Lake-Allen County IN Archives Biographies.....Foster, William M. 1861 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/in/infiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com December 21, 2006, 9:54 pm Author: T. H. Ball (1904) WILLIAM M. FOSTER. William M. Fester is the efficient and popular agent of the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad at Hobart, and his relations in a business and personal way with this city have been most pleasant and profitable. He was born in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, September 16, 1861. His father, James Foster, was a native of Allegheny county, Pennsylvania, and was of Scotch-Irish descent. He followed the occupation of farming in early life, and at one time was engaged in the operation of a sawmill and the manufacture of lumber. At the time of his death, however, he was connected with the steel industry in Pittsburg, where he died in 1880. His wife and the mother of Mr. Foster was Charlotte Benton, also a native of the Keystone state, where much of her life has been passed, but she is now living in Hobart, Indiana, at the age of seventy-five years. Her parents were English born, and some of their children were also born in England. James and Charlotte Foster had five sons and two daughters: Sarah Antoinette, who died in December, 1897; John Benton, who is a foreman in the Edgar Thompson Steel Works at Braddock, Pennsylvania; Henry Albert, who was engaged with a publishing company at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, and was formerly train dispatcher at Fort Wayne for the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad; William M., who is the fourth child and third son; Marian A., who died in infancy; James Alexander, who is a foreman in the machine shops of the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railway, at Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he entered as an apprentice, in 1886, and has occupied positions in several other machine shops since then, returning to the Pennsylvania Company's shops in 1901, and was promoted to his present position of foreman in 1903; and Richard Franklin, a telegraph operator at Liverpool, Indiana, with the Pennsylvania system, who was born in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, July 28, 1871. This son, the youngest of the family, is an especially proficient musician and performer on the mandolin, possessed of much artistic skill, besides being so capable in his serious line of work. Mr. William M. Foster was reared and educated in Pennsylvania, attending school at Pittsburg for one year. He was a traveling man for four years; representing different lines of business. In 1887 he took up the study of telegraphy at Fort Wayne in the office of the Pittsburg, Fort Wayne and Chicago Railroad. He had completed his term of apprenticeship in one year, and then served a year as extra operator. In December, 1889, he was given a regular position, and in 1892 was appointed relief agent. In 1895 he was transferred from the latter capacity to the post of station agent at Hobart, which position he is still filling to the entire satisfaction of his company. He is a very capable man, and his courtesy in the treatment of the patrons of the road has won him high commendation and been a chief factor in his success. Mr. Foster is a true-blue Republican, and fraternally is affiliated with Camp No. 5202, M. W. A., and with the M. L. McClelland Lodge No. 357, of the Masonic order at Hobart. He and his wife are members of the Unitarian church at Hobart. Mr. Foster's wife, to whom he was married on June 24, 1896, was Miss Julia C. Butler, a daughter of William M. and Elizabeth (Johnson) Butler. The history of her father, a pioneer of Chicago and of Lake county, is detailed below. Mrs. Foster was born in Chicago, July 4, 1871, and she spent some of her girlhood days in Hobart. She received her education in the grammar schools and in the Hobart high school, and she completed her education in the Valparaiso Normal College. Her own educational qualifications led her into teaching, and before her marriage she was known as one of the successful teachers in the public schools of Hobart and Liverpool. Her interests are still afforded as far as possible to literary affairs, and she is a member of the Woman's Reading Club of Hobart. She is among the most highly esteemed ladies of Hobart, and her social relations are with the best people of the city. Mr. and Mrs. Foster have two children: The son, James Moulton, was born July 8, 1897, and Helen Virginia was born April 30, 1900. Shortly after their marriage Mr. Foster purchased a comfortable and commodious modern residence on Cleveland avenue in Hobart, really exchanging for it his residence property in Fort Wayne. Mr. Foster takes great pride in his nice home, and gives attention to the adornment of the nice grounds about the house, while Mrs. Foster does her part so well for interior comfort and beauty. There follows the obituary of Mrs. Foster's father, as clipped from an issue of the local press dated in December, 1895. Died, December 1, William M. Butler, Sr., one of Hobart's oldest residents. He was a native of Watertown, New York, where he was born January 22, 1824. He came to Chicago in 1837, and was one of the far-sighted pioneers who watched the frontier trading post develop, like the fairy castles of a single night, into the representative commercial metropolis of a continent. Mr. Butler was engaged in the hardware business there until the great fire. He then moved to Hobart, where he has ever since resided. He leaves a wife and ten children, an interesting family, to whom the sincere sympathy of this community is extended in their bereavement. The funeral services were held Wednesday forenoon from the home. "We see but dimly through the mists and vapors."—And perhaps most dimly on this earth can we penetrate the veil which covers the inmost heart and impulses of our fellow men. We see the puppets play upon the boards; but of the hand behind the curtain which controls and impels them, we know nothing. Mr. Butler's was a unique character—rugged, and strong of purpose and will. All-sufficient unto himself, he possessed his hopes and his ambitions, and he fought and struggled for them with a silent determination which was only the stronger because its ordinary indications were repressed. He had many acquaintances, yet the number of men who really knew him was very few. Those who were permitted to see beneath the stern and rugged exterior found something, within the inner self of the man, to understand and look upon with no little admiration. He had had his troubles and his disappointments; and out of them he had brought one strong desire to provide for the children whose happiness and worldly welfare was, as a matter of fact, his highest wish. Taciturn he was, and not given to revealing his inner emotions to those about him. And yet he had moments when he unbent, when his grim silence seemed to relax; and in those moments, which were seldom seen by any except his family, there could be read the better nature which dominated his life's hard and really unselfish struggle. He possessed in an exceptional degree the refined education .and deep mental grasp which might have made him a highly known student and thinker had he chosen. His ideal of life was a plain and far from idyllic one. He was faithful to his religious tenets to the end, and in accordance with a prevously [sic] expressed desire, the funeral address was made by the eloquent Cora L. V. Richmond, of Chicago, one of the most brilliant leaders of the Spiritualistic exponents in America. Appropriate music was pleasingly rendered by the quartette [sic] choir of the Unitarian church. Additional Comments: Extracted from: ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Genealogy and Biography OF LAKE COUNTY, INDIANA, WITH A COMPENDIUM OF HISTORY 1834—1904 A Record of the Achievements of Its People in the Making of a Commonwealth and the Founding of a Nation. REV. T. H. BALL OF CROWN POINT, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF ILLUSTRATED CHICAGO NEW YORK THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 1904 File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/in/lake/bios/foster501gbs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/infiles/ File size: 8.4 Kb