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Progressive Men of Minnesota
Minneapolis Journal
1897
 FRANK A. DAY of
Fairmont, Martin County, is one of the best known
newspaper men and politicians in the state. His
newspaper, the Martin County Sentinel, is a high class
country weekly, and it is the boast of its editor that
it has the largest circulation of any country weekly in
Minnesota.
Mr. Day was born in 1855 in
Green County, Wisconsin. In 1874 he came to Fairmont and
established the Sentinel which he has conducted ever
since. In 1878 he was elected to the lower house of the
legislature and had the distinction of being the
youngest member of the body. In 1886 he was elected a
member of the state senate and was re-elected in 1890
and 1894.
It was during the first session of his last term,
in 1895, that he was elected president of the senate,
and filled the office of lieutenant governor for the two
years’ term made vacant by the promotion of Lieutenant
Governor Clough to the office of governor. Until the
campaign of 1896 Mr. Day’s political affiliations had
been with the Republican party. For two terms he was a
member of the Republican state central committee.
In 1892 he was one of
Minnesota’s delegates-at-large to the Republican
national convention in Minneapolis, and has been a
prominent figure in all the important Republican
gatherings in the state for a dozen years or more. In
the campaign of 1896, however, Mr. Day, with Hon. John
Lind, Hon.
John Day Smith, Congressman C. A. Towne, State
Senators D. F. Morgan and S. B. Howard, and other men
formerly prominent in the Republican party of the state,
organized the free silver Republican party of Minnesota,
and supported Bryan and Sewall and the free silver
fusion candidates in the state campaign. Several of the
gentlemen above named were nominated for office, Mr.
Lind being chosen by the new movement as its candidate
for governor, and being subsequently indorsed by the
Democratic and Populist parties. Mr. Smith was a
candidate for presidential elector, Mr. Towne for
congress from the Sixth District, and Mr. Day was
nominated by acclamation for congress from the Second
District, and without effort on his part was indorsed by
the Democratic and Populist parties. Although swept down
to defeat with the other free silver candidates in
Minnesota, Mr. Day’s popularity at home was attested by
the fact that he overcame a large Republican majority in
Martin County, carrying it by one hundred and
fifty-four, and ran nine hundred and fifteen ahead of
his ticket in the Second District. As a public man Mr.
Day has exerted a marked influence, has helped to shape
most of the important legislation of the state during
the past ten years, and has made himself known from one
end of the state to the other. He is married and has
four children—two boys and two
girls.
 HENRY NICKEY RICE is a prominent citizen of
Fairmont, Martin County, Minnesota. He is a native of
Indiana. His father, D. B. Rice, was born in Oneida
County, New York, on August 2, 1815, and lived in that
state until 1840, when he came West and established a
home in Indiana. He first took up a farm near Fort
Wayne. It was in that locality that he married Miss
Rosanna Nickey, who was a daughter of Daniel Nickey, a
German, who had emigrated to Pennsylvania. In 1866 Mr. Rice
came to Minnesota, but soon after moved to Eagle Grove,
Iowa, where he is now living in robust health. He is a
self-made man, and of that type which always achieves
prominence and good will of his fellow citizens. His wife died in
1862. Of their family of eight children, two are now
living, Dr. Rice and Ezra Rice, a banker in Luverne,
Minnesota.
Dr. Rice was born in
Whitley County, Indiana, on September 2, 1843. He
obtained his education in the country schools of Whitley
County, and remained at home, giving his father the
benefit of his services until he was eighteen years of
age. Then,
upon the breaking out of the war, young Rice responded
to the President’s call for troops and became a member
of Company B, Seventy-fourth Indiana Volunteer Infantry.
He continued with this command until the close of the
war. with
the exception of one year of sickness after the battle
of Perryville, Kentucky. During this year he was at
Quincy, Illinois. When he rejoined his regiment it was
under command of Gen. W. T. Sherman, then stationed at
Ringgold, Georgia. Dr. Rice was just in time to
participate in the famous march to the sea. During the
war he was in many hard fought battles, but was never
seriously wounded, although he was struck in the
shoulder during the charge at Jonesboro, at the taking
of Atlanta.
At the close of the war Dr.
Rice was honorably discharged, being mustered out on
June 13, 1865, at Indianapolis. He at once returned to
his Indiana home and entered the Commercial College at
Fort Wayne. He spent a winter in teaching school, and in
1866 came to Minnesota and located a homestead near East
Chain Lakes. At that time the vicinity was very sparsely
settled, and the land on which he located was still in
its primitive condition.
After a few years he began
the study of medicine with Dr. G. D. Winch in Blue Earth
City, Minnesota and in 1872 he entered the medical
college at Keokuk, Iowa, where he continued his studies
until fitted for practice. He then returned to Fairmont,
where he engaged in practice for the next ten years.
Finding an opportunity to further his studies, he
entered Rush Medical College at Chicago and graduated
from that institution in 1885. Since that year he has
lived continuously in Fairmont.
Aside from his professional
duties. Dr. Rice has been connected with the business
interests of his locality, and has for ten or twelve
years been owner of a prosperous drug store at Fairmont.
