and other foot troubles. From the first he met with a cordial response in business from the residents of the city and now with his added line of orthapedic (sic) shoes and devices his trade has materially increased so that it is a most satisfactory concern from the financial point of view. He has a man in his employ who is a graduate of the same school, so that Mr. Miller can devote his time almost entirely to the management of the business in its larger aspects. Mr. Miller has a modern home and other real estate which he rents and today represents the true spirit of the Panhandle business man "progress." In politics he is a Democrat. FRANK J. BRENNAN, is the owner and manager of one of the oldest drug houses in the Panhandle and has been established in professional life in Alliance for nearly twenty years. He has built up a clientele and substantial business of which any man may well be congratulated, especially when his success is due to his own industry, high reputation for business ability and the courtesy displayed to his customers. Mr. Brennan was born in Bay City, Michigan, the son of Martin and Mary (Fitzpatrick) Brennan, both of whom were born in Ireland and came to the United States at an early day to locate in the northern central states. To their son they have transmitted those rare qualities of the Irish which no other race on earth is fortunate enough to possess, humor, wit and a genial optimistic disposition which enables the possessor to overcome and surmount many a difficulty in life that would daunt and discourage others. Frank was next to the youngest in a family of twelve children and as his father died when he was only seven years old the burden of rearing and educating her children fell upon the mother, but she nobly put her shoulder to the task of being both father and mother to her little brood and that she was successful in this great undertaking need not be said when one looks at her sons and two daughters. Mrs. Brennan came to Alliance in 1888, one of the pioneer women of the section and town, so that her children were educated in the excellent public schools here. Frank received his instruction in the old building which was later converted into a flouring mill, and then graduated from the high school. He had early decided upon a professional career, and having chosen pharmacy matriculated in the pharmacy department of Northwestern University. The college proper is located at Evanston, but the medical and pharmacy departments are situated on the south side of Chicago, where he received his degree and was admitted to practice in 1899. Knowing that there were more openings and chance for building up a good business in the west than in Illinois, the young man returned to Alliance after commencement and bought the drug store owned by Fred H. Smith. He at once established it on a modem footing, with the slogan on "service," The health of a community depends nearly as much upon the druggist who fills the prescriptions as upon the doctor who writes them and Alliance has indeed been fortunate in having such a capable and conscientious man for this work as Mr. Brennan who has always personally handled or supervised the prescription branch of his business. He is modern in his ideas and methods, keeps an up-to-date establishment in every particular, gives care to his displays and has added all the attractive side lines that people have learned to expect in the modern store. His promptness, courtesy and consideration have gone a long way toward his success in building up a fine trade which is also a money making business. 'The store is located advantageously on Box Butte Avenue, where the better elements of the city congregate for purchases. In addition, Mr. Brennan owns a modern home in the town where he and his gracious wife dispense a cordial hospitality to their many old, warm friends. On September 1, 1909, Mr. Brennan was married at South Hampton, Canada, to Miss Madeline Carey, the daughter of John V. Carey and two children have been born to them: Helen, seven, and John F., a lad of two. Mr. Brennan is a member of the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks and the Knights of Columbus. ALLEN D. RODGERS. -- Of the men who have lent dignity of character, excellence of labor and largeness of general co-operation to affairs in Box Butte county and the Panhandle for more than three decades, none is held in greater esteem than Allen Rodgers, the owner and manager of the leading grocery house of Alliance. Mr. Rodgers is entitled to pioneer honors for not only was he one of the early settlers of the section but was a freighter, frontiersman and broke timber claims for other men in order that they might prove up on them. Thirty-two years have passed since Mr. Rodgers drove into Cheyenne county in true pioneer style and settled on a homestead and timber claim. For many years he lived and labored, slowly and arduously developing |
