USA > Nebraska > A Biographical and genealogical history of southeastern Nebraska, Vol. I > Part 25
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Mr. Jones was born in New Hanover county, North Carolina, June 10, 1846, on the same plantation on which his father, David Jones, was born, October 3, 1807. The latter was married in Northi Carolina in 1833 to Miss Margaret Ann Keith, who was born in the same county in North Carolina, March 12, 1818. They brought their movables and two female slaves to Missouri in 1849, and settled in Buchanan county, nine miles south of St. Joseph, they being witnesses to some of the first building operations in that city. He had eighty acres of land, which he cleared of the heavy timber and farmed from 1849 until 1865. In March, of the latter year, he sold out and came to Nemaha county, Nebraska, and bought one hundred and sixty acres which adjoins the farm of Mr. B. F. Jones on the south. They were parents of fourteen children. Annie died in infancy; William J. is a farmer in Oklahoma, and has three sons and three daughters and has lost two daughters; Susan L. is the widow of B. F. Rice, in Oklahoma
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City, and has four daughters and two sons living; Mary P. is the wife of Henry W. Highsmith in Oklahoma City, and has one son; David died when seven years old; Annie is the wife of John J. Whittington in St. Joseph, Missouri, and has two sons and one daughter; Amanda H. is the wife of W. T. Moore, in Seattle, Washington, and has four sons and two daughters living; B. F. is the next child; T. L. is an extensive merchant and live-stock dealer in Hendley, Nebraska, and has five daughters; Charles M. was, at last accounts, at Joplin, Mis- souri, and has a wife, two sons and one daughter; Eveline, in Seneca, Kansas, is the widow of B. F. Coons, and has two sons; John Leoni- das Keith is unmarried and with his brother T. L .; Milton F. died at the age of thirty-two in St. Joseph, Missouri, leaving a wife and one son; and Addie is the wife of Thomas A. Bath, at Auburn, and has three sons and three daughters. The mother of these children died here on the old home, July 22, 1874, aged fifty-six, and the father died July 18, 1879, aged seventy-two. They were both Baptists, and he was a Democrat, and was justice of the peace in Missouri from 1849 to 1860. They had both received small inheritances, and they in turn helped their children get a start in life.
Benjamin F. Jones was reared on a farm, and had his schooling in the district school, although most of his learning was acquired at home. The little brick school house, known as Happy Hollow, and standing only a few rods from his present place, has been the scene of his, his wife's, his children's and his grandchildren's schooldays, and it is a place of affectionate memory and happy reminiscence. Mr. Jones has consistently followed farming throughout his career, and his home place consists of ninety well cultivated and well improved acres, and he also owns one hundred and sixty acres in Sheridan county, Kansas.
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He raises corn and wheat crops principally, and is also connected to some extent with cattle-raising and threshing machines.
Mr. Jones was married November 5. 1872, to Miss Sarah E. Clark, who was born in Holt county, Missouri, in 1854, a daughter of John C. and Mary E. (Noland) Clark. The latter is the oldest living set- tler in Nemaha county, and in the history of her life will be found fur- ther details of interest to the present sketch. The nine children born to Mr. and Mrs. Jones are all living: David is a farmer, within sight of his father's place, and has two sons and one daughter ; Florence gradu- ated from the State Normal, taught several years, and is now a sales- lady with Thompson and Perry; Miss Myrtle, who was also educated in the State Normal at Peru, has been a teacher for four years in Au- burn; Mary, educated in Peru, is a teacher three miles west of Peru; Addie is a student in Auburn, as is also her sister Dora; B. F. Jones, Jr., is a boy of eleven and attending the Happy Hollow school; Mar- shall Clark is aged nine, and the youngest, Victor, is seven years old. Mr. and Mrs. Jones may well be proud of this bright and intelligent family, and rejoice in the fact that the circle is still unbroken by the hand of death. Mr. Jones is a Master Mason, and a Democrat, and he and his wife are members of the Baptist church.
CHARLES MERRITT WELTON.
Charles Merritt Welton, who is the owner of a fine, productive farm just east of the town of Johnson, Nemaha county, is a resident of twenty-five years' standing in this part of the state, having come here in 1878 from Marshall county, Illinois, where he was born Decem- ber 26, 1855.
