Blackford County Biography Ref. Page

ISAAC R. WAGGONER. To those who love the soil and the fruits thereof, Pleasant Valley Gardens is an attractive, luring title, suggesting good things for those who have appetite for two or three meals each day— and that means about everybody. In Grant county Pleasant Valley Gardens also suggests their founder and enterprising owner, Isaac R. Waggoner.

Mr. Waggoner is a native of Wabash county, Indiana, born near Lincolnville, June 23, 1866. But as soon as he reached his majority he located in Marion, and is now well known to the business community. His wife, Mrs. Waggoner was Miss Lizzie Nixon, from the same community in Wabash county. They were married May 26, 1888, while he was in the employ of Frank Carlson as a market gardener. The children born to Mr. and Mrs. Waggoner are: Miss Anna Waggoner; Miriam who is the wife of William Bodkins and they have one child, Robert William: Georgia, who is the wife of Virgil Bodkins; Harry Bryan Waggoner and twin sisters, Ruth and Ruby Waggoner. Some of Mr. Waggoner's relatives have been with him as gardeners, but as a family, they all belong to Wabash county.

Mr. Waggoner worked only one year for Mr. Carlson, when he acquired a knowledge of and liking for the business, and his career as a gardener on his own account was begun at the old Boots Mill site—bottom land along the Mississinewa, and then he moved to Wabash county, where he gardened for two years, still supplying his Marion wholesale vegetable trade. But the distance was against him and he returned to Grant county. At this time he located at the Barley Mill, a short distance below the old Boot Mill site. Pleasant Valley was the sign on that old mill, since torn down and rebuilt on the J. L. Barley farm in Franklin township as a barn. He appropriated the name, the garden land being on both sides of the river, and when he later bought the present Pleasant Valley, part of it had been operated by him as a garden for several years. When Mr. Waggoner first located there he hauled all the garden products through the river and there was always danger connected with delivery, but he prospered and acquired his present home up the hill from the first bottoms along the Mississinewa where he has developed one of the best garden spots in Indiana. The Washington-Pleasant range line passes through the garden, but at that point the Mississinewa is the boundary and the property is taxed in Washington and Mr. Waggoner is a Washington township voter. He has 64 acres in high and low lands, and the high land is adapted to small fruits, as the lowlands to vegetables.

The Mississinewa is both his friend and his enemy, and alluvial soil is the nature of the garden. Mr. Waggoner has installed the Skinner irrigation system, utilizing electric power from the Marion Light and Heating Company direct, and each year he will add to his system of pipe lines until he will no longer be dependent upon the weatherman—sunshine being as frequent as showers in Pleasant Valley.

While Mr. Waggoner is an all-around gardener he has two specialties, strawberries and canteloupes, and the Waggoner canteloupe is very much in demand on the Chicago market. While he has always supplied wholesale trade—Marion dealers—Mr. Waggoner was friendly toward the new-market house proposition and engaged a stand there, but the first season found him still supplying dealers, with neither time nor stock for a stall on the city market. He has always made a specialty of green corn, but the telephone orders from Marion grocers more than consume his product. In short, the man who started market gardening without a dollar and with debt confronting him, has succeeded in business, and he is now a factor in the commercial world of Marion—controls the situation from the standpoint of fruit and vegetables. There are two small green houses and extensive cold frames for propagation purposes, and cement has served an excellent purpose in their construction. The home is lighted with electricity, and the irrigation is accomplished that way, and in time other use will be made of the power. There is a wind pump, and a water system had been installed before the electricity was utilized at Pleasant Valley.

It is only a short walk from Pleasant Valley to the interurban car, but for seven months of the year while there is produce to market the Pleasant Valley wagons are seen about the streets—though in winter the family use the cars. There is rugged scenery—Mississinewa hills, and a winding road from the house to the garden, and picturesque is the word that describes the place, and Mr. and Mrs. Waggoner fully understand how their present comfortable situation has been attained, and they are still laboring as hard as when it was more incumbent upon them. The telephone orders are received from the house or from an extension phone in one of the vegetable packing sheds in the garden, and Pleasant Valley is one of the most profitable farm investments in Grant county—the profit coming from strict attention to all the details of the fruit and vegetable trade—a business that requires careful and sensible management. Mr. Waggoner has made an eminent success of it.

