While the duty of formally announcing the death of one of the oldest, most active, and worthy members of this Association is a sad one, the privilege of paying tribute to the memory of the late Charles H. Gere is a pleasure.
   It was my good fortune to have been intimately and continuously associated with him in various capacities from the day of his advent into Nebraska to near the day of his death.
   In July, 1865, I had the pleasure to welcome him to the territory of Nebraska, as he stepped from a steamboat at Brownville. I therefore can speak of his characteristics from personal knowledge.
   He was born in Wyoming county, New York, in 1838, and died at his home in Lincoln on the 30th day of September, 1904, at the age of sixty-six.
   Biographically, I copy extracts from an editorial in the Lincoln Daily Journal, announcing the death of Mr. Gere. This, I am advised, is largely autobiographic, and therefore reliable:
   "He prepared for college at Oxford academy, and entered the junior class at Dickenson College, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, graduating in 1861.
   "Just before graduating he enlisted in the Pennsylvania 'Bucktails' with several of his classmates, but they were all refused muster by order of Governor Curtin, who said that undergraduates were not needed. He was appointed a teacher in a grammar school in Baltimore the following year, and continued the study of law under the tuition of Congressman C. L. L. Leary. In June, 1863, when Lee invaded Pennsylvania, he resigned to enlist in the 10th Maryland infantry, which was ordered immediately to occupy Maryland Heights, where it guarded a battery of artillery during the battle of Gettysburg. Upon the expiration of the term of the regiment he served in the quartermaster's department at Annapolis and Martinsburg for several months, was a member of a party of independent scouts in the vicinity of Balti-

more, when Jubal Early raided Maryland, and afterward joined the 11th Maryland infantry, and served until the close of the war. He was admitted to the bar at Baltimore it few days later, and started to visit his mother, who lived at Table Rock, Nebraska.
   "Nebraska suited him, and he wrote back for his trunk, and opened a law office at Pawnee City, and soon afterward was taken into partnership by David Butler, afterwards the first governor of the state. He was appointed prosecuting attorney for the county by the county commissioners, and was elected to the first legislature of the state, which convened at Omaha, July 4, and elected John M. Thayer and Thomas W. Tipton to help get the state into the Union.
   "Upon the admission of the state, March 1, 1867, he became the private secretary of Governor Butler. On the location of the capital at Lincoln the following summer he began the publication of the first newspaper in Lincoln, at first named the Commonwealth, but later the State Journal. In the fall of 1868 he was elected to the state senate from the five counties of Lancaster, Saline, Pawnee, Gage, and Jefferson; was chairman of the committee on education and a member of the committee on railroads. In the former capacity he had charge of the University bill, and as a minority in the later committee reported a substitute for the bill, appropriating 400,000 acres of state lands for sundry railroads, which substitute was finally accepted, after a hot fight by both houses of the legislature, and became a law. Under it, within two years, were built the first sections of the Burlington & Missouri R. R. in Nebraska, the Midland Pacific, the Atchison and Nebraska, all now it part of the Burlington system, and the Omaha & Southwestern, a part of the Union Pacific system. All these roads 'come to Lincoln,' while the roads projected in the majority of the report of the committee were 'up the river' for the benefit of the eastern tier of counties.
   "He soon after was chosen chairman of the republican state central committee, and served four successive terms. In 1875 he was elected to the convention that framed the present state constitution. He served a second term in the state senate in 1881-82, and was appointed, in the spring of 1881, a member of the board of regents of the University to fill a vacancy, and was afterward elected twice to the same position, and was president of the board several years.
   "In the city he was president of the board of trustees in 1869-70, and county attorney, by appointment of the com-

