USA > Nebraska > A Biographical and genealogical history of southeastern Nebraska, Vol. I > Part 3
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WV. H. RICHARDS.
WV. H. Richards, attorney at law of Liberty, Nebraska, is one of the successful representatives of his profession in this portion of the state. He was admitted to the bar in 1894. He handles all kinds of legal mat- ters, and has conducted cases in many parts of the state, as well as in the courts of Kansas and Iowa. He is associated with his brother, L. S. Richards, in the real estate business, and they are largely interested in realty in Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska and Kansas. J. T. Rich- ards, another brother, is one of the successful dealers in pumps and wind- mills at Liberty. Mrs. Clara Dobbs, of Beatrice, is a sister of Mr. Richards.
WV. H. Richards was born in Atchison county, Missouri, near Rock-
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port, August 27, 1853, and comes of an old and honorable family. He has been a resident of Nebraska since 1859, so that he is one of the oldest living residents of a commonwealth which was not admitted to the Union till nine years later. The Richards brothers are owners of the Central Hotel at Liberty, and for a time operated it. All are active and progres- sive business men, and always identify themselves with movements cal- culated to be for the best interest of Liberty. They are stanch Republi- cans in politics. Charles R. Richards, an elder brother, enlisted in the war of the rebellion, where he gave up his life in defense of his country.
In 1900 Mr. W. H. Richards was married to Miss Minnie F. Thorp, of Beatrice. She is a daughter of Charles F. Thorp, a veteran of the Civil war, now deceased. Mrs. Richards is a graduate of the North- western Business College of Beatrice, and received her diploma from that institution just previous to her marriage. To Mr. and Mrs. Richards has been born one child, Wilma Ruth.
WILLIAM GAEDE.
William Gaede, cashier of the Nemaha County Bank at Auburn. Nebraska, is one of the prosperous and able business men of the county' and is a member of a well known family in southeastern Nebraska. All the family were natives of Germany, and the name has been known in certain parts of Germany for many generations. William Gaede, the grandfather of the Auburn banker, was a well-to-do man, and wrote his name Gade, with a character over the letter a, as did also the parents of William.
Dietrich and Elizabeth (Pagels) Gaede, the parents of William Gaede, were born near Berlin, Germany, where also all their children were
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born, and in 1870 they crossed the Atlantic on the good ship Harmonia, . which was making her third trip, in the then short period of ten days. They brought with them their five children, as follows Lena, the wife of H. M. Mears (and their history is further detailed in this sketch) ; Louise, widow of William Hewekerl; Fredericka, wife of H. H. Bartling, who is now serving his fourth term as mayor of Nebraska City; August, who went to the Black Hills in 1876, where he died a few years later ; and William. The parents both inherited property and were well-to-do when they came to America. They located in Peru in Nemaha county, Nebraska, and invested in farm and city property in this state and Kan- sas. Dietrich Gaede was a modest, retiring man, and, being unacquainted with business conditions in this country, he was unsuccessful in some of his ventures. He and his wife were worthy and refined people and gave their children the higher advantages in the fatherland, as well as in America. August was in the Episcopal Boys' College in Nebraska City, and William was in the State Normal at Peru. The family all have musical talent, both instrumental and vocal, and are charming and de- lightful people, in every relation of life. The parents were Lutherans, and their children are all reared in that faith. Dietrich Gaede was a Republican, as is also his son William. The former died in Nebraska City at the home of his daughter, April 17, 1899, at the age of seventy- six years, and his wife followed him six months later, on October 18, and they both sleep in the beautiful Mount Vernon cemetery, in Peru, Nebraska. An imported Olitic granite monument marks their grave. and, as a family monument, the names of Gaede and Mears are both carved upon it.
