Copyright USGenNet Inc., 2013, All Rights Reserved U.S. Data Repository Please read U.S. Data Repository Copyright Statement on this page: Transcribed and submitted by Linda Talbott for the US Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ ========================================================================= U.S. Data Repository NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization. Non-commercial organizations desiring to use this material must obtain the consent of the transcriber prior to use. Individuals desiring to use this material in their own research may do so. ========================================================================= Formatted by U.S. Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott All of the above information must remain when copied or downloaded. =========================================================================== Biographical History of Cherokee County, Iowa W. S. Dunbar & Co., Chigago - 1889 [page 499-500] JAMES HENDERSON, one of the early settlers of Cherokee County, has been a hard-working, enterprising citizen, who has made life a suc- cess, and has a place in the memory and hearts of his fellow-citizens in the same degree as his brother, Hon. D. B. HENDERSON, Congressman from Iowa, who is highly esteemed by every loyal and liberty-loving citizen of the State which he so ably represents in the House of Representatives at Washington. JAMES HENDERSON, who is frequently styled in political parlance "Honest JIMMY HENDERSON," on account of his strength of character and integrity, both in public and private dealing, is a native of Scotland, born in Old Deer, Aberdeenshire, September 18, 1819. He is a son of THOMAS and BARBARA (LEGG) HEN- DERSON, who emigrated to the United States and located on a farm in Fayette County, Iowa, where they spent the remainder of their days. The husband died at the age of seventy-five years, and the wife at eighty-five years. Of their nine children JAMES is the oldest; there were seven sons and two daughters, and the sons still survive. The Hon. D. B. HENDERSON, of Dubuque, Iowa, Member of Congress, is the youngest son. JAMES passed his youthful days at a parish school in Scotland, beginning his studies when eight years old, and quitting the school-room at the age of sixteen years, when he commenced to learn the harness-maker's trade; he served an apprenticeship of five years under JOHN CRAIG with whom he formed a partnership which con- tinued another five years. During that period Mr. HENDERSON was betrothed to Miss JOAN WHYTE, to whom he was afterward married. Mrs. HENDERSON was born in Peterhead, Scotland, and is the daughter of a shipmaster. After his marriage, our esteemed subject continued at his trade until 1848, when he conceived of a bright future for him- self and wife in free America, to which land his parents had emigrated five years previous. They sailed from Liverpool and were on the great ocean six long weeks. On their arrival at New York they took what was then an improved mode of travel, the Erie Canal, and came via the Great Lakes to Chicago, where Mr. HENDERSON'S brother GEORGE met them and helped load their effects on a wagon and hauled them 100 miles into the country. They located at Janesville, Wisconsin, where Mr. HEN- DERSON worked at his trade five years; he then removed to Clayton County, Iowa, where he entered eighty acres of land and purchased eighty acres more adjoining, on time at ten per cent, interest, which he bought from a man named COLONEL SANFORD, of Dubuque, Iowa, taking a bond for a deed. In 1870 Mr. HENDERSON decided that Western Iowa offered better inducements to a farmer than the eastern part of the State, so he went to Cherokee County, having made a trip there the year before and selected a homestead of eighty acres five miles north of the present flourishing city of Cherokee. Upon this land he erected a house, under which was the first walled cellar in the county. He hauled his lumber from Denison, sixty-five miles away, and some of the material from Sioux City, sixty miles distant. He employed the slow but sure ox-team mode of transportation. The streams being unbridged it frequently took from four to six yoke of oxen to pull him through the sloughs. He kept pushing his farm improvements along and adding to his land until he now possesses 400 acres in an excellent state of cultivation. In the fall of 1871 Mr. Henderson was appointed to fill the office of county treasurer, succeeding D. T. GEARHEART, the then incumbent of the office having become a defaulter. He was then nomi- nated and elected to the office, served his term of two years, and was re-elected for another term, which he filled. He was elected on the Republican ticket, and there was never a better and truer county official than JAMES HENDERSON. After quitting the treasurer's office he remained a resident of the city, having rented his farm. Mr. and Mrs. HENDERSON are the parents of seven children: JAMES A., a resident of Cherokee; THOMAS G., a rising attorney of Sioux City; HOWARD C., druggist and postmaster of Newcastle, Colorado; ISABELLA, wife of WILLIAM M. SNELL, postmaster of Cherokee; IDA, wife of FRANK H. THOMAS, a lumber dealer of Dakota, and ELLA L., wife of A. BAUMGARDNER, a grocer of Cherokee; ROSILLA ANN died in infancy. Mr. HENDERSON has been a member of the Republican party ever since its organization in 1856, and has been active in political matters through all these long and eventful years. However, in the fall of 1888 he voted the Prohi- bition ticket as a matter of conviction and principle. Besides filling the office of county treasurer he has served several years as justice of the peace, a member of the School Board, township trustee, and in other minor offices. He is an honored member of the I.O.O.F., at Cherokee, and belongs to the Baptist Church. When he was a resident of Scotland he was identified with the Baptist Church. This truly estimable gentleman, now seventy years of age, man's allotted time, is in the full possession of all his faculties. He began life's jour- ney with no means, but possessed the willing spirit found in so many of his countrymen; he has surmounted one obstacle after another, and is to-day enjoying the fruits of his labors. While he has seen much of hardship at various times in his life, he has ever lived a true Christian, and hence in his declining years is surrounded by a family who loves him, and a great community to revere his life work. Truly he hath builded well, builded worthily! ===========================================================================