missioners, and postmaster under President Harrison's administration. He served in the early '80s as a member of the state railroad commission, when the body was first created. For a long series of years he was a member of the board of literary trustees.
   "Upon the establishment of a daily edition of the State Journal in July, 1870, Mr. Gere abandoned the practice of law, and has devoted his time and energies to the editorial columns of that paper, and has been president of the State Journal Company since its incorporation in 1872.
   "He was married in 1871 to Miss Mariel H., daughter of Capt. John Chipman, of Washington, D. C. Four children have been born to them, of whom three daughters are living.
   "Mr. Gere was of colonial and Revolutionary stock, descended through his father, George Gere, son of 'Jonathan of Heavitree,' Devonshire, who crossed the ocean in 1634, and settled in Boston, and through his mother from Lieut. Thomas Tracy, also from the south of England, who emigrated to Connecticut in 1635, and Mathew Grant, who came over about the same time, one of the founders of Windsor, Connecticut. His maternal grandfather, Dr. Isaac Grant, served through the Revolution with the Connecticut line, and was in Washington's Jersey and Pennsylvania campaigns, and at the storming of Stony Point."
   Mr. Gere was in exceptional man in all desirable respects. The state, more particularly the city of Lincoln, owes much to him for his labors in developing and making them what they both are today. As long the editor-in-chief of the Daily Journal his gifted pen was ever persistently and successfully devoted in their behalf, not only in these two factors, but in all matters pertaining to good citizenship and betterment of a progressive commonwealth. He was a writer of extraordinary force in whatever he advocated. His convictions were unswerving for what he conceived to be right and for the greatest good. His boldness in utterance was coequal with his convictions. He was a profound thinker and safe counselor.
   As more expressive and forceful than I have words to utter I quote another, speaking of a friend on an occasion like unto this:

"We are in the habit of culling from nature her choicest flowers and, weaving them into suggestive designs and garlands of beauty, placing them upon the coffins of our departed friends and loved ones as tokens of our respect and esteem. So, too, with pathetic pens do we enroll upon the tablets of the heart the names of those who were, but are now no more, and with eloquent tongues do we recount the many virtues, noble character, and endearing qualities of those who have been called hence."
   His labors are ended. He has entered into what we call death, but which, unless all teachings are in vain, is but the beginning of another and better life. Those who walked with him far down into the valley of the shadow of death, while the final scene was closed to vision, have no doubt but that when he entered into that "dreamless sleep which kisses down the eyelids" he gently drew aside the curtains which separate the seen from the unseen, the known from the unknown, and stepping behind its mysterious folds, fell asleep in the arms of his Creator.

   The best heritage of the race is the memory of the lives of its great men and women. The rich and the poor are alike the heirs of him who has lived a useful and honorable life. In all ages it has been the kindly office of friendship to record and perpetuate the memory of the good deeds of our fellows.
   It is therefore in a peculiar sense fitting that we should, in the records of this Society, perpetuate the memory of its founder, one of the most noteworthy pioneers of the territory and the state.
   Robert Wilkinson Furnas, the farmer's boy, apprenticed printer, editor, publisher, railroad man, merchant, soldier,

legislator, Indian agent, postmaster, governor, University regent, pomologist, floriculturist, horticulturist, and promoter of agriculture, was born on an Ohio farm May 5, 1824. His great grandfather was born on English soil, and both his father and mother were natives of South Carolina, but in the veins of both there was so much Quaker blood that they early chafed under the peculiar institutions of their native state and sought the freer atmosphere of Ohio. They settled on a farm near Troy, in Miami county, where Robert was born. At Troy, at the tender age of eight, he was orphaned, by the death of both father and mother from cholera. Young Robert was cared for by his grandfather Furnas, and continued on a farm until near seventeen years old. From that time on he seems to have made his own way in the world. For four years he served as an apprenticed printer in the office of the Linking Valley Register of Covington, Kentucky. The educational advantages of that day, for the poor boy, were very limited indeed. His irregular attendance at school would not amount, all told, to more than twelve mouths. Yet by dint of hard work and indomitable pluck, with a liberal use of midnight oil, or more strictly speaking of tallow candles, he obtained a good, practical education, and like many others he learned to appreciate in after life educational advantages largely because he had never enjoyed them himself. The newspaper office became to him what it has been to so many of our noteworthy men - his real university. While the curriculum of this poor boy's university is doubtless narrow and it's instruction often crude, yet the education it does give rings true, and often in its practical efficiency compensates in a large measure for its defects.
   After serving a regular apprenticeship of four years as if practical printer he removed to Cincinnati, where, in partnership with A. G. Sparhawk, he opened and conducted a book and job printing office, which enterprise also included the publication of several periodicals. In the year 1847 he returned to his native county of Miami and became the editor and publisher of the Troy Times, a local whig newspaper,

which he conducted for about five years. From 1852 to 1856 he was successively engaged as merchant in the book, paper, notion, and jewelry trade in Troy, as railroad ticket agent, and railroad conductor.
   It seems probable while engaged in these latter avocations he still controlled his printing outfit, for in the spring of 1856 he brought a printing outfit from Ohio with him and established at Brownville, this state, the Nebraska Advertiser, which has been published continuously from that time to this, but of recent years at Nemaha City in the same county.
   On April 6, 1856, he landed from it Missouri river steamboat at Brownville. An inventory of his belongings at this time would show his printing outfit and one and a half shillings, or eighteen and three-fourths cents in cash--not a very large contribution to the grand assessment roll of the, then territory. But he brought with him an inexhaustible enthusiasm and an unalterable faith in the future of the great West. Well might be have sung with Whittier

