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 385-386] HORATIO PITCHER was born in the town of Monroe, Waldo County, Maine, January 23, 1839. His father, HORATIO GATES PITCHER, was born in Belfast, Maine, and his ancestors came from England at an early day and settled in New Hampshire. His mother was ANNA LEONARD, a native of Maine, who traces her ancestry directly to the Mayflower. When HORATIO was eight years old his father removed to Bangor and engaged in mercantile pursuits; he attended the schools of that city until he was fifteen years old, when he entered a dry-goods store to learn the business of clerk and salesman. He remained there two years, and then attended the academies at Bucksport and Kent's Hill for two years. At the age of nineteen he started for the West to seek his fortune. The first season he worked on a farm in Western New York, and in the fall he went to Ohio and took a course in pen-drawing at Oberlin. The following winter and early spring he taught eleven schools of twelve lessons each in penmanship in Northwestern Ohio. He then entered the Maumee Business College as teacher of penmanship. He returned to Bangor on a visit, but was induced to remain there and go into the grocery business on his own account. In 1860 he arrived at his major- ity, and cast his first vote for ABRAHAM LINCOLN, and has voted with the Republican party ever since. In the spring of 1861, at the first call for soldiers to suppress the Rebellion, he sold out his business and enlisted as a private in Company A, Second Maine Volunteers, under Colonel JAMESON. This was the first regiment that left the State for the war. After the first battle of Bull Run he was promoted to Regi- mental Commissary Sergeant, and soon after was made Quartermaster Sergeant, in which capacity he served with the regiment until after the Peninsular campaign. He then received a commission as Quarter- master of the Eighteenth Regiment Maine Volunteers, then being organ- ized at Bangor, Maine. In the spring of 1864 he was ordered to Albany, N.Y., on inspection duty, and was retained there until the end of the war, as inspector of cavalry and artillery horses for the United States Army. He then went to Savannah, Georgia, and embarked in the ship- chandlery business, but this proved with him, as with many others, to be a fool's errand; in two years he lost all he had and more too, and then went to Boston and engaged in the same business there under the firm name of PITCHER, FLITNER & Co. In the spring of 1868 he came to Iowa, stopped in Marshalltown and bought a team and an old buggy, and began a tour of inspection of Northwestern Iowa, which was then a vast, unbroken prairie, with a settler here and there on the rivers. After traveling over this beautiful country he de- cided to become a farmer, and noticing on the land plat that at Sioux City that the surveyor had indicated a spring upon the sec- tion where he now resides he decided to find it, and securing the services of a surveyor, measured from the Little Sioux River to the spot; finding an unfailing supply of water, he at once secured the tract, paying the Government $2.50 per acre for the same. He immediately had sixty acres broken and commenced keeping bachelor's hall. On the organization of the township, desiring to honor their worthy citizen, the name of PITCHER was chosen. Mr. PITCHER was elected the first supervisor, and continued to hold that position until the law reduced the number of supervisors from one to each township to five in the county. After the Boston fire of 1872 he went back to that city, and for three years engaged in the lumber business. At the expiration of that period he returned to Iowa, and has since made it his home. His farm now consists of 720 acres of fine land, which is largely seeded to tame grass; it is well adapted to raising live-stock, and 150 head of cattle are fed annually on the PITCHER farm. The improvements are of the best, and there is a beautiful grove of ten acres, of which Mr. PITCHER may well be proud. In 1881 Mr. PITCHER was elected to represent the county in the Lower House of the Nineteenth General Assembly of Iowa. He was married June 13, 1877, to Miss LIZZIE A. HERSEY. They have four children: RAY, LEON, BESSIE and MARIAN. Mrs. PITCHER is a native of the State of Maine. ===========================================================================