"BLACKFORD AND GRANT COUNTIES INDIANA, A CHRONICLE OF THEIR PEOPLE PAST AND PRESENT WITH FAMILY LINEAGE AND PERSONAL MEMOIRS"; Complied Under the Editorial Supervision of BENJAMIN G. SHINN; vol. II ; THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY; CHICAGO AND NEW YORK; 1914
Submitted by:Peggy Karol and Karen Overholt

SAMUEL WISE. Material prosperity has long been in the possession of Samuel Wise. Mr. Wise has earned all that he has ever acquired, and few men have performed a more skillful and industrious part in the life and activities of Jefferson township during the last thirty or forty years than this citizen, who combines a large industry as a farmer with practice of his trade as a blacksmith and machinist, his home being in section seventeen. A large dwelling house and barn are features of his place which attract attention first of all, and about these buildings his well cultivated fields, his high grade and well kept stock all indicate the thrifty and efficient character of the proprietor. Mr. Wise started out with very little more than the average young man of his time had on arriving at manhood, has made a remarkable record of increasing his possessions, and all his accumulations represent his industry and honorable dealing.

Samuel Wise comes from an old Pennsylvania family of Dutch ancestry, and some of its connections were the Viglers and Shaeffers of Center county, Pennsylvania. Samuel Wise, grandfather of Samuel, was born in Center county, Pennsylvania, about one hundred years ago. His early life was spent in his native vicinity, and as a trade he choose woodworking and became a skilled carpenter and joiner. After he came to Indiana, he made practically all the furniture for his home, and it was much superior in design and stability to the average furnishings of Grant county homes in those days. In Center county he married a Miss Shaffer, and all their four sons were born in that county, namely: John, Jacob, Henry, and Samuel. In 1847, the family came to Pennsylvania, and with one horse and a wagon journeyed slowly overland to Indiana, until they reached Grant county. There Daniel Wise first located on a rugged farm in Mill township, and a few years later bought one hundred and sixty acres of land in Jefferson township. This purchase was in section five of that township, and there he applied himself vigorously to the clearing and improvement and cultivation of his land, until with the aid of his wife he had made an excellent farm. The four sons grew up on that place, and the parents finally retired and spent their declining years in the home of their son Jacob. Both were in the fullness of years when death came to them. They were of the fine old type represented by the pioneer, kindly neighbors, upright in all their actions, and left behind them the heritage of a good name. Only one of their sons, Henry, is still living, a well known farmer at Gas City. Samuel died unmarried when twenty-six years of age, and John died some years ago, leaving a family.

Jacob Wise, father of Samuel, was born in Center county, Pennsylvania, in 1833, and was fourteen years old when the family migration was accomplished to Grant county. On reaching manhood he started out to make his own way, and chose farming as his vocation. He was always regarded as one of the most substantial and successful men in his locality, and eventually acquired a large property. After giving all his children a good start he still had two hundred acres, which is now owned and occupied by his widow. Her maiden name was Elizabeth Marine, a sister of Daniel Marine, prominent family in Grant county, whose history is given in greater detail on other pages. Mrs. Jacob Wise is now seventy-eight years of age. Jacob Wise died on the old homestead in section four of Jefferson township, in the fall of 1909.

Samuel Wise was born on his father's farm in Jefferson township, December 8, 1856. As a boy he attended the public schools when school was in session, and in the holidays and vacation pursued a quite rigid course of duty about the home. On growing up, and after his marriage, he bought eighty acres of land in section seventeen, and there made his start, and that place has been the scene of his most successful achievements. Farming and stock raising were the businesses to which he gave all his attention for a number of years, and as he acquired a little surplus he reinvested in land, increased his estate to one hundred and sixty acres. At the present time his farm has four different sets of buildings, is well provided and equipped for tenant farming. Probably no land in Jefferson township is graded to a higher degree of productiveness, and yet with better care for its future fertility, than the Wise farm. His own home has a good dwelling house and excellent barns. A number of years ago, after getting well started as a farmer, Mr. Wise set up on his own land a little shop in order to perform his own blacksmithing. In that trade he had had a little experience, and possessing a natural aptitude for mechanical work, he soon proved himself adept. From doing work for his own convenience, there soon came a demand from his neighbors for help in this way. Thus his trade grew as a matter of personal accommodation, until it became necessary for him to devote practically his entire time and attention, and he set up a shop twenty-five by thirty feet and equipped it with all the appliances for high-grade custom blacksmithing. Since then Mr. Wise has been a blacksmith, first of all, though in the background he has his large farm, and keeps an eye on its cultivation and the raising of his stock, although the actual work is necessarily performed by outside labor. Mr. Wise many years ago made a reputation for his skill in the mending of boilers and tubes, and as his reliability in repairing that very delicate class of machinery became better known he was sent for frequently to use his services in different sections of the county and even beyond the limits of Grant county. Mr. Wise was married in May, 1882, to Miss Sarah Ellen Bole. Mrs. Wise, who has well dignified her place as a wife, and whose many acts of kindliness and charity have given her a place of affection in the community, was born in Jefferson township in 1853, a daughter of George Bole, and of one of the old and well known families of Grant county. George Bole was born in Ohio, came to Grant county at an early day, was a farmer in Jefferson township, where he passed away when more than sixty years of age. Mr. and Mrs. Wise have no children, and are members of the Christian church, while in political faith he is a Democrat.

