History of western Nebraska and its people, Vol. III, Part 70

Author: Shumway, Grant Lee, 1865-
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: Lincoln, Neb., The Western publishing & engraving co.
Number of Pages: 1056

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struction crews. After finishing the grade schools Dr. Hand graduated from the high school at Hay Springs in 1897, then attended the Chadron Academy for a year. He had al- ready decided upon a professional career but wished experience and also wanted to earn some money. When he was offered a school to teach he accepted and was a successful peda- gogue until 1890, then entered the medical de- partment of the Iowa State College. Three years later, in 1903, he won, by competitive ex- amination, the undergraduate internship in the Iowa Homeopathic Hospital at the University of Iowa and a year later graduated with high honors and the degree of M. D. In October the doctor came to Alliance, opened an office and became established in medical practice, since which time he has continuously served the city and surrounding country. As a phy-

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sician and surgeon he soon won a high repu- tation for skill and successful operations and after enjoying a most gratifying general prac- tice for several years he specialized in diseases of the head, throat and ears and now has a growing clientele along these lines. At the present time Dr. Hand maintains his office in the Imperial Theatre Building. He is a member of the Box Butte County Medical so- ciety, the Nebraska State Medical association and the American Medical Association and is United States Pension Examiner for his dis- trict. He is also physician on the county board of insanity. During the World War the doc- tor was a member of the Medical Advisory Board and at the present time is serving as city physician of Alliance. Dr. Hand is a widely read man not only along lines of his profession but keeps abreast of all movements of the day ; he is progressive in his business and thoroughly believes in supporting every movement that tends to the development of the county and improvements of civic and com- munal affairs. In other words he is a "boost- er" for this section of the Panhandle. The doctor is a Mason and a member of the Coun- try Club. .

HARRY A. DUBUQUE, the owner and manager of the Imperial theatre, the leading moving picture house of Alliance, is a man who during his business career has followed various occupations in several parts of the middle west as well as the Dominion of Can- ada. Since starting out in life independently he has been mill hand, foreman of a spinning mill, foreman of a milling machinery contruc- tion party, barber, ranchman, member of the Canadian Northwest Mounted Police and now is in the moving picture business and in all his several fields of endeavor his versatility has assisted him to well deserved prosperity. He is a native of the Dominion of Canada, born September 21, 1880, at St. John, the son of Joseph and Elsie (Rainville) Dubuque, the father being a native of the same country. Harry was next to the youngest boy in a

family of five children and when he was only two years old his father died, leaving the burden of supporting her little family to the mother. She had little means to earn money, removed to Pawtucket, Rhode Island. There Mrs. Dubuque and the oldest girl found em- ployment in a cotton mill and managed in some way to keep the children with her. Child labor laws had not been passed at that time and young children were not prohibited from work- ing as they are today, so when Harry was

only six years old he too, went to work in the J. P. Coats thread mill, earning two and a half dollars a week. He worked nine months of the year and attended school three, so his edu- cation was not entirely neglected. He contin- ued to work in the cotton mills and when only fifteen was promoted to the positions of fore- man over nearly two hundred operatives, the youngest man to hold such a responsible po- sition. He had not, however, gained it easily for he had worked hard, given study to the machinery used and won the promotion on pure merit. Three years later Mr. Dubuque was made a most attractive offer by the Whitesville Machine Company to go out on the road setting up cotton milling machinery as he had an exceptionally good understanding of the machines and the manner of their opera- tion. Just three weeks after entering on the new work, the boy, for he was nothing more in years, was given charge of the men as fore- man. While still working in the mill the young man began helping in a barber shop nights to earn a little more toward the upkeep of the home. He learned the barber trade in this manner and as the shop was mortgaged he bought it, cleared up the mortgage in less than a year and sold it at a profit of over sev- en hundred dollars. Soon after this he came west, locating at Leads, South Dakota, and opened a barber shop, but five months later disposed of it to go on a ranch but three weeks later left for Canada, where he joined the Northwest Mounted Police at Regina. He remained with this organization four months, but as the law provided that the personnel of the Royal Police must be British citi- zens and as Mr. Dubuque was not will- ing to give up his United States citi- zenship he bought his release for four hundred dollars and returned to Belle Fourche, South Dakota. Near that town he took a position as foreman of the Half Circle M ranch and remained four years and a half.