MR. AND MRS. CHARLES M. WELTON
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His grandfather, Noalı Welton, was a Connecticut farmer, born at Waterbury, and one of the streets of that city is named Welton in honor of the family, some of whose members were participants in the war of 1812 and the Mexican war. Noah Welton was twice married, and reared a large family of sons and daughters. He lived to the advanced age of ninety-one years.
Bela Adolphus Welton, the father of Mr. Welton, was born in Connecticut. December 27, 1823, and died in Nemaha. Nebraska, in 1882. at the age of fifty-nine. He married Miss Abigail Merritt, who was born in Cattaraugus county, New York, in 1832. Her father, Joseph Merritt, was a farmer, and in 1844 removed from Cattaraugus county to Bureau county, Illinois, where he had only money enough to pay for forty acres of land, but at the time of his death he owned fifteen hundred acres in that rich agricultural section of the state. Adolphus Welton was married to Miss Merritt in Bureau county, Jan- uary 4. 1855, and they had four children : Charles M .; Albert J., who died at the age of two years; Ellen, who died at the age of eight years; and Frank, who died when nine years old. The mother of these chil- dren died in 1878, and their father was then married to Felicia Ann Holmes, nce Frisby, of Connecticut, who is still living near Bracken, Nemaha county, bright and cheerful at the age of seventy-eight. She has been a resident of this county since 1856, and was married here.
Mr. Welton had a fair education in the common schools of Henry, Illinois, near which place his father owned a quarter section of land for which he paid eight hundred and fifty dollars. In the fall of 1869 his parents moved from Marshall county, Illinois. to Berrien county, Michigan, and bought a peach farm near St. Joseph, but three years later they sold and went to Bureau county, Illinois, and settled on a farm which grandfather Merritt gave them. Three years later they sold
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this place also and moved to Henry, Illinois, where Mr. Welton's motlier died.
In March, 1878, Mr. Welton came to Jolinson, Nebraska, and bought the quarter section of land a mile and a quarter north of the town which his father a few years previously had purchased from the government. On this land he built a one-story frame building, and lie has since moved this structure to his present home and now uses it as an implement building. Besides the original quarter section he owns one hundred and twenty acres at his present homestead, and on the latter he has placed nearly all the improvements except an old frame house and a few cottonwood and fruit trees. He does general farming, growing about eighty acres of corn and from sixty to eighty of wheat, and keeps his place in fine shape and makes it yearly more profitable and valuable. His nice residence was erected in 1900 and he moved into it on the 10th of December of that year. It is a full two-story dwelling, of eight rooms, with basement, arid is well built and furnished throughout.
Mr. Welton was married October 25, 1882, to Miss Amanda Jane Barnes, who was born at West Point, Lee county, Iowa, November 17, 1853, a daughter of Jolin and Elizabeth Harger Barnes, whose further personal history is detailed in the biography of Casner Barnes, to be found on another page of this work. Four children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Welton : A daughter that died in infancy; Albert Casner, who died when nearly two years old; Alice May, who was born April 6, 1891, and is a bright little girl in school; and John Barnes, who was born January 24, 1894, and is in the intermediate department of the public school and is especially bright at penmanship, writing as neatly and gracefully as a girl and with seemingly natural talent. Mr. Wel- ton is a stanch Republican, and has served as school treasurer for two
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years. He and his wife are Methodists and he is a trustee and treasurer of the church.
JONAS DRUERY.
The deserved reward of a well spent life is an honored retirement from business in which to enjoy the fruits of former toil. To-day, after a useful and beneficent career, Mr. Druery, is quietly living at his pleasant home in Brownville, surrounded by the comforts that earnest labor has brought to him. Since 1857 this city has been his home, and here he is well known as a skilled mechanic. He was born in Lin- colnshire, England, on the 22d of July, 1827, and is of the fourth generation to bear the name of Jonas. His paternal grandfather, Jonas Druery, was a freeholder in the county of Lincoln, and belonged to the yeomanry. Jonas Druery, the father of our subject, was also a native of Lincolnshire, England, and was there married to Ellen Harris, they becoming the parents of five children. The eldest, Robert, died young. Jane became the wife of Edward Slight. and died in Indiana when seventy-eight years of age, leaving a son and daughter. Jonas is the third child in order of birth, and the subject of this review. John came from England to this country two years after the arrival of his brother Jonas, in 1856, and located near Dayton, Ohio. In 1866 he located on his farm in Nemaha county, Nebraska, where his death occurred. Eveline is the widow of Abe Stoker and resides in Ohio. She is the mother of one son and seven daughters. The father of this family was called to the home beyond in his seventy-seventh year, and the mother's death occurred here in 1896, at the age of eighty-seven years, she being ten years her husband's senior. Her religious views
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connected her with the Methodist church, while her husband affiliated with the Baptist denomination.
