Isaac T. Bishop

ISAAC T. BISHOP, a prominent member of one of the pioneer families of Kenosha county. Wis., who resides in Section 16. Somers township,, was born June 6. 1844, in a log house on his father's farm in this township, son of Jacob and Fanny (Potter) Bishop.

On both sides !Mr. Bishop can trace an old and interesting ancestry. This branch of the Bishop family in America dates its history back to John Bishop and Mary (Champion) Bishop, his wife, who were natives of Connecticut, and who moved to Dutchess county, X. Y., in the year 1740, where their son John C, was born July 2" 1746.

John C. Bishop served in the Revolutionary war, and his great-grandson. Isaac T. Bishop, holds a $15 bill with which the patriot was paid for service in that conflict. In 1765 he married Abigail Reynolds and to this union was born: Abram. Nov. i. 1766. Abram Bishop married Anna Bond, born Oct. 5. 1783, who died Jan. 11, 1870. in Somers township, on the farm of her son Jacob. She had been afflicted with blindness for fifteen years prior to her death. Their family of fifteen children has all passed away. Abram Bishop was buried in the Bishop burying ground at Granville. X. Y.. and a city has grown around what was once a secluded spot.

[This passage is too damaged in the scanned book to reproduce. See the original book.]

Jacob Bishop, father of our subject, when a boy of fifteen years, left his home in New York and made his way to Sandusky. Ohio, where he clerked in a store until he became of age. He married Fanny Potter, Jan. 19, 1833, in Granville, N. Y., and the record of their children is as follows: Henry H. died aged seven years. Abraham T., a retired merchant, is married and had eight children. Mary E. died in infancy. Phebe J. died in infancy.;\Iary E. (deceased) married Adelmar Graves, and had five children. Victoria A., unmarried, died at the age of si.xty-two years. Phebe J. (2), unmarried, died at the age of sixty-one years. Isaac T. is mentioned below. Joseph F., of Somers, Wis., is married and has five children. Anna L. married (first) Edwin Sherwood, and had one child, and (second) C. C. Hurd, of Foxlake, Wis. Fanny J. is the wife of Rev. Hiram Curtis, of Sutton, Neb., and the mother of five children. Jacob R., deceased, married Emma Carpenter, of Syracuse, N. Y.. and had one son, Jacob R., of Castleton, N. Dak. John E. died at the age of eight years. Delia E., of Somers, Wis., is unmarried. Harriet E. married Leander Capon, of Perry. Iowa, and had eight children, one of wdiom is deceased.

After marriage Jacob Bishop removed to Cleveland, Ohio, and went into the grocery business for himself. In 1838 he came West and pre-empted land, and bought altogether about 1600 acres of land in the township of Mount Pleasant, Racine county, and Somers, Kenosha county, the former covering the site of the present town of Corliss. He was accompanied West by Seth Doan, who subsequently became the leading dealer in dry goods in Kenosha.

Jacob Bishop was an excellent business man. He followed farming and kept on accumulating land until he owned 20,000 acres in Dunn and Waupaca counties. In 1839 he brought his family West, and located on a farm of 240 acres in Somers township, and of his large family of fifteen children ten were born and reared on this farm. Later in life he moved into Racine, his main object being to give his children better educational advantages. He continued to reside in the city for some six years, in the meantime continuing the management of the farm to which he then returned, having improved it with substantial and comfortable buildings. He died on the farm May 6, 1885. aged seventy-seven years. His wife died Jan. 21. i88q, aged seventy-five years. Politically he was a Republican. He and his wife had both been reared in the Quaker faith and they continued to be Friends all their lives, honest, virtuous, kindly people who were respected and esteemed wherever known.

Isaac T. Bishop has lived in Somers township) all his life. He attended the local schools and lived at home until seventeen years of age. when he went to Kenosha and became clerk for Doan & Hawley. where he remained one year, but the outbreak of the Civil war interrupted the quiet current of his life just as it did the thousands of others who answered the call of, country in the fateful years of 1861-.

On Sept. 9, 1862, Mr. Bishop enlisted under Chief of Pohce Bradley of Chicago, in Battery B, First Illinois Light Artillery, and was ordered to report to the battery then located at Memphis, Tenn. The quota of the battery having been filled, the subject of our sketch, enlisted in Company C, 55th 111. V. I. During the siege of Vicksburg he was assigned to special duty in the Ordnance Department of the 15th Army Corps. After the capitulation of Vicksburg, he was transferred to the Post Ordnance Department. In January, 1864, he was assigned to duty in the Ordnance Department, Military Division of the Mississippi, located at Nashville, Tenn., by order of Lieut. Gen. U. S. Grant, where he remained until the close of the war, in May, 1865. He enlisted as a private, and was mustered out as assistant ordnance officer. Seven days after joining the 55th regiment, he participated in the battle of Chancellorsville and his regiment soon after went down the Mississippi river to Young's Point, opposite Vicksburg, where in the summer of 1863 they helped to dig the canal which was usually called by the soldiers, "Grant's Ditch," which is destined some day to cut an important figure in navigation. A force of 25,000 men was engaged for three months in digging this canal. The object was to cut off and leave Vicksburg an inland town, and the work was in charge of Generals Grant and Sherman.

