He is a native of Denmark, born in that country, August 11, 1865. He attended school there, served an apprenticeship at a trade, and was a well qualified worker when he came to the United States at the age of twenty-two. His home since coming to America has been in South Bend. Many years ago he acquired naturalization as an American citizen, and has always voted and has given an intelligent attention to the affairs of his home community. Mr. Nelson has been in the general contracting and building business since 1895. In earlier years his work was general building, and later he built up an organization especially equipped for handling high class commercial buildings and fine homes. Some years ago he took his two sons into partnership, and since then the firm has been John Nelson Company, general contractors and builders. No firm in Indiana has a higher reputation for good work than this. In 1928 they put up a commodious and handsome brick office and work shop at 712 North Niles Street, and they also have a yard there for the assembling of their material and equipment.
Mr. Nelson is a member of the Masonic fraternity and B. P. O. Elks, and is one of the business men enrolled in the South Bend Chamber of Commerce. He and his family belong to the English Lutheran Church. He married Miss Camilla Wilson, who was born in Denmark, but was reared in South Bend. They have three children, the two sons, now associated with their father, being John C. and Ray W. The only daughter, Miss Carrie, is a teacher in the schools of South Bend.
INDIANA ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT Vol. 5
By Charles Roll, A.M.
The Lewis Publishing Company, 1931
HON. HERMAN H. WERBER, city treasurer of Gary, is one of the older residents of that industrial center, and his name is well known there both as a business man and citizen.
Mr. Werber was born in Chicago, Illinois, July 18, 1880, son of Emil and Sophia (Schulty) Werber. His mother died in 1883 and is buried in the Graceland Cemetery at Chicago. She left a family of two sons and two daughters, all of whom are living, Elizabeth, Emil, Herman H. and Julia.
Herman H. Werber received his schooling in the Lincoln Grammar School of Chicago. When he was thirteen he left school and began a career of varied experience in which his own efforts provided him a living and eventually brought him the opportunities of a settled business career. He was a plumber's apprentice and plumber's helper in Chicago for a time. For six years he was a cowboy in Montana, this being followed by another six years as a brakeman with the Sioux Line Railroad out of Bismarck, North Dakota. He also spent three years in the gold mines in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
After this western experience he came to Indiana on May 18, 1908, and first located at Tolleston, an old settled village in Lake County which the following year was annexed to the City of Gary. During the first year he was in the Gary community Mr. Werber did construction work for the American Bridge Company. His chief line of business, however, has been manufacturing soft drinks, and many years ago he established the Werber & Roberts Bottling Works and having acquired the interest of his partner is now the sole owner of that business.
Almost from the time he came to Gary he has been an interested worker in the local Republican party. In 1918 he was elected councilman from the Sixth Ward. In 1922 he was elected a councilman at large, and in the 1929 municipal campaign he was chosen city treasurer. Mr. Werber is a member of Gary Lodge No. 776, A. F. and A. M., B. P. O. Elks and Loyal Order of Moose, is a member of the Commercial Club, formerly was active in Rotary work. His church affiliations are with the St. John's Lutheran Church in Chicago. During the World war he was captain of several of the teams that sold Liberty Bonds and raised funds for other patriotic causes.
He married at Gary, January 19, 1918, Miss Myrtle Elser, daughter of Gustave and Elizabeth (Deidell) Elser. Her father is a member of the police force of the Illinois Steel Mills at Gary. Both her parents are Presbyterians. Mrs. Werber was educated in public schools in Chicago and Gary. She is one of Gary's ablest musicians and has found her time fully taken up by the claims of an extensive clientele of pupils, so that she has had to limit her teaching work to a class of eighty. She completed her musical education in the Chicago Conservatory of Music, where she studied under Professors Weidig and Robein. She is a member of the Professional Woman's Club of Gary and the Civic Music Association. Mr. and Mrs. Werber have one daughter, Geraldine Elizabeth, a pupil in the Horace Mann School at Gary.
INDIANA ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT Vol. 5
By Charles Roll, A.M.
