Ignace Hainer
1820-1900
Ignace Hainer is the son of Ignace
Hainer Sr. and Catharina Madarasz Hainer, citizens of the Republic of Hungary.
He is the husband of Etelka Barthos Hainer, daughter of Hungarian Lajos
Barthos. He is, on his mother’s side, a cousin of Count Istvan (Stephen)
Szechenyi.
Reprint
from Biographical and Historical Record of
Ringold and Decatur Counties, Iowa, published by Lewis Publishing
Company, Chicago, 1887.
Ignace Hainer is a native of
Hungary, Europe, a Hungarian exile, and one of the earliest pioneers of Decatur
County, Iowa. He was born of genteel parentage, and in Hungary received a
liberal and military education, becoming a lawyer, and being admitted to the
bar of all the courts of his native country. He was also an active worker for
the leading Hungarian journal edited by the greatest Hungarian patriot, Louis
Kossuth; but both his law practice and his career as a journalist were of short
duration, being interrupted by the National uprising and the great war for
independence in his country in 1848-’49. He naturally joined the National
cause, and became a member of the staff of General Count Casimir Batthyanyi,
the foremost cavalier of the highest aristocracy of Hungary, who cast their all
in the scales for the welfare, liberty and independence of their country.
In this capacity, acting as
Adjutant-General with Count Batthyanyi, he went through the campaigns of 1848s,
and in the winter of 1849, and in the spring of the latter year, when the great
National cause, by the destruction of several invading Austrian armies, became
victorious, and the National Independence was safe without the intervention of
Russia, and the new ministry (cabinet) was formed under Louis Kossuth for the
free and independent country, Count Casimir Batthyani became the Secretary of
State (Minister of Foreign Affairs), and Ignace Hainer acted as his secretary.
But this, too was a summer night’s dream.
In the latter part of the
summer of 1849, through the unwarranted intervention of Russia, the just cause of
Hungary became the lost cause, and the subject of this sketch, an Austrian
prisoner. By the kind intervention of
some powerful friends the subject of this sketch was liberated from the
Austrian prison and became an exile, immigrating to this country, then the only
free and independent country in the world – the home of the free, the land of
the brave.
For a year he lived in
Chicago, the Queen of the West, in order to become better acquainted with the
language, laws, manners and customers of this country, and in the year 1854
Ignace Hainer removed thence to Iowa, and settled in Decatur County on the
so-called Hungarian Reserve in New Buda Township, thus following in the
footsteps of his countrymen who had come before him, and became a pioneer of
Decatur County.
In the year 1858 the
Hungarian settlers in Decatur County, Iowa, petitioned Congress that settlers
could, and buy their reserved land and so become the owners in fee simple of
their homesteads; petition being granted by an act of Congress they became free
holders and with them the subject of this sketch also.
In the fall of 1856 Ignace
Hainer went with a fellow pioneer and two ox-teams to Princeton, Missouri,
twenty-six miles, to get corn meal for winter use for the settlement. It being
the time of the Presidential election, and also district court in Princeton,
the town and hotels were crowed with people. The pioneers after traveling
twenty-five miles on foot through drizzling rain, and getting wet and muddy,
hardly dared to take front seats at the tab d’hote; the back seats being
already occupied, the presiding judge kindly urged them to take seats by him,
which were accepted with embarrassment.
Hearing that they were
Hungarian settlers from New Buda, a lively conversation followed about the Hungarian
settlement, about Louis Kossuth, then in high popularity with Americans and
about the Hungarian war for independence.
Perceiving from the
conservation thus entered that Ignace Hainer was something beside an
ox-teamster he was asked if he knew French and being answered in the
affirmative was asked if he knew German to which question he again answered in
the affirmative. They then told him that just such a man as he was needed in
the State University of Missouri at
Columbia, and asked him if he would not accept the professorship of modern
languages at said university, then vacant, and this to question being answered also in the affirmative, they assured
him that without any further steps he would receive a call from the proper
authorities to assume the professorship of modern languages at said university,
and so it happened.