Jonas Druery was obliged to discontinue his studies in the district school when eleven years of age, and thereafter worked on the home- stead farm until his thirteenth year, while for the following five years he was employed at the carpenter's trade, during all of which time he received only his board in compensation for his services. On the 10th of May, 1851, he was united in marriage to Miss Eliza Woolsey, who was born in Lincolnshire, England, on the 23d of November, 1825, the daughter of Thomas and Mary (Sawyer) Woolsey, also natives of that shire, and for many years the father was a merchant in Gainsborough. These parents reared seven children, the eldest being John, who was a saddler by occupation, and his death occurred in England, leaving three sons and a daughter. Thomas, who was a Methodist Episcopal minis- ter, died in Toronto, Canada, where he was an early missionary among the Indians. He was a scholarly man and an orator, and in his later life was superanuated by his church. At his death he left two daughters, one of whom became the wife of a Methodist minister. Elizabeth became the wife of Walter Hart and died in middle life, leaving one son, Walter Hart. Mary became the wife of Daniel Dowell and died in Gainsborough, England, when fifty years of age, leaving four child- ren. Mrs. Druery is the fifth child in order of birth. Sarah Ann, who also died in England, was the wife of Charles Hetchell, a watch-maker and jeweler, and at her death, which occurred at the age of thirty-five years, she left three daughters and a son, all of whom were musicians. The youngest child, William, is a watch-maker and a wealthy jeweler in Lincoln, England, and has one son. The father of these children, Thomas Woolsey, was called from this earth at the age of fifty-two years. His father, Thomas Woolsey, Sr., was for many years a sea
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captain, and his wife was a lady of talent and of superior education. Mrs. Woolsey, the mother of Mrs. Druery, passed away about 1849, in her fiftieth year.
On account of her father's failing health Mrs. Druery was taken from boarding school when only fifteen years of age, at which time the estate was sold, but later repurchased and again sold at a large price. In 1855 Mr. Druery, accompanied by his wife and their oldest son, William Henry, sailed from Liverpool to the United States, spend- ing six weeks on the ocean voyage and landing in New York soon after the Fourth of July. Two other sons have been born to them, namely : John Woolsey, of Evans, Colorado, and Jonas H., a farmer of Nemaha county, and the father of one little daughter. They have also lost sev- eral children.
Mr. Druery has long been numbered among the leading citizens of Brownville, where he owns four residences and five vacant lots, and also has one hundred and sixty acres at Glen Rock. In his fraternal relations he is a member of the masonic order, in which he has reached the blue lodge degree, and in his political affiliations is a Democrat. After a pilgrimage of nearly eighty years, in which they were obliged to surmount many obstacles which beset their path, Mr. and Mrs. Druery are now living in quiet retirement at their pleasant home in Brown- ville, where they have many friends and acquaintances.
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VALENTINE P. PEABODY.
Valentine P. Peabody, a leading farmer and fruit grower of Aspin- wall precinct, Nemaha postoffice, has been a resident of Nemaha county since 1869. He came here shortly after an arduous term of service in the Civil war, and began on the bare prairie with the intention of making himself a living and a home, in which he has succeeded in an unusual degree. The very beauty of the place where he now makes his home is one of the rewards of his years of honest toil and endeavor. He has been prosperous in these business ventures, and also as a man and citizen. He has served his fellow citizens in various capacities, and he has given his influence for good and progress in every public matter which he has undertaken.
Mr. Peabody was born in Allegany county, New York, March 15, 1842, and comes of an old eastern family. His grandfather, William Peabody, was a blacksmith and farmer in northern Connecticut and western New York, coming as a pioneer to the latter place in 1809. His wife was Polly Holmes, also of Connecticut, and they reared all of their eleven children, seven daughters and four sons, all of whom were married and all but one daughter had children. They all moved from western New York to Michigan during the late forties and early fifties, and most of them were farmers in Mahoning county near Albion and Coldwater. All of them are now deceased.
