NORTHWESTERN IOWA ITS HISTORY AND TRADITION VOLUME II 1804-1926 S. B. Hoskins Dr. Samuel Bennett Hoskins, one of the foremost representatives of the medical profession in northwestern Iowa, has been a practicing physician and surgeon of Sioux City for nearly three decades. He is numbered among Sioux City's worthy native sons, his birth having here occurred on the 4th of April, 1871. The following interesting review of the life of his father, John C. C. Hoskins, is copied from a history of Iowa which was published in 1915: John C. C. Hoskins came to an honorable old age; in fact was almost a nonagenarian when called to the home beyond. As a Pioneer of Sioux City his name should be engraved upon the pages of Iowa's History, but he was not only a resident, he was also one of the active business men of Woodbury county and a supporter of all those projects which tend to promote public progress, upbuilding and advancement. He was born in Lyman, Grafton county, New Hampshire, January 18, 1820. His father, Samuel Hoskins, engaged in the practice of medicine. He married Harriet Byron, daughter of Caleb Cushing, of Orange, New Hampshire, who late in life removed to Chelsea, Massachusetts, where he passed away in 1873. In tracing the ancestral line of J. C. C. Hoskins it is found that he was desended from early Massachusetts families, represented in America since an early period in the colonization of the new world. The Hoskins family was represented at Scituate, Massachusetts, in 1834, while the Cushings lived at Hingham in 1635, as did the Hawke and Lincoln families, all of whom were ancestors of Mr. Hoskins. The Reeds were in Weymouth in 1835; the Cobbs on Cape Cod before 1640; and John Drake came over with Winthrop, while his cousin, Thomas Drake, settled in Weymouth in 1853. Mr. Hoskins also traced his ancestry back to the Cottons of Boston, the Sawyers of Lancaster and Newburyport, and the Wainwrights and Ambroses of Essex county. In fact there seems no one of his progenitors who came to this country after 1700, save his great-grandfather, John Church, a Presbyterian elder from the north of Ireland, who arrived in 1872, and the Huguenot, Jacques Pineaux, the father of Dolly Pineaux, his great-great-grandmother, famous to this day among her descendants for her personal beauty and he magnificent golden hair. William Hoskins, an ancestor in the paternal line, was at Scituate in 1634, was a freeman of Plymouth colony in 1638, an esquire in 1642, and bore the reputation of being a well-to-do man of religious character. His son William, together with William Reed and Thomas Drake, was a member of the colony that purchased Bristol county from the Indians and settled at Taunton, whence his numerous descendants have gone out far and wide into the northern and middle states. William Hoskins came from Norfolkshire, England, and was a wheelwright by trade. A contemporary biographer continues with the ancestral history of Mr. Hoskins: "His descendants down to the grandfather of J. C. C. Hoskins have been mechanics or farmers of the middle class. Few of them have been needy, fewer have been rich, few of them ignorant, but not many of them college bred, very few merchants or lawyers and fewer clergymen or physicians, much disposed to have their own way, tolerably ready to hear argument and be led by reason, but quick to oppose any show of assumed authority; in every conflict for individual freedom, since the days of Henry VIII at least, they have fought against prerogative and oppression. None of the family have held important public offices, but many of them were respectable and influential in their neighborhoods. His maternal ancestor, in the eighth degree, Matthew Cushing, with a numerous family, some of whom were already adults, came also from Norfolkshire. He settled at Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1634. The Cushing family was old and wealthy in Norfolk, and had large landed possessions there. Their history is well known back into the fifteenth century, and there (as in this country since) they were men of education and influence and wealth. The descendants of Matthew Cushing had, previous to the year 1800, furnished more than thirty graduates to Harvard College, and a more considerable number of very eminent clergy and lawyers and judges, than any other New England family. Among them history especially commemorates Thomas and John Cushing, who took very prominent parts in bringing on and prosecuting the war of independence, and William Cushing, who, already associate justice of the United States court, declined the chief justiceship when tendered to him by President Washington. Nor has the Cushing family lacked men of distinction in the present century - Witness Caleb Cushing, of Newburyport, Judge Cushing of Boston, and the late chief justice of the state of New Hampshire. "His parents reared a family of eight - five sons and three daughters - all of whom exemplified the character of their paternal ancestry by a respectable mediocrity of ability, so far as the accumulation of wealth and extended influence go, and their maternal ancestry by a considerable fondness for reading and literature, which doubtless led to the college education of the subject of this sketch. Three of the sons - all that were physically able - also proved that the family hatred of oppression retained its ancient strength, by enlisting at the very outset of the war against slavery, and fighting for freedom until all were free. So in the Revolutionary war his grandfather