Guthrie County IA Archives Biographies.....Ashton, Charles 1823 - 
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 November 29, 2011, 3:24 am

Source: See below
Author: Lewis Publishing Co. (1896)

CHARLES ASHTON, editor of The Guthrian, at Guthrie Center, Iowa, was born in
Lincolnshire, England, June 2, 1823. His parents emigrated to this country in
1832 and settled on a farm in Richland county, Ohio, where he grew up to
manhood, having only the slight educational advantages of the district school of
that place and period for parts of three winter terms. In his twenty-second year
he was happily married to Miss Mary, daughter of James and Mary Haverfield, of
the same neighborhood, her birth having occurred on the farm on which they were
married. After their marriage they settled on a piece of woodland in Hardin
county, Ohio, to clear a farm, with the expectation that farming would be their
life work. In 1852, associating himself with a brother, he entered the drug and
book business, locating in Kenton, the county seat of Hardin county, Ohio. Soon
thereafter he was licensed as a local preacher in the Methodist Episcopal
Church, and in 1860 entered the itinerant work. In October, 1861, he met with a
severe accident that crippled him for life. In the fall of 1864 he renewed
itinerant labor, and in the fall of 1870 was transferred from the Central Ohio
to the Des Moines Annual Conference of that church and did nine years' effective
work in western Iowa. Retiring from the itinerant field in the spring of 1879,
he assumed the editorship of The Guthrian, a Republican paper published at
Guthrie Center, Iowa, and in that position has now done seventeen years'
efficient work for his party and society, continuing his membership in the Des
Moines Annual Conference, in a superannuated relation.

   In the early months of 1879 he originated the project of the Guthrie &
Northwestern Railroad, the branch of the Rock Island now running from Menlo to
Guthrie Center, and was instrumental in the organization of the company which
effected the building of that road. He was elected president of the company, and
devoted faithful and persistent work to effect the construction of the road,
which was built in the summer of 1880.

   In 1891 he was appointed by the executive council of the State of Iowa the
member of the Iowa Columbian Commission for the Ninth Congressional District of
the State, and in that office he ably and industriously served. As chairman of
the archeological, historical and statistical committee of the commission he
wrote and superintended the publication and distribution of The Hand Book of
Iowa, of which 25,000 copies were published and distributed. The work received
high praise. In August, as a member of the horticultural committee of the
commission, he was given the superintendency of the horticultural exhibit, and
under his direction and encouragement Iowa made one of the very finest
pomological displays shown in the great Chicago exposition of the world's
resources and productions.

   In his early manhood he advocated the emancipation of the slave, and early,
with voice, example and pen, advocated total abstinence from the use of whatever
would intoxicate. From the organization of the Republican party he favored its
principles with inflexible fortitude. Throughout his manhood he has ever been
known as an advocate of sobriety and good government and the promotion of all
liberal enterprises and the best possible educational interests in the
communities in which he has resided.

   June 26, 1895, Mr. and Mrs. Ashton celebrated the golden anniversary of their
wedded life. To them in that life, eleven children— seven sons and four
daughters—were born. Six of the sons and three of the daughters yet survive.


Additional Comments:

Extracted from:

A MEMORIAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD OF IOWA

ILLUSTRATED

CHICAGO: THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
1896


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