Representative Arthur Pickford View All Years

ARTHUR PICKFORD

MR. SPEAKER: Your committee, appointed to prepare a suitable resolution commemorating the life, character, and public service of the late Honorable Arthur Pickford, of Cerro Gordo county, Iowa, begs leave to submit the following memorial:

Arthur Pickford was born on July 9, 1855, in Shepley, Yorkshire, England. Eleven years later, Mr. Pickford came with his parents, brothers and sisters to the United States. Members of the family settled at Monroe, Wisconsin, where they lived for a short time, going from there to Freeport, Illinois. In 1871 they moved to Monticello, Wisconsin, where Arthur Pickford worked from his twelfth to twenty-first year in the woolen mills. He and his brothers continued their education chiefly with three books, The Bible, the “Queen’s English” (which came from England), and a “Life of Abraham Lincoln”, which was purchased after arrival in America.

In February 1876, Arthur Pickford with his brother, Henry, set out for North Iowa, traveling overland with team and wagon. The story of this trip with its vivid experiences is told at length in Pickford’s “Westward to Iowa,” a ninety-seven page book published in the summer of 1940.

“A child born and reared in the country after the year 1900 can have little conception of the isolation of country life before the coming of the daily mail, the rural telephone, the good road and the automobile,” he wrote in this book. “But children were born, deaths came and accidents happened then as now. Perhaps the country folks, then, were more self­reliant than now.”

Arthur Pickford and his brother established themselves on a farm some six miles east of Mason City. There Mr. Pickford began a 44-year career of farming, spending many of the early winters teaching school. Always a student, he made his work as a farmer broaden his outlook on life. He was interested in many fields of study, among them geology.

For 25 years Mr. Pickford held the office of secretary of the school board of Portland township. For some years he was a member of the county board of education and for 13 years served as editor of the Globe Gazette in Mason City, Iowa.

He retired from the farm in 1920. He was a member of the local fair board for many years; for two years he held the position of President of this board. He was a member of the Congregational Church. He was liberal in his religious views, placing the best construction on that term.

In 1885 Mr. Pickford was married to Theo H. Sears, who died in 1928.

Mr. Pickford is survived by three sons. Lyle of Mason City, with whom he made his home in his last years; Arthur Harold of Des Moines and Rollo S. of Cedar Rapids—(a fourth son, Hugh S. died in 1928).

He served the State of Iowa in the Thirty-fourth and Thirty-fifth General Assemblies at Des Moines.

Mr. Pickford, up to the time he was well over the four score age, showed a youthful interest in the life about him. He retained his bodily and mental faculties until late in life.

Mr. Pickford’s activity in Iowa started in pioneer surroundings. He took his first examination for a teacher’s certificate in the bare courtroom of the first courthouse in Mason City, long since torn down. Other teachers of that period in town and country, some of whom became famous, were Ira Kling, Herbert Quick, L. L. Klinefelter, Art Sale, Dick Montague and Sue Treston.

Mr. Pickford learned to bind grain on a Marsh Harvester using straw for bands. Mason City in those days was a stripling youth, growing fast but gawky and unkempt with perhaps 3,000 inhabitants.

Mr. Pickford left a brief obituary which he closed with this:

“I know the night is near at hand

The mists lie low on sea and bay.

The autumn leaves go drifting by,—

But I have had the day.”

HENRY C. KRUEGER,

H. B. BLEWETT,

NORMAN NORLAND,

Committee.

Unanimously adopted,