He is a noted owner of a large stock farm near the
Silver Lake region. It contains five hundred acres
bordering on Silver Lake, about ten miles south of
Fairmont. It is beautifully located, and a part of it
has been fitted up as a summer resort. In 1866 Dr. Rice
was married to Miss Sarah E. Reed. Mrs. Rice is a woman
of much ability, and has been a very prominent worker in
the Woman’s Relief Corps, and in the Rebecca Lodge and
the order of the Eastern Star. They have six children.
Dr. Rice is a Republican and
has been honored with many local positions as well as
the election, in 1876, to represent his district in the
State Legislature.
For eight years he served as mayor of
Fairmont.
The interests of the city were ably conducted
during his administration. In 1880 he was ap pointed
surgeon of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul
railroad, and still holds that position, as well as
being pension examiner. He is very prominent in Masonic
circles, and is a member of the I. O. O. F. and of the
Phil Kearney Post, No. 18, G. A. R., at
Fairmont.
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN VOREIS is a lawyer engaged
in the practice of his profession at Fairmont. His father, John
H. Voreis, was a native of New York, but subsequently
became a farmer, owning a large tract of land, about one
thousand five hundred acres, in Marshall County,
Indiana.
The wife of John H.
was Helen Jacobs (Voreis), a native of Virginia.
The subject of this sketch
was born in Marshall County Indiana, December 31, 1853.
He attended the district school and a private school,
and, also, Merom College, in southern Indiana, for four
years. He began the study of law with Judge Capron, of
Plymouth, Indiana, and was admitted to the bar in June,
1878, In the following winter he removed to Minnesota
and December 10, 1878, found him located at Fairmont. He
formed a partnership with Hon. M. E. Shanks,
which continued for two years, when it was dissolved by
mutual consent.
Mr. Voreis continued
the practice of law in Fairmont and is at present the
county attorney of Martin County, and serving his fourth
term. During his residence at Fairmont, Mr. Voreis has
served the people of his town as a member of the village
council, to which he has been elected five times, and
also as village attorney. He is a Democrat in politics,
but Martin County has a Republican majority of from
seven to nine hundred. Not withstanding this Republican
majority, Mr.
Voreis competed successfully for public
office.
At the present time he is
chairman of the Democratic comity central committee, and
also a member of the Democratic state central
committee.
In May, 1895, he formed a law partnership with F.
A. Mathwig. Mr. Voreis is a member of the Masonic order,
and has held many important offices in that society. He
is also a member of Osman Temple at St. Paul. He has
never married.
Mr. Voreis may be said
to be a self-made man. He has relied upon his own
resources and energies to a very great extent. The first
dollar earned by him was received for service as a
school teacher in
Indiana.
 ALBERT L. WARD is a banker and prominent
citizen of Fairmont, Minnesota. Mr. Ward has lived in
Fairmont since 1864. He was one of the first settlers in
Martin County, and a pioneer of that section of the
state in every sense of the word. When he located
at Fairmont it was an army station, and the presence of
troops was regarded as necessary for the protection of
the settlers.
During the thirty-two
years of Mr. Ward’s residence there he has seen all the
southwestern part of the state brought under
cultivation, the pioneer region carried hundreds of
miles westward and the Indians, which were the terror of
the early settlers, relegated to the mountains of
Wyoming and Montana.
Mr. Ward was born in Cattaraugus County, New
York, on January 14, 1844. His father, Luke Ward, was a
farmer and a distant descendant of John Ward of
Revolutionary fame. His wife Miss
Charlotte Morgan, was a descendant of General Morgan.
Young Ward grew up on the farm in Cattaraugus County,
experiencing the life of a farmer’s boy, with all its
privations and at the same time its excellent training
for life.
He attended the common schools in the vicinity of
his father’s home during the winter months, his summers
being thoroughly occupied in the farm work. This common
school education was supplemented by a course at the
Randolph Academy. While obtaining his education he
taught school during the winters and eked out his income
by such other employment during vacations as he could
find. As he approached manhood he determined to become a
lawyer, and at different times studied law with the Hon.
W. H.
Henderson of Randolph, New York, and Hon. C. B. Green of
Ellington, New York. When twenty
years of age Mr. Ward determined to seek his fortunes in
the west.
He arrived in Minnesota in 1864, and went at once
to the frontier, locating in Fairmont, which was then
one of the outposts. As the country developed and the
young town grew, Mr. Ward took a prominent part in its
affairs. He engaged in politics and was made county
attorney, a position which he held for eight years. He
also served as county auditor, register of deeds, and
was postmaster at Fairmont under Lincoln, Grant and
Cleveland. He was honored with the appointment as one of
the board of World’s Fair managers from Minnesota in
1892. In 1874 Mr.
Ward started the Martin County Bank, of which he
is now president. He is also president and chief
stockholder in the Ward Machine Company, with branches
at Granada, Fairmont, Welcome and Sherburn, and the
Martin County Democrat Company, publisher of Martin
County Independent and Martin County Zeitung. Is also
chief stockholder and president of Sherburn State Bank.
In politics he now takes an independent position. Mr.
Ward was married in 1869 and has four children. May, Fe
Forest, Charlotte and
Lydia.
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