LOFT, Henry Livingstone

LOFT, GOULDING, COOK

Posted By: Volunteer
Date: 5/5/2010 at 17:16:40

LOFT, Henry Livingstone, of Washta, Cherokee County, is a thoroughly equipped and successful lawyer, and an editor of ability, having, in addition to other duties, managed the Washta Journal since 1894. He is of English parentage and descent. His ancestors, who were mostly tradespeople and farmers, lived in England for several generations. His father, William Loft, a cabinetmaker by trade, was born in Beverly, England, in 1813. He came to America in 1853 and settled on a farm in Dubuque County, Iowa. Mr. Loft's mother, Ellen Goulding,
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was born in Cheshire, England, in 1833. She is now living in Cherokee County. The father died in 1885.

H. L. Loft was born April 9, 1857, at Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, whither his parents had moved a few years before. Here he attended the public schools until he was sixteen years old, when, in 1873, he came with his parents to Iowa, settling on a farm in Cherokee County, four miles from the town of Cherokee. Until he was twenty-one years of age he worked on the farm, and received but little schooling. He entered Simpson College, at Indianola, in 1879, and worked his way through without assistance, graduating in 1885 with the degree of B. S., and receiving the Master's degree two years later. While in college he was a member of the Smithsonian Literary Society, and in 1884 founded the Beta Alpha Chapter of the Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity. After his graduation he began reading law in the office of E. C. Herrick at Cherokee, and continued his studies in the office of Marks & Mould at Sioux City. He was admitted to the bar at Des Moines in 1887, and practiced law in Sioux City with gratifying success until .1893. He left there soon after the great financial panic had struck the city, and went to Alta. where he remained one year. In
the fall of 1894 he came to Washta and resumed his practice of law, and soon afterward purchased the Washta Journal. which he has since continued to edit, though he still follows his profession. Mr. Loft is a careful student, and by industry and close attention to whatever work he may have in hand, he has been unusually successful.

Mr. Loft is a thoroughgoing republican, always a firm supporter of the party, but he has been a worker rather than a reaper in the field of politics, as he has held only minor offices. He was a charter member of the Sioux City Council of Royal Arcanum. He united with the Presbyterian Church of Indianola in 1883, and was a member of the First and Second Presbyterian Churches v-hile in Sioux City, serving as a trustee and pres:ding elder. He now belongs to the Congregational Church.

He was married November 13, 1889, at Storm Lake, Iowa, to Marcia Phebe Cook, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Horace Cook, then of that place, but now of Washta. Mr. and Mrs. Loft have two daughters: Edith Arena, born in 1890, and Phebe Ellen, born in 1894, and one son, William Horace, born in 1897.
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Biographies and Portraits
of the
Progressive Men of Iowa
Volume 11
Leaders in Business, Politics, and Professions
together with
the beginnings of
A Western Commonwealth
by
Benjamin F. Sbambaugh Ph.D.
Des Monies
Conway and Shaw
publishers
1899