The Lewis Publishing Company, 1931
EDGAR MARVIN WILCOX is an Indiana citizen, a resident of the City of Hammond, but railroad officials and railroad employees in this country and abroad know him as the master mind who invented the Hannauer and Wilcox Car Retarder System. In 1930, seven years after this device was first successfully tested in the Gibson classification yards of the Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad, and after thirty-two other classification yards of a dozen or more great railroad systems had installed the car-retarding device, Mr. Wilcox was awarded the coveted Henderson Gold Medal by the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia in recognition of his contribution to railroad engineering through his invention.
Edgar Marvin Wilcox was a newspaper man by early training and was well on his way to distinction in that field, when he left it to follow the bent of his mechanical genius into practical railroading. He was born at Buffalo, New York, August 13, 1871. His father, Horace Wilcox, who died in 1889, developed a high degree of genius in the newspaper field. He learned the trade of compositor in the office of the Western New Yorker, published at Warsaw, New York. For thirty years he was employed on the editorial staff of the Buffalo Morning Express, finally serving as commercial, marine and financial editor. He also wrote articles of a literary nature under the nom de plume "Silas Farmer."
Horace Wilcox married Mary Harriet Beverly, who died in 1885. Her ancestors came from Holland and were among the early Dutch settlers of the Mohawk Valley at Fort Plain, New York.
Edgar M. Wilcox was graduated from the Buffalo public schools in 1888. At thirteen he was carrying a route of papers for the Buffalo Courier, and has always ascribed to this experience important lessons in promptness and discipline in the face of difficulty. He had to report at three o'clock every morning, and he carried and delivered his papers in spite of snow and zero weather. Later he worked under his father, the commercial editor of The Express, and for a salary of $3.50 a week gathered closing stock quotations at the Board of Trade. With this training he was qualified, when his father died in 1889, to succeed him as commercial and marine editor of the Buffalo Morning Express. He was probably the youngest man in charge of that department in any big newspaper office in the country.
But after a year he gave up his newspaper work to follow his inclination for a mechanical career. He became a car oiler with the Lehigh Valley Railroad, two years later was made a brake inspector, and at the age of twenty-two became assistant foreman of the Buffalo Yards. From that he was promoted to general foreman of the car repair shops and the inspection department of both the freight and passenger cars at Cleveland for the New York Central lines. Three years later he was made traveling car foreman between Cleveland and Buffalo. He held that position at the time the New York Central put on its famous train "The Twentieth Century Limited." The story has often been told of how Mr. Wilcox, on one bitter cold night, bought a gallon of whiskey from a nearby saloon and poured the liquor into the frozen steam line and thereby avoided the possibility of halting the train and transferring the passengers. From traveling car foreman he was promoted to division general foreman, with territory between Toledo and Buffalo. In 1906 he was sent to the Danville division of the New York Central and Indiana Harbor Belt to systematize mechanical work. After this was accomplished he was made division general foreman between Toledo and Chicago. In 1914 he returned to the Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad at its terminal, and that has been the scene of his labors ever since. His official position today is that of master car builder in charge of construction and interchange of freight equipment for the New York Central lines at the Chicago terminal.
But his hobby and enthusiasm over a long period of years has been invention. His daily work with railroad equipment induced him the habit of constant thought, study and experiment with a view to smoothing the difficulties and lightening the labors and dangers and hazards of train operation. In particular, he applied himself to one of the oldest problems of railroading, switching. Long before Mr. Wilcox entered the railroad service the great freight terminals of the different systems had developed extensive "classification yards," where railroad cars received from different lines were sorted out and made up into new trains for destinations near and far. Switching crews comprised a large part of the personnel employed in these yards. Then came the device of the "hump," by which cars were pushed on to an incline and by gravity run out on the different tracks, but each unit of car or cars had to be manned by an individual switchman who operated the hand brakes to control the car in its descent, while other men threw the switches by hand.
To the problems of this situation came Mr. Wilcox with his originating mind. Out of it after many years he perfected his car retarding device. The essential principle of this device is a brake rail, cushioned by springs, set parallel to the track rail, operated electrically or pneumo-electrically, so that the brake rail, at the will of the operator in the towers, is pushed against the flanges of the car wheels, the flanges being compressed between the brake rail and track rail so as to retard the movement of the wheels, and thus the car itself is controlled and guided at the will of the operator.