"We cross the prairies as of old

The Pilgrims crossed the sea,

To make the West, as they the East,

The homestead of the free!

 

"We go to rear a wall of men

On Freedom's southern line,

And plant beside the cotton tree

The rugged northern pine."

   On June 7, 1856, he published the first number of the Advertiser and began that marvelous campaign of nearly fifty years for the creation and development of what is fast becoming the greatest agricultural state in the Union. From 1856 to 1860 he edited and publishedthe Nebraska Farmer, the first agricultural paper published in Nebraska. In 1857 he was a delegate to the convention held at Topeka to form a state constitution for a now state which it was proposed to organize out of northern Kansas and southern Nebraska. On March 22, 1862, he was, by President Lincoln, commissioned as colonel in the regular army. Under this commission he organized the first Indian regiment, which was composed of Indians who had been driven by the Confederates from Indian

territory into southern Kansas. Two other Indian regiments were afterward organized by him, and as commander of these Indians he successfully fought several engagements of some importance along the border.
   At the request or Governor Saunders he resigned his Indian commission and, returning to Nebraska, aided in organizing the second regiment of Nebraska cavalry in which he enlisted as a private. He was soon promoted to captain. He served efficiently in General Sully's campaign against the Sioux Indians in Dakota and took a leading and decisive part in the battle of Whitestone Hill, Dakota, September 3, 1863.
   At the close of the Rebellion he was, by the governor, commissioned colonel of this regiment. After the close of his term of service with the 2d Nebraska cavalry he became United States Indian agent for the Omaha Indians as well as postmaster for the same, which post he held for nearly four years, and until political differences with President Johnson terminated his services. He now returned to his Brownville farm to follow his favorite pursuits as horticulturist and promoter of scientific farming.
   In 1868 he was a delegate to the national convention that first nominated General Grant for President.
   From January 13, 1873, to January 11, 1875, he served as governor of the state of Nebraska, and as such was ex-officio member of the board of regents of the University of Nebraska, to which latter position he was elected by the people in 1875 under the new constitution adopted that year.
   In 1856, and within a few months after his arrival in Nebraska, he was elected to die council of the third legislative assembly, and also served as a member in its fourth, fifth, and sixth sessions and in the eighth session in 1861 as its secretary. As a member of the legislative assembly he drafted and introduced what became the first common school law of the territory, also the law creating what became the state board of agriculture - thus promoting the two great interest, to which his life was chiefly devoted - agriculture and education.

   He was for many years president of the State Board of Agriculture and for very many years and up to his death its secretary. He died, therefore, as he had always wished to die in the harness. He was also president of the State Horticultural Society, president of the Nebraska State Soldiers' Union, vice-president of the American Pomological Association, presided over the first State Educational Convention held in Nebraska; was president of the Trans-Missouri Irrigation Convention held at Denver, Colorado, 1873; was alternate United States commissioner to the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876; United States commissioner to the Cotton Centennial at New Orleans in 1884-85; member of the Executive Council and special commissioner of the United States to the American Exposition at London in 1886; one of the United States commissioners at large of the World's Fair at Chicago in 1893; president of Nebraska Territorial pioneers; first president of this Society, and remained president thereof for five years, and on the death of Mr. Morton again became its president, retiring from that position one year ago. For six years he was president of the International Association of Fairs and Expositions.
   In the great civic societies he was no less active. He assisted in the organization of the grand lodge of Masons of Nebraska and successively held nearly all of the offices therein. At various times he held high office in all of the organizations of that fraternity. He participated in the organization of the grand lodge of Odd Fellows and held the highest office therein and was its representative to the national convention of that order. He was a member of the Grand Army of the Republic and of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of America.
   In politics he was an old line whig until the organization of the Republican party, when he enlisted under its banner. While a strong partisan, he was yet tolerant of the opinions of others and was proud to number among his intimate and life-long friends many of his political opponents.