Thomas Peabody, the father of Valentine P. Peabody, was born in Stonington, Connecticut, September 7, 1797, and died in Woodford county, Illinois, in 1884. January 25, 1825, he married Fidelia Shat- tuck, who was born in Potter county, Pennsylvania, February 12, 1809, a daughter of William Shattuck, a lumberman and farmer in Pennsyl- vania, and who reared seven children. They were married at Couders-
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port, and then settled on Oswego creek, twelve miles from that village, where Mr. Peabody was a farmer and lumberman until 1844; he then sold and moved to Athens county, Ohio, where he bought and sold land after taking the timber off; in November, 1858, he moved to Wood- ford county, Illinois, where he lived retired among his children, who had preceded him there, until his death. He and his wife reared all their eleven children : Daniel died in Potter county, Pennsylvania, in 1869, aged forty-three, leaving four children living: Janette is the wife of R. S. Burnham, in Woodford county, Illinois, and has a large family ; William Nelson is a wealthy farmer and large landowner, and has a large family : Mary, who died at the age of sixty-four in Illinois, was the wife of John Wallace, who came from Scotland at the age of ten, and they had a large family : Amelia, wife of James Richards, who died in Kentucky, his native state, was an invalid for twenty years and bed- ridden for twelve, and she died in Woodford county, Illinois, February 21, 1892, leaving two children; Laura, widow of John H. Black, at Unadilla, Nebraska, has two children living; the seventh child was Val- entine P .: Thomas P., who enlisted in the Union army in 1862, died of pneumonia at Arkansas Post in 1863, January 10; Eliza, wife of Lewis Fisher, now retired in San Diego, California, has a large family ; Lephia, wife of C. W. Harford, a carpenter of Randall, Kansas, has a number of daughters living: Alice and her husband, William West, are both deceased, one daughter surviving them. The mother of these children died in Washburn, Illinois, January 21, 1861, at the age of fifty-one years.
Valentine P. Peabody had a very meager education, and at the age of fifteen went with his brother-in-law, R. S. Burnham, to Woodford county, Illinois, where he worked on the latter's farm for one year. He then hired out at wages from ten to sixteen dollars a month, which
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work he continued until the war came on. In April, 1861, he re- sponded to Lincoln's first call for troops, and was enrolled in Company G, Seventeenth Illinois Infantry. He was wounded in the shoulder at Shiloh, in June, 1862, and was discharged according to Halleck's order. After remaining at home for two months, he re-enlisted, August 12, 1862, for three years' service, in Company H, Seventy-seventh Illinois Infantry, becoming second sergeant. He was in Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, was slightly wounded several times, but never off duty, now having three crooked fingers on his right hand, as result of being struck by a shell. He returned to Springfield, Illinois, in July, 1865, and he spent the following two years in Chicago undergoing treatment for granulated eyelids, until his sight was restored. He then spent about two years in Tazewell county, Illinois, where he was married, and in the spring of 1869 came to Nemaha county, Nebraska. He had spent all his cash capital on his eyes, and the first few years were years of economy, if not privation, until he got a substantial start.' He has made fruit-growing his principal enterprise. He has a farm of one hundred and eight acres, and altogether has some six hundred fruit trees of all varieties. He also has about ten acres of timber.
In February, 1869, Mr. Peabody was married to Miss Mary E. Dressler, who was born in Tazewell county, Illinois, a daughter of Joseph and Eleanor (Wooley) Dressler, the former of Pennsylvania and the latter of New Jersey, and they had been farmers in Pennsyl- vania, Ohio and Illinois; the former died in the war, of pneumonia. in 1863, at the age of forty-three, and the latter's death occurred in Mr. Peabody's home in Nebraska. There were six children in the Dress- ler family : Sarah, the wife of George Stock, died in Tazewell county, leaving three children; Mrs. Peabody is the second; Henry, a farmer of Nemaha county, came here in 1870, and has eight children ; John is a
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Nemaha county farmer and has four children; Lorine, in Aspinwall precinct, is the widow of Pulaski Harford, and has eight children; Minerva is the wife of A. B. Davidson, of this county, and has four children.
Nine children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Peabody. Laura, deceased wife of C. E. Harris, a railroad engineer in Colorado, died at the age of twenty-seven, leaving two sons, Charles and Earl, who have since been with their grandparents; Elmina and her husband, C. H. Kindig, are both successful teachers at Wakefield, Nebraska, she having begun at the age of fifteen, and they have taken post-graduate courses and are enthusiastic in their profession ; Lester is a farmer north of Nemaha and also a railroad trainman, and has three children; Elsie, wife of W. F. Higgins, a stockman of Stella, Nebraska, has two chil- dren ; Clarence, unmarried, is a flagman on the fast trains between Table Rock and St. Joseph, on the Burlington and Missouri River road; Adah is the wife of Eli Knapp, a farmer near Stella; Mabel is the wife of Harry Russell, in Nemaha precinct, and has one child; Miss Alice, aged sixteen, is a student in Nemaha; and Grace, aged fourteen, is in the same school, and is also taking instrumental music, being very apt in this line.
