48 Sioux City Academy of Science and Letters. 
Congregational church and is much interested in various 
benevolent enterprises. 
While in school Mr. Stone had acquired a knowl- 
edge of surveying and in 1852, having just been married, 
he went west and became a surveyor in Wisconsin and 
Iowa for several years. He was also employed in the 
office of the county treasurer of Linn county, Iowa, for a 
time and was subsequently engaged in the banking busi- 
ness at Marion as a member of the firm of Smyth, Stone 
& Company. 
“In May, 1856, Mr. Stone settled in the little frontier 
town of Sioux City, 300 miles from the nearest railroad. 
Nearly all of Northwest Iowa was then a vast, uninhab- 
ited region of prairie, still owned by the government, 
over which Indians, trappers, and white frontier hunters 
pursued deer, elk and other game and annually trapped 
beaver, muskrat, and mink. The few widely scattered 
settlements were of log houses and sod houses, built in 
the groves along the rivers, creeks, and lakes. Mr. Stone 
secured a clerkship in the office of the county treasurer 
soon after he settled in Sioux City. In 1861 he was 
elected treasurer and recorder, holding the office several 
years. This position enabled him to secure a very large 
business in paying taxes for more than a thousand per- 
sons. Mr. Stone opened up a land office and soon built 
up a good business, entering government lands, buying, 
selling and locating land warrants and scrip. He was 
not only a careful, capable business man, but he was 
enterprising, and far-seeing, and besides doing a large 
business for others, his knowledge of the country en- 
abled him to make good investments in real estate in 
early days which brought him a large fortune in later 
years when the frontier town became a large city. For 
many years he carried on the largest real estate business 
ever established in Northwestern Iowa. In 1867 he 
opened a private bank in connection with his land busi- 
ness, and at the end of three years he, with the assistance 
of others, organized the First National Bank of Sioux 
City. He was first its cashier and later its president. For 
many years Mr. Stone gave his attention to the bank, 
which under his judicious management has grown into 
