Cook county, Illinois, and thence went to Tazewell, county, Illinois. In 1872 he removed to Pawnee county, Nebraska. On September 5, 1861, he enlisted at Ottawa, LaSalle county, Illinois, in Company H, of the Fourth Illinois Cavalry, Colonel Hoyd Dickey, of Ottawa, and Captain Wimple, of Pulaski, commanding. The regiment was sent to Belmont, Kentucky, and later to Forts Henry and Donelson, still later to Shiloh, and finally Mr. Eckhardt was placed on the body guard of General Grant and participated in the wonderful campaigns of the famous general. At Corinth he had a horse shot under him. The animal fell upon Mr. Eckhardt, injuring him so seriously that he has never fully recovered, and will always suffer from the effects of the terrible wound. On account of it, after a long siege in the hospital, he was honorably discharged and returned to his Illinois home.
On February 12, 1867, Mr. Eckhardt was married at Delavan, Tazewell county, Illinois, to Rachel F. Wertz, a daughter of John and Catherine (Hauk) Wertz, natives of St. Thomas, Pennsylvania, who removed to Illinois in 1864, where both died. Mr. and Mrs. Eckhardt are very well and favorably known and have many friends not only in Clay township, but throughout the county.
William Holroyd, living retired from active life in his pleasant country home in Glen Rock precinct, Nemaha county, Nebraska, is one of the pioneer citizens of this locality, and is enjoying now the rest and comfort to which he is entitled after long years of careful management and honest toil.
Mr. Holroyd is an Englishman by birth. He is a native of York-
shire, and was born October 11, 1829, son of John Holroyd. The latter also a native of Yorkshire, England, was born about 1807, and died there about 1863, leaving his widow and eight of their nine children. He was a manufacturer of steel, in which business he brought up his sons, and he also gave them good schooling advantages.
William Holroyd first came to America in 1853, with wife and one child, in a sail vessel landing in New York after a voyage of twenty-eight days. At Pittsburg he was employed in a steel mill for over a year, when he returned to England taking his wife with him. Later he again went to work in the Pittsburg steel mill, and remained there another year. In the spring of 1855 he came to Nebraska, landing at Brownville on May 11th, and here he purchased one hundred and sixty acres of government land, at $1.25 per acres, and established his home in a log cabin, sixteen by twenty-two feet in dimensions, having two rooms, one upstairs and one down. But few improvements had been made in this part of the country at that time, and the Indians were still here--not hostile, however. Game of various kinds was plenty, and Mr. Holroyd recalls the fact that in the early days of their settlement here he supplied the larder with venison. Their western journey was made by boat and on the way he stopped in Iowa. When he came here he brought a yoke of oxen of his brother-in-law Thomas Mosley. Here he has been interested in farming all these years, with the exception of four years during the Civil war, when he returned to Pittsburg and made good wages in the mill. He now owns two hundred acres of well improved land; with its long stretches of neatly trimmed hedge and its well kept buildings, including the two residences (one occupied by himself and one by his son), barns and other buildings. And his land is stocked with high-grade horses, cattle and hogs.
Mr. Holroyd is the father of ten children, one born in England,
one in Pittsburg and the others in Nebraska. Those now living are: Edwin, a farmer in Oklahoma Territory, has a wife and four children; Eveline, wife of Frank Comstock, a farmer living southeast of Auburn, has one son and four daughters; and Wilfred, a farmer. The mother of his children, whose maiden name was Eliza Mosley, and who was a native of Yorkshire, England, died May 22, 1879, at the age of fifty-one years. March 31, 1881, Mr. Holroyd married Mrs. Mary L. Wilson, nee Biddle, wide of David Wilson, who died in Wisconsin, leaving her and an adopted son. Mrs. Holroyd waas born in Washington county, New York, December 25, 1829, daughter of John ad Joanah (Van Patten) Biddle, the former a native of New York and the latter of New Jersey. In the Biddle family were eleven children, four of whom reached adult age; Mrs. Holroyd and her brother Henry, who resides in North Park, Colorado, are the only survivors.
Mr. Holroyd has usually been a supporter of the Republican party. Recently, however, he has voted the independent ticket.
Albert C. Leeper, one of prosperous farmers and highly respected citizens of Douglas township, Nemaha county, Nebraska, settled here in 1872, and has been identified with this locality for more than three decades. A brief review of his life is as follows:
Albert C. Leeper was born in Cass county, Illinois, April 9, 1851, and belongs to a family several generations of which have been agriculturists. The family have records dating back as far as 1700, showing Mathew Leeper, the great-grandfather of the subject of this sketch, to have been the owner of a large tract of land. Leeper township in
Bureau county, Illinois, was named in honor of this family. Albert C. Leeper's grandfather, Robert Leeper, was born either in Virginia or Kentucky. In the latter state he lived for a number of years. He married a Miss Somers, and they were the parents of seven children, viz.: Enmatyre, William Dudley, Samuel, Elizabeth, John, Martha and Mary. The mother of these children died in Kentucky. The father subsequently went to Illinois, where he married a second wife and had two children--Robert and Nancy. He died in Illinois, in 1844, at the age of sixty years.