In the issue of the Chicago Tribune of August 16, 1925, a leader article described the first official demonstration of this device. "The retarding appliance," said the Tribune, "designed and controlled jointly by George Hannauer, vice president of the Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad, and E. M. Wilcox, master technical engineer, has been undergoing tests at the Gibson 'hump' of the Harbor Belt Line since November, 1923. The demonstration yesterday was the first published exhibition of the results it has accomplished.
"The mechanism thus accomplishes the following results: 1. All car riders are eliminated, with a saving at the Gibson yard of the labor of sixty-six men at a wage of ninety- two cents an hour. 2. Cars are spaced more closely than under the old method. 3. Control of cars on grades prevents rough handling and damage claims. 4. Use of an outside braking medium obviates the necessity of preliminary train brake tests."
Mr. Wilcox and his associates did not secure the fruits of their invention without legal complications. It was three years before counter claims had been eliminated and the patent for the car retarding device permanently awarded. The first application for the patent was made December 24, 1923, and the patent was issued January 4, 1927. Early in 1925 the General Railway Signal Company of Rochester, New York, acquired the license to manufacture, sell and install the Hannauer and Wilcox system. Since then, as previously noted, it has been installed in many of the classification freight yards in the country. Employment of the system increases the switching capacity of a classification yard almost threefold, and, as the bestowal of the Henderson Medal indicates, it is regarded by practical railroad men as one of the greatest contributions to the industry during the present century.
Representatives of railroads from allover America and from nearly every foreign country have visited the Gibson yards near Hammond to inspect the actual operation of the Hannauer and Wilcox system. Mr. Wilcox has probably entertained and instructed more foreign notables in the art of the gravity retarder switch than any other individual in the railroad world.
It was inevitable that Mr. Wilcox invention would be regarded as a contribution to "technological unemployment." One of the interesting tributes to the practical success of the car-retarding device is found in an editorial in the literature of the I. W. W., from which the following is an extract: "The latest labor- saving invention in this line, the Wilcox Car Controller, is another step, and a long one, in the same direction. This device, by automatically controlling the cars as they are sent down the hump into the classification yards, will, when fully installed, do away with the rider. At Gibson, Indiana, where this new invention is being tried out, half the riders have already been laid off and the other half will go as soon as the car controller in installed down in the tracks. They are already putting 1,000 cars over in eight hours, with only seven riders. When the installation is completed it will be possible to classify 5,000 cars in twenty-four hours without a single rider." Against, this dire prophecy there is a later comment that the invention has actually caused more men to be employed because of the increased movement of freight, the roster of employees for the Belt Line alone being the largest in the history of that road. At the same time there has been a remarkable reduction in the death and casualty list.
Mr. Wilcox in addition to his official position with the Indiana Harbor Belt Railroad Company and as president of the Hannauer Car Retarder Company is a director of the Gibson Railroad Y. M. C. A. As a young man, from 1884 to 1888, he was a member of the Cadet Corps of the Sixty-fifth Regiment, New York National Guard. During the World war he was in charge of the railroad division of the Military Intelligence Auxiliary Department. He is a member of the American Miltary Engineers, is a Republican voter, is affiliated with the Lodge, Royal Arch Chapter, Knight Templar Commandery and Mystic Shrine of the Masons, the B. P. O. Elks and the Independent Order of Forresters. He is a member of the Shrine Club of the Orak Temple at Hammond, and a member of the Christian Science Church.
