that city. In 1857 the family moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the father was engaged
extensively in the manufacture of woolen cloths until his death in 1874. Mrs. Earle is still living,
and resides with her son in Chicago.
Our subject received an academic education, including the classics ; aided his father awhile in
the manufacturing business, and in 1872 went to Munich to study his profession. There he
remained nearly three years, returning at the close of 1874, making his home in Chicago, and
attending very diligently to his studies and work as an artist. In the autumn of 1880 Mr. Earle
went to Florence and Rome, and spent a year or more in the study of water colors, returning
well satisfied, we believe, with his progress in the art. He makes figure painting a specialty.
Mr. Earle is a man of great strength of character, having a fine sense of honor, a scrupulous
regard for all moral obligations and a lofty conception of his duties in life. In social intercourse
he is graceful and attractive, his artistic training and extensive travels having made him a most
enjoyable as well as an improving companion. He is always welcomed in the most cultivated
and discriminating circles of society, and wins enduring friendships wherever he goes.
As an artist he has always been a pains-taking and laborious worker, and though he executes
with a rapidity that is very unusual, and that seems marvelous to those not accustomed to it, he
nevertheless seems to be ever striving to improve his methods, and consequently shows a steady
UNITED STATES BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY. 2 6j
growth in the excellence of his productions. In former years he worked almost entirely in oil
colors, but in later years he has been quite enthusiastic in his water color work, and his versatil-
ity and aptitude are so great that he seems equally effective in both materials. Having always
been a devoted sportsman and successful hunter, his tastes 'have always been in the direction of
game animals and hunting scenes, and many of his game pictures are equal to anything of the
kind ever produced in America.
COLONEL WILLIAM H. FULKERSON.
JERSEYVII.LE.
*l T 7ILLIAM HOUSTON FULKERSON, a native of Claiborne county, Tennessee, born Sep-
V V tember 9, 1834, has the best stock farm in Jersey county and one of the best in Illinois.
He came here in 1866, and commenced with 320 acres, two miles north of Jerseyville, the county
seat, and subsequently enlarged his farm to 620 acres. He has other farms in this county, but
Hazeldell, the homestead, is strictly a stock farm, with a fine brick house, a gem of architectural
beauty and comfort, standing a few rods west of the public road, with model outbuildings, cow
barn, horse barn, etc., standing still farther back from the road. Everything about the premises
indicates wise planning and convenience, and the comfort of beast as well as man.
In "Glosser's Guide and Gazetteer of the Chicago, Alton and Saint Louis Railroad" we find
the following reference to this famous stock farm :
"The large herd of blooded cattle found here comprises some of the choicest and most beauti-
ful animals in America Continental Europe and the states of Kentucky, Vermont and Vir-
ginia largely contributing to the colonel's grazing fields and stables of thoroughbred short-horns.
Hazeldell is noted for its charming situation, and the genuine hospitality accorded strangers,
whether on business or for the purpose of sight-seeing. Well set back from the old state road,
on a gradual rise of ground, is Colonel Fulkerson's conspicuous residence conspicuous for its
architectural symmetry and its middle tower, from which is afforded an extended and unobstructed
view of the stock-raising and wheat-growing fields of one of the richest agricultural sections in
the United States.
The house is a model of convenience and comfort, being lighted with gas and heated by hot
air. It is luxuriously furnished, and contains a well-selected library. The colonel's reception room
bears unmistakable evidence as to the superiority of his stock in trade. Scores of blue and red
ribbons, gold and silver medals, awards from the various national, state and county fairs, is con-
clusive of the old adage, that 'blood will tell.' In fact, everything in and about the premises
indicates taste, refinement and wealth. The colonel is the happy possessor of a very interesting
family, having married a most estimable lady, the daughter of Joseph Russell, of Hawkins county,
Tennessee. The result of this happy union is five children, three boys and two girls, playful and
intelligent, exhibiting evidences of a careful tutorship.
Such is a brief insight into the Hazeldell stock farm and the home of Colonel William H.
Fulkerson, a gentleman who is singularly fortunate in knowing how and having the nerve to prop-
erly utilize and enjoy wealth. He is equally singularly fortunate in that he has all friends and
no enemies. A man of temperate habits, cool brain, fluent in conversation, industrious and truth-
ful in all things, his exemplary life is well worthy the study of the rising youth."