William Dudley Leeper was born in Kentucky, February 17, 1817, and died in Cass county, Illinois, March, 25, 1866. He married in Cass county, Illinois, January 1, 1848, Mary Ann Runyan, a native of Gallatin county, Kentucky, born in 1832, daughter of Wilson Runyan. After their marriage they settled on sixty acres of land, a part of his father's estate, where their family was reared. Of their six children, three are now living: George W., of Cass county, Illinois; Albert C., whose name introduces this article; and Arthur A., a lawyer and an ex-state senator of Illinois. The mother of this family died in 1857, and the father afterward wedded Miss Maria Hermeyer, who born him a daughter and son, Mary E. and Henry S. The second wife died February 6, 1898, at the age of sixty-five years.
Albert C. Leeper received a fair common school education. In 1872, on reaching his majority, he left home and came to Nemaha county Nebraska, where he bought one hundred and sixty acres of rich prairie land, at ten dollars per acre. From its primitive condition he has developed his land to its present high state of cultivation and improvement. Here we now find three-fourths of a mile of hedge fence, shade trees and fruit trees (one hundred and fifty of which are apple), and a comfortable residence, barns, granaries, etc. In connection with his
general farming. Mr. Leeper has always given more or less attention to stock-raising. It is worthy of note that he fed and sold the first carload of cattle shipped from Auburn.
Mr. Leeper has a wife and six children. Mrs. Leeper was before her marriage Miss Cyntha Ethleen Wood. She is a native of Crawford county, Indiana and a daughter of Eli and Sallie A. (Stewart) Wood, natives of Indiana and now residents of Custer county, Oklahoma. The Wood family comprised four children, Mrs. Leeper being the eldest. Of the others we record that Eunice, now Mrs. Hollar, resides in Oklahoma; Wallace S. also is in Oklahoma; and Jeanette died at the age of five years. The children of Mr. and Mrs. Leeper are: Vida E., a teacher, now living with her grandparents in Oklahoma; Annie E., Nellie, Dudley W., Bessie and Dale R.
Politically, Mr. Leeper is a Populist and a Bryanite, and fraternally he is identified with the F. and A. M. and A.O.U.W. He has always taken an active interest in local affairs, and has served twelve years as school director in his district. Mrs. Leeper is a member of the Methodist Episcopal church.
Albert Koeppel, who has been numbered among the thrifty, energetic and prosperous agriculturists of Southeastern Nebraska since the 10th of September, 1867, has his present beautiful farm in Peru precinct, about a mile west of the town. When he came to this state he had to begin operations with little money and consequently crude means of living and of preparing the soil for the raising of crops. The shell of a house which he erected for his domicile he still remembers as a
scene of happiness but of bareness and lack of comfort, but that has long since given place to an abode of neat and pleasing exterior, of comfort and good cheer within, and, withal, a home worth striving for and a fit reward for a life of toil and early privation in a frontier country.
Mr. Koeppel, who thus took up his residence in the new state of Nebraska nearly thirty-seven years ago, was born near Halle, Saxony, Germany, August 26, 1844. His father, August Koeppel, born December 10, 1814, was an overseer of a coal mine, and was in good circumstances and gave his children good advantages. He died in 1885 at the age of seventy-one years. He married Augusta Knappe, of Wettin, in 1838, and they had twelve children, three sons and nine daughters, seven of whom grew up, namely: Louisa is a wife of William Damme, of Halle; Albert is the second oldest August is a well-to-do farmer seven miles southwest of Fairbury, Nebraska, and has three daughters; Louis is a baker in Nebraska City, and has five children living; Mary is married and has three children living; Emily lives in Germany and has six children; August, who was the oldest of the family, came to America in 1867 with her brother Albert, and she died in Nebraska without leaving any children. The mother of these children preceded her husband in death by one year, passing away in 1884, at the age of sixty-eight years.
Albert Koeppel was reared in his native place, and from the age of fourteen until he was nineteen worked in the mines. At the latter age he entered the German army, and gave three years and four months service to his emperor, being in five battles during the course of Austro-Hungarian and Prussian war, never failing to repot for duty at a single roll call. In the spring of 1867 his brother August came to America, and in the fall he and his sister followed. He had some money on his arrival here, and he first took up residence in Sidney,
Iowa, where he remained for a year with his uncle, William Knappe, who had come to this country in 1848, having spent sixty-nine days on the water. In 1869 Mr. Koeppel left Sidney and came to Otoe county, Nebraska, where he bought eighty acres of raw prairie land for two hundred dollars. He at once began the task of improving this purchase, and built for his shelter a frame house sixteen by twenty-four feet, of one story, and in this he made his home until 1876. He purchased his present farm of eighty-five acres in 1891, paying twenty-one hundred and twenty-five dollars for it, with its good improvements, consisting of a brick residence and an orchard. In 1894 he erected his good barn, and he has also planted a new apple and peach orchard in the spring of 1904. He does a general farming business, growing from twelve to eighteen hundred bushels of corn and raising a number of hogs.