On October 10, 1909, Mr. Dubuque was married at Belle Fourche to Miss Myrtle Pen- gree, who was born at Mitchell, South Dakota, where she was reared and later graduated from the Methodist high school. She was the daugh- ter of Ira and Mary (Humphrey) Pengree, both natives of the buckeye state, the youngest in a family of seven children born to her par- ents. After spending more years on the ranch Mr. and Mrs. Dubuque came to Alliance in May, 1911. Mr. Dubuque looked the business situation over, believed he saw a fine opening in the moving picture theatre proposition so bought the Majestic which he at once remodel-

WILLIAM MAUPIN AND FAMILY

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ed and changed the name to "Empress." He was the pioneer movie man to give a change of program every day regardless of the initial expense and that he was far-sighted needs not be told when we learn of the phenominal success with which the business has met. The first theatre was soon playing to over crowded houses and then Mr. Dubuque remodeled the old Charter Hotel, practically rebuilt it, and in 1919 opened the new fifty by one hundred and forty foot building as an up-to-date, fire proof structure with a seating capacity of nearly a thousand. He installed a ventilating system that delivers thirty-two thousand cubic feet of fresh air a minute so that it is abso- lutely sanitary. A fine seventeen thousand Robert Morton organ that plays twenty-three instruments is an added equipment for the pleasure of the patrons and they have respond- ed generously in support of this most pleas- urable project, as this theatre is the most mod- ern in northwestern Nebraska. Mr. Dubuque is a progressive man in ideas and his business is a great addition to the business circles of the city. He is an Elk, a Modern Woodman and Knight of Columbus. H. A. Dubuque is now interested in the Osage and Kansas oil field and sheep business at Belle Fourche, South Dakota, was also the first picture show man in the state of South Dakota.

WILL M. MAUPIN, editor and proprietor of the Midwest, which he founded at Gering, Nebraska, in October, 1918, and which has proved a profitable enterprise, is not only a practical printer, but is a widely experienced newspaper man and somewhat prominent in labor circles. He was born in Callaway county, Missouri, August 31, 1863, the eldest of a fam- ily of eight children born to William Taylor and Sarah (Miller ) Maupin.

Both grandfathers of Editor Maupin were born in Kentucky and from there moved to Missouri, the paternal grandfather, George Maupin, a farmer and slaveholder, settling in that state in 1804. William Taylor Maupin, father of Will M. Maupin, was born in Callaway county, Missouri, and for sixty years was a minister in the Christian church. His death occurred in Hennesey, Oklahoma, in 1911. He was married in Audrain county, Missouri, to Sarah Miller, a native of Missouri, who died at North Bend, Nebraska, in 1894. Of their three surviving children, Will M. is the eldest, the others being Kittie, who is the wife of George L. Burkhaltere, an employe of the United States government, at Galveston, Texas, and T. W., who is in business with his older brother.

Will M. Maupin attended the public schools of Holt county until sixteen years old, when he entered a printing office at Oregon, Mis- souri, and, as old veterans of the case who understand the lure of the types would declare, "settled his fate." He has never since been able to escape from the atmosphere of the printing office, in which he lias filled every posi- tion from the lowest to the highest. He learned his trade with old-time thoroughness and be- fore he left Missouri owned his own newspaper at Craig. In 1886 he came to Nebraska, for a number of years afterward being connected with some of the leading journals of the state, working first at Fall City. He then went to Omaha and for nine years was with the World- Herald, and for the next ten years worked on the Commoner at Lincoln. From the capital he went to York, and after three years of newspaper work there, came to Gering and in the same year founded the Midzeest. It is a well conducted journal that has made its way into many homes and has become almost a necessity to the business men, who give it hearty support. Mr. Maupin has a circulation of 900 paying subscribers and the list is con- stantly increasing.

In October, 1895, Mr. Maupin was united in marriage to Miss Lottie Armstead, at North Bend, Nebraska, who was horn in Ohio. Their children are as follows: Louis, who is in the banking business at Baggs, in Carbon county, Wyoming ; Lorena, who is the wife of L. B. Lewellen, of Lincoln ; Dorothy K., who resides at home; and Richard Metcalfe, Margaret B., Charlotte May, Jack Robbins, all of whom at- tend school; and Dan Whitmer, who is an in- fant. Mr. and Mrs. Maupin are members of the Christian church. He is identified with the Knights of Pythias, as was his father, who was also an Odd Fellow and a Mason, and with the Elks. In politics he has always been in accord with the Democratic party. In 1909 he was appointed state labor commissioner and served in that office for two years, and during seven- teen months of the World War he served as director of publicity, when he resigned.

