Pages 475-7

HEALY MARCY LOOMER, at present one of the Agency Clerks at Green Bay Indian Agency, Keshena, Shawano Co., Wis., but whose home is in the city of Shawano, was born in the town of Oppenheim, near the village of Brocketts Bridge (now Dolgeville), Fulton Co., N. Y., November 5, 1847 and is the son of Aaron Perry and Esther Marcy (Healy) Loomer. 

Aaron P. Loomer, the father of the subject of this sketch, was born in the town of Stratford, Fulton Co., N.Y., on the 31st of May, 1822, and was brought up a farmer, but for the past thirty years has been a hotel keeper. He had three children, as follows: Healy M., the subject of this sketch, is the oldest; Byron Lucien, unmarried, is a farmer at Zillah, Washington; Guilford Morell, is a resident of Beaumont, Jefferson Co., Texas, and has been engaged in lumbering the greater part of his life, meeting with fair success. He married a daughter of Col. T. D. Rock, of Woodville. Texas, and has four children:  Perry, Harry, Mary and Bessie.   The subject of our sketch is of Scotch, English, Irish and Mohawk-Dutch ancestry. George Loomer, his great-grandfather on his father's side, and Job Wood, his great-grandfather on his mother's side, were Revolutionary soldiers, the latter living to be upward of ninety years old, and his wife was one hundred years old at the time of her death.

The Loomers are descendants of emigrants from Connecticut, who moved into New York State shortly after the Revolutionary war.  George Loomer, grandfather of H. M. Loomer, died with the cholera when his son, Aaron P. Loomer, was an infant, and his widow, Hannah (Chase) Loomer, a few years afterward, married again, and lived to the age of ninety-five years. At the time of her death it was claimed that she was the oldest living heir to the noted Chase-Townley estate of England. Aaron P. Loomer was an only son, and had a half-sister, Ophelia White, who married Andrew Thompson, and died in Oshkosh, Wis., a few years ago.

Healy M. Loomer was reared a farmer's boy, but being averse to that mode of life, was sent to school. After learning what could be taught him in the rather primitive district country school, where he lived, he attended Fairfield Seminary, in Herkimer county, N. Y., which, at that time, was quite a noted institution of learning. At the age of seventeen he commenced teaching district schools, and while not attending school himself engaged in this vocation until he was about twenty-three. Taking Horace Greeley's advice, at that time quite notorious, to "'Go west, young man; go west," he landed in Oshkosh, Wis., May 1, 1869. In the fall of 1869, Charles M. Upham, a merchant of Shawano, engaged him to go to Shawano and teach the village school, and he arrived in the then frontier village of Shawano, November 6, 1869. At that time Shawano was the last settlement between Green Bay and Ontonagon, Mich., on Lake Superior, a distance of over two hundred miles. The nearest railroad was at Green Bay, Brown county, a distance of forty miles. After teaching school in Shawano for two years, Mr. Loomer went to work in the lumber woods. His first job was given him by T. H. Dodge. He worked in the woods for two years, and then, in company with John A. Winans, John M. Schweers and Chas. R. Klebesadle, purchased the Shawano County Journal from M. H. McCord, changed its politics from rabid Republican to rabid Democratic, eventually bought his partners' interest, and while under his control, the paper was one of the staunchest and sprightliest Democratic country weeklies in the State. In 1879 he sold the Journal to Mrs. Peavcy, now State School Superintendent of Colorado, and a sister of Governor Upham, of Wisconsin. Mr. Loomer, after taking a trip to Montana in company with a colony from Chippewa Falls, which was headed by ex-Speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, A. R. Barrows, returned to Shawano and engaged in lumbering for several years; was the editor and half owner of the Shawano County Advocate for some time, after which he was land man and private secretary for Chas. M. Upham of Shawano, for two years. In 1887, Col. Win. F. Vilas, then postmaster-general, obtained for him the position of agency clerk at the Green Bay Indian Agency, under Thos. Jennings, agent, which position he resigned at the end of a year to accept a position with Robinson & Flinn, pine land dealers of Detroit, Mich., to go south to purchase pine lands for them, which business he was engaged in for several years, becoming familiar with all the long-leaf pine territory from Texas to Florida.  In September, 1894, Thomas H. Savage, agent at the Green Bay Indian Agency, appointed him to his present position.