On January 23, 1873, a memorable day to all Nebraskans, and doubly so to Mr. Koeppel, on which day the mercury fell to the unprecedented mark of thirty-six degrees below zero, he was married to Mrs. Kathrina Provost, who was born in Switzerland in 1843, a daughter of John Griuet, a carpenter. In 1850 her parents brought her to America, being twenty-two days on the passage to New Orleans, whence they went to St. Louis. Six children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Koeppel: Oliver, born in Otoe county, died at nine months; Mary is the wife of Frank Ivers, of Peru, and has two sons; Emma is the wife of Charles Patterson, of Oregon, and has two sons and a daughter; Theresa died in Otoe county, aged twenty-two months; Edward is a farmer and has a wife and one son; and Bertha is the wife of Arthur Simpson, a farmer in London precinct, and has one son. Mr. Koeppel is an independent voter, and is indifferent as to political preferment. He is now serving his district as school director.
This venerable citizen and retired farmer of Auburn, Nebraska, is of Scotch birth and parentage. Mr. Watson first saw the light of day in the county of Edinburg, Scotland, January 12, 1824. His father, William Watson, a coal miner by occupation, was born in the same place, about 1791, and his mother, whose maiden name was Jane Shannon, was also a native of Edinburg county. In their family were nine children, all of whom married, except two daughters. The fourth in order of birth was William.
William Watson was reared and married in his native land, and was occupied in the coal mines of Scotland until 1851, when he emigrated to America, accompanied by his wife and four children. He had just money enough with which to purchase their passage to this country, the voyage was made in a sail vessel and they were six weeks and two days from Liverpool to New Orleans. Eight days later they landed in St. Louis. The first night on their trip up the Mississippi the boat sprang a leak, the passengers were put ashore at midnight, where they remained until the trouble was overcome and the journey could be continued. Arrived in St. Louis, Mr. Watson soon found employment mining coal near that city, and worked there six years receiving two to five dollars per day. In 1857 he, with one hundred others, came to Nemaha county, Nebraska, expecting to homestead land. Their plans were changed, however, and Mr. Watson bought eighty acres, four miles southwest of Auburn. He entered one hundred and sixty acres and by paying one hundred and sixty dollars to a land speculator and relinquishing eighty acres he was deeded eighty acres. He paid forty percent interest. His first work here was to build a little cabin of logs, hewing them on the inside, and into this humble home he moved his family. Some years later he built a substantial stone house, thirty-four
by twenty-four feet in dimensions, two stories. He quarried the rock and dressed it and burned his own lime for building purposes doing all the work himself, alone, from the foundation to the roof. And the house is standing to-day as solid as ever. Mr. Watson added to his farm until he had two hundred acres, which he sold in 1901. He has done no farming, however, since 1898, when he retired, after forty years spent as a successful agriculturist. In 1898 he bought and moved into his present residence, which had just been built.
Mr. Watson married, in 1845, Miss Margaret McNeil, a native of Lanarkshire, Scotland, born April 9, 1825, daughter of Daniel and Mary (McCollins) McNeil. Her father, who was a coal miner, was accidentally killed in the mines, in the prime of life, and her mother kept the little family, two sons and two daughters, together and reared them by her own efforts. She died in Scotland at an advanced age. The children all grew up and married and have children of their own, and all are still living. Mr. and Mrs. Watson have ten children, namely: William, who is married and has one son and one daughter and occupies a part of the old homestead; Mary, who resides with her parents, is the widow of Ephraim Milton Long, and has five children, all married and settled in life; Daniel, an Oklahoma farmer, has a wife and eleven children; James, also of Oklahoma, is a farmer and stone-layer, doing fine mosaic work, and is married and has ten children; Margaret, wife of Joseph Snurr, of Dawson county, Nebraska, has two sons and one daughter; Jane, wife of Robert Bryant, a furniture manufacturer of Omaha, Nebraska, has one son and two daughters; Robert, a blacksmith of Howe, Nebraska, has a wife, son and daughter; Agnes, wife of George Harmon, of Auburn, has one son and three daughters; Euphemy, wife of William Myers, a farmer of Bedford township, Nemaha county, has a son and a daughter; and David, engaged in farming in Nemaha
county, has wife, one son and two daughters, the family at this writing numbering twenty-six grandsons and twenty-one granddaughters, and the great-grandchildren number twenty-one.
Politically Mr. Watson was for years a Republican, but recently his has affiliated with the Populist party. He and his good wife are devoted members of the Church of God; both were reared in the Presbyterian church. Mr. Watson inherited to a marked degree the strong constitution peculiar to his nationality. Some time ago while occupied in painting his building, he fell from a ladder and sustained severe injuries, from which he has never recovered, and he now goes about on crutches. Notwithstanding this, he is still remarkably active, both mentally and physically, for on eof his years, since he has entered the octogenarian range.
Charles B. Hurst, a prosperous agriculturist residing in Peru, Nebraska, is an old settler of this vicinity having taken up his residence across the river in Missouri over forty-five years ago, and his large farm still being situated there. He has arrived at the creditable degree of prosperity through his own efforts, and is a strictly self-made man. He began life by working for wages and gradually got ahead in the world, until by his constant diligence and economy he had a working capital and has since made ample provision for his own declining years, and done much for his family. Mr. Hurst has all the substantial qualities of citizenship which form the strength of a great nation, and his capable performance of the duties connected with his individual career, with his responsibilities as head of a family, and as a member of society and a unit of the community and state, furnishes good grounds
for the esteem in which he is everywhere held by his friends and associates.