a farm and establishing a home for his family, watching and assisting in the advancement and progress. While yet living in the country Mr. Rodgers gained a reputation for industry and integrity which is being perpetuated in his mercantile establishment and which he has transmitted to his children as a wonderful heritage, never to be purchased by mere money. Allen Rodgers was born at Sigourney, Iowa, May 23, 1861, just at the opening of the Civil War. His parents were Willis and Madelina (White) Rodgers, the former a son of the Blue Grass state. Allen was the youngest of a family of twelve children and early learned to give and take where a number of boys and girls grow up together. His boyhood was spent in the country on his father's farm, where he grew up sturdy, healthy and self reliant, able to cope with many an unexpected emergency. He received his early educational training in the good public schools of Iowa, and while yet a small boy began a financial career in a small way, his first venture was trapping quail and selling them for five cents apiece. When only seventeen the boy became impatient to become financially independent and established himself in business as a farmer. On December 16, 1881, Mr. Rodgers was married in Sullivan county, Missouri, to Miss Margaret A. Perry, who was born at What Cheer, Iowa, the daughter of Jefferson Perry, a native of New York. She was the youngest in a family of five children and became the mother of three children of her own: Cora M., deceased; Minnie T., who married George Roach, a farmer near Alliance and they have five children, and Chester C., who married Grace C. Watson and they are the parents of two children. Mr. Rodgers is associated with his father in the grocery business. He is an Odd Fellow, Mason, Elk and Eagle. Not satisfied with their surroundings, and desiring a home with its many opportunities, on the newly opened frontier of Nebraska, Mr. and Mrs. Rodgers drove overland in 1888, locating in what was then Cheyenne county, so that the nearest post office and town was Sidney, thirty-two miles away. Like all new settlers they were forced to meet and to overcome many obstacles and to endure numerous hardships. Hardly were the family settled when Mrs. Rodgers died. This left Mr. Rodgers with three small children on his hands, but he had already built a good, comfortable, warm "soddy" and at once began the task of improving his pre-emption and timber claim. He says that people today with their automobiles do not realize what distance meant to the first settlers who were forced to travel long distances by horse, mule or ox teams and that the thirty-two mile trip to Sidney and back in the eighties would mean much more to them than a journey of several hundred miles does today on the good roads in a machine. In recounting experiences Mr. Rodgers tells of one trip he and some near neighbors made to Sidney for mail and supplies. They took two teams to the wagon, and on the way had to shovel snow for six miles in the canyons to get the horses and wagon through, an undertaking that took seven days to cover the sixty-four miles. The Rodgers homestead was located on the south side of the Platte but settlers on the north side had to ford the river or make a detour of twenty miles to cross on the old Clark bridge built by the soldiers in the late sixties and many a team and man Mr. Rodgers has pulled from the quick sand of the treacherous stream when they attempted to, cross. As money was scarce on the plains in the early days many of the settlers worked when they could find something to do at times when the farms did not demand all their time, and Mr. Rodgers broke timber claims for cowboys who had taken them but were obliged to be with their outfits at just the time such breaking could best be done. The cattle men were paid in money by their employers and they in turn paid gold and silver for the work on the land. In this way Mr. Rodgers was able to make enough money to buy his little family many of the necessities which other men had to do without. Settlers lived far apart in those days and Mr. Rodgers had been fortunate in having three other families take claims adjoining his in the valley at about the same time, as the women were kind to his motherless children and the men were able to help one another in many ways. In 1892 Mr. Rodgers married Miss Minnie White, the daughter of John E. White and the next year he sold his farm in the valley to move twenty miles north of the Platte into the sand hills where he bought a thousand acres of land. He built a comfortable home, placed good improvements on the place and was engaged in ranching and cattle raising for five years. Desiring better educational advantages for his children, Mr. Rodgers disposed of his ranch and came to Alliance that year, buying in October, the grocery stock of J. J. Lyons or "Daddy" Lyons as he was well and kindly known to the residents of the town. Mr. Rodgers was already well known to the residents of the city for his care in fulfilling business obligations |
