Bios & Family Stories > Pioneers of Polk Co. > Andrews, Lorenzo Frank

A collection of sketches of the early settlers and city builders of Des Moines would seem to be incomplete without that of the author of them, especially when he was so important a factor in the upbuilding and in preserving and recording the history of the making of the city, and of the men who made it.

As the person most responsible for his coming to Des Moines, the one who has known him longest and been most intimately connected with his earlier years therein, I have been asked by his friends and parties interested in this publication to prepare a sketch concerning him, to be printed in this volume.

Having no personal knowledge of his life before coming to the city, I have managed to worry from him, by a close cross examination, the following particulars of his previous career:

He was born in Athol, Worcester County, Massachusetts, March Eighth, 1829, at one o'clock a. m., of Scotch ancestry, running back to Thomas Andrews, of Carlisle, England, A. D. 1286.

His father was an inventor and machinist. It was his custom, when working out his inventions, to devise and make the machinery necessary thereto. He was at one time engaged in an establishment which used a vast amount of bolts and nuts, the threading of which was done by hand. He invented a machine which automatically not only did the threading, but made the bolt heads. It was the first machine known of the kind, but, like many inventors, he neglected to get a patent for it, and others made millions from it.

When L. F. was two years old, his parents removed to Brandon, Rutland County, Vermont, where his father assisted Thomas Davenport in producing the first electric motor and railway known in the world.

When twelve years old, his parents moved back to Petersham, Massachusetts, near his birthplace.

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He attended the common school, and one term in Troy Conference Academy, at Poultney, Vermont, and when sixteen years old, indentured as an apprentice in the office of the Barre (Massachusetts) Patriot, and served three years.

In 1850, he came to Kalamazoo, Michigan, and in the office of the Telegraph put in type the call issued for the convention at Jackson, which organized the National Republican Party. Later, he established the Western Union, a weekly Republican paper, at Niles, Michigan, which was destroyed by fire. He then established a weekly paper at Girard, Pennsylvania, which he sold, and went to Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and served one year as city editor of the Daily Northwestern. Thence he went to La Fayette, Indiana, where he was two years assistant editor of the Daily Courier.

December Thirty-first, 1863, he came to Des Moines, and entered the employ of Mills & Company. While employed thus, ten hours a day, he read law, entered the first class of the Iowa Law School, now the Law Department of the State University, graduated in 1866, was admitted to practice in the state and federal courts, and December Seventh, 1866, was appointed United States Commissioner for the District of Iowa, by Judge John F. Dillon, of the Federal Court.

On coming to Des Moines, he was the special state correspondent of the Chicago Evening Journal, and to it sent the first press message over the first wire from Des Moines. He served the Journal nearly thirty years. He was also, at times, a special correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, Saint Louis Globe-Democrat, Saint Paul Pioneer Press and New York Tribune.

He was night editor of the Daily Register, under Mills & Company, and when the paper passed to the Clarksons, he became city editor of the Daily Republican and Daily State Journal, during their brief existence.

May Fifth, 1880, he was elected the first Secretary of the State Board of Health. The following year, the law was changed, requiring the Secretary to be a physician, which he was not. He was elected Assistant Secretary, and served eighteen years.

While with the State Board, he prepared and secured the passage of the law regulating the sale and use of kerosene, gasoline, and naphtha for illuminating purposes, and also the rules and regulations for illuminating oils used in coal mines, and the making and sale of linseed oil. He also prepared and secured the passage of the law providing for the punishment of those “holding up” railway trains for the purpose of robbery, the first of the kind in the state, as it fixed the offense, if human life was lost thereby, at manslaughter in the first degree.

He also reported for the press proceedings of the Legislature more than twenty years, and was well known throughout the state. It was often said by Legislators and men from different parts of the state who came to Des Moines, that at home, when important news was current of doings at the Capital, and reports were conflicting, they always waited for the statement of “A.” in the Chicago Journal, to get the facts and truth.

The Index of Miller’s Code of Iowa, prepared by him, has been pronounced the best example of legal indexing ever done in any Iowa publication.

His coming to Des Moines resulted in a disturbance at both ends of the line. The foreman of our printing establishment leaving us to embark in business for himself, made it necessary to secure another one. I set about finding the best man for the place that could be had, and after diligent search, and much correspondence, he was selected. He was desirous to come West, and the new Capital of Iowa attracted him.

The next morning after his arrival, I was waited on at my residence before breakfast by a committee representing all the printers in the establishment, with a “round robin,” signed by the entire force, declaring that they would not go to work under the new foreman. I informed them that Mr. Andrews had been highly recommended to me; that I proposed to give him a trial; that anyone who did not want to work under him did not have to, and for them all to appear at the counting-room and get their money, if any was due them; that I proposed to run my own business a while longer. Every one drew his money, stepped down and out. One apprentice boy came back the same day and went to work, but no one of the others ever had an opportunity to work for the company again. To help me out of the lurch, Lamp. Sherman, Barlow Granger, Will. Porter, General William Duane Wilson, and one or two other business men, formerly printers, came in, tendered their services, took off their coats, rolled up their sleeves, and went to the “case.” Inside of a week, many more printers than I could find work for came in from other places and applied for situations. Thus ended the first and only “strike” ever organized among the printers of Des Moines during my more than forty years in the business in the city.

The reason given for the "strike” was the charge that Mr. Andrews, while associate editor and foreman of the Daily Courier, at La Fayette, had put two lady typesetters at work, and the printers thereupon struck and “ratted” the office. There was no Typographical Union at Des Moines, and this was claimed to be a “sympathetic strike.” The real animus was, the temporary foreman did not want to be displaced, and had worked up the '‘strike” on his own account. Mr. Andrews was thus an early martyr in behalf of ‘‘Women's Rights.” He remained in our employ for a number of years, in charge of our Book and Job Department, and later was night editor of the Daily Register, doing much editorial work in the meantime, until he was called to a prominent official position at the Capitol.

No man better versed or more skilled in the typographic art ever held a place in an Iowa printery, and as a newspaper man, he was a peer of the best in his special lines. As a statistician, he was only equaled by Wm. H. Fleming. His succinct and impartial reports and statements of public proceedings and affairs; his terse and lucid conclusions, made his correspondence sought for by Chicago and Iowa journals.

Of late years, he has largely devoted his time and talent in digging out and recording important facts in the early history of the state and city, their prominent men, and early settlers. In this, he has done a work of great value, and added largely to the general knowledge respecting them. There is a wide-spread desire that he continue in the good work, unearth and record many more facts of historical importance.

Mr. Andrews’ wife is a lady of culture, and a writer of marked ability. She is the founder of the local society of the Daughters of the American Revolution (her father being a soldier of the Revolutionary War), and of the Scudery Literary Club.

Their son, Frank Mills Andrews, who was a product of the State College at Ames, and later of Cornell University at Ithaca, New York, is a very successful architect of national reputation. Notable specimens of his work may be seen in New York City, Indianapolis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Dayton, the City of Mexico, Mobile, New Orleans, and in the new Capitol of Kentucky.

FRANK M. MILLS.

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