The First Lawyer in Ironton, Ohio – Dec. 14, 1899 – One of the first lawyers in Ironton was Mr. Roberts. He lived here in the first year of the town’s history. He was an intelligent and agreeable man, whom everybody liked. He was sickly, had the consumption, we believe, and died in 1851. He was buried in a lot at Old Maidville, which was the only cemetery Ironton had. Afterward, he was removed to the Kelly cemetery.
At the time of his death, he was engaged to be married or was supposed to have been, to a lady out west, who made every provision for his care during his last sickness and saw that he was tenderly and respectfully interred. She was afterward married, lived in Burlington, Iowa, and became a rich woman.
About twenty years ago, R. M. Stimson, who was a warm friend of Mr. Roberts, and like him, had joined his fortunes to the fate of Ironton, then a howling infant, met somewhere, perhaps in Burlington, Iowa, the fiancée, now Mrs. Rand, and told her of the lonely and desolate grave of Mr. Roberts, at Kelly Cemetery, whereupon she authorized Mr. Stimson to have the body removed to Woodland cemetery, and provided him with the money for the purpose. It was promptly done, and Mr. Roberts, the first lawyer of Ironton, sleeps in Woodland.
Mrs. Rand now figures in the newspapers, not unpleasantly, however, but seeing her name several times lately, recalls the incident we have above related. She is quite rich and endowed a professorship of Applied Christianity at Iowa University, provided that Rev. George D. Herron, her pastor, then preaching in Burlington, should occupy the chair. The gift she made, which was $50,000, was accepted, and Dr. Herron entered upon his duties.
For some time, Applied Christianity, according to Dr. Herron, has become very socialistic, which form of teaching was not satisfactory to the friends and patrons of the University, and so Dr. Herron very sensibly resigned. The endowment would go with him, but he plead with Mrs. Rand, as the resignation was voluntary, that the gift be not withdrawn. This was noble in Dr. Herron. It was a phase of Applied Christianity.
This fall we heard Dr. Herron speak at Columbus. He spoke for Mayor Jones, who also spoke from the same platform that night. He is a delightful orator, and his heart is fragrant with love for all men. We are not surprised that Mrs. Rand admired him and was willing to endow a chair for him.
But his applied Christianity is of the impressionist sort, filled with purple cows and green sunsets, and his logic so blends with his longings that one can not tell where either begins or ends. He talked with such sincerity that one felt he was certain that a man was better off if he lost himself in communistic dependence than if he asserted his individual force and self-reliance in manly independence.
Were it not getting too far beyond the main argument of this article, which is a little wavy, anyhow, we might say that Dr. Herron is announced for addresses in Boston and other points of the effete east. He will be perfectly fascinating in an argument intended to [illegible] that peaches should spring, full-juiced and rosy, from the budding twigs of April, and if they don’t, there is something wrong somewhere, most probably with the fellows who own the trees.
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