Mr. Wilcox married in 1892, at Buffalo, Mary Comstock, daughter of Lewis and Mary Comstock, of Sardinia, New York. Her father, who was a descendant of the Earl of Comstock of England, was a non-commissioned officer under General Sheridan at the famous battle of Cedar Creek, when Sheridan made his ride. Lewis Comstock was member of a New York regiment. Mr. and Mrs. Wilcox have three children. The oldest, Marvin Edgar Wilcox, now superintendent of the car department of the Boston & Maine Railroad, married Lois Harrington, a descendant of the early pioneer Harrington family of Concord, Massachusetts, and through her mother a descendant of President Tyler. The second son, Dr. Clarence Howard Wilcox, a practicing physician at Hammond, married a daughter of Dr. Koons, of Newcastle, Indiana. Mr. Wilcox' only daughter, Aurilla May Wilcox, is the wife of Harry F. Derner, of Hammond. Mr. Derner was a non-commissioned officer in Headquarters Company, Fifty-fifth Artillery, and was in the American Expeditionary Forces from March 25, 1918, to January 22, 1919. He served in the second battle of the Marne, in the operations on the Vesle, and in the Meuse-Argonne offensive.
INDIANA ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT Vol. 5
By Charles Roll, A.M.
The Lewis Publishing Company, 1931
LEVI IGLEHEART, SR., was the common ancestor of the modern generations of that family in Vanderburgh and adjacent counties. Students of social origins as an element in the destiny of states and nations as well as families may examine with profit his life as man and citizen. (It will be noticed that a variation in the spelling of the family name has occurred. The head of the Indiana branch of that family, Levi Igleheart, Sr., spelled his name with an “e” in the last syllable, while various branches of the same family from an earlier period omitted that letter.)
Levi Igleheart, Sr., the fifth son of John Igleheart of Prince Georges County, Maryland, was born August 13, 1786, and died in Warrick County, Indiana, December 12, 1855.
His mother was Mary DeNune Igleheart, daughter of Dr. Richard DeNune of a French Huguenot settlement near Baltimore, and Dr. Richard DeNune's wife, the mother of Mary, was a Miss Hall, daughter of Captain Hall of the Virginia Colonial Militia.
He married Ann Taylor and in 1816 moved from Maryland to Ohio County, Kentucky, where he resumed his farming activities. He was comfortably situated as a farmer in Ohio County, with his farm cleared and paid for, with good improvements, when a stranger appeared and exhibited an overlapping survey, which entitled him to the possession of the land as the real owner but which under the laws of Virginia and Kentucky at that time did not have to be recorded, and of which he had no notice. It was just such an occurrence which drove Daniel Boone from the State of Kentucky through the loss of his entire farm with all improvements.
Levi Igleheart, Sr., vacated his farm and moved to the State of Indiana and settled in Warrick County, a short distance east of the British Settlement in Vanderburgh County, which extended into Warrick, Gibson and Posey counties adjoining. There is reason to believe that proximity to the British Settlement was an inducement to the elder Igleheart to settle with his family, as the leading families of the British Settlement had brought with them into the wilderness, British ideals, correct speech, musical and literary culture, with church opportunities, and all three of Mr. Igleheart's sons found their wives in the British Settlement and two out of five of his daughters found their husbands there. One of the daughters, Harriett, who found her husband in the British Settlement, married John Erskine, a farmer in the British Settlement in Vanderburgh County, and by this marriage was reared a large and influential family. Among the descendants are Annie Fellows Johnston and Albion Fellows Bacon, well known in American literature.
In 1825 Levi Igleheart, Sr., was appointed Magistrate in Warrick County and was elected by the Board of Magistrates to be its president, and retained that position until after 1830, when the law changed and the duties of the Board of Magistrates, which involved charge and management of the finances of the county, were transferred to the Board of County Commissioners, composed of three members and Levi Igleheart, Sr., was repeatedly chosen by election of the people of the county to be one of those commissioners. The Board of Magistrates of the county as financial managers of the county was an adoption by the early Indiana Legislature of the old Virginia custom, where the plantation owners, as magistrates, controlled their public local affairs and it was under that system that Levi Igleheart, Sr., became chairman of the Board of Magistrates of Warrick County.
His sons were Asa, Levi, Jr., and William T.
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INDIANA ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT Vol. 5
By Charles Roll, A.M.