At first Colonel Fulkerson made a specialty of fine horses, but he now keeps only about thirty,
while he has a round hundred short-horn cattle, including the finest lot of heifers the writer ever
saw on anyone farm. Mr. Fulkerson is proud of his cattle, his horses, his Poland, China and red
Berkshire pigs, his Angora goats, and he has a right to be, for he has made the raising of thor-
oughbred stock a study, and it is among the best of its kind in this great state.
Our subject is as full of enterprise as his barns are of stock or his house of premium ribbons.
He has two good orchards; raises an abundance of small fruit; is a prominent member of the
Alton Horticultural Society; was president of the Jersey county fair in 1881-2; was county judge
268 UNITED STATES BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY.
at one period; at another, the general manager of the Jersey ville branch of the Wabash railroad,
and in public spirit and push is one of the foremost men in this part of the state.
The colonel is a son of the late James Fulkerson, M.D., who was also a farmer, and sprang
from an old Virginia family. His grandfather was Colonel Peter Fulkerson, who commanded
troops in the continental army, and his mother was Frances Patterson, a sister of General Patter-
son, who was in the second war with England, the Mexican war and the late civil war, and who
died in Philadelphia in 1882.
The colonel himself was educated at West Point, and has himself done some fighting. He
was in the Mormon war of 1858-9, having charge of a government supply train, and in the late
civil war. He rose from a private in company A, 63d Tennessee infantry (Confederate), step by
step, to the command of the regiment, and was twice wounded. He had a brother-in-law killed
who was in Stuart's famous black horse cavalry, and the horse which that brother rode, now
thirty-one years old, is on the farm of our subject.
Prior to that unpleasantness Colonel Fulkerson was in the mines of California and in British
America, and afterward lived on the plains, doing anything honorable that turned up.
The colonel has a well selected library, much larger than one is accustomed to see in a farm-
house; is well read on other subjects besides cattle breeding and horticulture; has traveled over
no inconsiderable part of the United States and a small part of Canada, and is decidedly enter-
taining in conversation. In hospitality it is enough to say that he was reared at the South.
JOHN DEERE.
MOLINE.
THE subject of this sketch is one of the best examples of that class of citizens usually styled
self-made men. John Deere was born at Rutland, Vermont, February 7, 1804. His parents
were William Ryland and Sarah (Yates) Deere, his father being a native of England, his mother
of English parentage. They immigrated to Canada, and afterward settled in Vermont.
His early educational advantages were limited. At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to
Captain Benjamin Lawrence, at Middlebury, Vermont, to learn the blacksmith's trade, and when
twenty-three years old he was married to Demarius Lamb. Having become master of his trade he
commenced business on his own account, and conducted it with varying success at different towns
in Vermont, until the year 1837, when he decided to remove to Illinois, and selected Grand
Detour, Ogle county, as his future home, and immediately resumed his former occupation.
Recognizing that the urgent need of the country was a better quality of plows, he set himself
to the task of improving upon the cast-iron and wooden mold-board plows then in use. Pro-
curing from Chicago some saw-plate steel he hammered out upon his anvil the first cast-steel
plow that was ever made, and the only kind that would cleave without carrying the alluvial soils
of the Mississippi Valley. A plow that would not clog was before unknown to the Illinois farmer,
and from that time down to the present his resources have been continually taxed to supply the
demand for the then, as now, famous John Deere plows, and as fast as capital and credit accumu-
lated, the business was extended. The hard times that succeeded the commercial revulsion of
1837 gave an impetus to immigration, and the West began to settle rapidly. With characteristic
enterprise and energy he extended his trade to remote points, by adopting a system of wagon
transportation and delivering his plows to various agencies for distribution to the farmer. To
better accommodate a widely extended and continually increasing trade, he sold out his shop in
Grand Detour and removed in 1847 to Moline, Illinois, where a water power had been partially
developed, and where the Mississippi River and its tributaries afforded cheaper and better facili-
ties for freighting raw material to the factory, and transporting finished plows to the various river
towns, and for dfstributing to distant settlements. Having rented here more extensive works,
the first year's product amounted to one thousand plows. The manufacture of steel in this country
UNITED STATES BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY.
was at that time in its infancy, and inferior in quality to the foreign product, so that it became
necessary to look to England for steel of the requisite quality, and the first steel for mold-boards
and shares was imported in 1847 by John Deere.
