WILLIAM H. LAKE (1881), sheriff of Pipestone county, has been a resident and prominent citizen of the county for the past thirty years. He is one in a family of nine living children, the names of the others being Edwin, Linnian, Bert, Charles, Nellie, Olive, George and Minnie, who were born to William and Olive Lake, both natives of Vermont. They moved west to Juneau county, Wisconisn, in the early fifties, and there both are now buried.
It was in that Wisconsin county on October 8, 1858, that William H. Lake of this biography was born. He was educated in the district schools and gew to manhood on the farm of his father, ten miles from the town of Necedah. On leaving home he journeyed direct to Pipestone county, arriving in the then new county in which his fortune was to be cast on July 6, 1881. He secured employment at farm labor, later managed the farm of Dr. Taylor, and then until 1888 was a farmer on his own account. In the year mentioned Mr. Lake located in the town of Jasper, then in the building, and was there engaged in the dray and transfer business for thirteen years. He then associated himself with W. W. Stearns in the general mercantile buriness, from which he was called, as a result of the election in the fall of 1906, to assume the duties which he has since faithfully performed as upholder of the dignity of the law in the county.
Mr. Lake was married in Pipestone county on June 8, 1884, to Etta Lobdell, who died in May, 1898. One son, Arthur, now a barber at Marshall, Minnesota, was born to this union on February 12, 1886. A second time, on October 8, 1907, Sheriff Lake was joined in marriage to Ethel Gilmore, the daughter of William B. and Mary Gilmore, early day settlers of the county. Mrs. Lake is a native of Iowa.
For two terms during his residence in Jasper Mr. Lake served as president of the village council. Fraternally he is affiliated with both the Blue Lodge and Chapter of the Masonic order, the Modern Woodmen, Workmen and Yeoman.
Source: An illustrated history of the counties of Rock and Pipestone, Minnesota. Northern History Publishing Co.- 1911