The Lewis Publishing Company, 1931
LESLIE T. IGLEHEART. More than one hundred years ago there came into the almost virgin mid-west of America a group of pioneers-country folk from Prince Georges County, Maryland. As a result of that migration, Levi Igleheart, the father of Leslie T. Igleheart, was born in what was virtually a frontier' country. When Levi Igleheart was four years of age his parents removed to Warrick County, Indiana, from Ohio County, Kentucky, where they had first taken up their residence after leaving their Maryland home. In 1844, he married Susanna Ingle of Inglefield, Indiana, a member of the Ingle family which has been prominent in Vanderburgh County for four generations.
Leslie T. Igleheart was born in Warrick County, Indiana, on July 3, 1848. He had reached the age of five years when his father decided to leave the Warrick County home and remove to Evansville. In 1853 Levi Igleheart joined with the Little Brothers in the establishment of a saw mill in Evansville which at that time was a considerable lumber center with quite a business in hard woods. Three years later Levi Igleheart with his two brothers established the flour milling firm of Igleheart Bros.
Leslie T. Igleheart attended the public schools of Evansville and then obtained higher education at Asbury (now DePauw) University at Greencastle, Indiana. After he completed his school work he represented the Igleheart Brothers' (now General Foods Corporation) interests in the Yosemite Flour Mills. Later the mill was destroyed by fire and soon afterward he became interested in the establishment of the Melrose Mills. It was operated for fifteen years after which period of time fire again occurred and that plant was destroyed.
In, 1904 the death of Levi Igleheart occurred and the three sons took over the father's interests and Leslie T. Igleheart became president of the Igleheart Brothers mill, which office he held for twenty-two years. In 1920 there was a merger of the Igleheart firm with the Postum Cereal Company, and Mr. Igleheart retired from active business. However, the business still continues under the name of Igleheart Brothers, Incorporated, and its products, chief among which are the "Swansdown" brands, are known throughout the world.
Mr. Igleheart was married on January 20th, 1874, to Miss Lizzie H. Giltner, of Chillicothe, Missouri. Two sons were born, Levi Giltner Igleheart and Jobn Giltner Igleheart. The elder son, Levi, passed away in 1909. John Giltner Igleheart, the other son, now resides in Evansville, Indiana. He has two sons, namely, Leslie Derthick Igleheart and John Giltner Igleheart, Jr.
Mr. Igleheart quietly carried on several worthy philanthropic enterprises. Chief of his interests in this respect was his attention to the needs of Evansville College, the Deaconess Hospital and to Trinity Methodist Church, with which the family is affiliated.
Leslie T. Igleheart died September 27, 1930. The death of his widow followed November 1, 1930.
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INDIANA ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT Vol. 5
By Charles Roll, A.M.
The Lewis Publishing Company, 1931
JOHN EUGENE IGLEHART, member of the Indiana bar since September, 1869, and president emeritus of the Southwestern Indiana Historical Society, has had a career distinguished both by the intensity of his devotion to his profession and by the extent of his interests and contacts outside the field of the law. Long ago he achieved high rank in his chosen vocation. Professional success acted as a spur rather than as a halter in his attitude toward matters not directly concerned with his career. His home community of Evansville has long been under obligation to him for varied and useful public activities and services. But a still wider public, not Indiana alone, have felt and expressed a sense of obligation to his scholarship and patient investigation in the factual details and the generalizations which have resulted in a revision of older estimates as to Southern Indiana's place and influence in the history of the Middle West.
Mr. Iglehart's career and work must be appraised in the light of the statements made in this brief introductory paragraph. Only in that way can the true inwardness of his consecutive experiences, positions held, and professional and public services, as described in the following paragraphs be revealed. When Mr. Iglehart was called to the bar he immediately became associated with his father, one of Indiana's great lawyers and jurists, concerning whom something should be said before introducing the life of the son.
The Iglehart family came to Southern Indiana and settled in Warrick County in 1823. At that time Judge Asa Iglehart was five years of age. He was born December 8, 1817, in Ohio County, Kentucky, son of Levi (vide supra) and Ann (Taylor) Iglehart, who had crossed the mountains from Maryland about 1815. Out of his personal recollections written down many years later, Asa Iglehart contributed some important pictures of the environment in which not only he grew up, but which was similar in many respects to, that which encompassed the boyhood of Abraham Lincoln. Judge Iglehart with his brothers and sisters, found his chief intellectual stimulus in the encouragement of his mother, rather than in the formal advantages of the winter terms of school. The early Methodist preachers were generally better educated than most of the people in the country, and their presence and conversation served to stimulate the Iglehart children to seek for better educational opportunities.
