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nal improvements, constitutional amendments, and miscellaneous subjects, and a member of the sifting committee, to which he was appointed in recognition of his ability as one of the leaders of the minority. HON. J. N. GAFFIN.
![]() sible position, is one of the best known men in Nebraska.
Hon. J. N. Gaffin was born near Pecatonica, Illinois, May
27, 1855, and was raised on a farm with all the varied
experiences of rural youth. He mastered the common branches
and graduated from the high school of Pecatonica with
honors. At the age of twenty-one he became impressed with
the desire to go west, |
and spurred on by bright hopes and high ambitions he
reached the town of Valley in the month of August, 1876,
rigged out with the "prairie schooner" of the period. In
October of the same year he was married to Miss Laura
Williams, a public school teacher, and the union has been
blessed with five children. Mr. Gaffin was successful at
farming, and branched out to stock raising and feeding
cattle and hogs for the market. In 1883 the family moved
into their present comfortable home on their farm located
five miles from Wahoo, in Saunders county, occupying and
managing 320 acres of improved land. Mr. Gaffin was always a
student of political questions, and in his early life was an
ardent republican. For fifteen years he served his fellow
citizens as justice of the peace, and for twenty years held
a position on the school board. He was one of the prime
movers in the Farmers' Alliance, and has taken an active
part in the succeeding populist organization. He was a
delegate to the Cincinnati and St. Louis conferences, as
also to most, if not all, state alliances and people's party
state conventions since the institution of the reform
movement in this state. In 1890 he was elected to the
legislature, being a member of the house, and was re-elected
in 1892 and was chosen speaker of the house of 1893. This
position he filled with such credit and honor to himself
that he was the unanimous choice of the fusion party for
speaker of the house of 1897. Speaker Gaffin is an ideal
presiding officer, prompt, fair, able, and expeditious in
the dispatch of business. He has guided the deliberations of
the house in such a way as to command the respect of all,
regardless of party. He is chairman of the committee on
rules, and has shown a capacity for a vast amount of arduous
labor in the smallest space of time. |
HON. FRED GAYLORD.
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