Bio of Meachum, Hon. Frank L. (b.1835) Wabasha Co., MN
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Made available to The USGenWeb Archives by: Barbara Timm and Carol Judge
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This bio comes from "HISTORY OF WABASHA COUNTY" 1884.
Check out Barbara's site for more great information on this book:
http://www.rootsweb.com/~mnwabbio/wab1.htm
There are also some pictures and information from descendents for some 
of the bios on her pages.

Meachum, Hon. Frank L., one of the most enterprising stockmen and farmers
in Wabasha county, was the only son of Chadwill and Mary (Lee) Meachum,
and was born on a farm near North Shenango, Crawford county, Pennsylvania,
August 8, 1835. Being of a studious disposition, he early aspired to
better educational advantages than those afforded by the district school,
and at the age of sixteen entered the Kingsville Academy, located at
Ashtabula county, Ohio, where he remained a portion of three years,
teaching arithmetic for his tuition several terms in the academy and
occasionally dropping out of his classes to do service as a county
pedagogue and earn the wherewithal to defray his expenses. Becoming
ambitious to enter upon a business career, he abandoned the student life
in 1854, and accepted a clerkship in the store of A. C. Stratton, at
Linesville, Pennsylvania. The following winter found him teaching school
again, and the next two years he spent at his old home in Pennsylvania,
dressing and shipping staves. In 1847 the family came to Minnesota and
located in Elgin township. Mr. Meachum's first claim was a pre-emption on
a quarter of section 3 in that township, which he sold in 1867. He now
owns four hundred and twenty acres in Elgin, on sections 3, 10 and 11. His
farm-buildings are surrounded by beautiful cultivated groves and orchards,
and were erected at an aggregate cost of four thousand two hundred
dollars. Mr. Meachum has given considerable attention to stock-raising,
more particularly to fine grades of cattle. He has engaged largely in the
buying and shipping of stock since the fall of 1878, and during the season
of 1883 was associated with R. R. Dumonde in handling farm machinery at
Plainview. Mr. Meachum's political affiliations have been with the
republican party, and he has been repeatedly elected to places of public
trust and honor; has been chairman of the Elgin township board of
supervisors, justice of the peace and township assessor, a member of the
state legislature in 1873, and engrossing clerk of the lower house in
1871. His name is enrolled as a Knight Templar in the Rochester
Commandery. Mr. Meachum resides in Plainview and is living with his second
wife, formerly Mrs. Abbie Merrill, nee Brockway, to whom he was married
December 28, 1873, and by whom he has one child, Agnes, nine years old.
His first wife was a Miss S. M. Trace, of Crawford county, Pennsylvania,
by whom he had three children: Sarah F. (Mrs. H. A. Gifford), of Erie,
Pennsylvania; Emmet G. Meachum, married to Alice Marshall, and residing on
his father's farm in Elgin, and Lee F., a compositor in the "Plainview
News" office. His father, who was also a Wabasha county pioneer, was
residing with his son at the time of his death, which occurred in January,
1874, in his sixty-fourth year, and whose aged wife still survives him and
continues an inmate of her son's home.