Asa Iglehart after his marriage to Ann Cowle continued to live on his farm, also taught school, but at the same time was diligently pursuing the study of law and was admitted to the bar at the age of thirty-two. In 1849 he removed to Evansville. In 1854 he was appointed common pleas judge and later was elected without opposition to the same office. He rose rapidly in his profession, enjoyed a profitable income, and his abilities brought him in association with Indiana's other eminent lawyers. He helped organize the first state bar association and was second president, and was one of the original promoters of the Bar Association of the United States. For many years he was an editorial contributor to the Central Law Journal. He revised McDonald's Treatise for justices in Indiana, later known as Iglehart's Treatise. He also prepared an original work on Pleading and Practice in Indiana. The portion of the work on pleading that is an adaptation of pleading as it exists at the common law, to the law in Indiana under the code, is a concise elementary discussion which has always remained an invaluable text book of the law in Indiana.
Judge Asa Iglehart died February 5, 1887. Among concise estimates of his work as a lawyer one of the best is found in the resolutions prepared by the Evansville bar: "As a commercial and corporation lawyer he was without a peer in Indiana. As a special pleader he had no rival. He was master of all the branches and intricacies of our jurisprudence. For twenty-five years he was the leader of a bar made famous by the names of Blythe, Jones, Chandler, Baker, Law and others, dead and living. In the history of Indiana, Asa Iglehart will always rank with Willard, Judah, Morton and Hendricks, as one of her great men." The eminent Judge Gresham wrote of him: "I have met few men who had greater power of analysis, and, just now, I can recall no one who examined and briefed a case better."
One of the dominant forces of his life was his complete faith in the great verities of revealed religion. He was an earnest churchman, for many years a trustee of DePauw University and also a trustee of the Evansville public schools.
The names of his children were: Ferdinand C., who married Nannie D. Stewart; John Eugene, who married Locke W. Holt; and Ann who married Edwin Taylor. John E. Iglehart’s children are: Eugene H., who married Emily Powers; Ann, who married John Ingle Jr.; Lockie Holt, who married Charles Humphry; and Joseph H., who married Gertrude Townley.
Anne Cowle Iglehart, mother of John E. Iglehart, was born in England December 27, 1817, and was in her fifth year when she came with her widowed mother and two small brothers to join the first British settlement in Indiana. Her mother’s brother, John Ingle, was one of the founders of this British settlement and platted its capital, Saundersville.
John Ingle of Somersham, Huntingdonshire, England, a Baptist minister, was the father of John Ingle of Saundersville, who platted the Town of Saundersville in 1819 and who was the ancester of two of the three wives of the original three Igleheart brothers, while John Ingle of Somersham was the common ancestor of all three wives of the elder Iglehearts, resulting from the fact that Asa Iglehart married Ann Cowle, whose widowed mother, Sarah Ingle Cowle, a sister of John Ingle of Saundersville, came to him in the British Settlement in 1822, bringing three small children, one of whom was Ann Cowle, the niece of John Ingle of Saundersville, who later married Asa Iglehart.
On the burial plot on the old Ingle homestead at Saundersville, is a memorial tablet, inscribed with letters in bronze, which reads as follows:
Mr. Iglehart pursued this investigation further in his admirable address (published by the Indiana Historical Society) on The Environment of Abraham Lincoln in Indiana, which illustrates the method of his historical work and corrects many popular misconceptions as to the social and intellectual character of the pioneers of Southwestern Indiana. The significance of this address has been well understood by historians, and the comments made by Miss Tarbell will not be out of place in this connection. In a letter to Mr. Iglehart, she wrote:
"It places and gives an importance to the subject which it seems to me never to have had before. I think it will force future biographers to concede that there were big and inspiring influences exerted directly or indirectly on Lincoln in the period that he lived in Indiana. There was an abundance of character and high notions of life in the atmosphere of Southwestern Indiana when young Lincoln lived there, and you cannot make me believe that he did not respond to what was in the air."