CHARLES E. HERSHMAN, M. D., de- ceased, was one of the younger members of the Box Butte medical fraternity. Dr. Hersh- man was a physician of wide experience as he had charge of the various branches of the medical service of the Burlington Railroad for a number of years and after coming to Alli- ance in 1911, succeeded in establishing him- self firmly in a position of prominence in pro- fessional circles, as well as in the confidence of the public. He was a native of the Hoosier

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state, born in Jasper county, Indiana, January 12, 1885, the son of Frank M. and Mary A. (Hofferlin) Hershman, the former a Buckeye by birth, while the mother, like her son, is a Hoosier, born at Evansville. Charles was the oldest of the five children born to his parents. He attended the public schools during the win- ter and worked on his father's farm in the summer time, growing up sturdy and strong and able when it came to farm business to do his share of the work and enjoyed going back to the old farm to visit his father and to recall the old happy days of childhood. After grad- uating from the high school at Rensellar, the young man matriculated at Valpariso Univer- sity, Valpariso, Indiana, spending three years in study, specializing in pharmacy. After re- ceiving his degree in his home state Dr. Hersh- man decided that he preferred medicine to pharmacy for a life vocation and realized that his pharmaceutical training would help him in his profession. He entered the Chicago Col- lege of Physicians and Surgeons, took a four year medical course and was granted his M. D. degree June 18, 1908. He passed a brilliant examination for the internship of St. Joseph's Hospital, Joliet, Illinois, serving in that ca- pacity for eighteen months. In 1919 the doc- tor opened an office for the practice of his pro- fession at London Mills, Illinois, but within ten months had been appointed medical ex- aminer for the Burlington railroad with head- quarters in Chicago. A year later Dr. Hersh- man was transferred to Alliance but resigned January 1, 1912, as medical examiner and immediately was reappointed to the posi- tion of surgeon for this district of the Burlington with headquarters at Alliance. As soon as this change had been made the doctor opened an office for his priv- ate practice which grew with most grati- fying rapidity. He was a young man fully equipped in every way to take charge of medi- cal and surgical work and his great success in Alliance gained for him a wide clientele here and throughout the surrounding district. Af- ter locating in the Panhandle the doctor be- came a convert to the great possibilities of this section and took an active part in all move- ments that tended to the development of Alli- ance and the county. He was a member of the Box Butte County Medical Society, the Nebraska State Medical Association, and the American Medical Association. His office was located in the Guardian Trust Building on Box Butte Avenue. In addition to his medical duties and its many calls, Dr. Hershman be-

came interested in the business of Alliance and demonstrated his faith in the future of the city by investing heavily in bank stock and became president of the Guardian State Bank and Trust Company and it was due largely to his progressive and constructive policies that this institution holds the high place it does in the financial circles of Nebraska and the Pan- handle, for while he was progressive in his ideas and methods he was conservative in all business dealings and by these qualities fur- thered the interests of the bank and won for it the confidence of the citizens of this district.

On October 18, 1913, Dr. Hershman was married at Alliance to Miss Dorothy Hoag, a native of Blue Springs, Nebraska. She was the youngest of six children born to her par- ents. Mrs. Hershman received her education in the Council Bluffs, Iowa, high school and after graduation took a course in a commer- cial college; then accepted a position in the office of the general superintendent of the Bur- lington Railroad at Alliance where she remain- for five years previous to her marriage. Two sturdy, healthy boys became members of the Hershman family : Robert, aged four and Paul F., past three. Mrs. Hershman is a member of the Episcopal church, while the doctor belong- ed to the Christian church. In politics he was a Democrat, while his fraternal affiliations were with the Masonic order and he was a Shriner and a member of the Elks.

December 20, 1920, Dr. Hershman was al- most instantly killed by an electric shock while treating a patient in his office with an X-ray machine. Dr. Hershman's death is a loss to the entire community as he was the type of man and citizen no town can afford to lose. Though a young man his energy and enterprise had made itself felt in the commercial and pro- fessional life of Alliance. He contributed both his talents and money to the upbuilding of the city, and gained a prominent place in public af- fairs. As president of the Guardian State Bank, he stood at the door of commercial ac- tivity and as a physician and surgeon ranked high.