Hoskins and four brothers fought from the beginning to the end. "His father led a hard life in a hard country among the granite outliers of the White mountains, but he was always honored and respected by all that knew him, and when he died, in 1873, at Chelsea, Massachusetts, where he went to live in his old age, he was much mourned through the whole circle of his acquaintances. Not less beloved nor less widely mourned was his wife, who, after her husband's death, came to Sioux City, where she had a home with her son, J. D. Hoskins, until she died in August, 1882." During the boyhood of J. C. C. Hoskins his father engaged in the practice of medicine in a rural community, where his patients usually paid in farm produce. The boy had comparatively few advantages, yet was eager for a college education. His desire for this was never quenched, yet in the beginning it seemed impossible of fulfillment. However, by working at farm labor in the summer and teaching school in the winter, he eventually saved enough to meet the expenses of a college course and at the age of twenty-one was graduated from Dartmouth with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. He later received the degree of Master of Arts from the same institution. He gave a note to his father for six hundred dollars payable on demand. He possessed but one suit of clothing and little else of this world's goods when he applied for the position of principal of the academy at Lebanon, New Hampshire, which had recently been taken over by the Universalist church and was called The Lebanon Liberal Institute. he was engaged at a salary of four hundred dollars per year and entered upon his duties in September, 1841. Subsequently his salary was increased to five hundred dollars and many men who afterward won distinction in professional life or political circles were among his students. His earnings as a teacher enabled him to discharge his financial obligations to his father, but in 1846 his health failed and he was obliged to abandon teaching. Mr. Hoskins then turned his attention to civil engineering and was first employed on the construction of the Cochituate water works at Boston, Massachusetts, beginning the preliminary survey in June, 1846, and remaining until the completion of the works in the fall of 1848. He had charge of the Newton and Brookline tunnels until they were well under way and was then deputed to make a survey for what is now the Brookline old reservoir. When the survey was approved he took charge of the construction work and so continued until its completion. In 1849 he was connected with Thomas S. Williams, who had been appointed superintendent of the Sullivan Railroad in New Hampshire. Not long after Mr. Williams was made superintendent of the Boston & Maine Railroad and left Mr. Hoskins in charge of the Sullivan Railroad for some months. Later the latter joined the former in Boston and was engaged on the construction of the Boston & Maine Railroad until June, 1850, when an engineer of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad engaged him for the excavation and construction of its tunnels. On the 15the of June, 1850, he found himself near the western end of the railroad on the Monongahela river. He was then engaged to relocate a portion of the western division with the instruction to lay as good a line as possible and to get as near the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania as he could without touching that state. That task successfully accomplished, he was then given charge of the tunnel division and when the work was well under way was transferred to the preliminary survey of the Northwestern Virginia Railroad, which is now the main line of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, crossing the Ohio river at Parkersburg, West Virginia. At that time there had been no work so difficult undertaken in the United States. In one hundred miles there were twenty-two tunnels and a ruling grade of eighty feet per mile. For nearly six months Mr. Hoskins directed the efforts of a corps of sixteen men, covering a broad extend of rugged country. He located sixty-five miles of the road and superintended the construction of thirty-seven miles, including the central and most difficult portion. The work was begun in the summer of 1852 and a train made the initial trip to the Ohio river on Christmas day of 1856. Mr. Hoskins left his position in January, 1857, and, declining an advantageous offer from the Texas Railroad Company, started for the far west. He had become interested in the shaping of events in Kansas and, accompanied by his wife, started for that state April 7, 1857, going from Parkersburg, Virginia, to St. Louis by steamer, the trip covering eight days. Leaving his wife with relatives in St. Louis, Mr. Hoskins then proceeded by rail to Jefferson City and thence to Lexington, on to Kansas City, and to Leavenworth, Weston, St. Joseph, Omaha and Council Bluffs, arriving in Sioux City, May 5, 1857,. Fellow passengers informed him that Kansas had settled her difficulties and would doubtless be a free state and he intended to settle there, but his cousin, John C. Flint, urged him to go to Sioux City before making a permanent location. Mr. Hoskins recognized the advantages and opportunities here offered, purchased lots and a house on Nebraska street and there resided for many years. Sioux City was then a frontier village, having no communication excepting by river trip to St. Louis, occupying fourteen days. There was no railroad within three hundred