SAMUEL H. HEMSTED

HEMSTED, AKERS, THOMPSON, HADDOCK, GRIMES, HINDMAN, ENDSLEY - ANDREWS, OHL AND CO

Posted By: jhindman (email)
Date: 1/1/2019 at 18:49:56

SAMUEL H. HEMSTED, a successful agriculturist, leading business man and junior partner of the widely known and prosperous firm of Andrews, Ohl & Co., is an honored citizen of Graham Township, in which part of Iowa he has resided for nearly a half-century. His pleasant home is located upon section 14, where he owns a fine farm of two hundred and forty acres under an excellent state of cultivation, and well improved with substantial and commodious buildings. Our subject was born December 19, 1837, and was but four months old when his parents moved to Ohio, where they settled due north of Columbus. In this locality Mr. Hemsted spent the first six years of his life. In 1844 his parents again made a change in their location, then journeying to the West and finding a permanent home in Johnson County, Iowa, entering into agricultural work in what is now Newport and Graham Townships. From nineteen years of age Mr. Hemsted was entirely self-supporting, and was then engaged in farming, giving his entire attention, up to 1880, to agricultural duties and stockdealing.

September 1, 1880, Samuel H. Hemsted engaged in business with William Andrews and Alfred R. Ohl, being the third partner in the highly successful firm of Andrews, Ohl & Co., dealers in stock, grain, lumber, seeds, wagons, agricultural implements, buggies, harness, coal and rock salt. Although mainly occupied by the cares of daily business, our subject continues the cultivation of the farm, the homestead annually yielding excellent returns for the labor expended in the tilling of the soil. Mr. Hemsted comes of good old Pennsylvania stock, and possesses the sturdy virtues of his ancestors. His father, Frederick W. Hemsted, was born in Pennsylvania, and his mother, Elizabeth Akers, was also a native of the Quaker State. They came to Johnson County in the fall of 1844, and after many years the mother died in Graham Township, about 1884, but the venerable father still survives. Our subject has been thrice married. His first marriage gave him a faithful companion Miss Eliza Thompson, a native of Ohio. By this union Mr. Hemsted became the father of two children: Mary L. and Emeline. Mary L. is the wife of W. F. Hindman; Emeline is Mrs. C. E. Endsley. Mrs. Eliza Hemsted died in May 1864. The second wife of Mr. Hemsted was Miss Mary J. Haddock, a native of Ireland, who bore her husband five children, of whom four are yet living: Oscar, Agnes, Guy and Lillian. The eldest child of the second family, Jennie, died in childhood. Mrs. Mary J. (Haddock) Hemsted passed away in the spring of 1879, in Graham Township. The present wife of our subject was Miss Mary E. Grimes, a native of New York State, who was born in Troy. Mr. and Mrs. Hemsted are the parents of two children, Ellen and Mabel, bright and intelligent young daughters.

Our subject, although a very busy man, finds time to inform himself regarding the affairs of the day, and takes a special interest in both local and national issues. Highly respected for his sterling integrity of character, courteous in his bearing and affable in manner, Mr. Hemsted has in social, business and political relations the happy faculty of winning and keeping friends, and has received from his constituents and neighbors various offices of trust, the duties of which he has discharged to the universal satisfaction of his fellow-citizens and his co-workers in the public cause. From his very earliest years closely associated with the advancement of the best interests of Johnson County, an earnest advocate of progress and reform, our efficient subject long ago attained a high position in the regard of the general public.

Source: Portrait and Biographical Record of Johnson, Poweshiek and Iowa Counties, Iowa (1893), pages 147-148.