General Grant then threw his army across the river to Grand Gulf, where he met General Pemberton in command of the Confederate forces, who fought stubbornly from Grand Gulf to Raymond, and next at Champion Hills, Black River Bridge, ending with the siege of Vicksburg. Mr. Bishop carried a gun and participated in all of that campaign, and was finally mustered out of the service at Nashville, Tenn. He returned to his home in Somers township, and again became a farmer with his father.

On Nov. 28, 1866, Mr. Bishop was united in marriage with Miss Lydia J. Clemons, who was born in Oswego county, N. Y., July 3. 1846, daughter of Hosea and Eliza (Wallace) Clemons, and five sons were born to that union, as follows: John C, who was drowned in August, 1902. while in the employ of the St. Paul Railway Company, married Maggie Fitzgerald, of Somers township, and had two daughters, Arvilla L. and Delia M.; Adelniar A., a graduate of the State Normal School at Whitewater, and formerly for nine years bookkeeper for the J. I. Case Threshing Machine Co., and now in the laundry business at Racine, married Maud E. Thompson, and has one son, Gordon A.; Isaac T. died at the age of eighteen years: Edwin S., a graduate of the State University at Madison, taught two years there in the Physics Department, and at present occupies the chair of Physics in the East Division High School at Milwaukee: and Benjamin H. is at home.

Mr. Bishop is a stanch Republican and on numerous occasions he has been called upon to serve in offices of trust and responsibility. He was town treasurer for one year, and for a period of five years was chairman of the board of supervisors, and while a member of the county board was elected chairman. For eleven years he has served as a justice of the peace, rendering decisions based upon a proper recognition of facts, and with the experienced judgment which has given satisfaction to his fellow citizens. He has always been prominent in the various public-spirited movements of his locality, and as a man of sterling integrity and ripe judgment has been chosen as a leader in manv of these. For twenty-four years he has served as secretary of the

Somers Mutual Fire Insurance Company, a local organization of assured stability. He has been one of the promoters of progress along agricultural lines and local development of all kinds, claiming that Somers township possesses not only the natural advantages but also the type of citizenship which should make it a banner township in the county. He has taken a deep interest in all the work of the Grand Army of the Republic, and is a valued member of the Fred S. Lovell Post. In fraternal life he belongs to the Knights of Pythias. Mrs. Bishop is a consistent and active member of the M. E. Church, but Mr. Bishop continues a Quaker in his religious convictions.

Clemons. The paternal grandfather of Mrs. Bishop w'as John demons, a native of New York, where the family has been settled for generations, two brothers coming from England and locating here at a very early day. John Clemons married Lydia Devereaux, and he died in Xew York. His widow came to Mt. Pleasant township where she lived to the age of eighty-four years. They had four sons and two daughters.

Hosea Clemons, son of Jolui and father of Mrs. Bishop, was a native of New York and a farmer by occupation. He came to Wisconsin in October, 1846, and settled in Mt. Pleasant township, Racine Co., Wis., where he died in 1882, aged seventy-five years. He was twice married. His first wife, Eliza (Wallace) Clemons, passed away in 1862, aged forty-four years, in the faith of the Methodist Church. She was a daughter of William and Hannah (McDaniels) Wallace, of Scotch descent, the former of whom died in New York at the age of eighty-four years, but the latter had died long before, the mother of six children. The children born to the marriage of Hosea and Eliza (Wallace) Clemons were: William Wallace, of Fairmount, Los Angeles Co., Cal.; Nancy A., who died aged twelve years; Lydia J., Mrs. Bishop; Sarah E., wife of Russell Lewis, of Racine; Harriet Eliza, deceased, formerly the wife of E. Cook; Helen A., deceased, formerly the wife of James E. Spencer; Estella R., wife of Gaylord Shepherd, of Racine; Ida M., deceased wife of E. G. Ozanne; Wesley H., of Berryville, Wis.; and Ira F., of Racine. Flosea Clemons married (second) Abbie J. DeGroat, widow of Albert DeGroat, and daughter of a Mr. Dodge, of New 'ork. There were two children born to this union, Herbert and Florence, the latter the wife of E. A. Tostevin. Hosea Clemons became a Methodist in his youth.

As printed in Commemorative biographical record of prominent and representative men of Racine and Kenosha counties, Wisconsin, containing biographical sketches of business and professional men and of many of the ea (1906). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.