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Jasper County, Iowa

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Perry Engle, M.D.

In the political circles of Jasper County, no name has gained greater prominence than that of Doctor Engle, of Newton, the present State Senator from his district. In his professional circles of the county, he is also well known and highly honored, and his abilities are of such a high order that lie is doubtless the most prominent surgeon in central Iowa at the present time.  A volume of this character would, therefore, be incomplete were no mention made of the life of a man so eminent and so successful.

 Born in Findlay, Ohio, July 16, 1840, the Doctor was the eldest of eight sons comprising the family of Jacob Engle, a native of Somerset County, PA, who was born in 1812. The paternal grandfather was a Prussian by birth, but early in life came to America and settled in Pennsylvania, where he remained until death.  Jacob Engle was a mechanical genius and a man of considerable ability.  Early in life he went to Maryland, where he married Miss Laura Probst, who was of French and English extraction.  In 1838 he removed to Ohio and located in Findlay, where he became a prosperous and well-to-do mechanic.  A man of broad views and liberal education, he gave his children the best possible educational advantages up to the time of his death, which occurred in Ohio in 1858.  His widow survived him for many years, passing away in Metz in 1884.  It is probable that the inventive genius of the family was inherited from him, the Doctor and two brothers now living in Newton having received letters patent on several inventions.   Another brother, Theodore, is a prominent physician and surgeon at State Centre, Iowa.

 The subject of this sketch completed his literary education in Ohio, and in his youth decided to take for his life work the legal profession, but on account of an annoying impediment in his speech, which in his boyhood days lie hoped to overcome, but which as he grew older became worse rather than better, he was compelled to abandon his first chosen profession.  Then it was that he decided to take up the study of medicine and surgery, and soon afterward he entered the medical department of the Michigan State University at Ann Arbor. Two years later, in 1868, he was graduated from that institution, after which he took a postgraduate course at the Long Island Medical College, from which he was graduated.

 For the two years following his graduation, the young physician engaged in tile practice of his profession in Brooklyn, NY.  In 1872 he married Miss Katie Madison, of Ann Arbor, MI, and during the same year he came to Newton, where he at once became prominent as a surgeon and also acquired influence as a politician.  He was formerly a Republican, his first vote having been cast for President Lincoln, and was a strong anti-slavery advocate.  His brother Alexander gave up his life on the bloody battlefield of Shiloh, and he himself helped to nurse the wounded from that fearful engagement. In 1876 he cast in his lot with the Greenback party, and at the same time established the Newton Herald to advocate the principles of that party.  For twelve years he has given this paper his personal attention.   As a writer he is clear and forcible, and his editorials have attracted no small amount of attention.

 On account of the pressure of other duties preventing him from giving the required attention to the paper, the Doctor in 1888 associated with himself William Burney, who has since had the principal charge of the publication of the paper, although our subject still writes the loading editorials and political articles, he has recently become identified with the Union Labor and People's Party, and in 1889 received the nomination on the Union Labor ticket for the State Senate, and received a sufficient number of votes to elect him, although the district was strongly Republican. He is now a member of the Senate from his district, and his loyalty to his friends and party caused the recent dead loch in that body.  He has served as a member of many important committees and was Chairman of one. He also has introduced many bills, nearly all being on behalf of the poor and oppressed.  Probably the proudest act of his legislative career was the bill introduced in the Twenty-third General Assembly to establish an Educational Blind School for Adults to be located at Knoxville, Iowa.  The bill passed, and with it an appropriation for the construction of the buildings, and the institution is now in successful operation, being the third school of the kind in the United States.

 The Doctor was the founder of, and established the Industrial Union, the motto of which is "Vox Populi, Vox Dei," and in which he now holds an official position.   Although at the time of this writing (1893), the order is hut six months old, it has more than one hundred thousand members. Doctor Engle has ever been a friend of the poor and the unfortunate, and while his practice has been very large it has not brought him riches because he has given his attention to a large number of poor patients, from whom he never asked nor expected remuneration.  As a politician and newspaperman he is aggressive and unrelenting, and has made some bitter enemies as well as a host of warm friends.  In debate, although hampered by his infirmity, he has held his own against his adversary.  Socially, he is prominent in the Masonic order, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and tile Knights of Labor.

 The union of Doctor and Mrs. Eagle has resulted in the birth of two children, both boys. The older, Harry, is now a medical student at the Iowa State University.  The younger, Bert, is a boy of fourteen years, and even at this early age is taking to journalism, having established the Saturday Rumor, a small sheet, which he edits personally.

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Last updated: October 23, 2001.