LLOYD C. THOMAS, is one of the young- er generation of business men of the Pan- handle who are making history in Nebraska. Mr. Thomas is a native son and thus far in his business career has displayed the push and energy for which the citizens of this state have won a high and enviable reputation. He was born at Elwood, Gosper county, July 8, 1889, the son of John and Dora L. Thomas. Lloyd received his elementary education in the

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public schools of Maywood, Alma and Beaver City and a denominational school at Orleans. In 1892, the parents with their six boys moved to Omaha, where Lloyd entered Boyles Busi- ness College for a special commercial course. When only nine years of age the boy had start- ed in to learn the printers' trade so that by the time he finished school he had served his apprenticeship as a printer and was competent to handle any kind of work in that line. Upon leaving the commercial school he accepted a position with a piano house, remaining two years before going on the road as salesman for typewriter companies. In November, 1907, at the age of eighteen Mr. Thomas won third place in a sales contest conducted by the Oliver Typewriter Company among its three thou- sand salesmen, his territory covering western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming.

In the spring of 1908, he accepted a position in Alliance with a real estate firm and in De- cember of the same year purchased the Alli- ance Herald, of which he has been chief owner and editor most of the time. He has found that his practical education as a printer of in- estimable value in carrying on the paper. On February 17, 1908, Mr. Thomas married Miss Belle M. Liveringhouse, of Wayne, Nebraska, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Livering- house, who were pioneer settlers of O'Neill, Nebraska. During a part of 1912 and and also the folowing year, Mr. Thomas was the manager of an irrigation company at Lingle, Wyoming, managed a large irrigated ranch for the same concern and published a country newspaper, any one of these lines being con- sidered a busy job for a man. He still re- tained his newspaper interests and residence at Alliance, however, and afterwards returned here to make his permanent home. In Novem- ber, 1916. Mr. Thomas, better known through- out the Panhandle and Box Butte county as "Lloyd," was elected representative to the Ne- braska Legislature from the district comprising Box Butte and Sheridan counties. He served in the regular session of 1917 and the special session of 1918, being one of the introducers and sponsers for sixteen bills which became laws, including the Nebraska prohibition en- forcement law, the eighteen-mile-per-hour railroad stock transportation law, the twice-a- month pay roll law for railroad employes, the woman suffrage law, the mineral leasing law, and other enactments that are considered pro- gressive and desirable legislation. Of his work in the legislature the Nebraska State Journal said in part. "While many men are entitled to distinguished mention for their services in

securing prohibition for the state of Nebraska, there are three whose staunchness at a trying time gave them strong claims for the honor of making the prohibition bill the tower of strength that it is. These men are representa- tives, Norton of Polk county, Flansburg of Lancaster county and Thomas of Box Butte county. These three men composed the mem- bership of the conference committee that fought it out with the three wet conferees sent by the senate and wrested from them by sheer bulldog tenacity all the vital things that the contest was over. They were able to do this in part because they knew the House was back of them, but it required three men who knew what they wanted and who refused time and again to give an inch from their position to stand up under the tremendous pressure brought to bear to get near beer through for the brewers. If near beer had been per- mitted, prohibition would have been impossible so far as beer selling is concerned .. . . . Repre- sentative Thomas is one of the owners and editors of one of the liveliest papers in the state, the Alliance Herald. He was elected by a big majority as a representative for Box Butte and Sheridan counties, in a Republican district. He is a Democrat and was one of the leaders of the last session."

Mr. Thomas has been given credit by many for securing more favorable advertising and publicity for western Nebraska than any other one individual through his work in the state legislature, by his editorials and newspaper articles and his speeches made telling of the resources of this section of the state. His activities at one time led to his nickname, "Live wire Louis." At the present time Mr. Thomas is devoting most of his time to his real estate and investment business in Alli- ance and to the development of western Ne- braska potash fields and the oil fields of east- ern Wyoming. Although given a deferred classification in the draft during the World War, he volunteered and took the examination for an officers' training camp and had the war continued until December. 1918, he would have been in training at Camp Fremont, Cali- fornia, the last of the "six Thomas boys" to enter the army. At the present time he is county chairman of War Savings for Box Butte county and takes an active part in all public affairs that tend to the development of this section. Mr. Thomas is secretary of the Potash Highway Association, is publicity chairman of the Nebraska State Volunteer Fireman's Association and a member of the Alliance Volunteer Fire Department, Travelers

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Protective Association, Royal Highlanders, Eagles, Odd Fellows, and other organizations and fraternal associations. He is a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, takes an active part in the Commercial Club affairs and was at one time secretary of the Alliance Commercial Club.

