My Genealogy Hound

A. M. Preston, who is one of the prominent and successful agriculturists and stock-breeders and dealers of Union county, owning and operating a valuable and well improved farm of two hundred and fifty acres, dates his residence in Iowa since the spring of 1869. He was born in Rock county, Wisconsin, January 28, 1850, a son of Orenzo and Myria (Mason) Preston, the former a native of Massachusetts and the latter of England. The parents were married at South Hadley Falls, Massachusetts, and in 1848 removed to Rock county, Wisconsin, where Mr. Preston followed contracting and building until 1869, when they took up their abode in Afton, Iowa. The town of Cromwell was being built at this time and Mr. Preston secured the contract for the first school building there. He removed to the new village, where he erected most of the buildings, including the Congregational and Methodist Episcopal churches, thus being an active factor in the material upbuilding of this part of the state in an early day. He also opened up a farm between Cromwell and Kent in Platte township, where he still resides and which is also the home of our subject. He purchased one hundred and eight acres of land, built a neat residence thereon and improved his farm until he had brought it under a high state of cultivation, annually gathering rich harvests therefrom. As stated, he makes his home with his son, A. M. Preston, and has now attained the venerable age of eighty-five years. His wife passed away in 1888 at the age of seventy years. They were the parents of three children, as follows: one who died in infancy; Cyrus, who passed away at the age of four years; and A. M., of this review.

A. M. Preston was reared in Evansville, Wisconsin, and under the direction of his father he learned the carpenter’s trade, which he followed for several years. When he was nineteen years of age he accompanied his parents on their removal to Afton, Union county, Iowa, and the following year came with them to Cromwell. He has added to the old homestead farm until it now comprises two hundred and fifty acres and through the use of modern methods of farming has made the land highly productive and valuable. He has also made additions to the residence, erected several good barns and outbuildings and in fact the place is lacking in none of the equipments of a model farm property of the twentieth century. In addition to his general agricultural interests he also raises good graded stock and Duroc Jersey hogs, feeding seventy-five head annually. In both branches of his business he is meeting with a gratifying measure of success and is widely recognized as one of the prominent pioneer agriculturists of the county, connected with its early development and upbuilding, for he aided in breaking the virgin soil and also ran a threshing machine for a number of years.

On the 8th of November, 1886, in Platte township, Mr. Preston was united in marriage to Miss Emma Mclntyre, who was born near Batavia in Wapello county, Iowa, a daughter of Ebenezer Mclntyre, a pioneer of Platte township. Unto Mr. and Mrs. Preston has been born one child, Ron, who is a graduate of the Kent graded schools and now assists his father in the conduct of his farming interests.

In his political views Mr. Preston is a republican where national issues are involved but at local elections casts an independent ballot. He has held several minor township offices and has been president of the school board for the past three years, the cause of education finding in him a stanch friend. In 1905 he was elected one of the five county supervisors, his term of office beginning in January, 1906, and is discharging the duties of this position to the satisfaction of all concerned. He is a charter member of the Odd Fellows lodge at Kent, of which he is a past grand and also the first noble grand. He has been a delegate to several county conventions and is well known throughout Union county, as well as in Adams and Adair counties, where he has many warm friends. Both he and his wife attend the Baptist church, of which Mrs. Preston is a member. Not only has the subject of this sketch seen Union county grow from a wild district, with only a few white inhabitants, to a rich agricultural region, containing thousands of good homes and acres of growing towns, inhabited by an industrious, prosperous, enlightened and progressive people but he has participated in and assisted the slow, persistent work of development which was necessary to produce a change which is so complete that it has come to be popularly referred to as magical.