Mr. William Gaede was born in Germany, November 28, 1861, and in common with the other children, enjoyed good educational advantages and parental instruction, especially from the mother, who was exception-
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ally devoted to "Willie," as she loved to call him. As is common in Germany, he had three names, Herman Frederick William. He has been in the banking business since 1892. Previous to this he was manager of the business of his brother-in-law, H. M. Mears, in Peru. The latter was the leading business man of the place for twenty-five years, a man who had made his own way to prosperity and a high position in the business affairs of his county. He had a department store of general merchandise, besides handling lumber, coal and brick. Mr. Gaede was in the responsible position of manager of this concern, and while attending school kept the books of the establishment and the pri- vate banking concern connected with it. He left Peru on August 1, 1892, and became one of the stockholders and the first cashier of the bank at Johnson, Nemaha county, where he remained for seven years. He re- . turned to Peru on the death of Mr. Mears, and took charge of the latter's estate. Affairs were complicated and required all his business ability to settle satisfactorily, but he gave a most careful administration, and after the entire matter was straightened out, in 1901 he organized the Nemaha County Bank, together with A. M. Engles, William Tynon, and others. with a capital stock of forty thousand dollars. Mr. Engles is president, Fred Lampe, vice president, and Mr. Gaede is cashier. The bank was opened for business in January, 1902, in the fine brick building with stone front, one of the substantial business buildings in Auburn, and since that time the institution has increased its patronage rapidly, and is one of the solid banks of the county.
Mr. Gaede and his sister, Mrs. Lena M. Mears, live together in their pleasant home in Auburn. Mrs. Mears was married to Mr. H. M. Mears on November 5, 1872. The latter was born in Germany, near the ' borders of Holland, and his parents spoke both the Dutch and German languages. He was brought to this country when a baby, and his father,
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an early settler in western Missouri, at a time when the principal market was St. Louis, died in that city, from the plague, leaving his widow and three sons and one daughter with a good estate. Mrs. Mears has a foster daughter, named Louise Wilhelmina Mears; she is a daughter of Mrs. Mears' sister, Mrs. Louise Hewekerl, and has been the joy and comfort of the Mears home since she was three years old. Louise, or "Lulu" as she is familiarly known to her loved ones and friends, is a most worthy young lady, possessing a pleasing personality and a lovely character, having received careful training in early life, followed by a college education, supplemented by delightful travels in America and Europe. At present she has the chair of geography in the State Normal school at Moorhead. Minnesota, and likes the "Northland" very much. Miss Mears is the pride of her "Uncle Will" and "Mamma Mears."
GEORGE T. DUSTIN.
George T. Dustin, the liveryman of Auburn, Nebraska, is one of the successful and respected business men of the town. He was born in Dubois county, Indiana, September 11, 1844, son of Timothy and Louisa T. (Combs) Dustin, the former a native of Haverhill, Massachusetts, and a direct descendant of Hannah Dustin, and the latter born in Ten- nessee in 1816. Timothy Dustin was by trade a ship carpenter. In August, before the birth of the subject of this sketch in September, Tim- othy was making a trip on the Ohio river, was taken with cramp colic, and died on the boat. Thus George T. is of posthumous birth. There were four children in the family-James C., John M., Amanda and Laura F. All grew up and married and reared families. Amanda, wife of Daniel Macken, died at Denver, Colorado, July 19, 1898, at the age of
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fifty-seven years. James C. died at Cripple Creek, Colorado, a year later, leaving eight children, their mother's death having preceded his. John M. died in October, 1901, in Lancaster county, Nebraska, leaving three children. Laura F. is the wife of Thomas J. Metcalf, of Auburn, Nebraska, and is the mother of nine children, five of whom are graduates of the State Normal School and three of the State University; two of the sons, Clyde and Charles Dustin Metcalf, are ministers in the Methi- odist Episcopal church, in western Nebraska.
At the death of her husband Mrs. Dustin and her little family were left in limited circumstances, she having only eight hundred dollars. She remained in Indiana two years and then, in 1846, she moved to Bureau county, Illinois, where she bought eighty acres of land and where she reared her family, the children doing their part to assist in the sup- port, and when possible attending the district school near their home. When he was only ten years old George T. "worked out" and brought home to his mother his earnings. Here they lived until 1860, when the Dustin family, in company with others, emigrated to Nebraska, making the journey by wagon in true emigrant style and being three weeks en route, arriving at Peru, Nebraska, on September Ist. They brought with them two horses and three cows, and George T., then a youth of sixteen, walked most of the way. Peru then could boast of about ten houses. The Dustin family took up their abode in the village, and rented land for farming purposes. May 9, 1862, the mother died, and the family then scattered.