   He affiliated with the Methodist church before moving west, but, on coming to Nebraska, he united with the Presbyterians, with whom he worshipped up to the time of his death.
   While residing at Cincinnati he was, on October 29, 1845, married to Miss Mary E. McComas, who shared his fortunes until her death at Brownville, April 1, 1897. There were born to them eight children, of whom five are still living. On December 25, 1899, he was married to Mrs. Susanna E. Jamison, who still survives him, residing at Lincoln.
   This active and remarkable life of a little move than eighty-one years came to a fitting and peaceful close at Lincoln, June 1, 1905. On Sunday, June 3, a special train carried his remains and hundreds of sorrowing friends to the very spot where, forty-nine years before, he had stepped from the steamer, all aglow with hope and ambition to aid in the conquest of a wilderness.
   The struggle was now over and the battle won. The brave heart that had counted the moments of this long and busy life was silent forever. His remains were borne up the steep slope of the hills that had known him so long, and were laid to rest among the evergreens of Walnut Grove Cemetery, overlooking the great river whose waters had so kindly borne, him to our shores. Over his ashes were performed the solemn and impressive burial ceremonies of the Masonic Order - the great civic society which he so well exemplified and which he had served so long and so well. A large part of his life had been devoted to the service of the public in official positions to which no salary was attached. To him service for others was a service of love, and the sense of duty well performed was a sufficient compensation.
   It is vain to speculate what might have been the life of one. Had the environment been other than it was. Had young Furnas been born to ease and luxury, had he held a diploma from a great seat of learning, had he inherited a great fortune, we might not now be commemorating his life and achievements. Certain it is that the strong physical constitution brought with him from the farm and the sterling in-

tegrity inherited from his Quaker parents stood him in good stead in the great work that lay before him. Adverse winds that would have brought others to earth seemed only to raise him the higher. Defeat could not crush nor disappointment sour him. While he had a strong, well-balanced mind, yet his remarkable career can not be explained on the theory of great intellectual superiority.
   The keynote of his character and the secret of his success was his faithfulness and his kindliness of spirit. Without seeking preferment, he diligently and faithfully performed every duty which the partiality of his fellows imposed upon him. His gentleness of spirit and kindness of heart often led to his being chosen over others equally able and equally competent. To the very close of life he remained young in spirit and buoyant in temperament. He believed in the great possibilities of the future. He never sighed for the good old times of the long ago. To him every decade was better than its predecessor.
   On his eighty-first birthday, while in a local hospital, receiving treatment for his fatal malady, he said to me that his chief wish to live longer sprang from his desire to see the great inventions, discoveries, and improvements that the future was sure to bring. He said that if it be true that the dead can see the living he should enjoy looking over the battlements of Heaven and witnessing the further progress on Earth.
   He came to our shores when our civilization was new and our enterprises young. No other single life is so intimately interwoven with the beginnings of so many things that have made us a great state. Our civilization has now become so complex and our enterprises so varied that it would be quite impossible that any one man, however capable and active, should, within the next half century, exert more than a fraction of the influence upon our development that he exerted in the half century just closed. No one else seems to have touched our life, industrial, economic, civic, political, and religious, at so many points as did he; and he never touched ex-

cept to elevate. If I were asked to what single individual this state owes the greatest debt of gratitude for its marvelous growth and development I would be but expressing the consensus of opinion of those best qualified to judge when I answer, Robert Wilkinson Furnas.

   The name which Mr. Shedd bore is Scottish and was rooted in Scotland as early as 1400, continuing there and afterwards in America in a tenacious, through not numerous, succession down to the present time.
   The original stock was humble the name indicates as much - but it worked up to knighthood some time about 1500. The rise was a doubtful honor, and not one to boast of, perhaps due rather to the comeliness of a lass than to conspicuousness of a man, for the bar sinister ran across the new coat-of-arms.
   To one of this early race, at least, adventure appealed. This was Daniel, and he came out to America in 1640, twenty years after the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers, and settled at Braintree, Massachusetts. In accordance with the spirit of the time he was probably a sober, dry, hard-praying Puritan, with little use for witches and a long head for a bargain. As I say, his name was Daniel, and there was a quantity of Samuels, Jonathans, and Ezekials, Ruths, Rachels, and Rebeceas to follow. The family developed a strong bent for the pulpit and mission field, and they were not the last to espouse the cause of liberty. Plenty of them were in the Revolution, and one Captain Abel Shedd, grandfather of the subject of the present sketch, commanded an American vessel in that war, and served his country at least to the extent of capturing a British sloop off the New England coast, with several men and two barrels of ruin. Whether the incident or any of its possible consequences made an impression on the Captain's

