After my niece, Rose Vimont, had been with us for probably a year I became satisfied that she had not succeeded in winning the affections of my wife. Dr. C. R. Pomeroy had been our pastor at the Centenary Methodist church for several years and had removed to Emporia, Kansas, and taken charge of the State Normal School at that place. As Rose desired to prepare herself for a teacher I went with her to Emporia in the spring of 1877 and placed her at the institution under the care of Dr. Pomeroy and his wife, where she remained for twelve months, when school was suspended by reason of a fire which destroyed the buildings. Rose returned to Des Moines and the following year, 1878, she taught a small school in the brick schoolhouse on the northwest corner of my farm, and had a room and boarded with my half brother, Charles R. Afterwards she obtained a situation in the public schools of the city of Des Moines and became a very successful teacher, remaining in the city some fifteen years or more.
Soon after the purchase of my farm, in order further to promote the interests of my brother and give him employment, I became interested in the purchase and raising of pure bred short-horn cattle, committing to my brother the immediate supervision and care of them on the farm, and building some extensive barns and other out-buildings. I subsequently bought from George Sneer 126 acres of valuable land in section 20, township 79, range 24, and afterwards in July, 1879, bought thirty-seven acres adjoining the tract that I had purchased of Edinburn, making a part of the home farm. I also bought adjoining the same original tract eleven acres from a man by the name of Parks.
Subsequently I contracted with a man by the name of Miller to put down a bore hole on my land near the barns, with the hope of procuring artesian water for my cattle and a flowing well. In this I was disappointed, but I required the man to keep an accurate journal of the different strata through which he bored, and at the distance of about 140 feet below the surface he went through a valuable strata of coal averaging from four and one-half to six feet in thickness. I subsequently leased the right to take coal from these lands to the Keystone Coal Company, under which lease they sunk a shaft and operated a mine on the home place for about thirteen years. The royalty from the coal during these thirteen years more than paid the original purchase price of this land, which cost me originally only about fifty dollars per acre.
About the year 1878 I received a letter from my old friend, Amos Harris, formerly a resident of Centerville, Iowa, then living at Wichita, Kansas, informing me of the death of a man by the name of Loring, who had been a former client of mine, residing at Indianola, Iowa. He stated that Mr. Loring had left a widow and some five little children, all girls, the youngest an infant only a few months old, and that the family was left in a destitute condition; that upon questioning Mrs. Loring she had told him that I had transacted some business as attorney for herself and husband, and had sold a house and lot in Indianola that they had deeded to me, with a promise upon my part that after paying certain debts for the collection of which I was attorney, if there was anything left they should have it. I had realized about one hundred dollars over and above the amount paid out and I immediately sent Mrs. Loring fifty dollars for the relief of her immediate necessities, and afterwards paid her the balance. Some four or five years after this Mrs. Loring came to Des Moines, bringing with her this young child then about four or five years of age, stating that she had a short time before that married a man by the name of Gregory, that he was a man of considerable means but refused to support her first husband's children, that she wished to make some arrangement to have this young child cared for, that she had already disposed of her older girls among her relatives. I introduced her to Mrs. Winkley, then a resident of Des Moines, who kept a school for small children and boarded and cared for them, a lady to whom my son had been going to school and who was held in high estimation by her many friends. Mrs. Gregory, as she then was, arranged with Mrs. Winkley to leave her youngest child with her to be cared for, and left with me some money to pay Mrs. Winkley from time to time, and also any other expenses that might be incurred in the care of the child. Mrs. Winkley lived on Third street within a block or two of our residence, and I frequently had this child visit our home. My wife seemed to be interested in the child and became attached to her, as I did also myself. Along about the first of February, 1882, Mrs. Gregory came into my office in Des Moines, stating that she had come to take her child Susie, as she could no longer afford to bear the expense of her keeping with Mrs. Winkley. I asked her if that was the only objection to the child remaining where it was, and she said yes, she was very well satisfied but she was then separated from her husband and was not able to pay the expense incident to the child's keeping in her present situation. I asked her if she had any home to which she could take the child, and she said no, that she had employment at some sanitary institution but it really was not a home for the little one. Upon the impulse of the moment and without any very considerable thought upon the subject and having no consultation with my wife, I told Mrs. Gregory to leave the child where it was and I would bear the expense of caring for her. My income from my practice at that time was averaging about $10,000 a year and I saw nothing very serious about this undertaking, but upon reporting it to my wife she expressed herself very much dissatisfied. Upon further reflection I feared that after the child became older the mother might claim its custody, and for my own protection I wrote out articles of adoption and sent it to the mother, which she duly executed and returned it to me, surrendering to me the full care, custody and control of the child, which articles were duly recorded in Polk county, Iowa, on the 8th of February, 1882. After remaining for several years with Mrs. Winkley I sent this child to Chicago to the school of Miss Rebecca Rice, where she remained for a number of years and received a very satisfactory education. The enterprise, however, of caring for and educating this child was not a success. My wife imbibed a strong prejudice against her and never received her as a member of the family. When she was about seventeen years of age she became dissatisfied and I sent her to her mother, who was then living in California. She did not remain with her mother, but afterwards came back to me and by her own wish and desire I arranged to have her taught telegraphy by the superintendent of city telegraphs at Chicago. In the meantime I ascertained that while she was in California she had engaged herself to be married to a man by the name of Guldager. I tried to dissuade her from this early and inconsiderate engagement but she had not learned the lesson of obedience and was not easily controlled by good advice or counsel. Her California lover furnished her the means and she left without my knowledge or consent and went to California to him when she was about eighteen years of age, and was married.