Mr. Hurst was born in Pickaway county, Ohio, September 13, 1842. His grandfather, Levi Hurst, was of Scotch stock and probably a native of Scotland. He was a farmer by occupation, and came to America in an early day, moving from the place of his first settlement, in Maryland, to Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1798, where he died in 1856, at the age of ninety-two years and his wife died several yaers later at the age of ninety-three. They had begun life very humbly, grandmother Hurst having been married in her bare feet, but they were strong and industrious and in time gained a fair share of this world's goods, as well as the esteem of all within the circle of their influence. There large family of sons and daughters settled in different states of the west, in Indiana, Iowa and Missouri. Levi Hurst was a fine fiddler, and furnished many hours of pleasure to the family, and especially to Mr. Hurst's father, who was a natural dancer. Burn when about thirty years of age he was converted and joined the Methodist church. After this his religious feelings led him to believe that the fiddle was an unholy thing and a temptation to the spirit, so notwithstanding the almost tearful remonstrances of his son, he kindled a fire on the hearth and placed the beloved instrument, for which he paid a large sum of money, in the flames, for conscience's sake.
James Hurst, the father of Charles B. Hurst, was born on the Isle of Man, December 7, 1791. His first wife was Betsey Williams, who died leaving the following four children: William E., who was born in Ohio and died in Holt county, Missouri, in 1888, at an advanced age, leaving four sons and one daughter; Betsey Ann, wife of Palmer Low, in Columbus, Ohio, and the mother of one son and one daughter; Caroline the widow of Hiram Crenshaw, but by her first husband, Madison
Shackleford, a Methodist minister, she had six children; and Henry H., who died in Grand Junction, Tennessee, and was twice married, having had one son and two daughters by his first wife. In 1822, when thirty-one years of age, James Hurst married Elizabeth Sly, aged sixteen, who was born in West Virginia, June 30, 1806. Her father, Henry Sly, was a German farmer, who never talked good English, who was married in Ohio, and who lost his wife at the age of fifty, she having been a midwife and having worn herself out by attendance on the sick. James Hurst and wife had fourteen children. One son died in infancy, and Moses and Jesse died in boyhood, the former having been killed by a falling tree at the age of five. The other sons and daughters grew up as follows: James died at the age of twenty-two, soon after his marriage; Thomas M., born in Ohio about 1825, was a brick and stone mason and died in Otoe county, Nebraska, in 1898, having had twelve children; Harriet, the widow of Joseph Brusha, lives in Washington state, and has seven children; Sarah is the wife of Benjamin E. Drummins, of Worth county, Missouri, and has seven living children, having lost three; Elliott S. is a stock rancher of Idaho and has six children; Ezra M. is a fruit farmer of Hollywood, California, and had twelve children, seven of whom are living; Mary J. is the wife of George Johnston, of Vernon county, Missouri, and has four sons; Charles B., is next of the children; Joseph P. is a farmer of Chetopa, Kansas, and his second wife, having eight children by his two wives; Cynthia D. is the widow of William Pugh and lives in Nebraska City; Matilda died in 1853.
The family left Ohio in 1852 and came to St. Joseph, Missouri, where they lived two years. The father owned four hundred acres of land and was a leading stockman, but met reverses and sold out at seven dollars an acre. He then came to Atchison county, Missouri, and
although in his sixty-second year, worked at his trade of brick and stone mason, and took contracts building the first three brick houses in Atchison county. He died in that county at the age of eighty-eight years less nine days, and his widow died there in February, 1891, at the age of eighty-five.
Charles B. Hurst was ten years old when the family came to Missouri, and the schooling which it was his privilege to receive was very limited in quantity and deficient in quality, but he learned to read and cipher, and has always been a good speller. He remained at home until he reached his majority, and was then with a threshing outfit for a time, and in the fall of 1863 engaged in herding and feeding cattle in Doniphan county, Kansas, at the wage of a dollar a day. He worked for the firm of Fisher, Warner and Piatt for two hundred and forty-two days, in rain and shine, Sundays too, and never missed a day. He then fed hogs for three months at a dollar and a half a day, after which he worked on the home farm for a year. In 1869, a few years after he began married life, he bought a hundred and fourteen acres in Missouri, across the river from Brownville, at about five dollars an acre, and later purchased two hundred acres at twenty-four dollars an acre. This is the land on which he has worked out his career as a farmer, and it is now worth seventy-five dollars an acre. There are two sets of buildings on his land, and the entire property is valuable and brings in large annual returns. His home place in Peru consists of a nice and comfortable residence and two acres of land, most of which is in orchard.
April 8, 1866, Mr. Hurst was married in Atchison county to Miss Caroline A. Rich, who was born in Bureau county, Illinois, February 7, 1846. Her parents, Washington and Seline (Provance) Rich, were farmers, and moved from Pennsylvania to Illinois, where the former died, and his widow and her ten children then came to Atchison county,
Missouri. The following children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Hurst: Lindley S. is a teacher and farmer living at home in Peru; Findley D. is a farmer in Nodaway county, Missouri, and has five children; Mary S. is in the Peru normal and preparing herself for a teacher; Sophia S. is the wife of Glenville N. Coon, manager of a lumber yard in Osceola, Nebraska; Benjamin B. is a teacher in Harvard, Nebraska, being a graduate of the business department of the Tarkio (Missouri) College; Calista A. is a member of the class of 1906 in the Peru normal. The beloved mother of this family died on the farm in Atchison county, Missouri, in 1891, at the age of forty-four. She was a woman of noble character and attributes, and was not only a revered personage in her family circle but was a favorite among her many associates and friends. She and her husband were members of the Methodist Episcopal church, and he is a trustee of the church in Peru.