Having been the first to open this avenue of supply, he and his associates have ever since been
the largest consumers of steel for the manufacture of plows in this country; and it is but just to
American steel manufacturers to say that for many years American steel has taken precedence
over the foreign article. The pioneer in the manufacture of steel plows, he has continued to
occupy the leading position, and the name and fame of the John Deere plow extends to every
state in the Union. So great has been his success that other firms have attempted to appropriate
the name by which his plows are known.
In 1868 the firm was incorporated under the style of Deere and Company, with John Deere,
president, Charles H. Deere, vice-president and treasurer, and Stephen H. Velie, secretary.
A correspondent of the Lowell (Massachusetts) "Morning Mail" thus writes in regard to the
great plow town of the Northwest:
MOLINE, ILLINOIS, August 14, 1882.
EDITOR " MORNING MAIL: " By plow town your correspondent means a town where plows are made. There are
many such towns in the West. Chicago is one of them. One firm there Furst and Bradley employ something like
500 men in making steel plows. There is a much larger establishment at South Bend, Indiana, and a few other plow
factories of fair size are found in that state.
Rock Island, Canton, Monmouth. Peru and half a dozen other towns in Illinois are doing a creditable business in
this line, but the great plow town of the Northwest is Moline, three miles from Rock Island, and on the Illinois side
of the great grandsire of waters. Here a round 1,000 men are employed the year round in making steel plows. One
firm, the Moline Plow Works, monopolizes 700 of these men. John Deere, the grand mogul of steel plows on this con-
tinent, was, in his younger years, a Vermont blacksmith. He came into the land of prairies nearly fifty years ago,
and in 1838 began to make plows at Grand Detour, on the Rock River.
In 1847 Mr. Deere came to Moline. Here, at the start, he built a small shop, large then, for steel plows were a
new thing in those days, and began operations on a moderate scale, enlarging from time to time as his orders
increased. Prior to 1876 he had enlarged his premises three or four times; that year he added more than fifty per cent,
and in 1881 put up another mammoth brick structure three stories high. The total floor area of the several buildings
is. by actual measure, eight and three-quarters acres, and in them are consumed annually 1,785 tons of steel, 4,150 tons
of bar and pig iron, 450 tons of malleable iron, 2,500 tons of Pennsylvania coal and coke, 1,000 tons of grindstone,
300 barrels of oil and varnish, thirty-five tons of emery, and 2,100,000 feet of oak and ash timber. In these several
shops are five turbine water wheels and a Crawley engine of 500 horse power.
The 700 men employed by John Deere and Company have made for the market of 1882 no less than 97,000 plows,
which find their way into all civilized countries on the Western Hemisphere where such plows are in use. The other
plow company here put something like 70,000 plows on the market annually.
John Deere, the father of steel plows, is seventy-eight years old, being born in 1804, and he is still quite young, even
sprightly. He is a temperate man, a Christian, a pillar of the Congregational Church, brimful of social cheer, and
looks to-day as though he might serve as one of the pall-bearers to the nineteenth century.
HENRY S. GREENE.
SPRINGFIELD.
HENRY SACHEVERELL GREENE, attorney-at-law, and lately a member of the firm of
Hay, Greene and Littler, was born in the North of Ireland, July 12, 1833, his parents being
James Greene, and Margaret (Forester) Greene. At six years of age Henry came to Canada West,
now Ontario, and was reared at Port Hope, county of Durham, on the shore of Lake Ontario,
receiving a fair English education.
In 1857 he came to this state, read law in the office of Judge Weldon, of Clinton; was admitted
to practice January, 1860; became a partner of Hon. C. H. Moore, of that place, and practiced in
that connection for six years. During the last half of that period Mr. Greene was attorney for
the Chicago and Alton Railroad Company for Logan and McLean counties, resigning that position
on removing to Springfield in July, 1868. From that date the law firm of Hay, Greene and Lit-
tler held the same position for that railroad company until January i, 1881, when the partnership
28
372 UNITED STATES BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY.
was dissolved. For several years prior to its dissolution, this firm had charge of the legal -busi-
ness of the W abash Railway Company in this part of the state, as we learn from the "History of
Sangamon County." From the same source we also learn that for. several years Mr. Greene has
been the general counselor for the Wabash, Saint Louis and Pacific Railway Company for Illinois,
in which state it owns and controls^by lease 1,300 miles of railway lines, and he is also consulting
counsel for outside business of the company, controlling in all no less than 3,000 miles of road.
