HISTORY OF MANITOWOC COUNTY


plant. He has held the office of mayor and is a man of independent thought
and
action, and has many friends accordingly. Mrs. Higgins will be missed from
Neenah society circles, where she was known not only for her social virtues
but
for a heart warm, generous and impulsive for others' welfare."-Neenah
Daily
Times (Democrat), October 23, I902.
"Neenah loses, by the removal of the Hon. Thomas Higgins to Manitowoc,
one of its most valued families. Mr. Higgins has been, for a long term of
years,
closely identified with the progress of this city, and has helped forward
all en.
terprises of value. He has served the city as mayor, and has by appointment
rendered valuable assistance in making the Neenah library the finely classified
institution it is. Interested always in the conduct of large enterprises,
Mr. Hig-
gins has managed to find time to study public questions, and is a man of
broad
information and sound and careful judgment concerning the big questions that
are stirring the world's heart to common fellowship at the present time.
And
when it comes to farming and stock-raising-well, Mr. Higgins knows how.
He is just the sort of citizen that any city may be proud to find on its
poll list.
And the family is just as desirable. Mrs. Higgins is a woman of rare home
grace, and most charming habit. The rule of her life binds her to kin, but
her
active interest in all things draws her into useful society and makes her
a most
useful woman. The daughters, like their father and mother, are helpful and
true, and just the sort to make society better. The only distress The News
wishes the family is that they may not like Manitowoc better than Neenah,
and
that they will return to their beautiful home on Church street within a year."
-The Neenah Daily News (Republican), October 24, I902.
Mr. Higgins is of Irish extraction, his father Thomas Higgins, Sr., having
been a farmer in County Roscommon, Ireland, who emigrated to America in
i849, just after the birth of the subject of this sketch, settling in Monmouth
county, New Jersey, near the old Monmouth battleground. In i863, the Hig-
gins family left New Jersey for the west, purchasing a farm of three hundred
and twenty acres near Sterling, Illinois, where Thomas Higgins remained,
assist-
ing on the farm until his maturity. The old home is still well known as the
Hig-
gins homestead, its owner Thomas Higgins, Sr., having died ,in I895, but
the
farm still remains in the family, being owned and occupied at this time by
one
of his children.
Mr. Higgins received his education in Dutch Lane school, near Freehold,
New Jersey, and in the county school of his Illinois home, and later took
a
course in a Chicago business college.
At the age of twenty-one, Mr. Higgins with his brother H. C. Higgins, en-
gaged in railroad contracting, and at that early age was entering into very
im-
portant contracts with such railroad companies as the Baltimore & Ohio
and
Pennsylvania Railroad Company. In I877, the Higgins brothers buift gas works
at Dixon, Illinois, near their old home which they sold later, and in 1878
built
gas works at Waterloo, Iowa, and Neenah and Menasha, Wisconsin. Mr. Hig-
gins then took up his residence in Neenah and on November 6, i879, was mar-
ried to Mary Gaffney, daughter of Philip Gaffney, a merchant of that city,
and
continued his residence in Neenah until his removal to Manitowoc. During
this
time Mr. Higgins and his brother built gas works, electric light plants and
street
railways in many cities of this and other states, including the gas, electric
light


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