At that time a profitable business in the west was teaming, and in the spring of 1863 George T. Dustin was employed by Ingraham & Christie, at the rate of twenty dollars per month, to drive six yoke of oxen to Colorado Springs, and was gone from Peru eight months. The next year he drove four yoke of oxen from St. Joseph, Missouri, to
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Montana, where he remained four years, employed there in driving mule teams, hauling freight. On his return trip to Nebraska, in 1868, he was accompanied by his brother John, as he also was on some other occasions, and they had many interesting experiences. From 1869 to 1875 Mr. Dustin was occupied in breaking prairie in Nemaha county, at $3.50 to $4.00 per acre. From his youth up he was a hustler and a money- maker, but for some years he did not learn the worth of money and the importance of saving it. In 1874 he turned his attention to the livery business in Peru. He rented a barn, owned one horse and buggy and went in debt for two more horses, and continued in business there until 1881. In this venture he saved two thousand five hundred dollars, with which he then bought a farm of one hundred and sixty acres on the Peru bottoms. He cultivated this land one year. The season was a wet one, however, and the crop was not a success and he was glad to sell out at a loss. Next we find him in Brown county, Nebraska, where he in- vested in another farm. He spent four years in Brown county and during - that time owned five farms, all of which he sold at a profit. On Thanks- giving day, 1889, he disposed of his last farm in that county and in Janu- ary of the following year came to Auburn and bought the Minnick trans- fer line, the outfit consisting of six horses, two omnibuses, a buggy and wagon, and a barn forty by forty feet in dimensions, the purchase price being $3,100. As showing the success with which he has met in this business, we state that Mr. Dustin's establishment now consists of frame and brick buildings, the former forty by eighty feet, and the latter thirty- six by one hundred and forty feet, and his barns are stocked with good horses, usually to the number of twenty-five. Each year hie buys and sells many horses. Mr. Dustin also owns his home and has a quarter of a block where he exercises his horses.
Mr. Dustin married, January 8, 1880, Miss Hulda Capwell, a native
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of Scranton, Pennsylvania, born in 1861, daughter of James Capwell of that place. By this marriage are four sons and three daughters, viz. : Winnifred, Soame, Plann, Ralph, Laura, Nellie S. and John. Miss Winnifred is a teacher in the public schools of Auburn.
Politically Mr. Dustin is a Republican. He served nine years as constable, and was the Republican nominee for the office of county commissioner, but withdrew his name in favor of C. E. Ord, the present county commissioner. Fraternally Mr. Dustin is an F. and A. M., and his religious creed is that of the Lutheran church, while Mrs. Dustin is a Baptist.
WILLIAM WHITE.
William White is a citizen of Beatrice, Nebraska, of twenty-three years' standing, and with a life record of efficiency, integrity and honora- ble worth in every capacity in which he has been called upon to act. He is esteemed not only for the part he has taken in business affairs since coming to this state, but also as one from a border state who responded to the appeal of his government during the Civil war and followed the flag in many campaigns and took part in much hard service.
Mr. White was born in Greene county, Tennessee, May 8, 1845, and was a member of an old and aristocratic southern family. His father, Abraham White, was born and reared in Tennessee, and there married Miss Nancy Jennings, also of a good southern family. They had eight children, four sons and four daughters, and three sons were soldiers in the Civil war, namely: Joseph, now deceased, who was in a Missouri regiment ; William; and John. The parents both died in Tennessee, the mother in middle life and the father at the age of seventy-four.
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Mr. White was reared on a Tennessee farm, and early learned the virutes of industry and thrift. He was still a boy in years when the war came on, but was possessed of the fiery ardor of his race, and 011 November 7, 1862, enlisted in Company G, Fourth East Tennessee Vol- unteer Infantry, under Colonel Patterson and Captain West. The regi- ment saw much active service and some hard fighting, and during all his service Mr. White proved himself a brave and dutiful soldier, seldom missing a rollcall, never negligent of duty, and never flinching from the danger of shot and shell or the exposure and weariness of marching and the eamp. After the war he acted as manager of the farm until 1874, and in June of that year moved to Illinois, and later came to Nebraska. He lived about three years in Pawnee City, and since that time has been in Beatrice. For a number of years he conducted a hotel, and was one of the most popular men in that line of business in southeastern Nebraska. During the war he contracted several diseases, and has been a severe sufferer from chronic rheumatism ever since, so that his efficiency in many ways has been much impaired.
Mr. White was married in Tennessee in 1866 to Miss Mary J. White (not related), who has been his faithful helpmate for nearly forty years. They have been the parents of three children : Lydia, Josie, and Mrs. Ella Hill, of Barber county, Kansas.
