TORBERT, Williard H.

TORBERT, Williard H. (Camden, NY, Jan. 23, 1845--Unknown). Torbert prepared for college by attending Falley Seminary in Fulton, New York and then Princeton. He worked as a druggist in Syracuse, New York before coming to Dubuque in 1864.

Torbert purchased an interest in the drug business of E. H. Moore creating the firm of Moore & Torbert. This firm later merged with the business established by Timothy MASON and was operated by a Mr. Sampson. This resulted in the drug firm of Moore, Torbert and Sampson. When Moore retired and Sampson died, Torbert became the sole owner of the renamed firm of W. H. TORBERT at the age of twenty-four. (1)

Torbert carried on both a wholesale and retail business and established a large trade extending through Iowa in Minnesota, Nebraska, Dakota, Illinois and Wisconsin. According to accounts of the time, Torbert filled 100,000 prescriptions in twenty years. He was also secretary-treasurer of the corporation which constructed the ELEVENTH STREET ELEVATOR and a director of the DUBUQUE AND SIOUX CITY RAILROAD. (2) In 1886 he was the sole agent for the Crystal Plate Glass Company.

In 1880 Torbert led efforts to modify Iowa's laws on the sale of alcohol by pharmacists. He was elected president in 1888 of the State Jobbers and Manufacturers' Association and was credited with the enactment of laws regulating the rates between railroads and shippers in the state that put Iowa on an equal status with Chicago. In 1888 he was elected president of the Iowa State Pharmaceutical Association and in 1889 was re-elected, an honor never before given a member. He served as a delegate from Iowa to the 1892 National Pharmaceutical Association convention. (3)

Torbert was considered a champion of the interests of the retail druggists and held membership in the National Wholesale Druggists Association and the Interstate Druggists' League in which he was also the Iowa representative of the state executive committee. He served as president of the DUBUQUE COMMERCIAL CLUB and Dubuque Jobbers and Manufacturers' Union. In 1899 he served as vice-president of the American Pharmaceutical Association, the largest society of pharmacists in the world.

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Source:

1. The Northwestern Druggist: A Progressive Journal for Retail Druggists, Volume 2. Minneapolis: Lumber Exchange, 1901, p. 21

2. The Biographical Dictionary and Portrait Gallery of Representative Men of Chicago, Iowa and the World's Columbian Exposition.Chicago: American Biographical Publishing Company, 1893, p. 610

3. "Municipal Molecules," Dubuque Daily Herald, July 29, 1892, p. 4

Gue, Benjamin F. and Shambaugh, Benjamin Franklin. Biographies and Portraits of the Progressive Men of Iowa: Leaders in Business, Politics and the Professions; Together with an Original and Authentic History of the State. Volume 1. Des Moines: Conaway and Shaw, 1899, p. 378-379

See: UP TOWN DRUG STORE