Tekamah and Vicinity, Noteworthy Men of

made several trips as a roustabout on the steamboat, "Denver," then plying between St. Joseph and Omaha. Following this he hired out to a government freight transportation company and became, in the parlance of the times, a "bull whacker," driving six yoke of cattle, pulling six thousand pounds of government stores in heavy wagons, from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to Fort Laramie, Wyoming, a distance of over 1000 miles. This was before the Union Pacific railroad was built and when the present great states of Kansas, Nebraska and Colorado were a vast prairie sea. Returning from this trip, in the fall of 1864, he entered Asbury University, at Greencastle, Indiana, from which he graduated in 1869. While attending the University he also studied law and was admitted to practice in Indiana. In the fall of 1870, he located in Tekamah.
   Since entering this county and state as a citizen his life has been full of public works and honors. He began by teaching school in 1870. The following year, he, with W. B. White, established the "Burtonian."
   In 1873 he started the first "Burt County Bank." He was a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1875. From then up to 1887 he gave his entire attention to his law, real estate and banking interests. In the latter year he was appointed by Governor Thayer, as district judge to which position he was repeatedly elected until 1896 when he retired from the bench and gave his attention to the practice of law and the management of his large land interests. At the present time, his son W. M. Hopewell, is associated with him in the practice of law.
   Mr. Hopewell was united in marriage October 20th, 1874, to Miss Hattie E. Nelson of this city.

   CHARLES W. CONKLING has been identified with the west all his life. He was born on a farm at Alden, Illinois, December 7th, 1847, where his childhood and early manhood was spent attending to the duties devolving upon a farmers boy. He attended the district schools and later the Walworth (Wisconsin) Academy.

He cast his lot with Tekamah and its interests in June, 1873, and has been one of its foremost citizens in enterprises affecting it and the county during all this time. To his agitation is due some of the greatest public improvements in the county. He has had unlimited faith in the future of Burt county and by his own unaided efforts, coming here a poor young man so far as finances were concerned, he has become one of its large holders of real estate. Of late years he has operated quite extensively in Old Mexico mining properties and to that now gives the greatest share of his attention. Mr. Conkling was united in marriage at Tekamah, in the tall of 1877, to Miss Clara E. Daley.

HORATIO N. WHEELER was born in the month of April, 1834, in Hardin county, Ohio, six miles east of Kenton, on a farm where he grew to manhood. He was educated at Antioch College, whose first president was Horace Mann. After leaving college, in 1858. he entered the wholesale grocery business at Peoria, Illinois, a member of the firm of Wheeler, Sloan & Co. At the breaking out of the war he returned to Ohio and enlisted as second lieutenant in Company H, 135th Ohio Volunteer Infantry. At the close of the war he moved to Lima, Ohio, where he and his brother engaged in the retail grocery business under the firm name of J. & H. N. Wheeler. In 1870 he returned to Kenton, Ohio, and helped to organize the Kenton Manufacturing Co.,-- of which he was secretary and business manager for several years. He was also one of the partners in the Exchange Bank, of that city and was assistant cashier for a few years. In 1876 he came west and resided for a short time at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where he was for a time connected with the Daily Republican, as solicitor, travelling correspondent and agricultural editor. In 1882 he removed to St. Paul, Minnesota. where he was on the staff of the St. Paul Globe.
Mr. Wheeler came to Tekamah in 1887 where he has


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