After the dissolution of my partnership with Williamson & St. John in 1865, I continued the practice of law without any partner in business, receiving assistance from time to time from young men who were studying law in the office or who were beginners in the profession. None of these, however, proved entirely satisfactory.
About the year 1870 Benjamin F. Kauffman, then a young man recently graduated in the law department of the State University, came to me desiring a situation in my office. I had been so disappointed in the young men who had preceded him that I hesitated about making any further engagement in that direction. Judge George G. Wright, however, who had been one of Mr. Kauffman's preceptors at the law school, warmly recommended him and urged me to give him a position in the office. He was entirely without means and I offered finally to pay his board for six months and take him upon trial. He asked me what he could expect after the expiration of the six months. I told him that after six months if I found that I could get along without him I should discontinue the arrangement. He replied that that was a very hard proposition. I told him no, that he was a young man in good health, full of energy, and if he could not make himself a necessity to my business in six months there was no reason why I should continue even to pay his board. He said if he accepted my proposition, what would I do for him at the end of the six months. I told him that if he made himself a necessity to my business so that I could not get along without him, he would then be master of the situation and I thought there would be no trouble about arranging terms that would be entirely satisfactory to him. He came into the office accordingly and applied himself diligently to business. I occasionally stated to him some question involved in cases I had pending and desired him to examine the authorities and make a brief upon the question involved. He proved to be of very material assistance, very industrious, with a clear mind capable of understanding and analyzing and applying the cases he found in the books bearing upon the question under investigation. At the end of six months I arranged a partnership with him and he continued in that relation for seventeen years, with much profit pecuniarily both to himself and myself.
In the year of 1874 I exchanged a lot that I owned on Center street with Mrs. McCauley for property on Fifth street, taking the deed in the name of the firm of Nourse & Kauffman, upon which we built the subsequent year a two story brick building, occupying the south half of the first story for our law offices. We subsequently bought from Thomas Boyd the forty-four feet on the east end of this purchase, giving us the entire forty-four south feet of lot 2, block 22, of the original town, and in the year 1886 we built a four story brick building covering the entire surface of the lot.
On the dissolution of my partnership with Mr. Kauffman I formed a partnership with my nephew, Clinton L. Nourse, and we removed into the new building and occupied the front rooms of the second story. Mr. Kauffman in the meantime entered into partnership with one N. T. Guernsey and occupied rooms on the fourth floor of the building.
About the first of January, 1880, I received information that my father, who had removed to and was then residing at Reynoldsburg, Ohio, was very ill and not expected to live. I immediately went to Reynoldsburg. My father was still conscious and able to recognize me, but was very nearly approaching the end. My brother, John D., who resided then at Lancaster, Ohio, was in attendance upon my father but unable to arrest the disease. On the 3rd of January my father passed away. After his death in conference with my step-mother in regard to her future, I found she was disposed to join her sister, Mary Herron, in building a small house in West Rushville and making her home there. I was satisfied that this arrangement would not last. My step-mother was a self-sacrificing woman and I knew her sister's disposition was very exacting. It was also arranged that my half-sister Mary should live with them. When I bid my step-mother good-bye I told her that I had no confidence in the permanency of the arrangement she had made with her sister, but in view of her faithfulness to my father during his old age I wanted her to feel that she should have a home, and if the arrangement she had made to live with her sister did not prove satisfactory, not to hesitate about advising me of the fact, and I would provide her a home on the farm where her youngest boy Charles R., was then living. As I anticipated, after a few years I received information that mother and sister Mary both desired to come to Iowa and avail themselves of my proffered help. They came accordingly and the first year resided with my half-brother Charles. Mother then had about twelve-hundred dollars of the small means left, and I proposed to borrow this money and build her a house which she should have rent free, and I would pay her interest on the twelve-hundred dollars which would enable her to live comfortably on the farm. I accordingly built the cottage for herself and her daughter Mary, which they continued to occupy for several years. In the meantime sister Mary taught a Sunday School class in the neighborhood, and among her scholars was one Chris Mathes. This rude uneducated boy, seventeen years younger than herself, pretended to fall in love with her and on the first of January, 1889, she became his wife. In March, 1896, my step-mother died, leaving what little means she had to her daughter Mary, and what was left of the money she had advanced to me for building the house she had occupied on the farm, which I afterwards paid over to Mary in full.