For two years prior to the consolidation of the American Union and Western Union Telegraph
Companies, Mr. Greene was counsel for the former company, and attended to its extensive litiga-
tion with the latter. So rapidly has the legal business of our subject extended, and so large has
it become in connection with corporations, that he has been obliged almost entirely to withdraw
from general practice at the bar; and his duties outside of the state, we are informed, are larger
than those in it. In civil practice, to which he confines himself, he is one of the foremost lawyers
in central Illinois. No man at the bar in this part of the state makes a clearer or abler argument
on a legal proposition.
While the civil war was in progress in 1863, Governor Yates appointed Mr. Greene attorney
for the eighth judicial district (embracing DeWitt, Logan and McLean counties), and he was
subsequently elected to this same office. Before the expiration of the latter term, Mr. Greene was
elected to the legislature, by the republican party, and in 1867 resigned his office of state's attor-
ney, to aid in making and amending laws, serving one regular term, and two special terms in the
general assembly. The business of legislating, however, was not congenial to him, and before the
expiration of his term he removed from his district, and since that time he has never been active
in politics, or a candidate for any office.
While a resident of Ogtario, in 1854, Mr. Greene was united in marriage with Miss Elizabeth
Hogle, a native of that province, and of New Hampshire parentage, and they have one daughter
and one son.
D
GENERAL DANIEL DUSTIN.
SYCAMORE.
ANIEL DUSTIN, a county official, and one of the leading men of De Kalb county, dates
his birth at Topsham, Orange county, Vermont, October 5, 1820, his parents being John K.
and Sally (Thompson) Dustin. The Dustin family was originally from Massachusetts, and is
traced directly back to Hannah Dustin, the famous heroine of Haverhill, Massachusetts (1697).
Daniel received a district school education ; worked on his father's farm during the busy season
until twenty years old ; taught school five terms ; studied medicine at Topsham and Corinth,
Vermont ; attended lectures at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, where he received
the degree of doctor of medicine in 1846, and after practicing at East Corinth about three years,
went to California, where he remained for eight years, being in practice for five years, and keep-
ing a general and drug store the rest of the time. While in that state he was a member of the
legislature for Nevada county, in 1855-6.
In 1858 Mr. Dustin came to Sycamore, and was engaged in the drug business until he
enlisted in the 8th Illinois cavalry, which was organized at Saint Charles, Kane county, in Sep-
tember, 1861, our subject being placed in command of company L. Three months afterward he
was promoted to the rank of major. This regiment was in the Army of the Potomac, and in
March, 1862, joined the general advance on Manassas, in General Sumner's division. In the early
part of the spring of that year, at four different times it drove the enemy across the Rappahan-
nock. In May of that year it was assigned to the light cavalry brigade, General Stoneman
commanding. The regiment did important service at Games' Hill dispatch station, and Malvern
Hill, by skirmishing with the enemy ; remained on picket on the James River, while the army
lay at Harrison's Landing; led the advance on the second occupation of Malvern Hill, and, with
Benson's battery, United States artillery, bore the brunt of the fight, and brought up the rear of
our retreating forces at Barrett's Ford and Chickahominy.
UNITED STATES BIOCRAPHKAL DICTIONARY.
273
In August, 1862, Major Dustin was appointed colonel of the 1051)1 Illinois infantry, and was
mustered in with his regiment on the second of the next month, at Dixon, Illinois. His regiment
was in the Army of the Cumberland, and in the spring of 1864 was brigaded with the load and
1 29th Illinois, the yoth Indiana and the 79th Ohio, with which regiments it remained during the
war, the same being in the ist brigade, 3d division of the aoth army corps. Immediately after
the Atlanta campaign, Colonel Dustin was placed in command of the 2d brigade of the same
division and corps, and remained in command of that brigade until the collapse of the rebellion.
