- HON. PLINY NORCROSS is one of Janesville's influential citizens.
A lawyer by profession,
- he served four years as district attorney of Rock County,
from 1871 to 1875, and two terms as city attorney of Janesville,
1875 and 1876. He sat in the mayor's chair for two terms, 1877
and 1878, and has twice represented the Janesville District in
the State Legislature, first in 1867, and again in 1885. His
intellectual capability and his moral worth have commanded respect
and his kindly impulses, generous nature, genial disposition
and charitable instincts have made him universally popular.
- Mr. NORCROSS was born in the town of Templeton, Worcester
Co., Mass., Nov. 16, 1838.
- His father, Franklin NORCROSS, married Lydia POWERS, who
bore him three sons and two daughters, Lanson Powers NORCROSS,
Pliny NORCROSS, Frederick Franklin NORCROSS, Ellen Sophia NORCROSS
and Louisa Azubah NORCROSS.
- Franklin NORCROSS was a farmer and lumberman in his native
State, and removed from
- Massachusetts to Wisconsin in 1852, settling at La Grange,
Walworth County. For a time he cultivated a farm there, but
being allured by tales of brighter prospects in the West he went
to Tama, Iowa. Within a few years he returned to Wisconsin,
taking up his residence in Janesville. He died there in 1875,
in his sixty-third year, his wife surviving him until August,
1892, when she died at Denver, Colo.., at the age of seventy-seven.
- Daniel NORCROSS, the father of Franklin NORCROSS, and grandfather
of Pliny, was
- descended from English ancestors who settled in Massachusetts
in early Colonial days. He died after reaching the age of seventy-six
years, the father of five children. Lydia POWERS, wife of Franklin,
and mother of Pliny NORCROSS, was one of the twelve children
of Oliver POWERS, a Massachusetts farmer who traced his lineage
back to the early Puritan settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
He died on the ancestral farm at the age of seventy-seven.
- Pliny NORCROSS came to Walworth County, Wis., with his parents,
in the fall of 1852. He was for a short time at the State University.
On April 16, 1861, while a Freshman, he enlisted in Company
K, 1st Wisconsin Infantry, under Capt. Lucius FAIRCHILD, being
the first student to enlist in the war for the Union. At the
expiration of this term of service he again enlisted, in Company
K, 13th Wisconsin Infantry, and was captain of that company during
three years. His brothers Lanson and Fred were members of the
same company. Fred died during his term of service at Nashville,
Tenn., May 16, 1865.
- Mr. NORCROSS was married Jan. 4, 1865, to Phoebe A. POOLE,
only daughter of John H.
- and Elizabeth (WINNE) POOLE. The children of this marriage
were Frederick F., John Vanderpoole, Elizabeth Leavitt and Edward
Powers. Frederick married Alice WRENN. John married Marian
RUGER. Elizabeth married George A. MASON. Both sons and the
son-in-law practice law in the city of Chicago. The third son,
Edward, is studying medicine at the Medical School of the Northwestern
University of Chicago.
- In the spring of 1865 Mr. and Mrs. Pliny NORCROSS settled
in the city of Janesville, Wis.
- Mr. NORCROSS was a partner of the late Judge John R. BENNETT
from 1866 until 1873, then a year with Hon. A. A. JACKSON, and
from 1876 to 1883 was in partnership with Hon. B. F. DUNWIDDIE,
present judge of the twelfth circuit. Upon the dissolution of
the firm of NORCROSS & DUNWIDDIE, Mr. NORCROSS gave up the
practice of law and went to Brooklyn, N.Y., and in company with
two Englishmen, Messrs. Ivery and Bulver, organized the International
Tile Co., of which he was president. After the factory was erected
he sold out his interest and returned to Janesville, and in the
fall of 1883 he erected the NORCROSS block, on River street,
and in the summer of 1884 moved the Farmer's Mill from its location
on Milwaukee street to its present site, on Rock river, at the
foot of Dodge street, and leased it to the firm of DOTY &
McKEY; later he bought out McKEY and remained as a partner in
the milling business with E. P. DOTY until 1900, when he sold
out his interest in the milling business to Mr. DOTY. In the
same year, 1884, he erected the Phoebus block, on Milwaukee street.
In 1885, he built the first permanent electric light plant in
the city of Janesville, Wis., on a part of the site formerly
occupied by the Farmer's Mill, using the same water-wheels and
flume for generating electric current that had been used for
turning the Buhr mill stone.
- In 1892 Mr. NORCROSS purchased the Fulton milling property
on the Catfish river, tore down
- the old mill, and put in its place an electric light plant,
from which he furnished current for Edgerton and for the Janesville
street lamps. The Janesville circuit was about thirty-three
miles in length, and was a part of the first long-distance plant
in Wisconsin. In 1891 and 1893 he purchased both of the old
and abandoned flouring mills at Indian Ford, and a few years
thereafter united the power of both mills into an electric light
plant and grist mill on the site of the McCHESNEY Mill on the
west side of the river. In 1899 he sold the Janesville Electric
Plant, Library and Mill, together with the Fulton Electric Plant,
to the Janesville Electric company, of which he was the first
president, and still serves in that incumbency. From 1889 to
1897 he was in partnership with Alexander RICHARDSON, in the
manufacture of ladies' fine shoes, in the NORCORSS block.
-
- Taken from "Commemorative Biographical Record of
the Counties of Rock, Green, Grant, Iowa and Lafayette Wisconsin"
(c) 1901, pp. 35-36.
-
- Courtesy of Carol
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