son, George, of course we are unable to determine. He afterwards turned out to be a strong advocate of temperance and of the humanitarian movement of his time. This was the father of Hibbard Houston. At an early age he was bound out, in which mild form of slavery he continued until of age. He acquired his right of franchise without having acquired an education. This he set out to get; and went so far as to graduate from Dartmouth College in 1839, studying medicine afterwards at Cincinnati.
   He then moved to a settlement named Denmark, on the west bank of the Mississippi, seventeen miles from Burlington, in the territory of Iowa. Though he came too late (he himself informed me of the lamentable fact,) to take part in the destruction of the Mormons across the river at Augusta, his brother, who had preceded him here, had helped in wiping out the iniquity, as he called it, even furnishing a log chain with which to stuff the cannon when balls were no longer to be had.
   Dr. George Shedd, upon his arrival in this pioneer village practiced medicine, and meantime vigorously talked abolition in the open, and privately worked negroes north to Canada, being a prominent spirit on the "underground railway," the business of which carried him abroad as far as Cincinnati and north to the Lakes and brought him frequently into clash with southern slave-owners. Upon the creation of the Republican party he became a stanch member, continuing as such until his death in 1891. He was a man of firm convictions, sturdy principles, with a quiet taste for fighting evildoers. Something of the Scotch obstinacy and of the Puritan piety and zeal, with perhaps a little of the intolerance of both, had descended, it will be seen, even thus far. Here, however, it, stopped.
   Hibbard Houston Shedd, son of the doctor, himself seldom referred to his antecedents. Indeed, he was so democratic that he took little vanity in what his forebears had been doing or had done. He believed that each man should stand upon his feet. But I have mentioned these antecedents as

possessing a certain value, possibly in making plain the inherited tendencies and influences which shaped the beginning of his life.
   Dr. George Shedd married Abigail Houston, and Hibbard was the only son born of this union, on January 27, 1847. It was still the period of chopping and hewing of wood, of ox-teams, and long prayers. The community was a New England one, excepting two or three families of negroes which had appeared out of the South and had been adopted for conversion and as a defiance to the South.
   Hibbard Shedd grew up here, and may in the first sense be said to be an American, being the seventh generation of the name in America; and in the second sense, also, by his pioneer environment. His home was unpretentious and his life simple and healthful, consisting of work, school, and church. He attended the academy of the town, the first academy or college in Iowa, where he was taught mathematics, Latin and Greek, philosophy, a little Hebrew, astronomy, and a good deal of the Bible and Concordance. Over this course of study he often smiled in later years. One event signalized this somewhat uneventful boyhood - a trip to Illinois where in company with his father he heard one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, and we can not doubt but that it made a deep impression upon him.
   At the outbreak of the war he was anxious to shoulder a musket, but being only fourteen years old, his patriotic aspirations outran his age. In '61, arriving at seventeen, he joined the 45th Iowa Volunteers, and during the brief end of the war saw service in Tennessee and Mississippi, though to his regret he was in no great battle.
   In 1869 he made his first trip to Nebraska and was so impressed with the possibilities of the new state that he returned a year later to take up his residence at Ashland, where he engaged in mercantile business. Here, until his death three months ago, was his home.

