William A. Sharp Biography


	This biography appears on pages 1683-1684 in "History of South 
	Dakota" by Doane Robinson, Vol. II (1904) and was scanned, 
	OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

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	WILLIAM A. SHARP, successfully established in the real-estate 
business, in the city of Clark, Clark county, was born on the home farm 
in Oldtown township, McLean county, Illinois, on the 21st of November, 
1858. and is the son of Theodore and Ophelia M. (Watson) Sharp. Theodore 
Sharp was born in New Jersey on the 8th of October, 1820, and when 
eighteen years of age went to Chatam, that state, where he engaged with 
A. & W. C. Wheeler to learn the machinist's trade, becoming a skilled 
artisan in the line and also a successful inventor. He may be said to 
have inherited much mechanical ability, for as far back as records are 
in evidence the family have been allied with the machinist's trade and 
business. Christian Sharp, an uncle of Theodore, was the inventor of the 
Sharp rifle and was a manufacturer of firearms. John H. Sharp, an uncle 
of our subject, was likewise a machinist by vocation, and the same is 
true of Jacob Sharp, his son. Ancestors of Mr. Sharp were participants 
in the war of the Revolution and also in that with Mexico, but as the 
family records were unfortunately destroyed by fire no definite data is 
accessible at this time. Ophelia M. Sharp, the mother of the subject, 
was born in Glencoe, Columbia county, New York, on the 20th of April, 
1832, and her marriage to Theodore Sharp was solemnized, in the city of 
Albany, that state, on the 31st of December, 1849. They became the 
parents of one son and three daughters, one of the latter being now 
deceased. 

	In the spring of 1858 Theodore Sharp removed with his family to 
McLean county, Illinois, where he remained until a short time before the 
outbreak of the Civil war, when he removed with his family to 
Louisville, Kentucky, where he had charge of the machine shops of the 
firm of Miller & Moore during the progress of the war, said shops being 
engaged principally in government work at the time. In the spring of 
1866 he again located on a farm near Benjaminville, McLean county, 
Illinois, where he continued to be actively engaged in agricultural 
pursuits until the fall of 1882, when he came to South Dakota, 
accompanied by his only son, the subject of this review, and on the 6th 
of September of that year each of them filed on a homestead and a tree 
claim in Clark county. Theodore Sharp here continued to be engaged in 
farming and stock growing until his death, which occurred very suddenly, 
in the city of Clark, on the 2d of March, 1886. 

	William A. Sharp passed his boyhood days on the old homestead farm 
in McLean county, Illinois, and after completing the curriculum of the 
public schools in that locality continued his studies in the Wesleyan 
University, at Bloomington, and the State Normal School, at Normal, 
Illinois. After coming to South Dakota he taught during several winter 
terms in the district schools, and in the meanwhile continued to be 
actively engaged in the improving and cultivating of his farming 
properties until 1890, having been elected to the office of register of 
deeds of Clark county, on an independent ticket, in the autumn of that 
year, and having removed with his mother from the farm to the county 
seat on the 12th of the following December. Here they have ever since 
continued to reside. Mr. Sharp was clerk of Garfield township in 1885-6-
7, and held the office of register of deeds for a term of two years, 
while in 1897-8 he served as county treasurer, having shown much 
fidelity and discrimination in every official capacity in which he has 
labored. In 1893 he purchased the only set of abstracts of titles for 
Clark county, and thereafter conducted an abstract business until March 
1, 1903, when he disposed of his books and has since continued in the 
real-estate business. He is interested in several valuable farming 
properties and also controls a considerable amount of town realty, while 
he is also a stockholder in the Vienna Roller Mill Company, at Vienna, 
this county, where the company has a well-equipped flouring mill and 
grain elevator. In politics Mr. Sharp was aligned with the Republican 
party until 1890, since which time he has maintained an independent 
attitude. Fraternally he is a valued member of the local organizations 
of the Woodmen and the Knights of the Maccabees, in the latter of which 
he has served as commander. 

	On the 11th of July, 1901, Mr. Sharp was united in marriage to 
Miss Grace C. Latimer, of Seneca, Kansas. She was born near Winnebago, 
Minnesota, on the 12th of October, 1872, and is a daughter of Pleasant 
H. and Lucy E. (Day) Latimer, whose marriage was solemnized in 
Minnesota, on the 6th of January, 1869. Mr. Latimer was born in Knox 
county, Illinois, on the 2d of May, 1844, and removed to Minnesota in 
1860, and he served eighteen months in the Ninth Minnesota Volunteer 
Infantry, during the Civil war, and thirty days during the Indian war in 
Minnesota in 1862. He removed with his family from Minnesota to Kansas 
in 1876. His wife was born in Maine, whence she accompanied her parents 
to Wisconsin and later to Minnesota. Mrs. Sharp was a child of about 
four years at the time of her parents' removal to Nemaha county, Kansas, 
and there she was reared and educated, having attended the high school 
in Seneca and later having been for a time a student in Campbell. 
University, at Holton, Kansas. For a number of years prior to her 
marriage she was a successful and popular teacher in the public schools 
of Nemaha county, Kansas, where her parents still reside. Mr. and Mrs. 
Sharp have one child, Carol O., who was born August 11, 1902.