W. H. SANDERS
The paper [The People's Advocate] is now edited by W. H. Sanders, who purchased the interest of Mr. Linderman. The paper is the particular champion of what is known as the Greenback-Labor party, for the advancement of whose principles it has labored and is laboring manfully. Mr. Sanders has a great and ready flow of language, and each issue of his paper teems with scathing remarks on the abuse of power, the growth of monopoly, the supineness of existing parties, and the necessity for the organization of labor for its own protection.
W. H. Sanders was born on November 27, 1852, in Lorain county, Ohio. His parents, Daniel and Mehitabel Sanders were farmers, who were raised in that State. In 1854 they removed to Indiana and stayed there one and a half years, and then returned to their old home in Ohio. His father was a veteran of the Forty-first Ohio Infantry, company H, and was severely wounded in battle. During the last two years of the war the subject of this sketch carried mail overland. In 1865 the whole family moved to Branch county, Michigan, and lived there until the year of 1870, when they emigrated to Newton, Jasper county, Iowa. November, 1871, they settled on new land in Franklin township, Cass county, Iowa, and improved it and made a success of farming.
December 15, 1874, Mr. Sanders married Mary R. Hughes, of the same county; and as a result of said union, have an interesting family of three boys, namely--Vernie D., born September 28, 1875; Brinton B., born June 2, 1881, and Floyd A., born December 30, 1883. Mr. Sanders engaged for several years in the mercantile trade at Wiota, in this county, and had his stock of goods destroyed by fire; after which he moved to Marne, and published the People's Advocate. In the fall of 1883 he removed it to Atlantic, where he especially espoused the cause of labor, and has made his paper a power in the hands of the people, by whom he is held in high esteem, and is fast rising to a position of much usefulness and influence.
Contributed by Lisa Varnes-Rex from "History of Cass County, Iowa. Together With Sketches of its Towns, Villages and Townships, Educational, Civil, Military and Political History: Portraits of Prominent Persons, and Biographies of Old Settlers and Representative Citizens." Springfield, Ill.: Continental Historical Company, 1884, pp. 456-457.