Shadrach M. Chaffin, farmer and veterinarian of Humboldt, Richardson county, is an old and well known settler of Southeastern Nebraska. He first became acquainted with this county in 1858, and has resided here continuously since the 12th of August, 1861, on which date he arrived from Holt county, Missouri. Nebraska was not yet a state and was indeed a wild country compared to its present highly civilized condition, and its many changes and steps of development are photographed on the mind and engrafted in the experience of Mr. Chaffin, who has himself been intimately identified with the life and times in which he has lived for over forty years.
Mr. Chaffin was born in Scioto county, Ohio, August 12, 1833,
so that he is now past the Psalmist's limit of three score and ten years; yet is able to do a day's work and perform his part of the obligations of life with much of the zeal of youth. He was reared on his father's Ohio farm, and remained with his parents till after he was grown. His schooling was meager and acquired in the primitive log schoolhouse such as was marked out for the temple of learning in the early part of the last century. From the age of sixteen he was constantly engaged in farm labor, and has had an increasing ratio of success in all the years that have followed. In 1855 he left Ohio and moved to Holt county, Missouri, and five years later arrived in Nebraska. For thirty years he was engaged in farming in Salem, and in 1891 he took up his abode on his present nice homestead, a part of which lies within the corporate limits of the town of Humboldt. Besides working with profit his small farm he follows the vocation of stock doctor, and is well known for his connection with both pursuits.
Mr. Chaffin is a Republican in politics, but has nourished no specific ambition to leave the rank and file of the party and attain office. He has served on the city council of Humboldt for three terms and is known as a public-spirited and enterprising citizen. He and his wife are members of the Christian church, and he is a firm advocate of the temperance cause.
September 25, 1864, Mr. Chaffin was married to Miss Lucinda O. Pierce, who ws born in Vermont, November 19, 1847, a daughter of Daniel W. and Lucy Edwin Pierce, both natives of Vermont. Her father was a cabinet maker, who moved to Waterloo, Wisconsin, in 1857, and died in 1899, in the same week with the death of his oldest son, Daniel W. The family had come to Nebraska in 1858 and twenty years later had gone to the state of Washington, where Mrs. Chaffin's mother died in 1891. Mrs. Chaffin remained at home until her marriage,
which was celebrated in Brown county, Kansas. Eight children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Chaffin, as follows: George is an office man in the employ of the Great Northern Railroad, and has a wife, one son and three daughters; Francis died at the age of one year; Ettie, the deceased wife of Charles C. Pool, died at the age of thirty-three, leaving six children; Mrs. Lucinda Belle Corn, a widow with three children, resides with her parents; Edgar E. died at the age of four years; Mrs. Lucy Boss, in Humboldt, has one daughter; Miss Mary is at home and in the employ of the telephone company, and also sings and plays well; the eighth child, a daughter, died in infancy.
Philip Jenkins, one of the well known and much esteemed citizens of Pawnee City, Nebraska, as born December 6, 1821, in Onandaga county, New York, and is a son of Christopher and Minnie (Howard) Jenkins, both of whom were born in New York. The father descended from three brothers of the name who came to America from England, prior to the Revolutionary war. The father died in 1847 at Lacon, Illinois, aged fifty-two years, the mother dying in 1840, in Morgan county, Illinois. By trade Christopher Jenkins was a carpenter. He lived an honest, upright life and died respected by all who knew him. Our subject's parents had a family of nine children, four of whom still survive.
Philip Jenkins was reared to manhood in his fathers home, in 1839 coming with his parents to Morgan county, Illinois, and later to Woodford county. He was one of the loyal citizens who responded to the call of President Lincoln for troops, and enlisted for service on August
13, 1862, in Company C., Seventy-seventh Illinois Volunteer Infantry, under Colonel D. P. Grier. His term of service covered eighteen months, and during that period he participated in the Yazoo expedition, was at the siege of Vicksburg, Jackson, New Orleans and in the movements of the army on the Texas coast. On one occasion, when the flag bearer was struck down, Mr. Jenkins gallantly seized the banner and carried it in the face of the enemy. For his bravery on the field of battle he was promoted from second to first lieutenant, and doubtless would have received further recognition had not domestic trouble caused him to resign and return to his home. During his absence two of his little children were taken sick and died, both being buried in the same grave. The prostration of their mother caused such severe illness that her devoted husband felt that his place of duty was at her side.
Mr. Jenkins was married in Woodford county, Illinois, February 1, 1846, to Miss Malinda Sweet, who was born in Morgan county, Illinois. She is a daughter of Phelig and Abigail (Bardeen) Sweet; natives of New York, who settled in Illinois, where both died. The three children born to Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins are: E. M. Byron, Thayer county, Nebraska; Lola M., wife of Niel Duncan, of Pawnee community and Myrtle, wife of J. H. Phelps, of Wilsonville, Nebraska. The two children who died in Illinois were: Abraham Lincoln, aged three years, and Philip J., a babe.
