BIOGRAPHY: Tilford, J. S.
From the A.T. Andreas Illustrated Historical Atlas of the State of Iowa, 1875

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J. S. TILFORD. – It is rarely the case that men are judged fairly by their associates in 
the age in which they live.  The petty jealousies and business strifes common to all 
communities, so warp and bias the judgment that an impartial verdict can seldom be 
obtained until these feelings have been dispelled by the hand of the common leveler, 
Time.  But in spite of this hindrance to a just contemporary estimate of character, the 
historian has found a man in Benton County, who, by the natural disinterested, self 
denying benevolence of his character and life, has to a great extent dispelled those 
feelings, as is shown by the universal respect and deference manifested towards him by 
all classes, who unite in pronouncing him the most public spirited and truly benevolent 
citizen Vinton has ever possessed.  Coming here at an early day, with ample means at his 
disposal, he has given away enough to have made him one of the wealthiest men in the 
county, had he used the business shrewdness he possessed for his own individual 
interests.  It is scarcely necessary to say that the man referred to is J. S. Tilford, who is now 
in his sixty-fifth year, having been born July 30, 1811, in an Indian fort in Clark County.  
Clark's Grant, Indiana.  He belongs to a long lived race, as his father, John Tilford, who 
was of Irish descent, and a Virginian by birth, was filled by an accident when ninety years 
of age.  When a boy of fifteen, Mr. Tilford was bound out to the cabinet trade, serving a 
regular apprenticeship, worked at the trade until the Spring of 1832, when he enlisted 
with a company of "Rangers," for the Black Hawk war.  He was quartered in Chicago, 
when that new beautiful "Queen City of the Lakes," was scarcely large enough to be 
called a hamlet, and was offered a one hundred and sixty acre claim in the best part of 
the city for twenty dollars.  From Chicago he went to Rock Island, and was present at the 
Treaty made by General Scott with the Sac and Fox Indians for that tract of land known 
at the Black Hawk Purchase, which treaty was made at the close of the Black Hawk war, 
on the present site of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad depot in the city of 
Davenport, September 15, 1832.  Remaining at Rock Island a little over one month, he 
had the cholera, and was one of the few out of four hundred cases to recover.  Leaving 
Rock Island, the "Rangers" wintered at Fort Gibson, Arkansas, and in the following Spring 
were sent south to make treaties with the Pawnees, Comanches, and other Indians on 
Red River, near the Texas border.  Upon returning to Indiana, after an absence of thirteen 
months, he attended school some six months at Washington, Indiana, which was all the 
educational advantages he ever enjoyed.  The following Spring he removed to Franklin, 
Indiana, and engaged in the cabinet business on his own account, which he successfully 
carried on for about seventeen years, when in the Spring of 1851 he sold out and 
removed to Fremont, now Vinton, Iowa, and entered a section of land, more than half of 
which is now within the corporate limits of the City of Vinton.  That same season he laid 
off "Tilford's Addition to Vinton," embracing six blocks south of Concord street, and both 
sides of Main street, all of which he gave away, excepting one block which he offered 
the county if they would build a court house on it, and four lots on which he erected his 
own residence.  He afterwards laid out other additions, and disposed of many more lots 
on the same liberal conditions.  Through his energetic and persevering efforts, the 
location of the Iowa College for the Blind was secured at Vinton, and received from him 
a liberal donation of time and money.  He also founded Tilford Academy, a school which 
has become deservedly popular and prosperous.  In short, nothing worthy of support has 
ever failed in receiving from him that encouragement its merits deserved.