GEORGE HAINES. Grant county has its many beautiful and valuable farm estates, some of which have been under one name since the pioneer era of this region. George Haines occupies a portion of the land which was settled by his father nearly seventy years ago, and has himself been closely identified with Monroe township for over forty years. As a farmer and stockman he has made a fine record and he bears a name which has always been associated with honest industry and unimpeachable integrity, in this county.

George Haines was born on the Haines farm in section eight of Monroe township, April 15, 1850, a son of James and Nancy W. (Smith) Haines, both of whom were natives of Fayette county, Ohio, where they were reared and married. The father, who was born March 14, 1818, and died in March, 1884, came to Grant county in 1844, and filed a claim on one hundred and sixty acres of government land. He did not settle on that place because of its low situation and the water which stood in great lakes over its surface at the time. He bought forty acres on a higher level, cleared off the woods, and erected a cabin of round logs, which furnished the first home of the Haines family in Grant county. At the time of his settlement there were no roads in the vicinity, and he and his family had to contend with many pioneer conditions and hardships. Despite his hard beginning, James Haines prospered and at one time was owner of about nine hundred acres of land. As his children became of age he gave to each one a farm, and provided liberally for those dependent upon him, and always exercised a wholesome influence in the life of the community. He was a Mason from the time he became of age, and was also a communicant of the Methodist church. The seven children in his family were named as follows: Mrs. Susanna Boiler, a widow residing in Monroe township; Mrs. Rebecca E. Kelley, now deceased, who lived in Blackford county; Milton, deceased; George; Samuel, of Van Buren; Alfred, on the old homestead in Monroe township; and Constantine, of Alhambra, California.

George Haines was educated in the district schools of Monroe township, and as his father was in more than ordinary circumstances, he also enjoyed the advantages of the town schools, attending the institution at Marion taught by William and Bina Russell, during 1868-69 and 1870. After that he served a period as school teacher for three terms, teaching in the number one school in Jefferson township, in number two in Pleasant township, and number one in Monroe township. When he became of age his father gave him one hundred and twenty acres of land, and the son afterwards paid a part of the value of this to his father. Since that original acquisition he has added four hundred and forty acres, making his estate now a farm of five hundred and sixty acres, lying in sections four, five, eight and nine of Monroe township. His home is situated on section five. About 1876 he added eighty acres adjoining his first place and then bought seventy acres nearby. In 1885 he purchased the interests of some of the heirs in the home farm, and in 1888 bought one hundred and sixty acres of land. He personally manages and farms all but one hundred and sixty acres on section four, which is conducted under a tenant. His home dwelling is a large white frame house, a very attractive home, comprising eleven rooms and erected in 1885. Back of it is situated a large red barn, forty by seventy-five feet and built in 1885. The farm in section four also has good barns and a dwelling house. Mr. Haines is one of the large crop raisers of Monroe township, and in 1912 his record for production was two thousand bushels of corn, two thousand bushels of oats, and sixty tons of hay. On his farm Mr. Haines has about forty head of cattle, and one hundred hogs, using eight horses for the farm work. He markets each year about one hundred and twenty-five hogs.

In the spring of 1885, Mr. Haines married Miss Margaret Benbow, a daughter of Thomas Benbow. Six children were born to their marriage, four of whom are now living, namely: Lena J., at home; Benjamin, deceased; Willis W., at home; Wilmont, in school, at Muncie; one that died in infancy; and Geneva Beatrice. Mr. Haines is a Republican in politics, and he and his family worship in the Christian church.

BYRON L. BUNKER. How farming pays under the direction of an energetic and able agriculturist is well illustrated in the activities of Byron L. Bunker of Monroe township. Mr. Bunker, though reared and in early life following farming was for many years engaged in contracting and a few years ago invested his means and resumed the work which constituted his first love in his vocations of life. At the present time he has almost a model estate in Monroe township, situated in section eleven. It is on the Arcana gravel road, where he is the owner of one hundred and sixty acres of land, all in cultivation except a timber lot of eight acres. During 1912 he produced three thousand bushels of corn which at the prevailing price was worth a good deal of money, though he sold none of his grain, feeding it all to his stock. He also had a crop of thirty tons of hay during that year. In 1912 he sent one hundred and eighty swine to market, and from this source alone it is not difficult to estimate that the income of the Bunker farm is a very large one. In 1913 his crops comprised seventy acres of corn, sixty acres of oats, and other smaller crops. At this writing he has one hundred and thirty hogs on his farm, and he raises all the grain needed to grow and fatten them for the market. During this year he is also renting eighty acres besides his own place. Mr. Bunker and family reside in a comfortable brick house of eight rooms and it is in many respects as comfortable as the average city home and is heated by steam and has all the facilities for family life on a modern and attractive basis.

