42 MINNESOTA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



* 

 compositor on the Prairie Farmer, himself and O. W. Wight, the 

 editor, constituting the entire force on the paper ; also as city reporter 

 of the Chicago Times. 



In September, 1855, he came to Prescott, Wisconsin, his present 

 home, and entered into partnership with Charles E. Young in the 

 publication of the Transcript, a weekly paper. • In November, 1855, 

 he was appointed clerk of the Pierce county board of supervisors, to 

 fill a vacancy; elected in 1856 for two years ; re-elected in 1858. In 

 1857, sold his interest in the Prescott Transcript. 



In 1861 he was commissioned as Adjutant 2nd Battalion of 

 the Second Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry (Col. C. C. Washburn), 

 and served in the Missouri and Arkansas campaigns till July, 1862, 

 when broken in health by exposure and privation in the White River 

 Swamps, under Gen. Curtis, and his office having been abolished by 

 Act of Congress, he resigned at Helena on surgeon's certificate of 

 disability and came home to Prescott. 



In October, 1863, he was appointed temporary clerk of the pay- 

 master general's office. War Department, Washington, and in the 

 February following promoted to a regular clerkship, class 2, in the 

 adjutant general's office and assigned to duty as confidential clerk to 

 Gen. E. D. Townsend, acting adjutant general. In March following 

 he was transferred to the office of assistant secretary of war, under 

 Charles A. Dana, and promoted by him to class 4 of the War De- 

 partment rolls, the grade next to chief clerk. His work here was to 

 create and organize an office with entirely new duties growing out 

 of the exigencies of the war. That office still survives, using the 

 same system. He served in this position under Dana and Gen. 

 Thomas T. Eckert, now president of the Western Union Telegraph 

 Company, the last assistant secretary of war under the civil war 

 regime, afterward serving with and receiving his instructions per- 

 sonally from Secretaries of War Stanton, Grant, Schofield and 

 Rawlins. 



In 1869, again broken in health and his family all reduced invalids 

 from the malaria then prevalent in East Washington, he resigned 

 and moved to Lake City, Minnesota, and tried gardening and small 

 fruit raising. Here, through the friendship of J. M. Underwood,' 

 S. M. Emery and others, he joined the State Horticultural Society, 

 of which he was secretary from June, 1882, till January i, 1885. 



At Lake City he passed (speaking after the manner of men) ten 

 of the best years of his life afflicted by what was supposed to be an 

 incurable disease, due to his army hardships and exposures in Arkan- 

 sas, but yielding at last to a surgical operation. 



