HUGH
SEYMOUR ANTRIM. One of the prominent business citizens of Cairo, whose
activities in the commercial world have been such as to make his name
familiar to the large grain-buying firms of Southern Illinois, and who has
also interested himself in the public welfare of his adopted city and with
social and religious matters, is Hugh Seymour Antrim, head of the H. S.
Antrim Grain Company and president of the Cairo Board of Trade. Mr. Antrim
was born at St. Louis, Missouri, October 14, 1867, and during the following
year his father, John Antrim, brought his family to Cairo, where he had been
engaged in business during the Civil war, and where he passed the remaining
years of his life.
The progenitor of the Antrim family, according to
tradition and history, came to the United States as a member of Penn's
Colony, being of Scotch and Irish descent. The grandfather of Hugh S.
Antrim, Joel Antrim, came from the Keystone state of Indiana during the
early history of the latter commonwealth, and there died. John Antrim was
born in Madison, Indiana, in 1830, and there spent his youth in a modest
clerkship. He began life with little more than an elementary education,
became a flatboatman when nearing his majority, and ran the Ohio river for
several years, passing late in the 'forties and during the early 'fifties
the site of Cairo when a single house marked it. When he left the river he
engaged in merchandising at Metropolis, Illinois, but left that point and
came to Cairo, being a merchant in the latter city during the Civil war,
while it was occupied by Federal troops. He made the intimate acquaintance
of Generals Grant and Logan and other officers of high rank, a fact which
served him advantageously later on in life. Going from Cairo to St. Louis,
Mr. Antrim carried on a mercantile business in the latter city for a rather
brief period, when he returned to the city at the junction of the big rivers
and died here in 1904. He became a stockholder in the old First Bank of
Cairo, contributed as a public-spirited citizen toward the general welfare
of the town, took a citizen's interest in politics as a Republican and was
highly esteemed by all who knew him. He was a Knight Templar Mason and past
high Priest of his Chapter, and was a consistent and liberal member of the
Presbyterian church. He married Eliza Parr, a daughter of Eli Parr, an
agriculturist of Concordia, Kentucky, where Mrs. Antrim was born, and she
died in 1892, having been the mother of the following children: John, who is
a traveling salesman out of Cairo; Albert, who passed away in 1891,
unmarried; Nellie May, who became the wife of John A. Haynes and died in
1899; Addie P., who married Fred A. Kent, of Chicago; Miss Viola, who lives
in Chicago; Hugh Seymour; and Walter S., who died at New Orleans in 1899,
leaving a son, Charles F. Antrim, of Chicago.
Hugh Seymour Antrim
was educated in the Cairo graded schools and began his business career at
the age of fourteen years as a clerk in the grain firm of C. M. Howe &
Brother. He became a member of the firm in 1900 and succeeded to the
business in 1906. His business is a purely domestic one and embraces the
handling of food-stuffs as a shipper to points affording the best market for
grain. In his public relation to the community Mr. Antrim is active among
the commercial interests of Cairo. He is president of the Cairo Board of
Trade and has represented his city as a delegate from that body in various
meetings over the country, Chicago, Washington, D. C., St. Louis and Kansas
City, and as a delegate to the Deep Waterway conventions he represented his
city at Washington, December 7, 1911. He served as a member of the city
council from the Third ward of Cairo for one term, and is a member of the
Commercial Club and a director of the Central Building and Loan Association.
He is a Master Mason and past chancellor of the Knights of Pythias, and past
exalted ruler of the B. P. 0. E., representing that order as delegate at
Detroit in 1910, and at Atlantic City in 1911.
On October 9, 1894,
Mr. Antrim was married at Carbondale, Illinois, to Miss Claribel McNeal, of
Denver, Colorado. Her father was the late Judge R. T. McNeal, prominent in
church and at the bar of Denver, and founder of the Women's College of
Colorado. He passed away January 14, 1911, and he and his wife, who was a
Miss Ellett, of Virginia, had seven children. Mrs. Antrim was educated in
Potter's College, Bowling Green, Kentucky, and she and Mr. Antrim have three
children, namely: Hugh Seymour, who is a junior of the Cairo High school;
Walter Ellett, a freshman in the same school; and Virginia. Mr. Antrim has
brought up his household in the Presbyterian church, and was trustee of the
congregation during the erection of the new house of worship of that faith
some years ago.
Extracted 15 Jan 2018 by Norma Hass from 1912 History of Southern Illinois, Volume 2, pages 740-741.
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