After the January meeting of
the regency of the university he received the appointment and assumed the
duties of his office, and as Saul, the son of Kish, according to bible history,
went in search of his father’s asses and found not the asses but a kingdom, so
the ox-teamster found not only his corn grist but a professorship in a State
University, a thing which can only happen in this glorious, free, enlightened,
unprejudiced country. Ignace Hainer retained this position in the university
for five years to the greatest satisfaction of patrons and students who
presented him with due ceremonies with a gold-headed cane, appropriately
engraved, in recognition of their love and gratitude.
When the civil war broke out
the Missouri State University was closed, and Ignace Hainer, not wishing to
take side in arms, returned again to his farm in New Buda Township, Decatur
County, Iowa, and there he mainly engaged in farming, but the confidence, trust
and love of his fellow-citizens heaped him with all kinds of offices of public
trust. So he acted many times in Decatur County as a public school teacher,
preacher, school director, township clerk, assessor, justice of the peace for
many terms, a member of the United States Grand Jury, delegate and chairman to
township and county conventions, deputy county clerk and deputy county
treasurer, and last but not least United States Postmaster of New Buda Township
for ten years during Grant’s whole administration, and a part of President
Hayes’s.
Only in 1880, when he went
for a long visit to Europe, he resigned this position, whereupon the
postmastership of New Buda Township was discontinued, and as his advice was
transferred to Davis City, the latter place being near a railroad depot.
In the years 1885, Mr.
Hainer again visited Europe and his native country. Hungary, returning to this
country in the summer of 1886. Having crossed the Atlantic Ocean five times,
and many times several seas in Europe, he is thought to be the most seafaring
man in Decatur County.
He has reared a large family
in Decatur County, and to all his children has endeavored to give a good
education. Of his six living children, the eldest, Eugene, is a lawyer, and the
president of his own bank, the Farmers’ and Merchants’, at Aurora, Hamilton
County, Nebraska; Julius, a medical doctor, and Professor of Physics and
Mathematics at State of Iowa Agricultural College at Ames, Story County, Iowa;
Bayard is studying law at the Union College of Law at the University of
Chicago, Illinois; the eldest daughter, Hermoine, is the wife of the county
superintendent of Carroll County, Iowa, at Arcadia; Norma is assistant
principal in the high school at Aurora, Nebraska, and Vesta, the youngest, is
yet attending high school.
Update: Vesta eventually
marries Dr. Eugene Chase of St. Louis, where they make their home.
Ignace Hainer’s son,
Vicktor, is a teacher. His daughter, Ada, marriied Memphis furniture merchant
John Theodore Blaise, a son of Joseph Blaise of the German-French province
known as Alsace-Lloraine.
In 1896, Mr. Hainer’s son
Eugene, is elected to the United States House of Representatives from Nebraska.
In 1899, Mr. Hainer’s son Bayard T. Hainer, is appointed City Attorney of the City
of Guthrie, Oklahoma Territory. He is then appointed by President McKinley to
the position of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of Oklahoma Territory.
After Oklahoma acquires statehood, Justice Bayard is appointed chief counsel to
the Federal Trade Commission and general counsel to the U. S. Department of
Agriculture, dying at his home in Oklahoma City in 1933.
Mr. Hainer’s son, Julius, is
eventually admitted to the bar of St. Louis, where he establishes a law
practice. Ignace Hainer is found dead on a road outside of Davis City in 1900,
following a trip to his homeland.
Ignace Hainer’s cousin, Countess Ernestine Szechenyi, and
her husband Count Christian Marie Ladislaus, who are for a time residents of
Decatur County, eventually return to their homeland of Hungary.
Mr. Hainer’s grandson,
Eugene Frank Blaise, who has moved from St. Louis to Guthrie, Oklahoma, enters
the Oklahoma oil business in partnership with lawyer Charles J. Wrightsman,
native of Pennsylvania. In 1908 the two of them become owners of the Farmers
National Bank of Tulsa, of which Blaise is president.
Following the collapse of
Farmers in 1910, it is reorganized as the Exchange National Bank of Tulsa, with
Harry F. Sinclair as president. Following two subsequent reorganizations, it is
today known as the Bank of Oklahoma or BOK, to include holdings of the Bank of
Arizona, the Bank of Colorado, the Bank of New Mexico and the Bank of Nevada.
-from
Biographical and Historical Record of
Ringgold and Decatur Counties, Iowa
Lewis Publishing Company,
Chicago. 1887.