ALFRED HEBARD

HEBARD

Posted By: Jake Tornholm (email)
Date: 4/23/2020 at 13:28:30

ALFRED HEBARD, capitalist, and present State Senator, is a pioneer of Red Oak. He was born in Windham county, Vermont, May 10, 1810. His parents were Augustus and Bathslieba (Leonard) Hebard; they were descended from early families of the colony of Connecticut.

The subject of this notice prepared for college at home and at Plainfield Academy,
and graduated from Yale in the class of 1832. Men who afterward became famous were members of his class in college, including Cassius M. Clay of Kentucky, Hon. Allen T. Carpenter, who afterward became United States Senator, and others who attained national distinction. For two years after graduating Mr. Hebard was engaged in teaching in Edgehill Seminary, at Princeton, New Jersey, and then took charge of a school for boys in New London, Connecticut. In 1841 he married Ann M. Huntington of New London. This union has been blessed with four children, two of whom are deceased. Those living are Augustus H., an iron merchant in St. Louis, Missouri, and Mary S., who is still at home. After teaching for a few years Mr. Hebard engaged in civil engineering on a newly projected railroad line, and began a log cabin near the present city of Burlington, Iowa, in 1837, where he lived for fifteen years. In 1853 he made the preliminary survey of the Burlington & Missouri River railway across the State of Iowa, and fifteen years later the road was built on the line that he laid out. He was a member of the legislature held at Burlington. During the war of the Rebellion he operated in the Government
civil engineering service in Missouri and Tennessee,"and spent some time after the close of the war,in the constructing of railroad in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama. He settled at Red Oak in 1868, and in 1875 was elected to the State Senate. In 1878 he was one of the two United States Commissioners to the World’s Fair or International Exposition at Paris, and made a tour of Europe before returning home. In 1879 he was re-elected to the Senate and was continued in that body for several terms. He is one of the representative citizens of Iowa, and a man of
marked ability.