USA > Nebraska > A Biographical and genealogical history of southeastern Nebraska, Vol. I > Part 8
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J. Louis Engel, the only son, was born in Germany, August 24, 1829. He was reared on the farm, and had a liberal schooling of eight years, with one year in a normal school. At the age of twenty he entered the German army, and spent six weeks in military service. He remained in his native land until 1859, and then took passage from Havre for New York, being forty-two days en route. Two weeks later he arrived in Sangamon county, Illinois, which he reached in the first week of June. He took three hundred dollars from the bank in New York, but had only twenty-five cents when he reached Springfield, having been swindled out of the rest in some unaccountable manner. He came from Spring- field, Illinois, to Nebraska in 1872, arriving in Brownville on the 6th of
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October. He bought forty acres of naked prairie for ten dollars an acre, and he and his noble wife have planted every tree which now adorns his farm boundaries. A year later they built their present residence. He afterwards added eighty acres more to his place, and he has been prosper- ons in his work during the subsequent years.
February 2, 1856, Mr. Engel was married in Germany to Catherine (Handle) Seachrist, a widow with the following children: Catherine the wife of William Mayer, who came to Nebraska at the same time with Mr. Engel and his wife, and they have three children; Christ Seachrist lives in Humboldt, Nebraska, and has five children; Annie Fredericka, is the wife of Louis Mayer, in Richardson county, Nebraska, with two sons and three daughters; and Fred Seachrist is owner of stock in a mine in South Dakota, and has four daughters and one son. Mrs. Engel has twenty-three great-grandchildren. Mrs. Engel was born in Marbach, Germany, December 2, 1822, and throughout her long life has been active and strong mentally and physically until the last year or so, when she has been in feeble health and for the past few months still more so. Mr. Engel is a Republican in politics, and served as constable for ten years during the first years of his residence here. He and his wife are Lutherans, and are valued and esteemed citizens of the county in which they have resided so long and been such important factors in the growth and development of this portion of southeastern Nebraska.
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WILLIAM H. STOWELL.
William H. Stowell, editor and proprietor of the Auburn Post, is a prominent factor in the business and social circles of Auburn, Nebraska. Mr. Stowell is a native of the Empire state and dates his birth in Leroy, May 3, 1855. His father, Luther K. Stowell, was born in Cazenovia, New York, October 18, 1823, son of Calvin B. Stowell. The Stowell family originally came to this country from England, the time of their settlement here being in colonial days. Early history shows them to have been mechanics and farmers, honest and industrious, occupying repre- sentative places among the people of the various localities in which they lived. Calvin B. Stowell was a blacksmith. He was born in 1794, and it is supposed he was a native of New Hampshire. He died in Darien, New York, in 1878. Thrice married, he reared a large family of children, namely : seven sons and one daughter by his first wife, one son by the second, and one daughter by the third. Luther K. was one of the sons by the first marriage, his mother being Olive Sabine, and he is now a resident of Leroy, New York; has been married twice and has outlived both of his companions. He first married, March 19, 1854, Miss Janette McGregor, who was born near Leroy, New York, in 1830, daughter of John McGregor, a Scotchman; and the only child of this marriage was William H., the subject of this sketch. Mrs. Janette Stowell died at the age of twenty-eight years. Subsequently Mr. Stowell married Miss Sarah Thomas, who bore him one son, Ernest C. Since her death the father has resided with his son.
William H. Stowell was reared to farm life, and improved the opportunities he had for obtaining an education in the public schools. At the age of twenty he began a career as school teacher, a career which covered a period of ten years, and it was while he was thus occupied that he entered upon journalistic work as a newspaper correspondent. July 1,
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1886, he began the publication of the Vedette, in Verdon, Nebraska, which he edited and published weekly for nine and a half years. Then, in October, 1895, he came to Auburn and purchased the Auburn Post, which he has since successfully conducted, owning both the building and the plant, and in connection with the publication of the paper also doing a job printing business, employing from three to six compositors. While in Verdon Mr. Stowell and four others organized a pioneer association, known as the Richardson County Pioneer Society, and in connection with that he published "The Pioneer Record," a quarterly pamphlet, some three years, and after he came to Auburn he continued it three months as a monthly publication, at the end of which time he sold out. From 1896 to 1899 he published the Nebraska State Poultry Journal, which was issued each month. The Auburn Post is a weekly paper, published on Friday ; is Republican in politics, up-to-date in every respect, and its columns show that it has plenty of the right kind of enterprise and push that are necessary to success in the newspaper line. As the Repub- lican organ, the Post exerts a potent influence that is felt for the good of the party.
