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Note: !1. Obituary of Samuel Albert Brush in Jennie Lillian Hall's scrapbook. Samuel attended school at the University of Iowa at Iowa City for one year and then taught school at a rural one-room school house in the wintertime and farmed during the summers. His first year of teaching, he was just about to dismiss the children when he saw a blinding blizzard approaching. He brought all the children back into the schoolhouse.
They collected all their long neck scarves and tied them together into a rope which they used to guide the larger children to and from the woodpile in order to bring sufficient fuel into the building to keep warm. Samuel took the left-overs from their lunch pails and divided it out through the duration of the storm which lasted well into the next day.
After the storm cleared, the frantic parents of the children came to the schoolhouse along the road, expecting to find their children frozen under the drifts, as they would have been on their way home when the storm hit. Instead, they found them all safe and warm in the schoolhouse under Samuel's care.
Samuel and his young family later moved into Chelsea where he engaged in the grain elevator business and acquired considerable land. Also, Samuel served on the town school board, the town council for four terms, was the mayor of Chelsea, and from 1927 to 1931 was elected state senator. On one occasion, his younger brother, Edward Alphonzo accompanied him to a session of the state legislature and later told his family that he was amazed at how intelligent and perceptive Samuel was in the affairs of the state. In 1916 Samuel helped organize the Chelsea Savings Bank. He then held the office of bank president until his death thirty-five years later.
S.A. BRUSH Senator from the Tama-Benton senatorial district, was born in Winneshiek county, March 19, 1873. In the fall of 1874 the family moved to a farm a few miles south of Chelsea and in 1877 to a farm in southern Richland township, Tama county. He received his education in the district school and graduated from the chelsea high school. After graduating from high school he taught six terms of school and later spent a year studying law at the State University at Iowa City. He was married to Catherine Wilkinson, August 8, 1900, and has a family of five children. Mrs. Harold B. Cobet, Cecil W., Merle, Amber and Burnell. The family home was on a farm near Chelsea until 1914 when Senator Brush sold the farm and moved to Chelsea. He has since been engaged in the coal, grain and feed business. Is also operating a farm near Chelsea purchased in 1919. Member of the Masonic fraternity and past master of Zenith Lodge No. 581. Member of the Methodist church, serving the official board of his home church. Has been a member of the school boards in the districts in which he has lived for twenty-nine years. Mayor of Chelsea from 1914 to 1918 and has since been a member of the town council. Elected state senator in 1926. A republican in politics.
Iowa Official Register 1927-1928 - Biographies of State Senators, pg. 228-229
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