Benjamin F. Shambaugh
Published: 2015-08-05
Total Pages: 440
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Excerpt from The Messages and Proclamations of the Governors of Iowa, Vol. 5 John Henry Gear, Governor of Iowa from 1878 to 1882, was born at Ithaca, New York, April 7, 1825. His father, Ezekiel Gilbert Gear, was born at Pittsfield, Massachusetts, to which place the grandfather, Hezekiah Gear, had removed from Connecticut after the Revolutionary War. Ezekiel Gilbert Gear was educated for the ministry and was ordained as a clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal church in 1815. It was as a missionary to the Indian tribes that he removed to western New York. At the age of two years John Henry Gear was taken to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he was cared for by his grandmother until 1831. In that year he was taken to Galena, Illinois, by his father. In 1833 Ezekiel Gilbert Gear removed to Fort Snelling, a frontier military post in what is now the State of Minnesota. Here the son, John Henry Gear, lived until 1843 when, at the age of eighteen, he left his home and went to Burlington, Iowa. When Mr. Gear came to Iowa he first worked on a farm, but soon found employment in a store. In 1845 he entered the employ of Mr. W. F. Coolbaugh, a prominent merchant of Burlington, and at the end of five years was taken into the firm of Coolbaugh & Co. Later he became the sole proprietor of the business - that of wholesale grocer. In 1852 Mr. Gear married Miss Harriet S. Foote, who proved to be a woman of more than ordinary ability. Throughout the public career of her husband she was his most trusted counselor and helpmate. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.