Tuscola-Oakland-Shiawassee County MI Archives Biographies.....Tower, William J. 1844 - 
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Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com June 2, 2007, 5:56 pm

Author: Chapman Bros. (1892)

WILLIAM J. TOWER. Among the well-known and active business men of Vassar,
esteemed for integrity and uprightness, as well as for industry and frugality,
is the gentleman whose portrait appears on the opposite page and who is now
clerk in the co-operative store of the Patrons of Industry at Vassar. He was
born in the township of Avon, Oakland County, Mich., April 19, 1844, and is a
son of Samuel S. Tower, a native of Vermont, of Welsh descent, and Emily
Chapman, who was born in New York and is of Holland stock.

The boyhood days of our subject were spent on a farm and he attended school but
fifteen months in all. Upon the 19th of October, 1861, he enlisted as a private
in Company A, Tenth Michigan Infantry. In every battle in which the regiment
engaged he participated, with the exception of the famous battle of Chickamauga,
at which time he was ill and had been detailed to guard forage. He was never
wounded, but contracted a serious ailment from which he still suffers, and it is
but just that our Government grant a pension of $12 per month to one who in his
youth offered himself so freely in the dark days of the Civil War. He received
his honorable discharge June 29, 1865. Having returned from the war, Mr. Tower
engaged as a farmer in Shiawassee County, Mich., where he owned forty acres of
land. On the 23d of September, 1867, he was united in marriage with Maria,
daughter of Caspar and Maria (Rhodes) Croope. This lady and her parents were
natives of New York, but were of German descent. She has become the mother of
four children, namely: Caspar, who was born June 19, 1868, in Shiawassee County,
and is now married and living upon a farm in Vassar Township; Carrie, who died
at the age of nine years; Cora, who was born in Shiawassee County, August 29,
1872; and Clarence, who was born June 3, 1874.

  Mr. Tower farmed until 1887, when he was commissioned by the Supreme President
of the Patrons of Industry to organize subordinate associations in various
counties in the State, and during the year and a half in which he carried on
this work he formed ninety-nine associations. He is Lecturer and President of
Tuscola County, and is Supreme Vice-President of the Knights of Industry of
North America at the present time. In 1890 he engaged in the sale of
agricultural implements and in 1891 he came to Vassar to live. During one term
he was Highway Commissioner in Argentine Township, Genesee County, and wherever
he has been called upon to serve the people he has done it to the satisfaction
of all. He is a sincere worker in the cause of the Patrons of Industry and like
many other self-made men is practical and strong in his ideas of work, and clear
in his convictions.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

Portrait and Biographical Record of Genesee, Lapeer and Tuscola Counties,
Michigan, Containing Biographical Sketches of Prominent and Representative
Citizens, Together with Biographies of all the Governors of the State, and of
the Presidents of the United States

Chicago:
Chapman Bros.
1892


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