 SAMS & McCAFFREE. |
of eighty-three and seventy-nine years respectively. Thomas Wagoner was a wealthy landed proprietor in Ohio, who engaged in agricultural pursuits. He was a staunch adherent of the Republican party of Ohio and during his prime took part in shaping party policy; he was an active participant in all movements that tended to develop the country, early adopted modern methods in his farming operations and was a man of civic reform and progress. There were twelve children in the family, of whom Carl was the eldest. The others who survive are: Frederick, now a stockman in Colorado; Lawson and Nels, both farmers in Morrill county; Gaty (sic), who married Ed. Saunders, lives in Kansas; Clara McConnell of Overton, Nebraska; and Dora Stiles of Morrill county. While irrigation was yet a question of the future, Mr. Wagoner came west and was farsighted in the selection of his location. After looking the country over he selected land near the Platte river in Cheyenne county on a homestead of one hundred and sixty acres; he pre-empted another one hundred and sixty and filed on a tree claim of one hundred and sixty. He at once began improvements which increased the value of his holdings until today his farm is one of the most fertile in the valley. Mr. Wagoner put his earlier knowledge of agriculture to good use on his prairie farm; became a careful business man; studied up on the best stock for this climate and decided that thoroughbreds did the best and brought the greatest returns on the market, and purchased pure bred Durham and Hereford cattle. He engaged in diversified farming also and has been exceptionally successful in raising meat animals for the market. With new methods introduced by the irrigation carried out along the river, Mr. Wagoner has begun raising varied forage crops, as he was the first to promote beet culture and this season had about two thousand tons. He has appreciated the advantages of this country even when suffering from the drought and insect pest of earlier days, and today is one of the wealthiest men of the Morrill section. Mr. Wagoner is an independent in politics. With his family he is a member of the Episcopal church while his fraternal affiliations are with the Masonic order as he is a member of the Blue Lodge, also the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite. In 1881, Mr. Wagoner married Miss Mary A. Durell, a native of Illinois; the marriage taking place in Nemaha county. Close attention to business, thrift, prudence and able management of his affairs are the rungs of the ladder of fortune up which this able man has climbed to his present affluence. Mr. Wagoner is too broad gauged to confine his ambitions to one line of endeavor and as his fortune has grown he has taken part in the commercial enterprises of his community, as he is interested in extensive oil properties, is the owner of a large block of stock in the Union State Bank, the Globe Insurance Company, the elevator, the electric light plant and the Wyoming Refining Company and may be considered one of the progressive capitalists of Broadwater. HARVEY L. SAMS, prominent in the affairs of Scottsbluff, has large private business interests that demand close attention, nevertheless he is one of the most active citizens in public effort. His enterprise and progressiveness have been of vital importance in the development of Scottsbluff, and his judgment concerning civic measures is very generally consulted. Mr. Sams has been a resident of Nebraska since boyhood, and of this city for seventeen years. He is president of the Sams-McCaffree Company, dealers in real estate and general insurance. Harvey L. Sams was born at Anamosa, Iowa, October 21, 1869, the son of Stephen and Mary (Wagner) Sams, the former of whom was born in 1837, in Ohio, and the latter in 1842 in Pennsylvania, and both died in Nebraska, the father in January, 1914, and the mother in 1910. Stephen Sams went to Iowa in 1844 and married in Jones county, and his children were as follows: Mrs. L. R. Porter, of Bartlett, Nebraska; Albert E., of Nowata, Oklahoma; Harvey L., of Scottsbluff; Milton A., of Blair, Nebraska; Mrs. E. E. Gaines, of Valley, Nebraska; Mrs. Nellie Shoaf, of Randolph, Nebraska, and one deceased. Stephen Sams and his wife were members of the Methodist Episcopal church. He came to Nebraska with his family and settled in Nemaha county, coming from there to Scottsbluff county in 1904. He was a farmer all his life. Harvey L. Sams attended the public schools and the State Normal School at Peru, afterward passed two years in the State University at Lincoln, and in 1900 secured his A.B. degree in the Wesleyan University. In the meanwhile he had taught school, eight years in all, leaving the educational field in 1902, when superintendent of the schools of Red Cloud, Nebraska. It was then he came to Scottsbluff and for four years was identified with the First National Bank, first as assistant cashier and afterward as cashier, Upon leaving the bank Mr. Sams |