In politics Mr. Loomer has always been a Democrat, and has taken an active interest in politics ever since coming to Wisconsin.  He has received many nominations from his party; but on account of the large Republican majority in his vicinity has been elected but a few times.   In 1876 he was nominated by his party for member of Assembly, the District at that time consisting of Shawano and Oconto counties. He ran away ahead of his ticket in his own county, but Oconto county gave a large enough majority for his opponent to elect him. In 1878 he was his party's candidate for State Senator for the First Senatorial District, which at that time was composed of the territory that now embraces the counties of Shawano, Oconto, Door, Kewaunee, Marinette, Florence, Forest and Langlade, nearly one-fourth of the whole State. His opponent, George Grimmer, of Kewaunee, was elected in 1876 by over nineteen hundred majority, but he only succeeded in defeating Mr. Loomer by about two hundred and fifty votes; but who had the satisfaction, however, of receiving in his home city all the votes cast but twenty-seven. Mr. Loomer has repeatedly been elected a member of the county board of supervisors of Shawano county, and several times has been chairman of the board. He has also several times been elected city clerk and alderman of Shawano. In 1882 he was elected county clerk of Shawano county, but failed to be re-elected. He has been chairman of the Democratic County Committee of Shawano county, several times, and has repeatedly been a delegate to all his party's conventions from a ward caucus to the Congressional and State Conventions. In 1884 he was an alternate to the Democratic National Convention at Chicago that renominated Grover Cleveland for President, and was one of his stanch supporters.

On July 7, 1875, Healey M. Loomer was united in marriage in the Presbyterian Church at Shawano, by the Rev. A. F. DeCamp, to Bessie Ann Charnley, who was born at Newport, R. I. April 2, 1852, and they have had two children born to them, namely:  Grace Esther, born March 6, 1877, who is now a school teacher; and Inez Healy, born February 6, 1879, who is now a school girl and resides at home. The parents of Mrs. Loomer were William and Sarah (McNeil) Charaley, the former of whom was an Englishman from Lancaster, England, the latter a Scotch woman from Johnstone, near Glasgow, Scotland, both of whom emigrated to America in early life, and were married in the State of Rhode Island.

Mr. Charnley was a mason and a farmer by occupation. He removed from Rhode Island to a farm he purchased near Black Lake in St. Lawrence county, N. Y., where he lived for many years. In 1869 he came to Milwaukee, Wis., removing to Shawano in 1871, and both he and his wife died there. Their children living are as follows: Mary, wife of James A. Alien, of Shawano, Wis., James, wife of John Loan, a farmer of Shawano; Bessie A., the wife of H. M. Loomer, the subject of this sketch; John T., of Alexandria, Louisiana, who has a wife and two children (he is a mason by trade, and is also engaged in the soda-water bottling business);  Frances Ida, of St. Paul, Minn., who is an assistant principle in one of the city high schools; William H. C., unmarried, who is a farmer and speculator and lives in the town of Richmond, Shawano county, and Anna, wife of John Williams, a hardware merchant of Marshfield, Wisconsin.

Mr. Loomer is a Knight Templar Mason, and in 1878-79 was grand senior deacon of the Grand Lodge of A. F. & A. M. of Wisconsin. He has been the representative of his Lodge in the Grand Lodge many times, and is an enthusiastic Mason. He formerly belonged to the I. O. O. F., and Mrs. Loomer is still a member of the Daughters of Rebekah of that order.  Mr. Loomer is not connected with any religious denomination, but his wife and two daughters are Episcopalians.