He accompanied General Sherman in his grand march to the sea, his brigade bearing its full
share of the hardships of that memorable campaign to Savannah, and through the Carolinas.
After the battle of Averysboro, North Carolina, where the enemy were driven from their position,
our subject was brevetted brigadier-general, a promotion which his coolness, dash and bravery
in that engagement had well merited.
General Dustin's brigade took part in the grand review at Washington, May 24, 1865, and
was mustered out of the service June 7. General Dustin has a spotless military record, and
was one of the most gallant officers sent from De Kalb county. With the exception of three or
four years, since returning to Sycamore, he has been kept in some county office, having been
county clerk and county treasurer before accepting his present position, that of clerk of the cir-
cuit court, and ex-officio recorder. He is a conscientious and perfectly reliable man, and faith-
fully discharges the duties of every post assigned to him. In politics he is a staunch republican.
General Dustin is a thirty-second degree Mason, and has held various offices in the order, such
as master of the Sycamore Lodge, high priest of the chapter, head of the Sycamore Commandery,
and grand commander of the State of Illinois. His religious connection is with the Congrega-
tional Church, in which he has held different offices, being clerk at the present time.
He was first married, in 1847, to Miss Isabella Taplin, of East Corinth, Vermont, she dying in
1850, leaving three children, and the second time in California in 1855, to Miss Elmira E. Pauly,
by whom he has one child.
w
HON. WILLIAM B. DODGE.
WAUKEGAN.
ILLIAM BURLING DODGE, the oldest hardware merchant in Waukegan, and one of
its leading citizens, dates his birth at Canoga, Seneca county, New York, August 6, 1824.
His father, Reuben D. Dodge, merchant, was at one period a member of the New York house of
representatives, and subsequently of the senate of that state, and his grandfather, Stephen Dodge,
was a captain in the war of 1812-14. This branch of the Dodge family were pioneer settlers in
Madison county, New York. The wife of Reuben Dodge was Mary Burling, who was also a
native of the state ot New York.
Our subject received a good English education, finishing it at the Canandaigua Academy, and
in 1843 came, with the family, to Lake county, Illinois, settling on a farm at Libertyville, where
William remained until 1846, when he became a clerk in a store at Waukegan. Two years later
(1848) he commenced the hardware business, and has followed it steadily for thirty-four years,
the first half of that period or more alone. For the last fifteen or sixteen years G. B. Wat-
rous has been in partnership with him, and in January, 1876, his only son and only child, William
H. Dodge, was taken into the firm. Two years after starting in business Mr. Dodge married
(November 27, 1850) Harriet S. Getty, daughter of Adams Getty, of Waukegan, and they have
had only the one son mentioned, a promising young man, of excellent business habits.
Mr. Dodge having been a resident of Lake county nearly forty years, and in business all but
the first five years, is one of the best known men in the county, and very highly esteemed for the
probity of his character, his prompt and straightforward business habits, and his readiness to
serve the public in any position where it is deemed advisable to place him. He filled the office of
274 UNITED STATES BIOGRAPHICAL DICTIONARY,
city supervisor from 1867 to 1874, when he declined to serve any longer. During that period he
represented Lake county one term in the Illinois legislature, and in the spring of 1877 was elected
mayor, and by continuous reelections was kept at the head of the municipality of Waukegan for
four years, discharging his duties with great satisfaction to the public.
Mr. Dodge is one of the fathers of the republican party, which he helped organize in this state
near the close of 1854, and he has stood by its colors with unwavering fidelity. He is a Master
Mason; also an Odd-Fellow; and at one time held the office of noble grand in the latter order,
the lodge in Waukegan being now extinct. He is a member of Christ Episcopal Church, and has
filled for many years the office of vestryman; also at one time that of warden. Nobody who
knows him doubts the sincerity of his faith or the purity of his life.
JOHN A. JONES.
SPRINGFIELD.
THAT branch of the Jones family from which the subject of this sketch, John Albert Jones,
descended, was from Wales, Edward Jones, M.D., the great-grandfather of our subject,
coming to this country at the time William Penn came over. He it was who began the settle-
ment of Marion, near Philadelphia. Evan Jones, son of Edward, was also a physician. Evan