Byron L. Bunker was born February 1, 1862, in Wayne county, Indiana, a son of Francis F. Bunker, who was born in 1840 and died in 1890. He was a native of North Carolina, and his father Thomas Bunker came from North Carolina and settled in Wayne county, during the pioneer period. During the Civil war Francis F. Bunker was for four years a Union soldier, having enlisted from Wayne County, and going through the war as a valiant defender of the integrity of the state. After the war he moved to Jay county, where he bought the farm, on which he spent the balance of his life. The maiden name of his wife was Lorena Hunt of Wayne county, who died in 1873 at the age of thirty-two years. By this marriage there were four children, namely: Alpha Retta, deceased; Byron L., Thomas Sheridan, of Jay county; Ira, who died at the age of seventeen, and one that died in infancy. The father for his second wife married Angeline Johnson, whose six children were Alice, May, deceased, Evi, Myrtle, Orvall, and Garfield. The second wife died when thirty years old, and Francis F. Bunker then married Alvira Votaw, who died in the spring of 1911.

Byron L. Bunker grew up in Jay county, where he attended the local schools, and when twenty-one years of age left home, married and for two years operated a farm belonging to his father. In 1885 he moved out to Kansas during the boom period in that state, but remained as a contender against the adversities of the west for only two years, and in 1887 returned to his home state. For several years he was engaged in contract work of grading roads and highways. Then for about eight years he was employed by the Marion Gas Company. In 1902 he began taking contracts for the laying of pipe lines, and laid one line from Marion to LaFontain, another from Marion to near Fairmount and relaid the line at Jefferson, Ohio. He then went to Canada, where he was engaged in laying one hundred miles of pipe line. Returning to Indiana in 1907, he bought sixty acres of land near Sweetser. In the same year he bought twenty-four acres near Hanfield, and soon afterwards bought thirty-two acres adjoining. All of this land he sold in 1911, and then came to Monroe township, where he bought his present estate of one hundred and sixty acres. Mr. Bunker has won his success by his own efforts, and has demonstrated that it is possible to pay a high price for agricultural land and still prosper as a result of its energetic management. For the land near Sweetser he paid one hundred and forty-three dollars an acre. He broke the record of land sales in Grant county, when he sold this for two hundred and five dollars per acre. He also sold part of his land near Hanfield, 47 acres, making a thousand dollars on the deal. For his present farm in Monroe township he paid one hundred and twenty-five dollars an acre, and as a result of his various improvements, it is now worth considerably more.

By his first marriage which occurred in 1883, Mr. Bunker had four children, namely: Charles Arthur, of Kansas City; Walter B., of Kansas City; Fred B., who is with the Marion Gas Company; and Mrs. Flossie Harper, of Portland, Indiana. April 16, 1904, Mr. Bunker married Lillian St. Clair, of Marion, a daughter of William St. Clair. Mr. Bunker has seven grandchildren, six living. James Byron died when an infant; Kearney Richardson and Maxine are children of Charles Bunker; Raymond Earl and Anna Louise are children of Fred Bunker; Palmer Byron and Helen Louise are children of Mrs. Flossie Harper. In politics Mr. Bunker is a Republican, affiliated with the Marion Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Eagles. In religion his parents were members of the Quaker church. Mrs. Bunker is a communicant of the Marion Christian church.

OZRO GROCE FANKBONER. It was in the days of the covered wagon emigrant train that George Kline Fankboner, from whom O. G. Fankboner of Fairmount is lineally descended, came from Tuscarawas county, Ohio, and located along the Mississinewa across from Jonesboro. He was not the first "Boner" to locate in Grant county, and to this day people have difficulty with the name, and it is as often called "Frankboner" and abridged to "Boner" as it is correctly spoken, although there are several Fankboner families in the community.

G. K. Fankboner sold his Tuscarawas county farm at forty dollars an acre, thinking it well sold. But when it developed that all that country was underlaid with iron ore, with melting furnaces springing up all over it, and that it sold again at two hundred dollars, he saw his mistake, but he had found good land—better farming land in Indiana.

