesca [?sic Villisca], Iowa; Richard, ex-sheriff of this county; Mrs. Martha Oxer, of Franklin, Nebraska; Mrs. Mary Myers, deceased; George, who is a partner of his brother, Harry, in the grain and live stock business at Audubon; Mrs. Myra Holcomb, of Spokane, Washington; Jasper, of Audubon; Harry A., the subject of this sketch, and Mrs. Emma Norton, of Yale, Iowa. The mother of these children died on August 30, 1909, having survived her husband nearly twenty years.
Harry A. Northrup was educated in the public schools of Douglass township, this county, and farmed with his brother on the home place, renting land until he became eighteen years of age. He then managed the farm until his widowed mother sold it, and after that returned to Johnson county, this state, where he worked for one season. In 1897 Mr. Northup married and moved to a farm in Cameron township, this county, where he remained for ten years. He then, for a little more than three years, bought and shipped grain at Ross, Iowa, for the Trans-Mississippi Grain Company, and in the spring of 1910 moved to Audubon, where he formed a partnership with his two brothers, George and Richard, in the grain and live-stock business, under the firm name of Northup Brothers.
On March 10, 1897, Harry A. Northup was married to Cora A. McCristal, of Audubon, daughter of William and Martha McCristal, both of whom are now deceased. To this happy union two children have been born, Hazel, born on January 24, 1898, and Merrill, July 27, 1900.
In the fall of 1914 Harry A. Northup was a candidate on the Democratic ticket for auditor of Audubon county and was triumphantly elected. He took the office of county auditor on January 1, 1915, and is now filling that office with credit to himself and with satisfaction to the people of Audubon county who elected him. Mr. Northup is a stanch Democrat and for many years has been active in the councils of his party. He is a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and of the Modern Woodmen of America.
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Transcribed from History of Audubon County, Iowa Its People, Industries and Institutions With Biographical Sketches of Representative Citizens and Genealogical Records of Many of the Old Families, by H. F. Andrews, editor, Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen & Company, 1915, pp. 323-324.
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