and this gained him confidence both with his customers and the wholesale houses with which he dealt. He soon gained a reputation for handling the best lines of goods, and kept such attractive displays that his business grew very rapidly and soon became most satisfactory from a financial point of view. Mr. Rodgers has the delightful cordiality of the southerner, inherited from his father. He manages to make every customer feel at home, no matter though the purchase of the moment be small, and by this faculty has gained many new customers and always holds the old ones. His trade increased so that he found it necessary to build the present fine two story brick building, with nearly two thousand square feet of floor space on each floor, where he has been located since 1901, at 122 Box Butte Avenue. From first locating in Alliance, Mr. Rodgers has taken an active part in civic and communal affairs, advocating every progressive movement for the upbuilding and development of the city and the confidence and position he has gained may be understood when we know that in 1913 he was elected executive officer of the municipality, was re-elected mayor in 1914, and by his economic management of the city finances, in the matter of the light and water plant saved the tax payers at least twenty-six thousand dollars. Mr. Rodgers proved so efficient an official of Alliance that he was re-elected mayor in 1919 and is serving at the present time. He has shown such marked executive ability in his business and as municipal officer that he was unanimously elected as one of the executive officers of the Nebraska Retailers' Federation, another office which he has well filled. Mr. Rodgers is an adherent of the principles of the Democratic party and while he is in sympathy with the party is too broad minded to be closely tied in local elections, believing that the man best fitted to serve the interests of the people should be placed in office. Mr. Rodgers is a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and has taken seventeen degrees in the Masonic lodge. ROY BECKWITH, the leading men's furnisher and haberdasher of Alliance and one of its solid and reliable business men, is an early pioneer of Nebraska and one of that famous band of men, the "cowboys," who herded cattle in the Panhandle and along the great "cattle trail," of the seventies and eighties. He has had many and varied experiences in this great commonwealth since brought here as a small child by his parents and is representative of that spirit that has opened up this state to settlement and development. In all of these changes Mr. Beckwith has taken an active part. He is a native of the Keystone state, born at Smethport, McKinn county, Pennsylvania, March 24, 1863, the son of Daniel E. and Elizabeth (King) Beckwith, both natives of that state, where they were reared and educated, later married and lived there for several years. Roy was the second child in a family of seven children born to his parents. His father enlisted in the One hundred and Twelfth Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, at the outbreak of the Civil War; he participated in many of the most severe engagements and battles of the conflict under the famous general, Roy Stone, and Roy Beckwith is named in memory of that officer. Mr. Beckwith served at Gettysburg and in the Battle of the Wilderness, where he was under fire twenty-eight days out of thirty. When peace was declared he returned to peaceful pursuits, but like so many of the returned soldiers was not contented with conditions as they existed before the war; as he desired greater advantages for himself and family; and knowing that land was to be had for the taking on the newly opened frontier in Nebraska, came to this state in 1866, when the country was a veritable wilderness. He located in Saunders county and the first year on the plains was a sub-contractor in getting out ties for the Union Pacific Railroad, which was then pushing toward the west across the state. The next fall he took up a homestead on Pebble creek, twenty miles west of Fremont, near the present site of Scribner. Roy and his brothers and sister were reared on this frontier farm and attended the pioneer school nearest their home when a teacher could be secured for it. While still a small boy he began to be useful around the farm and his first money independently earned was herding cattle when only eight years old and that two dollars looked very large to him. In 1872 the family moved to Antelope county within about a half mile of the famous "cattle trail," that led north from the Pecos in Texas to the Yellowstone river, along which the great herds of cattle were drifted north with the summer season and in the fall sold at a northern market. Cattle for the reservations used this same trail when being driven up for the Indians meat supply and sometime cows would hide their calves near the bedding grounds and they were left behind when the herd moved. Roy found one of these while herding for his father and brought it home on his pony. When it was |
