Leander C. Beshore
The Beshore-Whisler relationship in Grant County is a large and important one and there are several names that might be chosen around which to group a biographical sketch. For this purpose has been taken the name of Mr. Leander Cass Beshore, now enjoying quiet retirement from a long and active business career at Marion.
When Peter and Mary (Whisler) Beshore left their home in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in 1837, in company with the family of Jacob Whisler, they were enroute to Illinois -not to find better neighbors and friends, but to begin life in a new country where opportunity was better for them. When the party reached Marion, they liked the country and decided to stay awhile, and the journey to Illinois is yet in the future.
The above mentioned Mrs. Beshore was a daughter of Mrs. Whisler (See J. L. Whisler sketch). When the Whisler family left the old home in Pennsylvania, all but one daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth Hoffman, accompanied them. Besides Mrs. Beshore, Mrs. Martha Weaver and Mrs. Catherine Matchett were well known women, and Mrs. Weaver is now the remnant in her generation of this pioneer Whisler family. the sons in the Whisler household were: Martin, Jacob, Henry and Samuel.
Peter Beshore was one of three brothers who lived in Pennsylvania, Fred, Benjamin and himself. When he came west little was ever known afterwards of his relatives. the family name Beshore is French, and aside from these two brothers nothing is known locally of the Beshore family ancestry. Fred Beshore located in Wheeling, West Virginia, where he engaged in the iron manufacture, and his son Fred is the only Beshore relative who ever visited in Grant County.
It was one full generation in advance of the first railway train that he Whisler-Beshore emigrant train reached Marion, and the whole party liked the country, and none have since regretted the decision to stop on the Mississinewa in Grant county. The Whisler family history is now inseparable from Grant County history, the family having left its mark on the community. The children born to Peter and Mary Beshore know so much more of their Whisler ancestry than of their Beshore genealogy, because almost the entire Whisler family came west while the father alone represented his family, and died before they were old enough to know anything of his relatives. peter Beshore died in 1862 while Mrs. Beshore was spared to rear her children, dying in 1889 at Marion, and thus there are more of the Whislers than of the Beshores in the family history.
When they came to Grant county Mr. and Mrs. Peter Beshore had one son, Jacob, who married Sarah McKinney, and who is represented by one son, George Beshore. The children born later are mentioned as follows: Mrs. Elizabeth Acker, wife of Isaac Acker, and her daughters are Mrs. Della Stewart and Mrs. Alice Pierce; Van Deman Beshore, deceased; Samuel Benton Beshore, who married Lavina Morrow )see sketch of Fred L. Beshore), Leander Cass Beshore; Mrs. Martha Beshore Ives, wife of Henry Ives, and they have two sons, Glen, deceased and Hiram Beshore, who married Evangeline Johnson.
The Whisler-Beshore family had allied themselves with the Democratic party, but hen the Civil war came on three of the Beshore brothers -Jacob, Samuel B. and Leander C. Beshore enlisted and they were so much interested in Lincoln and the cause he represented that all of them afterward voted the Republican ticket, until temperance became the paramount issue. Then Mr. L. C. Beshore, the only survivor of this soldier trio, still had the courage of his conviction and in 1898 began voting for the Prohibition candidate and was the first candidate for mayor on the Prohibition ticker in Marion.
On January 18, 1872, Mr. Leander C. Beshore married Miss Elizabeth St. John. The marriage was celebrated at Carthage, Missouri, although they had grown up together and had been sweethearts before her parents moved to Carthage. She was a daughter of Abel Fitch and Margaret (Burke) St. John, her father, who was a brother to Judge R. T. and Dr. John St. John, died at Colorado Springs, where the family lived for some years, and her mother came to end her days in the home of Mrs. Beshore. Mrs. St. John is the woman wearing the white shirt waist in the octogenarian group shown in the special octogenarian chapter.
Octogenarians who came to the first meeting, September 1, 1903.
