Aaron Smith Newcomb (b. 1847)
B.M. Newcomb wrote:
Mr. Newcomb was educated in the common schools of Grant Co., Wis.; graduated, 1872, from Platteville State Normal School. After teaching school at Sun Prairie, Wis., keeping a general store, Belmonst, Wis., prospecting near Georgetown, Colo. during the gold excitement of 1875-76, and selling sewing machines in western Iowan, he was ordained in 1882 as a minister, his first charge being the Congregational Church of Pattersonville (now Hull), Ia. While there he founded the Pattersonville Educational Institution, a Christian academy which had many years of successful existence, becoming unnecessary with the establishment of public high schools.
In 1885 he moved from Iowa and was pastor at Clintonville, Kaukauna, Eagle River, Windsor, Ithaca, Pine River, Green Lake, and Osseo, Wis. In 1917 he moved to California, becoming pastor at Orange. In 1910 at Wester Park, Kans., following residence at San Diego, Calif., for his wife’s health. Later at Ivanhoe, near Rockefeller, Ill.; again, resided Alto Pass, Ill. All of the churches under his care grew in educational, literary and charitable movement, he persisting in his guiding motive to “make the world better for my having lived in it.”