Mr. Peabody is a stanch Republican; his father was a Democrat in early life. He served in the lower house of the state legislature in 1880-1, and has been an active political worker in the campaigns. He has also held minor offices, school director for fifteen years, road super- visor, etc. He was census enumerator in 1880. He was a charter member of Corbett Post, G. A. R., of Nemaha, which has since been abandoned. Mrs. Peabody is a member of the Christian church.
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MORGAN H. VANDEVENTER.
Morgan H. VanDeventer, stock-buyer and shipper at Stella, Nebraska, ranks as one of the solid and substantial business men and agriculturists of southeastern Nebraska, and is one of the real pioneers of this part of the country, having taken up his residence in this vicinity, May 1, 1859, or forty-five years ago, at a time when development and progress had hardly begun. He has figured prominently in the history of this section ever since, both as a landowner and stockman and also as a public-spirited citizen, and as such he has represented the sovereign people in the halls of legislation and in other responsible offices.
Mr. VanDeventer was born near Delphi, Indiana, September 9. 1836, and notwithstanding his near approach to the threescore and ten mark is as vigorous in mind and body as ever. The ancestors of the family were from Holland, and his grandfather, Isaac VanDeventer, was a native of New York and followed the occupation of. a farmer. He married Elizabeth Culbertson, also of New York, and she was left a widow in the prime of her life with little or no property, and she died in Indiana at the age of fifty. She was the mother of two sons and three daughters, and the son James was a farmer at Delphi, Indiana, where ne died in the prime of life, leaving two children.
The other son, Christopher VanDeventer, the father of Morgan HI. VanDeventer, was the eldest of the family, and was born in the Genesee valley of New York, September 29, 1803, and died in Jewell county, Kansas, aged eighty-eight years, seven months and four days. He married Elizabeth Baum, who was born in Ohio, June 3, 1811, being a member of a pioneer family. The following items concerning the Baum family history have been preserved :-
Jacob Baum, the father of Elizabeth Baum, was born in Mifflin county, Pennsylvania, October 7. 1780, and was married there in 1801,
MORGAN H. VANDEVENTER
MRS. SARAH J. VANDEVENTER
MRS. L. R. VANDEVENTER
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February 20th, to Asenath Rothrock, who became the mother of twelve children. October 8, 1805, he moved to Ross county, Ohio, and after the division of that county he was in Pickaway county, where he resided for twenty years. March 7, 1825, he removed with four other families to the wilds of Indiana. Embarking on the Ohio river in a flatboat, which they afterward sold and bought a keelboat, they ascended the Wabash to Deer creek, and thence up that a half a mile, and on April 30th went ashore and pitched their tents and proceeded to put in crops. In October Mr. Baum moved into a new house which he had erected on land he had the previous year bought at a land sale, and from that time until the spring of 1827 his house was crowded with hunters and travelers. Dr. Daniel VanDeventer came there with a small stock of goods and opened a store in a little log house built by Mr. Baum. The former was elected recorder, and the little store was occupied for the purposes of recorder's office, court room, etc.
Christopher and Elizabeth VanDeventer were married February 10, 1831, and had twelve children, all of whom grew up but one son. Isaac VanDeventer, born January 11, 1832, was a farmer in Indiana, Nebraska and Kansas, having come to Nebraska in 1861, and was a soldier in the Civil war; he died in Kansas at about sixty years of age, leaving three sons and one daughter. Mary Ann, born July 17, 1834, died April 2, 1857. Morgan H. is the third in order of birth. George, born September 25, 1838, died in Richardson county, Nebraska, Sep- tember 11, 1874, leaving a wife and three daughters; during the rebel- lion he recruited a company for the Union army. Jonas, born Septem- ber 24, 1840, enlisted in Pennock's regiment, and was killed near Inde- pendence, Missouri, March 22, 1863. Ira B. and Eliza Jane, twins, were born October 9, 1843, and the latter died April 4, 1884, while Ira is an extensive farmer in Jewell county, Kansas. Margaret, born August
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