THOMAS B. SKEEN.
Thomas B. Skeen, who was christened Thomas Hart Benton Skeen after the great Senator Benton, for whom grandfather Blevins was a warm admirer, is one of the oldest living residents of Nemaha county. Nebraska. He was a boy of seventeen on his father's farm near Nemaha
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city when the surveyors were running the base line in August and Sep- tember of 1855. He was born in Buchanan county, Missouri, on a part of the Platte purchase, on January 19, 1838.
The family originated in England, among the English nobility, and had its seat in Scotland for many generations. Great-grandfather Skeen was the ancestor who came from Scotland and founded this particular branch of the family in America. Jesse Skeen, the grandfather of Thomas B. Skeen, was born in South Carolina, November 24, 1764, but emigrated to Tennessee, where he was a farmer and distiller. He and his wife, Kezia Taylor, who was also Scotch, born in 1777, reared four sons and four daughters, and two of the latter joined the Mormons and went to Salt Lake City. These grandparents died in old age in Tennessee.
Alexander D. Skeen, the father of Thomas B. Skeen, was born in Sumner county, Tennessee, near Gallatin, December 18, 1815, and died in Nemaha city, Nebraska, in the early spring of 1892. His wife was Mary Blevins, who was born in Green county, Kentucky, in 1817, and was a daughter of Daniel and Mrs. (Roberts) Blevins, who were Ken- tucky farmers, and the former was in the Black Hawk war. Alexander D. Skeen and his wife were married at the respective ages of nineteen and sixteen, and they began farm life near Independence, Missouri. He had left home in his teens, and became a Mississippi river trader, going to St. Louis at an early day, and it was there that he met his wife. After the Platte purchase was opened he went viewing, and an old French trader, Roubidoux, urged him to take a claim on the Missouri near the mouth of the Blacksnake, which was the ultimate location of the city of St. Joseph, but he was not pleased with that locality, and took a claim in the dense timber, seven miles southeast of the present St. Joseph. He built the log cabin in which his son Thomas B. was born in the following winter, and as he was poor he had to work for wages to keep the wolf
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from the door, often cutting and splitting rails for twenty-five cent per hundred. He enjoyed the pioneer experience of going sixty miles to mill, with his blind horse loaded with corn. He found this life too arduous, and shortly afterward pre-empted one hundred and sixty acres in Atch- ison county, Missouri, where he began life anew, but still in humble cir- cumstances. He moved to Nebraska in 1854, and he died on the old homestead which he had settled forty years before, and his wife followed him in 1899. He and his wife were members of the Christian church, in which he was an elder, and he had served in the militia which routed the Mormons from Jackson county, Missouri. He was a quiet, unobtrusive man, living at peace with his neighbors, and attended strictly to his own business.
There were eleven children born to these parents, but a son died in infancy. Mrs. Margaret Snow, a widow of Auburn, was born in Buchanan county, Missouri ; Jesse died at the age of twelve; the third in order of birth is Thomas B .; Elizabeth is the wife of David Tourtelott, of Lincoln, Nebraska, and they have six children; Lucy Jane, deceased wife of James Hiatt, left four children; Richard is a retired farmer at Red Cloud, Nebraska, and has two daughters; Kenyon died in Arkan- sas in 1896, leaving his wife, a son and two daughters; Mary, wife of Henry Shubert, her second husband, lives in this county and has four children; John W. is at Broken Bow, Custer county, Nebraska, and has one son and one daughter; Nancy Ann is the wife of James Linn, of Lincoln, Nebraska, and has one son and one daughter.
Thosmas B. Skeen was reared and inured to farm life from an early age. Owing to his father's financial circumstances and the primitive surroundings in which they lived, his education was meager, and the old schoolhouse in which it was obtained was of the fashion now passed from history, being roughly made, with puncheon floor, slab seats and
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fireplace, and other equipments and appliances known to the schoolboy of sixty years ago. In 1854 he and his father came to Nemaha county, Nebraska, where they laid out a claim and built a double log house and cattle shed. They were among the first comers, and "batched" it the first winter, as the family did not come until the following April. The In- dians had not yet removed from their old camping grounds, but they lived at peace with the whites, their only depredations being the stealing of corn once in awhile, nor where they polite in their visits nor ever back- ward in begging for food. The first winter that Mr. Skeen spent there was a hard one, the deep snow making existence for the cattle especially precarious, and some of their sheep perished, the red men eating the dead animals in the spring.