 MR. AND MRS. S. B. SHUMWAY. |
formed a business partnership, incorporated, with F. S. McCaffree, under the style of the Sams-McCaffree Company, in the real estate and insurance line, and they have been very prosperous. Mr. Sams owns a large amount of valuable property in the county, some 2000 acres, including a whole section south of Gering, where he feeds two hundred head of cattle for shipment to the eastern markets. In 1905 Mr. Sams was united in marriage to Miss Cora V. Slates, who was born at Broken Bow, Nebraska, a daughter of John B. Slates, a pioneer of Custer county. They have five children: Eldon, Angeline, Lenore, Josephine, and an infant son, unnamed. Mr. and Mrs. Sams are members of the Methodist Episcopal church. He is a Knight Templar Mason, past master of the Blue Lodge, and past patron of the Eastern Star, to which organization Mrs. Sams also belongs. He has always been somewhat active in the Republican party, believing politics a necessary part of national life, but has never sought political preferment. The substantial development of the city has interested him from the time he came here and he has given encouragement to many worthy enterprises. He is president of the library board and is urging immediate action concerning the erection of a public library building that will be creditable to the city and fulfill the terms on which Andrew Carnegie made a very acceptable donation. It was Mr. Sams who was one of the leading factors in the organization of the Commercial Club here and was its first president, and was also instrumental in starting the Water Users association, of which he was first president. He is a man of sound, practical ideas, remarkably unselfish as to his personal interests, and it is evident that with its general welfare, the development into one of the state's great centers is his cherished hope for Scottsbluff, which from present indications looks very reasonable. STEPHEN BURROUGHS SHUMWAY was born at Spring Hill, Bradford county, Pennsylvania, April 15, 1822. He came with his parents to Lee county, Illinois, at a very early date. With his father he farmed and hauled wheat to Chicago with ox teams, and once their loads were mired down in the mud of State street in that city. In 1849, he quit Knox College, in his senior year, where he was working his way, shaving shingles, and went to California, passing through western Nebraska in 1850. He remembered a terrific rain the night they were encamped at Chimney Rock. They sat up in their tents for hours with their blankets over their shoulders and the water running under their feet. After a year in California and accumulating about two thousand dollars worth of gold, he returned home by way of Panama. On the trip down the Pacific ocean, he was impressed with the fact that it was anything but a peaceful ocean. The stokers kept the pipes red hot and several times the vessel took fire. In the storms the ship would crawl up an advancing wave for several hundred feet, to the top, and ahead of them there would be a trough in the water that seemed like a bottomless pit. Down into this the ship would plunge and when it hit the bottom the water would sweep over the decks carrying away anything loose. Then around the vessel, the water would begin to boil and the ship would again begin its laborious climb up another wave. Crossing the isthmus, he rode a Spanish mule in a path worn so deep that its banks were often as high as his shoulders, the verdure of the tropics was matted overhead so dense that it was fairly dark in places. On arriving in Illinois, he and Alson J. Streeter, afterward Union Labor candidate for President of the United States, gathered together one hundred head of cows, and in 1852, drove them to California. This trip was made through the North Platte valley, on the north side of the river to Fort Laramie. They had plenty of adventure, but no losses, and arrived at the golden mecca with more cattle than they started with, for some of the cows dropped calves, which were taken in the wagons and carried when they showed sign of fatigue. On February 28, 1854, he was married to Lydia Jane Streeter, a sister of Alson J. Streeter. She was born at Rock Hill, New York, October 1, 1835, and removed to Lee county, Illinois, about the same time that the Shumways moved there from Pennsylvania. Mr. Shumway went into mercantile business at Oxford, Henry county, Illinois and later retired to his farm adjoining the town. The old farm house where he lived, and which was burned recently, was the home for many years, and here the family of eleven children were born, three of whom died while quite young. Those who grew to maturity were Clara Grace, Roswell, George, Grant, Minnie Mae, Alson and Mabel. For about ten years S. B. Shumway served as county supervisor in Henry county, being elected as an independent, he being an independent in politics, since the greenback days. He was once independent candidate for Con- |
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