Mr. Stowell married, January 30, 1883, Carrie D. Robertson, a native of Cambridge, New York, born December 25, 1860, daughter of John and Adeline (Parke) Robertson, now residents of Verdon, Nebraska. Previous to her marriage Mrs. Stowell was for several years a teacher in the public schools. They have two children, Frank L. and Helen M., both attending school.
Mr. and Mrs. Stowell are regular attendants upon worship at the Presbyterian church, of which they are worthy members. Fraternally, he belongs to the Woodmen of the World. 1
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WILLIAM H. McININCH.
William H. McIninch, a retired farmer in Auburn, with a fine farm in London precinct, Brownville postoffice, is one of the oldest living settlers of Nemaha county and likewise one of its most successful farmers and business men. He began life in youth with no capital, and since earning his first money his record has been one of constant progress. He has been one of the large landowners of the county, but most of it he lias either sold or allotted to his children. In addition to his material prosperity, he has been generous with personal work and means in aiding the cause of religion and education, and has never failed to give a good account of himself in whatever relation he has been placed with society and his fellow citizens.
Mr. McIninch was born in Tuscarora county, Ohio, March 20, 1836. His grandfather, James McIninch, was born in Ireland and had two children, John and Sarah.
John McIninch, the only son of James McIninch, was born in New York city, July 29, 1808, and died in Nebraska, January 16, 1894. He was reared and educated in New York city, and was a school teacher in Ohio and Missouri. He was married in Tuscarora county, Ohio, April 2, 1829, to Miss Sarah Johnson, who was born on Laurel Hill creek, Pennsylvania, September 22, 1813, and died in Andrew county, Mis- . souri, in 1851. They were parents of eight children : Esop Edgar, born in Tuscarora county, Ohio, in 1830, died in Linn county, Oregon, in 1862, having been a pioneer there in 1852; he was unmarried, and left an estate including the one hundred and sixty acres which had been given him by the United States government. Charles Postly McIninch, born in 1834, was named after his maternal great-uncle a prominent and wealthy New Yorker, who has one of the fine monuments that adorn Greenwood
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cemetery of that city ; C. P. McIninch died in Oklahoma in 1901, leaving a family of sons and daughters who are now scattered throughout the southwest. Benjamin F. McIninch is in Nemaha county. William H. is the fourth of the children. Levi Johnson, a teacher, died while at his work in Canton, Ohio, in the prime of life, leaving a wife and a daughter. Catherine Ann died at the age of twenty-three while with her aunt and uncle Caldwell in New York city. Amos Anderson is a retired merchant in St. Joseph, Missouri, and has three sons. David G. is a farmer east of St. Joseph, and has three daughters and one son.
William H. McIninch was reared on a farm, having limited edu- cational advantages in the primitive schoolhouses of the time and locality. At the age of seventeen, soon after his mother's death, he left home and went with Hux Bivens to drive stock across the plains to Oregon. He was four and a half months from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Albany, Linn county, Oregon, and from there he went to the northwest corner of California in the spring of 1854. He was engaged in placer gold mining there until the fall of 1857, and then returned home by. way of New York city, and in the same fall came to this part of Nebraska and pre-empted the one hundred and sixty acres which still forms part of his farm, paying for it with a Mexican land warrant. There were but few settlers here then, the nearest neighbor being a mile away. The landscape presented a picture of an undulating stretch of prairie, covered with wild flowers and grass, and was a dreary scene to one accustomed to the roll and woodland of more eastern states. He made his first dwelling of one room, built of poles, and with one door and one window, and its dimensions were fourteen by sixteen feet. He later helped a squatter prove up some land, and received a deed for forty acres on Snow Island, on which he built a log and mud cabin. In 1860, soon after his marriage, he bought seventy-five acres one mile southwest of his place, for one
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thousand dollars, and his later purchases were: Five acres of timber on the bluffs near Brownville, for one hundred and twenty-five dollars; forty acres of timber for two hundred and fifty-five dollars; eighty acres of prairie southeast of this farm for two thousand dollars; eighty acres west for eighteen hundred ; eighty acres of improved land for fifteen hun- dred ; eighty acres which he purchased near by in 1894 for thirty-six hundred ; forty acres one mile south at fourteen hundred ; and in 1901 he purchased a half a block in Auburn on which he has erected a beautiful home for his permanent residence. He paid two hundred and seventy-five dollars to the Cumberland Presbyterian institution, Missouri Valley Col- lege, at Marshall, Missouri, and has a lot there on which he has paid taxes for ten years. He has sold and traded a great deal of land, and his present farm consists of three hundred and sixty acres, and in the family there are over fifteen hundred acres, with eight sets of buildings.
