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Here is a biographical sketch from 1878 about Zelotes Fisher. It is a very inspiring story. Zelotes was a brother of my 3rd great grandmother, Meroa Jane Fisher Barron.
ZELOTES T. FISHER
RED OAK
ZELOTES T. FISHER was born on the 13th of December, 1819, in Franklin county, Ohio. His father was Josiah Fisher, a Carmelite preacher of repute. His mother was a woman of most sterling qualities of mind, and a devoted Christian. Josiah Fisher and his wife had born unto them six sons and four daughters, four sons and two daughters having died. These people emigrated to the State of Iowa in 1856, converting a large tract of wild land into farms. Seven years after settling in Iowa his mother died, and two years later his father passed away.
From the age of twelve Zelotes was at work upon his father’s farm, attending during the winter months an inferior school held in a log hut. At the age of sixteen he learned the cooper’s trade, in which he became very proficient.
On the 4th of July, 1837, while engaged in celebrating the great day, he lost his right arm in the accidental discharge of an old-fashion cast-iron gun. At the time of this misfortune he had never been able to more than read printed matter indifferently, but he continued to acquire knowledge by virtue of the severest personal application. He learned to write and to readily read manuscript, and subsequently had the benefit of one year’s tuition at the high school at Worthington, Ohio, boarding at home and walking five miles a day, from home to the school.
At the close of this year of schooling his father moved to Delaware county, Ohio. Here Zelotes commenced the study of medicine under his uncle, William Fisher, continuing for a year and a half, during which time he had been upon the jury of several occasions. Life in a court-room had for him special attraction, and he determined to abandon Esculapius for Blackstone, and forthwith made an arrangement to read law in the office of the Hon. Thomas W. Powell, at the town of Delaware. He continued reading law and teaching school meanwhile, as a means of self-subsistence. In September, 1842, he was admitted to the bar at Mount Vernon, Ohio.
In January, 1843, with but six dollars in cash as his financial assets, he opened a law office in London, Madison county, Ohio. It was his good fortune to find at this time and place a warm friend in the person of W. H. Squires, at whose hotel he boarded, subject to his convenience as to pay. Here our young lawyer applied himself to vigorous study. In the course of a year and a half he was elected prosecuting attorney of Madison county, which position he held for four successive terms. During the holding of this office he had frequently to combat defense set up by such brilliant lights of the bar as Noah H. Swain, now justice of the supreme court of the United States; Sampson Masom, James Bates, W. Denison, subsequently the great war governor of Ohio, and others of equal note. After serving in this office for seven years he accepted a nomination for the assembly, resigning his attorneyship. He was elected to sit in the first session of the Ohio legislature after the adoption of the new constitution in 1851, taking rank as the first parliamentarian in the house, often occupying the speaker’s chair pro tempore. He remained in the house for two terms. During this stay of twelve years at London he had acquired two farms and a town residence.
In September, 1844, Mr. Fisher had married Jemimah Jones, of Madison county, Ohio, daughter of R. B. Jones. Her mother’s maiden name was Eliza McCormick; both these parents are still living. In 1855 Mr. Fisher converted his farms and residence into cash, determining to go farther west. With his wife and three children he came to Oskaloosa, Mahasha county, Iowa, having purchased in that and other counties nineteen hundred acres of wild land, his intention then being to practice law for a few years and subsequently to establish a large stock farm. With this in view, Mr. Fisher imported the first shorthorn cattle ever brought to Mahaska county. Here he commenced a very profitable practice of law. His sons were coming to manhood; but evincing an utter indisposition for agriculture, he was forced to abandon his farming proclivities. He however had his wild land converted into three large farms, which he sold.
In 1858 he was elected vice-president of the State Board of Agriculture, and in the succeeding year was made president.
On the 5th day of January, 1865, a meeting was held in a country school-house, upon the prairie in Mahaska county, for the purpose of organizing a company for the construction on the Central Railroad of Iowa. Mr. Fisher prepared articles of incorporation, which were adopted then and there, Mr. Fisher being elected one of the directors, and subsequently elected by the board as its secretary. The enterprise was conducted with great vigor, and the road, about one hundred and thirty miles in length, was completed in four or five years, and is now a very important link in the railway system of the state.
Desirous of placing his two sons in business, he began to look about the state for a proper location, and determined upon Red Oak as a suitable place, to which point he removed in 1871. Here he immediately commenced the practice of law.
In May, 1872, he purchased a half interest in the Red Oak “Express,” and became its editor, running the paper through the Grant campaign. In 1872 he was elected mayor of Red Oak, declining a renomination at the close of his first term. He is now in full practice of his profession, though he is a partner with his son, Z. T. Fisher, junior, in one of the largest hardware establishments in the State of Iowa.
We have here but briefly sketched the career of the eminently self-made man. His parents were burthened with a large family, and had but slender means, and Zelotes had to fight his way along the rugged paths of boyhood as best he could. At the age of eighteen years he had the misfortune to lose his right arm, thus disqualifying his for any agricultural pursuit, which no doubt was the natural bent of his mind. Under the most discouraging circumstances we find him trying to learn. His indomitable will, ever encouraged by the kindly words and counsel of his devoted mother, nerves him on to renewed exertions. He abandons physics for law, in the practice of which he has had an enviable professional and financial success, and now in his fifty-eighth year he is in splendid condition, both physically and mentally.
Mr. Fisher claims that his great success in life has come from two causes: first he had one of the very best of mothers, who inspired him to early exertion, and secondly, he has one of the very best of wives ever vouchsafed to man, who in his mature years has ever been his counsel and advice, and to whose clear judgment he owes much of the good fortune that has followed his life. His family at present consists of his wife, five sons and three daughters, one daughter having died.
In politics, Mr. Fisher is a very active republican, frequently appearing before his fellow-citizens in this and adjoining counties. He is a powerful and ready speaker. (source: The United States Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Eminent and and Self-Made Men: Iowa Volume; American Biographical Publishing Company, 1878, Chicago and New York, p. 602-604)
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