Mr. Jenkins came to Nebraska in 1878 and located in Brownville for eighteen months, then went to Alexandria and remained until 1883. For the following two years he was at Tobias, and in 1885 located in Ohiowa, Fillmore county. From 1878 to 1893 he successfully followed the lumbar business. In 1894 Mr. Jenkins came to Pawnee city. He is a Republican in politics and is the oldest member of the John Ingham Post No. 95, Grand Army of the Republic, of Pawnee city. For forty-
eight years he has been a Mason. He belongs to the Baptist church. Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins celebrated their golden wedding in Pawnee city in 1896.
Alfred Page, of section 28, Grant Precinct, near Dawson, Richardson county, is identified with the best traditions and highest development of agricultural enterprise and public-spirited citizenship in this rich and beautiful section of southeastern Nebraska. For forty-five years he has given faithful attention to his life pursuit on the government land that he took up when he came here, and his management and toil have been so effectively directed that now for several years he has lived in retirement on his beautiful homestead, free to spend some time before and all his life after his sixty-eighth birthday in wholesome ease benefitting strenuous endeavor during the fulness of manly vigor. Mr. Page has been prominent and influential in the affairs of his community as well as successful in material circumstances, and has been honored with offices of trust and responsibility and has given a due share of his time and attention to matters concerning politics, religion and institutions of county and state.
This well known Nebraska citizen was born in Monroe county, Kentucky, on Christmas day, 1835. His father, Samuel Page, was a native of Tennessee, and was accidentally killed in the woods when his son Alfred was five years ago. There were two other sons, B. W. Page came to Richardson county in 1859, and died in Nehama precinct in 1879, following his wife in death and leaving seven living children. He was born in 1832, was a stock farmer, and served in the state legis-
lature. The other son, Elijah, is a miner in Washington and Montana, and is a bachelor.
Alfred Page was reared by kind god-parents, but had only meager opportunities for gaining an education. At the age of twenty he left home and went to Missouri, where he followed farming mainly, in Sullivan and Holt counties, and in November, 1859, arrived in Nebraska. He took up a hundred and sixty acres of government land, the same tract that comprises his present farm, but how vastly changed and improved since he first occupied it only he and his oldest neighbors can picture. In addition, at present, he also owns a timber lot of twenty acres and he has sold two other farms in this state. His first house there was erected of logs that he hewed out of the timber with his own hand. But in spite of this being a very primitive and rude house, he had one equipment which was in advance of his neighbors houses and for which he had to endure much good-natured chaffing from his neighbors. This "style" which was the object of so much attention and wit consisted in glass windows for his house, and they were the first in the neighborhood. The pleasant frame house which is now the family home was built in 1867, a fine red barn was completed in 1897. There are also a cow house and hog house and all other improvements needed by the up-to-date farmer. Mr. Page also planted the hedge around the entire quarter section. At an early day he carried from the bottoms, on his shoulders, a bundle of one hundred and twenty-one Cottonwood and soft Maple sprouts, and during the years since they were planted they grew into large trees, from which were sawed much of the lumber which went into the above mentioned barn. There is also a fine orchard of various fruits, and the embowered home is a scene of beauty and coolness and shade during the most of the year. Mr. Page has made a specialty of raising shorthorn cattle and Poland China hogs,
and keeps a considerable number of both varieties of stock. He now has a tenant on his farm to whom he has turned over the entire operation and the management of the land.
Mr. Page in politics is a Democrat, and has fraternal affiliations with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. He is a veteran school director, having served twenty-five years on the board. He was assessor four years and county commissioner nine years or three terms, he later served one year as county supervisor, being the first Democrat elected in the county to membership on the board.
Mr. Page married, September, 1856, Miss Elizabeth Buchanan, who was born in Kentucky in 1832 and was reared in Missouri. Her father, Fielden Buchanan, was a farmer of Kentucky and Missouri, and married Miss Eliza Edwards, by whom he had two sons and three daughters. One of these sons, O. A. Buchanan, is a farmer near Mr. Page, and came here in 1865 from the Civil war, in which he served over four years as a soldier from Missouri. Mr. and Mrs. Page had nine children, eight of whom are living: Mollie, the wife of Frank Porter; Minnie Staley, who lives in Greenwood county, Kansas, and has four living children; Field Porter Page, who is a livery man in Dawson and has two living children; Eliza Roberts, in the state of Washington, Lincoln county, who has six daughters and four sons; Sarah Peatling, of Kansas, who has two sons and one daughter; Julia Lee, of Nemaha precinct, who has one son living; Grizell Lawson of Kansas City, who has one daughter; Eva Whitney, who lives in Liberty precinct and has three sons and one daughter; and Emma, who died at the age of nineteen in the flower and beauty of young womanhood.
Wesley G. Hummel, of Grant precinct, Richardson county, with postoffice at Dawson, is one of the enterprising and progressive farmers of this portion of Southeastern Nebraska. He settled here in March of 1877, from Kane county, Illinois, and a few years later commenced operations on the bare prairie which has since been transformed into his beautiful farm, one of the best in this county. Industry aimed at a definite end has been throughout one of his principal characteristics, and thereby he has attained prosperous condition in life and dignity and wholesome esteem among his fellow men. When a boy in years but a man in patriotism and devotion to duty, he gave loyal service to the Union cause during the war of the rebellion, and ever since, wherever he has lived, he has been noted for his public spirit and genuine interest in the welfare of his community, doing what he could to advance the general good.