miles and across the river was Indian territory, while to the east there was no settlement of any kind for more than a hundred miles, nor none to the north until Pembina was reached. Sioux City was a town of log cabins, board shanties and tents, yet people believed in its future and were eagerly buying lots. Mr. Hoskins had been married July 10, 1856, to Miss Clarissa Virginia Bennett, of Weston, Lewis county, Virginia, the second daughter of Hon. James Bennett, an influential lawyer who had often represented his district both in the lower and upper houses of the Virginia legislature. Mrs. Hoskins remained in St. Louis while her husband went on the prospecting trip and when Sioux City had been determined upon as their future home he returned and brought his wife to northern Iowa, where they arrived on the 5th of June, 1857. He also bought some supplies, a few floor boards, a window and a door and in a little cabin sixteen feet square, on Nebraska street, they set up housekeeping until a small frame house was built, there continuing to reside until the spring of 1864, when the property was sold. Two of their eight children were born in that primitive home. The last work which Mr. Hoskins did as a civil engineer was when he made the preliminary survey for the Sioux City & St. Paul Railroad in the autumn of 1866. He became the first president, as well as chief engineer, of that road and was very prominent and influential in public affairs. In 1858 he was chosen township assessor and city engineer and continued in office until 1871. He made profiles and advised street grades which were adopted in 1858 and revised and readopted in 1871. At different times he was called to public office, being appointed to fill vacancies in the position of county sheriff and also of mayor. He was for three terms a member of the school board and for one year was county superintendent of schools and never caused to feel the deepest interest in the cause of education. He was also postmaster of Sioux City for nearly sixteen years, retiring from the office in the spring of 1878. He aided in founding the first two national banks of Sioux City and was a director of one of these for several years. He was also founder and one of the directors of the First Savings Bank; was president of the Sioux City Building Fund Association for many years; and in 1864 aided in organizing the J. M. Pinckney Book & Stationery Company. He was one of the founders of the Unitarian church of Sioux City and one of the founders and honorary president of the Sioux City Scientific Association, now the Sioux City Academy of Science and Letters. He became a member of the Odd Fellows lodge in the early '50s and remained a member until his death. In fact, there were few important business or public interests of Sioux City with which he was not connected from the earliest period of its development, and he aided in laying broad and deep the foundation upon which its present prosperity has been built. Mr. Hoskins was survived by his wife and the following children: Dr. S. B. Hoskins and Mrs. Mary H. Wakfield, both living in Sioux City; Dr. J. B. Hoskins, of Allen, Nebraska; Mrs. Helen E. Johnson, of Los Angeles, California; and Mrs. Jucy M. Ayres, of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Mrs. Clarissa Virginia (Bennett) Hoskins, the mother of the above named, departed this life in December, 1916. Mr. Hoskins passed away in Sioux City, August 13, 1909. For a number of years prior to his death he had lived retired, enjoying a rest which he had truly earned and richly deserved. All who knew him recognized his worth, appreciated his splendid qualities and respected him for his upright life and what he accomplished. His history, indeed, forms an integral chapter in the annals of Sioux City and of the development of the northwest. Samuel Bennett Hoskins, whose name introduces this review, completed a high school course in Sioux City by graduation in 1888 and then entered the University of South Dakota, from which institution he received the degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1892. His professional training was acquired in the State University of Iowa, which conferred upon him the degree of M. D. in 1896. The following year he was offered and accepted the position of house physician in the Homeopathic Hospital of the State University of Iowa. It was in the summer of 1897 that he began the private practice of medicine in Sioux City, where he has remained continuously to the present time and has long been recognized as one of the leading representatives of the healing art. He has membership in the Sioux City Homeopathic Society, the Iowa State Homeopathic Society, the American Institute of Homeopathy and the Medical Society of the Missouri Valley. In 1902 Doctor Hoskins was united in marriage to Miss Anna Loefstrom, of Omaha, Nebraska. They are the parents of two daughters, namely: Clarissa H., who is superintendent of the branch libraries of the Sioux City Public Library; and M. Charlotte, assistant librarian in the Los Angeles Public Library. Fraternally Doctor Hoskins is affiliated with Landmark Lodge No. 103, A. F. & A. M., and with Sioux City Lodge, No. 164, I. O. O. F., and he enjoys high standing in social as well as professional circles of his native city. Debbie Clough Gerischer Iowa Gen Web, Assistant CC, Scott County http://www.celticcousins.net/scott/ IAGENWEB: Special History Project: http://iagenweb.org/history/index.htm Gerischer Family Web Site: http://gerischer.rootsweb.com/