Mr. McIninch, with the help and co-operation of his wife, has made all he has. He earned his first money by working on a farm in Missouri for Tom McDonald at ten dollars and a half a month. The second house which he built in Nebraska was of hewn logs, and it is now doing duty as a stable. This was replaced by the present brick, story and a half, house, which was built twenty-three years ago, and is beautifully sur- rounded with flowers and groves which make it a bower of beauty nearly all year. He has an apple orchard of ten acres, besides a large variety of other fruits, especially peaches. He has sold one ten-acre orchard, and has two others, and has planted twenty acres to fruit. His leading crop is corn, of which he plants from one hundred to two hundred and fifty acres, and from one hundred and six acres in 1902 he sold 5750 bushels. He has often raised as much as ten thousand bushels of corn. He and his wife are about to ensconce themselves in the new home in Auburn,
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and the maiden daughter and youngest son will remain on the farm and manage it.
Mr. McIninch volunteered on July 6, 1862, at Brownville, Nebraska, and was enrolled in Company G, Second Kansas Cavalry, with which he . saw service until the close of the war, for three years. He was under Generals Blunt and Steele in Arkansas. He was captured at Poison Springs, and was held a prisoner for nine months in Tyler and Camp Gross, Texas. After his capture he knew he would be reported among the dead, and he took the first opportunity to ingratiate himself with the Confederate officers, who permitted him to send a letter to his young wife, informing her of his real circumstances. This prison experience was the worst of all his life, and he suffered every physical torment except death, two hundred and ten of his companions in misery dying of disease, mostly of yellow fever. He was finally paroled and sent north, being mustered out at Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, and paid off and dis- charged at Lawrence, Kansas. The government paid him for his horse and equipment and the clothing he had lost, and he also received twenty- five dollars a month while in the service, having furnished his own horse. He also got four dollars a month pension, which was later raised to eight dollars, and is now twelve.
Mr. McIninch was married on January 27, 1859, to Miss Catherine L. Dunkle, who was born on the banks of the Ohio river, in West Vir- ginia, April 8, 1842, a daughter of Henry and Nancy (Smith) Dunkle. Henry Dunkle was a carpenter and boatbuilder, and died at the age of twenty-six, leaving his wife and this one daughter, having lost one da:ighter at the age of four. His widow afterward had eight children by James Emmons, and she died at Tecumseh, Nebraska, in the fall of 1902, when nearly eighty-three years of age. Mrs. McIninch came with the family in 1856 by water as far as Omaha, thence to Atchison
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county, Missouri, and her step-father took a claim in Nemaha county. The latter died in 1890, when about seventy-eight years old.
Mr. and Mrs. McIninch have had ten children : Ophelia is the wife of Casmer Barnes; James H. is a farmer near here, and has a wife and one son ; Willa Kate, born in 1864 while her father was in the army, was named after her father and mother; David P. is a farmer on the Auburn road, and has two sons and one daughter; Clara Belle is the wife of D. E. Zook, a farmer near here, and has six children living; M. S. is an attorney in Auburn, and is married; Charles D. died at the age of sixteen months; Barnett J., unmarried, is on the home farm and in part- nership with his father; one son died in infancy; and Julia Nellie is a student in the Auburn high school, class of 1904.
Mr. McIninch now votes the Prohibition ticket, having come over from the Democratic ranks . He is one of the surviving members of the Grand Army of the Republic. He has been a school director, but has had little time for active participation in public or political affairs. He and his wife are members of the Cumberland Presbyterian church, and the children have been baptized in the church. He is an elder, and has been a member of the assembly three times.
