C. F. Stearns was born in Chittenden County, Vt., Dec. 9, 1831, and was a son of Hamilton J. and Sophronia Stearns, nee Wheeler, who had a family of three children. His mother died in Clinton County, N.Y., and his father was again married, to Rebecca Mix. Two children were born unto them, viz.:-- Jay H. and Emiline. H.J. Stearns died in Fayette County, Ia. The subject of this memoir became self-supporting at the age of fourteen years, going to Burlington, Vt., where he was apprenticed to the printer's trade. He remained there three years, then went to Framingham, Mass., where he clerked in a general store until 1850, when he returned to his home in Clinton County, N.Y., and engaged in teaching school. In the spring of 1852, accompanied by his brother, he emigrated to the then far and unexplored West, settling in Clayton County. He was employed one year on the Clayton Herald, now the Elkader Journal, then taught school until the spring of 1853, when he engaged as clerk for the Elkader Mill Co. In 1857 he embarked in the mercantile business in Clayton, and in 1864 engaged in the same business in Elkader. He was married in the fall of 1858, to Elizabeth Askew, a native of England, born in January, 1834. To them have been born three children-- Elmore C., Delos H. and Fred. Mr. Stearns is a member of the A.O.U.W., Elkader Lodge, No.44. He has been identified with Clayton County for thirty years, and has seen it develop from a vast, unbroken region into one of the finest counties in the great grain- producing State of Iowa. source: History of Clayton
County, Iowa, 1882, p. 671 |