History of Linn County Iowa: From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time [1911]Brewer, Luther Albertus
History
History of Linn County Iowa: From Its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time [1911]
Brewer, Luther Albertus
Linn County (Iowa) -- Biography; Linn County (Iowa) -- History; Registers of births, etc. -- Iowa -- Linn County
Dr. Carpenter speaks of how he abandoned medicine, how he opened a
banking house in 1855, and became a land owner, having at one time as
much as 1,600 acres of land near where the town of Norway now stands.
He was first connected with Lehman & Kreider, later forming the
partnership of Carpenter, Stibbs & Company, the firm doing business
until 1861. Dr. Carpenter attended the convention at Chicago that
nominated Lincoln and was one of the first to enlist in the Civil war
as a surgeon. He was mustered out in 1865.
Henry E., Harvey G., Wellington W., and Major M. A. Higley were for a
generation merchants, financiers, and leaders in many enterprises in
Cedar Rapids. They were born in the state of Connecticut, coming to
this county in the early '40s. Henry and Harvey Higley for some time
operated a line of stages from Dubuque to Iowa City, and for that
reason knew personally nearly all the prominent men of Iowa in the '40s
and '50s. Iowa City being the capital and Dubuque the most enterprising
city in the territory and state, the public men frequently travelled to
and from these cities. Harvey Higley "got caught" with the gold fever
and went to California, returning in a few years to Cedar Rapids. The
Higley brothers made large fortunes in real estate which have descended
to their children.
The brothers, C. J. and Jacob A. Hart, natives of Maryland, came to
Cedar Rapids in the early '50s, and for a generation were two of the
most successful lumber dealers in Cedar Rapids.
Alexander L. Ely was one of the early millers, who died in the '40s.
His brother, Dr. J. F. Ely, came later to look after the business
interests of his deceased brother, and for some fifteen or twenty years
was a successful practitioner in Cedar Rapids. He and his wife for a
generation were leaders of the business and social life of this city.
Homer Bishop was an old-time merchant, arriving in the early '40s, and
for eight years was postmaster of Cedar Rapids. He was a congenial
person, well known, and an enterprising and free-hearted man who did
his best to build up a city on what was then thought to be the western
frontier.
No doubt the first Scandinavian settler to locate within the confines
of Linn county was Nels C. Boye, a native of Denmark, who emigrated to
the United States in 1827 and arrived in Muscatine in 1837 and located
in the vicinity of Lisbon in 1838 where he purchased land and engaged
in farming. Being brought up as a merchant he removed with his family
to Iowa City in 1843 and for a time operated one of the most up-to-date
stores in the new capital. On a business trip to St. Louis in 1849 he
fell a victim to the cholera and died there on June 23. A number of his
children continued to reside in Linn county, and a number of relations
are still residents of this county.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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