PETER CAREY.
Peter Carey is one of the oldest and best known residents of the town of Peru, where for thirty-five years he has been a familiar figure in the streets and personally known to every citizen both through official and business connections and social and personal association. He is the pioneer and oldest established drayman of the place, has carried nearly all the mail that the town has ever received or sent, and in his duties as
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chief police officer and representative of the majesty of the law has on more than one occasion made a reputation for coolness and courage while upholding law and order. In every relation of life, whether as soldier on the hardfought battlefields of the great Civil war, as a business man, as a public official, or as a public-spirited citizen, he has been efficient. enterprising, industrious, honest and brave, and deserves the regard and respect which are so gratefully accorded him by all who know him.
Mr. Carey was born in Pike county, Illinois, January 12, 1838, a son of Peter and Matilda (Constantine) Carey, who were of English descent and both natives of New York city, where the former was born February 28, 1811, and they were married in 1832. Peter Carey, Sr., was a baker in New York city, but after his marriage went to Illinois and engaged in farming during the remainder of his life. He died in 1898, and his wife in 1883. They were the parents of five children, of whom three are now living: Margaret, who has some ten children ; Peter; and Cyrena Claus, who is a widow in Pike county, Illinois, and has two children.
Mr. Carey was reared on his father's farm in Illinois, and enjoyed common school educational privileges. When the Civil war came on he volunteered, in July, 1861, in Company K. Second Illinois Cavalry, and gave four years and two months of loyal and devoted service to the country which he loves so well. He was commissary sergeant of his company. He was many times exposed to the missiles of death and had many narrow escapes, but liis reckless courage and dashing impetuosity- seemed invulnerable, although bullets often pierced his clothes and his comrades fell beside him. At Holly Springs, Mississippi, his regiment was captured, and he was the last man to be taken, and it was almost a miracle that he was not shot down for his brave resistance. He was in
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hospital at New Orleans for some two weeks, being afflicted with a peculiar southern fever, which caused him to sleep soundly from sunrise to sunset, and the only cure was a change of climate. When he was captured he weighed one hundred and sixty pounds and only one hun- dred and twenty-six on his release, but after leaving New Orleans he gained a pound a day until he weighed one hundred and seventy-six pounds. He received his honorable discharge at St. Augustine, Texas, September 25, 1865.
He then returned to Illinois and engaged in farming for two years. He came to Peru, Nebraska, in 1869. For at least thirty years he has carried the mail to and from the trains, seldom being off duty. He started the first regular dray wagon in the town, and is now probably the oldest drayman in the state. He has carried the express for the Normal College for thirty years. A few years ago he was thrown from his dray while the horse was running away, and for two weeks was unconscious and given up for dead, and was confined to his bed for two months, but his old veteran spirit brought him safely through and he is once more active and engaged on his regular tasks. He is a stanch Republican in politics, and has served his fellow citizens on the town board and also as city marshal. In the latter capacity he has had some narrow escapes from crazy men, but the coolness and courage which he had displayed before on the battlefield here stood him in good stead, and in each case he performed his duty unflinchingly.
Mr. Carey was married in September, 1888, to Mrs. Susan Debuque, who was born in England in 1841, and came across the Atlantic at the age of sixteen years, being a sister of John and Phillip Palmer, who are written of elsewhere in this work. She had been married twice before her union with Mr. Carey, and had five children by her first husbands. Mr. and Mrs. Carey have no children of their own, but have an adopted
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son who is the idol of their affections and the cheer of the home. His name is Ezra Peter Carey, and he was born April 18, 1890, a son of Albert Debuque and a grandson of Mrs. Carey. He was adopted at the age of eleven months, and he also has a sister and a brother. He is an industrious little fellow, and he and his foster father own and operate some ninety acres on the Missouri bottoms, for which they paid two hundred dollars in 1901 and which is now worth six hundred. This land was once the bed of the river, and on it they raise corn and also have about thirty acres in vegetables and truck. Mr. Carey also owns two lots and two buildings in town, and his wife has one building. Mrs. Carey was reared in the Methodist faith, and is a most estimable woman and popular among her many friends.
GEORGE BUCHANAN ARMSTRONG.
