Charles H. Thomas

THOMAS, TAYLOR, BROWN

Posted By: S. Ferrall (email)
Date: 11/9/2004 at 04:16:43

Charles H. Thomas
Member of the State Board of Education , was born in Warren county, Illinois, September 29, 1860, of Welsh and Scotch parentage. The father served in the Mexican war under General Zachary Taylor, a blood relative of the mother of this sketch. Mathew and Emaline Thomas moved to Union county, Iowa, in 1876 and the son completed his education in the Cromwell public school. A twenty he left the farm to enter business and has been actively engaged in mercantile life since, twenty-one years of it in lumber, hardware and banking at Kent, where he served ten years on the local school board. He first proposed the name and the route of the "Blue Grass Trail" across Iowa from Burlington to Coucil Bluffs. Represented Union, Ringgold and Decatur counties in the state senate 1913 to 1917. Author of the original Iowa "blue sky law," "teachers' minimum wage law," the prohibitory amendment voted on in 1918. In an extremely close three-cornered contest in the primary in 1916 he barely missed the republican nomination for state treasurer. Removed to Creston in 1916, where he is the senior member of the Creston Hardware Co. and one of the leading business men of the city. Married in 1886 to Miss Jemima I. Brown. Four children, Grace E., Hobart M., Mary I. and Carnot H., make up the family circle. A Methodist in church affiliation and an active republican in politics.

-source: Official Register, State of Iowa 1921-1922, Twenty-Ninth Number, Biographies of State Officers, pg. 307

-transcribed by Sharyl Ferrall (not related to subject)