John Eugene Iglehart was born in Campbell Township, Warrick County, August 10, 1848, and was about a year old when his father removed to Evansville. He was a pupil there in the public schools before Evansville had any public school buildings. While he was in high school it was his good fortune to come under the instruction of some very capable teachers, and he completed the four year course in three years. His studious tastes and habits followed him when he entered in September, 1865, Asbury (now DePauw) University, and there too he rounded out his four years of work in three, graduating in June, 1868. He immediately entered his father's law office and a little over a year later was admitted to the bar on reaching his twenty-first birthday. In 1874 he was admitted to practice before the Supreme Court of the United States. As a partner of his father he came to know a great number of the older generation of lawyers then practicing in Southwestern Indiana. For ten years he engaged wholly in the general practice of the law. His father at the same time was consulting counsel for the only railroad coming into Evansville. As other railroads concentrated at that center, the work of the firm became increasingly heavy in handling railroad matters. During the period of the Mackey control of the Evansville and Terre Haute Railroad Company, beginning about 1881, Mr. Iglehart was put in charge of the legal department of the system and acted as general counsel throughout the time of the Mackey control and for thirty years was general counsel of the Evansville and Terre Haute Railroad allied lines. When the Evansville and Terre Haute in 1912 was consolidated with the Chicago & Eastern Illinois Railroad, with general office in Chicago, the office of district attorney was created and was filled by Iglehart and Taylor. Mr. Iglehart's associate was his brother-in-law, Mr. Edwin Taylor, who had previously been associated with him for a number of years. Mr. Taylor died in 1922, but Mr. Iglehart has been retained as district attorney, though in later years his service has been almost entirely of an advisory nature.
Like his father before him Mr. Iglehart has always been deeply interested in the subject of education. For twenty years he was a member of the board of trustees of DePauw University, served as a trustee of the City of Evansville and was instrumental in maintaining a private girls' school until the privileges of the Evansville High School in preparation for college were opened to girls as well as boys.
Since 1916 Mr. Iglehart's time and general capacities have been largely devoted to historical research and the promotion of historical activities in his section of the state. He organized and became chairman of the Evansville Centennial Historical Commission to cooperate with the state-wide program for celebrating the centennial of Indiana's admission to the Union. During the World war period most of the municipal effort was absorbed by patriotic activities, excluding general historical work but at its close he was chiefly instrumental as a continuation of work already begun in organizing in January, 1920, the Southwestern Indiana Historical Society, which, specializing its work in one quarter of the state, has sponsored and in some cases has been directly responsible for some of the most dignified historical research in any section of the Ohio River valley. In connection with these activities Mr. Iglehart collected the material which he wove into magazine articles and society addresses and papers, some of which had been published separately, including his work on the first British settlement, also a history of The Beginning of Methodism, both of which were published in the Indiana Magazine of History, others in Historical Bulletins published by the State. He was also editor for the History of Vanderburgh County, published in 1923, and contributed, himself, some of the most valuable material found in this publication.
In the domain of historical research, Mr. Iglehart for a number of years has been recognized as an independent scholar and as a valuable co-worker with some of America's foremost historians. The outstanding American authority on the history of the Middle West, and particularly the influence of the frontier, Dr. Frederick Jackson Turner has repeatedly acknowledged Mr. Iglehart's authority in everything pertaining to the "Lincoln country" in Southern Indiana. Many, other eminent scholars have acknowledged their debt to the helpfulness of Mr. Iglehart, including Charles G. Vannest, author of Lincoln The Hoosier, who obtained most of his material. from the Southwestern Indiana Historical Society and says that without the aid furnished by Mr. Iglehart the book could not have been written. Doctor Turner in a letter to Mr. Iglehart commenting upon the Vannest book pays him a tribute which among historical investigators is perhaps the highest meed of praise: "At any: rate, you and such followers as this author have redeemed Southern Indiana from much misconception in respect to its early society.
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INDIANA ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS OF AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT Vol. 5
By Charles Roll, A.M.
The Lewis Publishing Company, 1931