a year old Mr. Beckwith took it to market when he sold his grain at Columbus, sixty miles away, and Roy bought a suit of clothes with the money. The boy worked on the farm in summer while attending school in the winter until he was seventeen; but he heard such wonderful stories from the cowboys who were driving the herds of cattle from northwestern Nebraska to the settlements that his young blood was fired with the spirit of adventure and the picturesque cow men decked out in "chaps" and spurs, big hats and six shooter guns lured him on and as he expresses it, "I got the fever," and nothing would do but that he too must join a cattle outfit. He hired out on a ranch near the present site of Valentine, where he remained two years before changing to the "Boiling Springs" ranch owned by Major Mayberry, but the cowboys were a changing lot of men and the next year he joined the N Bar Cattle Company and while working there took up a homestead near Gordon. In 1884, he joined the trail herd that the company was bringing from Texas to the Indian Nation and thus early traversed that famous highway that has gone down in history, unique in its inauguration and different from any trail in the whole world. They had about eight thousand cattle in the herd, branded on the Cimaron river near the Kansas boundary, then drove two hundred miles west of Miles City, Montana, to the Mussle Shell river. The country was a wild expanse with practically no settlers, filled with rough cattle rustlers, French-Canadian and Indian trappers who wintered where snow found them and set traps along the streams. For three years Mr. Beckwith trailed cattle then, in 1887, came to Sheridan county and tried farming with, as he expresses it, "a varied amount of success." In 1900, he disposed of his place and established himself in Gordon in the clothing business, meeting with gratifying success from the first. Four years later he came to Box Butte county, settling in Alliance, where he opened one of the finest men's furnishing houses in the northwestern part of the state. He has a most attractive store, with a stock that would be hard to beat in a much larger city, is a man who reads human nature and by his courtesy, tact and reputation for giving everyone a "square deal," has built up a fine trade, which is most satisfactory from a financial point of view. January 9, 1891, Mr. Beckwith was married at Rushville, Nebraska, to Miss Emma Flexing a native of Pennsylvania and two children have been born to this union: Ora Fay, deceased, and Blaine G., who went through the Alliance schools and then attended a military academy for three years. He is now associated with his father in business and married Helen Rice. For his second wife Mr. Beckwith married Miss Maude Howell, at Chicago, Illinois on September 23, 1911. Mr. Beckwith owns a hundred and sixty acre farm of good Box Butte county land, has a modern home in Alliance, is an Elk, a Mason and a Shriner. GRANT G. MELICK, one of the progressive business men of Hemingford, who, though a late comer to the town, is doing his part in the upbuilding of the town and county, is the owner and manager of the Miller Hotel and Cafe, one of the up-to-date hostelries of the Panhandle. Mr. Melick was born in Finney county, Kansas, November 16, 1892, which places him in the younger generation of business men of today who are making financial history in this section. His parents were Franklin and Christiana (Larson) Melick, the former a Jerseyman, born in Hunderon county, New Jersey, while the mother was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. Grant was the seventh in a family of nine children born to his parents. When the boy was two years old, the family moved to Nodaway county, Missouri, locating on a farm where he grew up in the healthy environment of the country, attending the district school in the winter time and helping on the home farm as soon as his age and strength permitted, so by experience he was a good practical farmer while yet a boy in years. All the boys worked at something when he was young and Grant says that the first money he earned was making the fires and doing janitor work at the school which he attended. For this he was paid a dollar and a quarter a month. Grant remained at home with his parents until he was fifteen, then began to work on farms near his home independently during the summer seasons and continued his education during the slack period of the winter months, and thus he laid the foundation for a good practical education that has been invaluable to him in later years. He was strong, and ambitious, not afraid of work and the year he was sixteen cribbed a hundred and twenty-five bushels of corn in a working day of nine hours, a feat that a full grown man would have been proud to accomplish. The next year he established himself independently as a farmer and while he gained quite a satisfactory remuneration financially the |
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