The Fankboners who were already located at Jonesboro when George K. and Sarah (Moore) Fankboner arrived, were his brothers, and most of G. K. Fankboner and wife's children were grown, some of them married, but not all of them came to Grant county. The children of George K. and wife were: John, who married Mary Gaskell; Levi Lewis, who married Rachel Jane Moreland, through whom O. G. Fankboner belongs to the Fankboner family; Elizabeth, who became the wife of John Kilgore; Morris, who married Elizabeth Naber; Margaret Jane, who married Abram Carr (see sketch of A. W. Carr); George W., who married Mary E. Stallard; and Sarah, who married George Eckfield. Upon the death of his wife, George K. Fankboner married Matilda Webb, and two sons were born—Webster and Joseph, the former marrying Retta Fairbanks and the latter Minnie Havens. Mrs. Carr and Joseph Fankboner are still living in Grant county; some of the others are living in Ohio. Morris Fankboner was one time sheriff of the county.

Levi L. Fankboner married Rachel Jane, daughter of David and Mary M. (Jones) Moreland, August 20, 1852. They always had their home in the vicinity of Fairmount. Mrs. Fankboner was descended from Methodist ministers on both sides of the house, and they have always been identified with the Methodist church, attending services in Jonesboro and Fairmount. She had a brother, Ellis J. Moreland (married Luvenia Winans), who recently died in Newcastle, and her sisters are: Melinda, who married George Thorn; Mahala, who married D. D. Ward; Sarah Elizabeth, who married William Winans. The sisters are all living at Fairmount.

The children born to Mr. and Mrs. Levi L. Fankboner are: Morris Kilgore, who died in infancy; Sedora Jane, who married E. L. McDonnell and died in Michigan; Mary Martinette, who died in childhood; Sarah Romain, who married first Sanford McKinstry and second Eugene Mullen, and has one son, Terry Lewis McKinstry, who married Luella Tenny; Lucy Adelaide married Charles E. Sisson and has one daughter, Dora Alice Sisson; Lura Belle, who married twice, first William Smith and after his death M. F. Tackett, and has one son, Ara R. Smith, by her first marriage, and by her second husband three sons, William, Marvin and Walker Tackett; and Ozro Groce.

Never having known his brother Morris, the oldest of the children, Ozro G. Fankboner, the youngest, is the son who perpetuates the family name, and sometimes it is "Boner" they call him. Mr. Fankboner was married April 2, 1891, to Effie Howell, and they have one daughter, Lois Ozro Fankboner. While Mr. Fankboner still has his mother, Mrs. Fankboner's only living ancestor is Mrs. Elizabeth Howell. In their years of married life Mr. and Mrs. Fankboner have had a varied experience, living both in town and in the country, and he has been employed on the railroad as well as on the farm, and two or three times has been established in the baker trade. In the present year 1913 Fairmount people are supplied with Fankboner's bread and pastry. The Fankboners occupy their own brick building.

Mr. Fankboner does any part of the bakery business or drives the wagon in the sale of the product, and Mrs. Fankboner can wrap more bread and send away more pleased customers than any one he could secure at the counter. There is demand for Fankboner pastry specialties, and few men work more hours out of every twenty-four than O. G. Fankboner. He will go on the wagon or take a turn at baking, and the farm will never again tempt him.

Mrs. Rachel Jane Fankboner, his mother, by terms of the will of her husband, who died May 10, 1910, is sole owner of the Fankboner farm on Back creek (see Omnibus chapter), which her husband owned many years, and it was always one of the inviting countrysides, an attractive house overlooking Back creek. Recently it was burned, a misfortune to the whole community, for it was always a beauty spot. Mr. and Mrs. L. L. Fankboner have not lived on the farm for several years, and she occupies a commodious home in Fairmount.

The Fankboner farm adjoins Back creek, and while the family were not Friends, in the old days of the Northern Quarterly meeting of Friends, Mr. Fankboner was forced to patrol his fences as there were so many horses hitched along them and sometimes whole panels of the fence were jerked down, so that it was a wise precaution for him to watch them. In this occupation he would visit with farmers from all over the country in attendance at the meetings who sought places to tie their horses, and Mr. Fankboner was really glad when the June meeting there was a thing of the past. The story is elsewhere told about him hanging venison in a tree on the meeting-house the first time he ever attended Quaker meeting at Back creek. John and Daniel Fankboner were the two brothers living in Grant county when George K. Fankboner arrived, and thus he did not come into the wilderness absolutely among strangers, although he came early into the new country. Mrs. Carr is now the oracle of the Fankboner family in Grant county.

Deb Murray