Three sons were born to Mr. and Mrs. L. C. Beshore: Glen F., who died in infancy; Charles St. John, who married Ada Lenox, and has one son, Charles Lenox Beshore; Harry Lee, who married Alta May Myers. The two sons have succeeded to the stove and tinware business established in 1870 by their father, and thus for more than forty years the name Beshore has been continuously in the Marion business directory. Both Mr. and Mrs. L. C. Beshore well remember ante-bellum social conditions, although there were school advantages to be had in Marion at that time, their own children have had much better opportunities. While Charles S. Beshore preferred entering business to having a college education, Harry L. Beshore graduated from the department of electrical engineering at Purdue University, and for a time was in the employ of the Edison Electric Company in Chicago before entering partnership relations in the Beshore Stove and Tinware Store. In the future as in the past, the Beshore name will remain in the business directory.
Now that L. C. Beshore has leisure from active business she has traveled considerable, and for several years he and his wife have spent their winters in warmer climates, but in summer time Indiana is good enough for them. In the last decade they have spent six winters in Florida and four in California. While Marion friends come first, Mr. and Mrs. Beshore have pleasant acquaintances all over the United states, among families who spend their winters in Florida and California. Although retired from active business, Mr. Beshore takes hold of any work where he is needed, and having l3earned the tinner's trade early in life there are few things he cannot do in building or repairing property. His investments are chiefly in rental property, and he saves much expense, by doing necessary improvements himself.
While the father of the Beshore family was not spared to rear his children, the mother was unfailing and she rounded out her days in the home of her son, Mr. Beshore, who had both his mother and mother-in-law in his family and enjoyed the relations. While his parents located east of Marion in 1837, they afterwards removed to Pipe Creek west of town, and it was there that he learned to know many of the Indians. They were neighbors to Jim Sassafras (see chapter on Indians) and one time they traded horses, but the Indian rued the bargain and rather than have difficulty with him, the father of L. C. Beshore traded back. While growing up among them, Mr. Beshore became so used to the Indians that he was never afraid of the. All the Beshore children attended school at Roseburg, and the first time Mr. Beshore ever saw Samuel Burrier, whose farmstead is in that vicinity, the latter was chopping down a mammoth red oak tree, and just beginning to make the farm now known to all as one of the largest estates in Grant County. Through many years of subsequent business acquaintance with Mr. Burrier, Mr. Beshore always associated the man with the gigantic tree he felled the first time he ever saw him.
The Beshore family home has always been on Branson Street, although the present commodious house is modern and occupies the site of the Ernst Guenin homestead where so many curious were found, and so much valuable hardwood lumber was in storage. Charles S. Beshore occupies a modern home on West Third Street, while Harry L. Beshore has a bungalow of California pattern on South Washington Street. The Beshores designed their own improvements, and besides valuable real estate investments (see chapter on Realty). In early life Mr. and Mrs. Beshore were identified with the First M. E. Church, when its house of worship was on Fifth Street, and for twenty years Mr. Beshore served as secretary -treasurer of the Sunday School there, seldom being absent from his post of duty. It was while T. D. Tharp was superintendent, and subsequent officials do not serve so many years.
When the "Crusade" was at its height in Marion in 1873, Mr. Beshore used to warm bricks on the old-fashioned box stove with which he heated his store, and around which chairs always stood for the use of customers. When the woman Crusader had warmed themselves, they would carry warm bricks through the streets while guarding saloon entrances, and one Marion business man warned him against thus accommodating the temperance women, but he never lost any patronage from the act. Mrs. Beshore is in the group of women shown in the Crusade picture in the chapter "Temperance Movement", and she remembers well how faithfully the women of Marion kept up their temperance agitation. Some of the best women in the town are shown in that picture.
Representative Group of Marion Crusaders
Centennial History of Grant County Indiana 1812-1912. The Lewis Publishing Co., 1914.