   On February 18, 1874, he married Katharine Leigh Graves, of Cincinnati, Ohio, to whom six children were born, four now living. His home life was ideal.
   When he came to Nebraska he was a young man, twenty-three years of age, with a sound education, broadened by the war experience, supplemented by that of a year's teaching in Illinois and a year in a Burlington, Iowa, bank. It can not be said that he was a pioneer of our state - the pioneer period was ended. He was one of the men of the construction period. He had great faith in the new commonwealth, despite its drouths, blank prairies, and grasshopper plagues. From the year of his coming he enjoyed the acquaintance and confidence of Morton, Furnas, and others of those who had preceded him and who were instrumental in bringing Nebraska into statehood.
   From 1870 until his death he took an active part in the religious, social, educational, and political life of his community and state. He was the prime spirit in organizing the Congregational church of Ashland, of which he was trustee, organist, and Sunday school superintendent for thirty-five years. His last fatal illness alone cut short his work in these lines. For a number of years he was trustee of Doane College, and always recognized the place denominational colleges have in our school system. This did not lessen in any respect his strong interest, almost attachment, for the State University, which he had witnessed rise from nothing to its present splendid proportions. For several successive terms he was president of the Ashland public school board, was a participant in the state, teachers' association, and presented addresses before the National Teachers' Association of America. He frequently contributed articles to educational journals and reviews. His literary work was not confined to these, since he was a contributor to various other magazines, and author of several monographs and memoirs.
   Politically be was a republican, coming under the influence of this party at, it may be said, its inception. While a stanch holder or the tenets of his political faith and a constant sup-

porter of its platforms and policies, he was broadminded in his convictions and unshackled by narrow prejudices. His first important public service was during his twenty-eight year, as a member of the state constitutional convention of 1875. Here he gained the thorough insight into the fabric of our commonwealth, himself helping to build it, and of the principles fundamental in good citizenship.
   From his diary of this period I will quote one or two extracts which may perhaps have interest:
   "May 12. - Convention met at 9:00 o'clock and proceeded to adopt the report of committee on rules. All adopted with slight changes, except rule 31, which was postponed until after dinner. Met at 2:00 o'clock and discussion began on subject of committees. Some of the members are in favor of a large number of them, some in favor of few, some are desirous of bringing bulk of work before convention. Vote finally passed to have entire number of committees. Speeches by Van Wyck, Martin, Manderson, Maxwell, Broady, Kirkpatrick, Hinman, Gwyer, Briggs, Reese, Harrington, Griffin, Laird, Weaver, and Hopewell.
   "May 27. - Committees on legislature and apportionment hold joint session. A very earliest and bitter debate - adjourned without satisfactory result.
   "June 3. - Long and fierce debate on salaries and clerk hire of executive offices.
   "June 10. - Convention put in a long day faithfully. Abbott made a bitter attack on Doom, but got the worst of it.
    "June 15. - Immense clouds of grasshoppers flying over - they are beginning to light nights and do some damage - business at a standstill, almost nothing doing in town. A pale, anxious, frightened body of men everywhere. Dark days these."
   His experience as a member of this convention well prepared him for the position he was to assume in the councils or his party and for the non-partisan public service which he was to render to the state. In the year 1881 was chosen a member of the legislature, and in 1883 was elected a speaker

of the house of representatives. This was a decade when the tariff question was paramount. Mr. Shedd put in ten years' study, and it may safely be said he became an expert upon the subject, having published frequent articles upon it in serious reviews. He was twice elected lieutenant-governor, filling that office with credit and dignity during the terms of 1885 and 1887. Time as well as the occasion will not permit me to deal with details of these ten years. He has left many papers, addresses, reminiscences, and records pertaining to them and the political history of the state at this epoch.
   This active participation in this early legislation broadened and strengthened him. He gained insight, foresight, and power. He acquired those statesman-like qualities which should develop in one who holds public position. I think his integrity was never questioned; his honesty of thought and sincerity of purpose was admired by his opponents, his loyalty and steadfastness of conviction were an asset to his friends; and all sought to rank among these. His interest in the welfare of his state persisted to the day of his death, and his faith in its present greatness and greater future was firm and abiding.
   Until within the last year or two Mr. Shedd was constantly engaged upon the platform, his speeches upon patriotic days and other occasions being in request wherever he was known. As a thinker he was clear, sound, and comprehensive, even at times profound; as an orator he enjoyed more than a local reputation, delivering addresses in numerous middle and Western states. But it is his private life perhaps which gives him the most honor.
   As a citizen he was always obedient to his state's and country's laws, and ready to sacrifice his personal convenience or desires to promote the welfare of his community and Nebraska. As a man he was kindly and considerate in his relations with his neighbors, clean and upright in all his doings, just and more than just in business dealings, even generous and charitable, and exercised a strong influence for good, and inspired strong useful, equitable action in others.

© 2000, 2001 Pam Rietsch, T&C Miller