Mr. Hummel was born in Lebanon county, Pennsylvania, June 8, 1847. His father, Christian Hummel, was born in Germany, June 11, 1810, and died in Kane county, Illinois, in 1896. He was married in Philadephia, March 17, 1840, to Miss Barbara Duper, who was a native of Germany. They were the parents of nine children, seven of whom are now living: Elizabeth is the wife of Samuel Rickert, of Dupage county, Illinois, and has two daughters and one son; Amelia is the wife of Daniel Piper, of Ogle county, Illinois, and has nine children; Wesley G., is the third; C. L., in Richardson county, has six children; F. A. in Franklin precinct of this county, is a farmer; Sarah A., of Edison Park, Illinois, is the wife of Mr. Mesner, who had two children by her deceased sister Catherine, and she had one child by her previous marriage; Mary died in middle life in Kane county, Illinois; and Henry L. lives in Holdrege, Nebraska.
Mr. W. G. Hummel attended school in Illinois up to the time he was sixteen years old, and then enlisted from Ogle county in Company E of the Fourth Illinois Cavalry. He served two years and three months, until the close of the war. After the rebellion he lived and farmed in Kane county, Illinois, for several years, and in 1877 came to Nebraska. In 1881 he bought a quarter section of land, which was in the state of nature, and in the subsequent twenty-three years had devoted his best efforts to its profitable culivation [sic] and improvement. He planted all the fruit and ornamental trees on the place. He built his first house in 1880, and the present large two-story residence was erected quite recently, and the commodious barn in 1899. Each year he raises about seventy-five fine Poland China hogs, and from thirty to sixty head of Polled Angus cattle, which he has bred up during the past ten years. He keeps about ten horses and tills from sixty to eighty acres of corn, with an average yield of fifty bushels to the acre, and also some twenty acres of wheat.
Mr. Hummel is a man of intelligence, and takes an interest in the world about him as well as his immediate daily affairs and needs. He finds much delight in collecting things of antiquarian interest, and has a copy of the first paper printed in America, having bought it at the Philadelphia Centennial, and also a cane made from the wood of the old ship Constitution. Mr. Hummel is a Republican in politics, and is a member of the Grand Army of the Republic. He served two years as county supervisor and for fourteen years as school director of district No. 92. He and his wife are members of the United Evangelical church.
Mr. Hummel was married in Grant precinct November 3, 1880, to Miss Helen E. Burr. They have a bright and happy family of nine children, some of whom have already taken up life's responsible duties
and others have the joys of childhood still before them, as follows: Boyle, aged twenty-two, is at home, farming; Frank Everett, aged twenty-one, is at home; Ethel Kate is a teacher and at present a student in the Peru Normal; Nellie F., is at home and in school; Wilber Harrison; Wesley Earl; Nannie Pearl; Harry Christian; and Helen Martha, the baby of the family.
Michael Meliza, of section 9, Liberty precinct, near Verdon, Richardson county, is an agriculturist and stock-raiser of pronounced prominence in this county, thoroughly successful in his operations and business transactions, thrifty and most enterprising in the management of his place, and withal a representative and public-spirited citizen who acts and accomplishes results in his various dealings for the benefit not alone of himself but also of the community in which he lives and of which he is a most worthy part. He came to Richardson county and his present place twenty-two years ago, on March 4, 1882, so that, while not a pioneer, he is an old and honored resident of this portion of southeastern Nebraska.
Mr. Meliza was born in Henry county, Indiana, April 9, 1850. His grandfather was John Henry Meliza, a farmer and carpenter in Virginia, where he died, leaving six children, two sons and four daughters, who all had families. Jacob Meliza, the father of Michael, was born in Virginia, April 12, 1809, and died in Adell, Iowa, in 1889, preceded two years by his wife. He was a very successful farmer and his landed estate was valued at twelve thousand dollars. He had also engaged in merchandising, losing some six thousand dollars by security, which was the principal misfortune that he met in his career.
He married Margaret Shively, who was born in Germany one year later than her husband, and came to this country at the age of fourteen, being three months on the voyage. She was the only daughter, and her two brothers are: Mike Shively, who owns nineteen hundred acres of land in California and a similar amount in South Dakota; and John Shively, an able farmer of Missouri. Jacob and Margaret Meliza had eight children: Lydia is the wife of Thomas Fike, in Iowa, and has three children; Perry is a farmer and fruit-grower in Ashland, Oregon, and has two sons and one daughter; Michael is the third of the family; Sophia, wife of James Trimble, died in Richardson county in 1900, aged forty-eight years, leaving two sons; Martha is the wife of W. F. Hulbert, of Auburn, and has two daughters; Francis Marion lives in Iowa and has one daughter; Melissa is the wife of J. B. Shuey, of Adell, Iowa, and has one son and three daughters; Rosa died at the age of sixteen, in Adell.