George Buchanan Armstrong, one of the foremost farmers and stock-raisers of Nemaha county, residing in Bedford precinct, Howe postoffice, has lived here nearly all his life, since childhood, and has made unqualified success of his ventures. He is a man of progressive ideas and public spirit, and both in matters of individual interest and those affecting the general welfare of his course of action and counsel are reliable, and accomplish results.
Mr. Armstrong's father, Josiah Armstrong, was born near Wheel- ing, Virginia, April 3, 1821, and died in Nemaha county, on the old home farm which he settled in in 1870. He was married on Thanksgiving day, 1838, in Pennsylvania, to Miss Catherine Morehead, who was born in Pennsylvania, September 10, 1816, and died in Nebraska, September 19, 1892. They came to Nebraska in 1864, and three years later settled
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on the prairie and began, without capital and in the pioneer fashion, to make themselves a home. They were successful people, and lived irre- proachable lives of industry. They were members of the Methodist church. Their children, all born in Ohio, are as follows: William, who died at the age of three years in Pennsylvania; Robert, a stock rancher in Rooks county, Kansas, has nine children living, eight daughters; one died in infancy ; Mary Ann, the widow of Henry Halterman, lives at Verdon, Richardson county, Nebraska, and has six children; Telitha, the wife of Albert Douglass, at Hiawatha. Kansas, has seven children living : Elizabeth, the wife of George F. Huntington, died in California at the age of fifty, leaving four children; Lauina, the wife of Perry Montgomery, of Stella, Nebraska, has six children : George B. is the eighth in order of birth; Josiah, who was unmarried, was killed by his seven-horse team at Oxnard, California, where he was hauling beets for the largest beet-sugar factory in the world.
George B. Armstrong was born in Jackson county, Ohio, June 25, 1856, and was brought to Nemaha county, Nebraska, on October 12. 1864. He was reared to farm life, and enjoyed a fair amount of school- ing, stopping at the ninth grade, then the highest, in his ninteenth year. He remained at home until his marriage, which occurred when he was twenty-six years old, and then began farming on his own account. He now owns three hundred and twenty acres in two farms, and he makes stock-raising and buying his leading enterprises. He has as high as two and three hundred head of cattle at a time. He bought his present farm in 1889, paying six thousand dollars for it, and he has built all the buildings except the house. He planted his own orchard, and he has two of the finest barns in the vicinity. The cattle barn is fifty-two by fifty- six feet, with twenty-foot posts, and will shelter seventy tons of fodder and fifty cattle. His hay and horse barn is thirty-eight by sixty-four feet,
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with twenty-foot posts, and will stall fifty-seven horses and hold eighty tons of hay. He raises about one hundred hogs each year, and about twenty horses.
March 18, 1883, Mr. Armstrong was married to Miss Lizzie Hughes, who was born near Brownville, April 7, 1861, a daughter of R. V. Hughes and Elizabeth (Cullen) Hughes, the former born near Dayton, Ohio, and the latter in Pennsylvania. They were married in Indiana, and came west in 1859. Mr. Hughes was a lawyer by profes- sion, and was honored with all the offices of the county during his resi- dence here. He had been a school teacher, and was a man of refinement and education, being a deep reader of all current and standard literature. He gathered the collection of fruit which took the premium among the exhibits from Nebraska at the World's fair in Boston. Mrs. Armstrong is one of ten children, and the others now living are : Jennie, the wife of Tom Ross, her second husband, has seven children; Mrs. Armstrong is next in age; Catherine is the wife of Charles Wheeler, of this county, and has eight children; Edward went to California at the age of nineteen and has a farm of one hundred acres there, and is the father of four children; John is unmarried, and living in Howe; Minnie is the wife of Tom Lighthill, in Oklahoma; Rose is the wife of Lee Nunn, in western Ne- braska, and has seven children. Mrs. Armstrong was educated in the Brownville high school, and taught for three years.
The following children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong : Edna, who was educated in the normal and taught for a time, is the wife of Mike Beauchamp, who farms the old homestead; Rosa has finished school and has a teacher's certificate; Boyd, born January 10, 1889, is at home and in school; Hope Mabel was born September 4, 1892; and Bob was born on Christmas day of 1898. Mr. Armstrong has been affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows for the past twenty years,
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