Mr. Skeen remained at home until he reached his majority, and in the spring of 1859 was among the stampeders to Pike's Peak. Den- ver then had about twelve houses, and from there his party of eight went to the Clear Creek and Boulder region. They were turned back by the deep snows on the east side of the mountains, and established claims at Twelve Mile Diggings, and they have since been thankful for the outcome of the expedition, for had they reached the other side of the mountains their bones would have later been found there by some subse- quent wanderers. After spending one summer in this new experience, Mr. Skeen returned to what seemed God's country, in Nebraska. But he was not satisfied with his western experience, and he soon afterward en- gaged in freighting, taking about ten wagons, drawn by four or six oxen or two or four horses, and loaded with flour, bacon and other pro- visions, to Denver and other parts of the state, where he sold the flour for sixteen dollars per hundred, his corn for nine cents a pound and other prices in proportion. He began this enterprise on borrowed money, and at the end of four years quit with two thousand dollars to the
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good. He had bought eighty acres of land, trading one hundred and twenty acres of wild prairie toward it and borrowing three hundred dol- lars at five per cent interest per month. He and his family moved on this property in 1861, and in the spring of 1865 he sold out for twelve hun- dred dollars and went to Jackson county, Missouri. He soon returned, however, and invested in a flouring mill two miles east of Auburn. He conducted this with success for nine years, and in 1873 sold his half inter- est in it for ten thousand dollars. During the following summer he was in the Northwest Pacific coast country for the purpose of locating land, but in the end came back to Nebraska, and settled on one hundred and seventy-three acres of improved land, where he was engaged in the stock business. In 1879 he bought two hundred acres near Nemaha city, and from then until 1898 engaged in the cattle-feeding business, shipping about five carloads each year. He moved into Auburn in 1888, farming by proxy for one year and then came back to the two hundred and eighty acres three miles southwest of Nemaha City, but a year later he sold this for fifty dollars an acre, which was then the top-notch price for land. He then bought two farms nearer Auburn, and in 1892 built his good home on a quarter of block of city property. He owns these two farms, for which he paid forty-five dollars an acre, besides one hundred and sixty acres one mile north of Howe, for which he paid fifty-four dollars an acre. He has since refused seventy-five dollars an acre for some of his land, and he is now one of the prosperous landowners of the county, all of which he has made by his own well directed efforts, beginning with nothing at the start in life. Diligence, perseverance and honorable meth - ods of business dealing have brought these rewards to one of the best known pioneers and citizens of Nemaha county.
On October 10, 1860, Mr. Skeen was married to Miss Eunice Harger, who was born at Muscatine, Iowa, a daughter of Jarias and Elizabeth
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(Wickersham) Harger, who came to Iowa from Indiana at an early day, and the latter was connected with the family which settled Yellville, Arkansas, in the early history of that state. Mr. and Mrs. Skeen are the parents of the following children Mary Elizabeth, born January 14, 1862, died when two years old; Eunice Eulalie, born April 7, 1864, is the wife of James Armstrong and has one son; Ada Frances, born Marclı 19, 1867, is the present wife of Riley Turney, residing on one of her father's farms, and she has one son by her first husband, James Whit- comb Fairbanks; George B., born September 13, 1869, is in Grant county, Oklahoma, on one hundred and sixty acres which his father bought him, and he has one son and three daughters; Lydia May, born May 25, 1872, is the wife of William Harris, of South Auburn, and has one daughter, and she was a teacher before her marriage; Ford, born July 31, 1877, is on one of his father's farms, and has one daughter; Adelbert died in 1892 at the age of eleven ; Cora Ethel died in 1874, one year old. Mr. Skeen is a Master Mason, and he and his wife are members of the Methodist Episcopal church, in which he has been an official for many years. In politics he is a Republican.
CAPTAIN C. F. NYE.
Captain C. F. Nye is one of the well known citizens of Clay township, Pawnee county, and he is also one of the pioneers of this part of Nebraska, having come here in 1867. He was born in Highgate, Frank- lin county, Vermont, December 17, 1838. He is a son of Nelson Nye, born at Keene, New Hampshire, December 17, 1810, and who lives at St. Albans, Vermont, at the age of ninety-three years. Nelson Nye is a son of Benjamin Nye and a Miss Wright, whose father was a soldier
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