Mr. Michael Meliza was reared principally in Davis county, Iowa, and his school advantages in youth were rather limited. He worked on the home farm, and when he started out for himself at the age of twenty-three he had five hundred dollars that he had saved from his wages. He was married in 1874, and then began as a tenant farmer in Davis county. Seven years later, when he came to Richardson county, Nebraska, he had thirty-five hundred dollars that had accrued from his industrious labors. He bought the quarter section of his present homestead, paying sixteen hundred fifty for it. It was naked prairie at that time, and all the present fine improvements have been placed here at his own cost and under his management. He has one of the finest barns in the county, built in 1892 at a cost of two thousand dollars. It has a stone basement, is painted yellow, with a cupola on top, and altogether is one of the most commodious and best equipped structures of
its kind anywhere in the country around. He completed his modern two-story house in 1899. It is amply large, is well built, and its inviting quarters plus the genial hospitality that pervades it all and the comfort and good cheer, for which the noble and energetic Mrs. Meliza is responsible, make this home one out of a hundred. There are two fine orchards, of apples and other fruits, which Mr. Meliza planted. He owns another quarter section, adjoining this place, and a half section in South Dakota. He keeps a large herd of shorthorn cattle, and a number of horses and mules for working his farm. He sold forty head of cattle in the fall of 1903, and some of his fine cows have brought as much as eighty-five dollars. He has some two hundred blooded Poland China hogs, and in one season he sold three thousand dollars' worth from the breeding of twenty sows. There is a fine hedge around the home quarter section, and half way around the adjoining tract, and all his land is divided into forty acre fields, fenced hog-tight. Without doubt this is one of the best cultivated, best managed and best equipped farms in Richardson county, and Mr. Meliza's pains have been well rewarded in the profitable enterprise he has built up since coming her over twenty years ago.
Mr. Meliza is a Republican in politics, but the only offices he has held are road overseer and school director. He and his wife are members of the Christian church, in which he is a deacon.
December 28, 1874, Mr. Meliza married Miss Arminta J. Chamberlain, who was born in Davis county, Iowa, and whose family history will be found in the accompanying biography of Abraham Zook. Two children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Meliza: Lem Elmer, born in Iowa, September 16, 1875, died at Hunter Springs, in 1900. He was a graduate of Lincoln University, and at the time of his death was employed by a wholesale dry-goods firm at a salary of eighty dollars a month.
He is buried in Verdon. His parents and sister were in California when he died, and his taking off in the height of young manhood has remained a lasting bereavement to them all. Katie Meliza, a young lady of fourteen years, is in the ninth grade of the Verdon schools, and is also taking musical instruction, having much talent in that direction. Mrs. Meliza is a full copartner with her husband, and the way in which she keeps up her end of the domestic establishment is most creditable to her many virtues of heart and mind.
Abraham Zook, a retired farmer of Verdon, was born in Wayne county, Indiana, June 24, 1832, shortly after the death of his father, Abraham Zook, who left his widow and three children already born, as follows: Daniel, who was born in 1824 and died near Birmingham, Iowa, in 1902; Esther, who was the wife of John Hoover and died in Indiana leaving two sons and one daughter; and Joseph, who is a retired farmer of Appanoose county, Iowa, and has three sons and one daughter. The mother of these children died in Iowa at the age of sixty-two. She kept her little family of children together and reared them to be honest and industrious. She had been left with a hundred and sixty acres of land, so that they all had a home until they could do for themselves.
The father was buried in Indiana and the mother in Iowa. Both parents were Brethren in church faith. When he was a child Mr. Abraham Zook saw his grandfather, John Zook, who was a prosperous farmer in Indiana. His earliest American ancestor was his great-grandfather, who was one of two brothers and a cousin that came from Germany and settled in Pennsylvania.
Mr. Abraham Zook had only a limited schooling in the district school. He lived at home until his first marriage, on November 6, 1851, in Indiana, when he was united in wedlock with Miss Mary A. Ulrich, who was born in Indiana in December 1831; a daughter of John and Catherine (Teeter) Ulrich, all of Pennsylvania. There were four children of this marriage: Mrs. Susanna Price, a widow, who lives in Iowa and has five children; Martin, of Falls City, who has five children; Catherine, who died at the age of seven; and Oliver, who is a farmer two miles south of Humboldt and has one son and two daughters. The mother of these children died in Iowa in 1871.
January 2, 1876, Mr. Zook married Mrs. Mary C. Chamberlain, nee Wallace, who was born in White county, Illinois, September 19, 1838. Her first husband was Raymond Chamberlain, a native of Virginia and a farmer of Iowa, where he died in the prime of life in 1873, leaving three children, as follows: Mrs. Arminta Meliza, wife of the prominent Richardson county farmer whose biography is given above; John Calvin Chamberlain, who is an able farmer of Nuckolls county, Nebraska, and has five sons and one daughter; and Robert Marshall Chamberlain, who bought Mr. Zook's farm of one hundred and forty-six acres in Liberty precinct and is farming it very successfully, and who has one son and one daughter.
Mr. Zook is a member of the Brethren church and his wife of the Christian church. In 1897 he paid eleven hundred and fifty dollars for a ten-acre tract in Verdon, which was then a ploughed field, and after taking out a sixty-six foot strip for a street, he built his fine house of two stories and attic, containing nine rooms, with modern high ceilings and all the conveniences that mark the twentieth century residence. He has a barn twenty-four by thirty-two, and several other buildings. He has now one of the delightful homes of Verdon. There
is a large lawn before the house, which is almost surrounded by shrubbery and orchards. Both he and his wife are now passing their old age in comfort and amid surroundings that are fit rewards for previous lives of honorable effort.
© 1999, Lori L. Laird, NEGenWeb Project