My Genealogy Hound

A. C. White, who carries on general agricultural pursuits and stock-raising, is the owner of valuable farming property, comprising seven hundred acres in Jones township, of which four hundred and eighty acres is in the home place, which constitutes a well improved and valuable property known as the Mount Pisgah farm. This place was the first settlement of the Mormons in Iowa and they gave to it the biblical name. They resided there for some years but eventually it passed into other hands and in time became the property of Mr. White, who keeps it in a splendid state of improvement. In the development of the natural resources of the land he has won gratifying success.

A resident of the county since 1856, he has practically witnessed its entire development and upbuilding, for at the time of his arrival around his home for miles stretched the wild, unbroken prairie on which hardly a settlement had been made or a road laid out. In the summer the land was covered with the native prairie grasses, brightened by thousands of wild flowers, and in the winter was one unbroken sheet of snow.

Mr. White was a young lad of about twelve years at the time of his arrival for his birth occurred in Washington county, Vermont, March 17, 1844. His father, Stephen B. White, was also a native of the Green Mountain state, where he was reared and there he married Matilda Cheney, also a native of Vermont. Stephen B. White engaged in business as a railroad bridge builder and contractor in Vermont for a number of years and four children were born unto him and his wife there. In 1856 they removed westward to Iowa, settling in Jones township, Union county, on a farm, now owned by the subject of this review. The father bought the Mount Pisgah farm of about two hundred and forty acres and further improved and developed that property, spending his last years thereon, his death occurring November 20, 1872. He was a prominent farmer and stock-raiser and an influential citizen of the community, who did much to further public progress. He served as supervisor and in other positions of honor and trust. He purchased the Mount Pisgah farm from the men who bought from Mormons, who had located in Iowa when they started on their pilgrimage from Nauvoo to the west. The wife and mother survived until October 10, 1878, when she, too, passed away. In the family were four sons and a daughter: A. C., of this review; Clarence S., who was a member of Company H, Twenty-ninth Iowa Volunteer Infantry during the Civil war and died of sickness at Island No. 10, when only seventeen years of age; Ida May, who became the wife of Theodore Depew and died in California; Frank, who died at the age of ten years; and Fred, now living in Washington.

A. C. White spent the first twelve years of his life in his native state and then came to the west to share with the family in all of the hardships and privations incident to residence on the frontier. In this district the schools were of a very primitive character and he is largely a self-educated man, constantly broadening his knowledge by reading, experience and observation since attaining his majority. Through the period of his youth he remained with his father and assisted in carrying on the farm. After reaching adult age he drove a stage for two years, sometimes having a two-horse team and again driving four horses to the coach on the way from Chariton to the Missouri river. In 1863 he went to Colorado, driving a team across the country to the gold mines, where he remained for about two years. In 1865 he returned to Iowa and soon afterward settled down, establishing a home of his own.

It was in Clarke county, Iowa, on the 3rd of June, 1866, that Mr. White was united in marriage to Miss Ellen Burd, a native of Pennsylvania, who came to Iowa with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Isaac Burd, who located here in 1856, the father becoming a farmer of Jones township. After his marriage he engaged in farming on the old home place and later bought out the interest of the other heirs and succeeded to the ownership of the property. From time to time he has added to his original possessions until he now has four hundred and eighty acres in the home farm, while his landed possessions aggregate seven hundred acres. He has thus become one of the large landowners of the county. In 1903 he purchased land in the Pecos valley of New Mexico, a tract of three hundred and twenty acres, went there with his children and improved a farm. He also put down a well nine hundred and thirty-three feet deep, and now has a fine artesian well, with a flow of seven hundred gallons per minute, with which he irrigates the land. This is now well improved and constitutes one of the valuable farming properties of that district. While in the south he rented his farm here but returned in the spring of 1907 and located on the old homestead at Talmage. In the meantime, however, he resided for a period of seven years in Afton, where he carried on a brokerage business. He also owns a nice residence in Des Moines, where he expects to locate. With general farming he has carried on the work of raising and feeding stock and introduced into the county the first and best Holstein cattle ever brought here. He has done much to improve the grade of stock raised and has always handled fine animals. He was likewise manager of a creamery at Talmage for four years and shipped a carload of butter per week. It will thus be seen that his business interests have been varied and extensive and his capable management and unfaltering energy have brought to him the splendid success which he has achieved and which makes him one of the most prosperous men of the county.

Unto Mr. and Mrs. White were born two children: Gertie, the wife of T. E. Waite, a railroad agent and operator at Waterloo, Iowa, by whom she has one child, Zelma; and Bert, who is married and has two children, Albert and Alberta, and resides upon his father’s ranch in New Mexico. Mr. White has been called upon to mourn the loss of his wife, who died December 22, 1907, on the fifty-eighth anniversary of her birth.

Mr. White is a democrat where national issues are involved but casts an independent local ballot. He has served as township trustee and as township clerk, was deputy sheriff for two years and later tax agent for the Chicago & Great Western Railroad for four years. No shadow of wrong or suspicion of evil falls upon his official record. Indeed it has been characterized by fidelity and promptness in the discharge of his duty and the salient points in his business career are unwearied industry, keen discernment and irreproachable business integrity. He has spent the greater part of his life from the age of twelve years in Union county and thus his life history is largely as an open book which all may read. He has been an interested witness of the growth and development of the county from pioneer times to the present and has seen its transformation from a wild, unclaimed, unbroken prairie into one of the rich agricultural counties of the state, also having, too, important industrial and commercial interests. Great changes have occurred in the methods of living. The old hand plow and other primitive machinery have been replaced by the modern riding plow, reaper, binder and thresher and thus much manual labor has been done away with and the effectiveness of the work of the farmer has been greatly increased. Mr. White relates many interesting incidents of the early days and his life record forms a connecting link between the primitive past and the progressive present.