JASON B. WADE, pioneer, frontiersman and early settler, is probably the only man now alive in Box Butte county to locate in Nebraska as early as 1872. His career has been one in which he has had varied and interesting ex- periences, from hunting buffalo on the west- ern plains, and passing through two Indian wars without, as he expresses it, "seeing an Indian," to the civilized existence of these modern days, and few men many years his jun- ior bear so few of the scars of life.

Mr. Wade was born in Michigan, March 15, 1848, the son of George W. and Lucy G. (Bass) Wade, the former a Buckeye by birth while the mother was a Pennsylvanian. He was the oldest in a family of ten children con- sisting of five boys and five girls. The family moved to Illinois by ox team in 1852, and in 1854, to Boone county, Iowa, in the same man- ner and Mr. Wade says that the first negro he ever saw ferried them across the Des Moines river. George Wade bought a farm of Captain Berry, of Civil War fame, located in Boone county and there Jasen earned his first money dropping corn for fifteen cents a day. He helped his father on the frontier farm in the summer and attended the district school winters. They had only two teams at the time they came to Iowa, one of horses and an ox team for breaking. They planted a hun- dred apple trees on the farm and people laugh- ed at them for it, as they believed, they would not grow "in such a country" as they expressed it, but they were wrong. Two miles from the original farm George Wade bought swamp land for fifty cents an acre that today is worth two hundred and fifty dollars an acre. In 1855, the Sioux Indians rose and attacked Fort Dodge but the Wade family were not attacked though warned of the danger. The only In- dians they saw were some peaceful ones of "Old Johnny Greene's tribe," Mr. Wade says. These hardy pioneers suffered untold har :!- ships and privations in Iowa ; one cold winter they lived practically on elk meat and made the shoes from the hides of the animals. Dur- ing the Civil War the settlers were compelled to hunt for deserters in their district. In 1872, Mr. Wade and several companions came by ox team to the location where Orleans now stands

on a buffalo hunt, using a prairie schooner to live in on the trip. They killed wild turkeys along the Republican river and the next spring, Mr. Wade, accompanied by his wife and one child, a neighbor, his wife and child made the trip overland from Boone county to the home- stead near Orleans on which Mr. Wade had filed on his first trip. They settled on the claims farmed a little, but supplies were so scarce and hard to get that the men wore shirts made from flour sacks. The drought came that summer and all the crops that were not burned up were destroyed by the grasshoppers and Mr. Wade says that "if it hadn't been for the buffalo, elk, deer, antelope, and jack rab- bits and cotton tails, wild geese and cranes as well as the grouse and fish, together with the flour and money sent by friends in the east, we surely would have starved to death." In the fall of 1873, accompanied by three friends Mr. Wade went to McCook, Nebraska, which consisted of but three log houses with one store also serving as postoffice and the mer- chandise was a poor scant stock but they bought what was absolutely necessary, then camped up on the Republican river to hunt buffalo. One night Mr. Wade lost his com- panions and spent the night alone wrapped in the skin of a buffalo he had killed and skinned, sung to sleep by the coyotes, after a supper of buffalo sirloin cooked on a spit over a "chip" fire, that tasted as good as a meal worth a hundred dollars. They secured a number of buffalo, put the meat in barrels and sent the hides to Fort Wallace for sale, getting but a dollar and a half for each as the pelts were not yet in prime condition. On the return trip at Red Willow, Mr. Wade learned of the death of his child from a mail carrier. In the fall of 1873 there was an Indian uprising and Mr. Wade was appointed a corporal in the company organized to fight them but they did not come that far and this was the second Indian war with no Indians. April 1, the following spring the Wade family consisting of father, mother and the second child, left Orleans in a wagon drawn by horses for Boone county. On his return to the old home, Mr. Wade bought a quarter section of land where he engaged in farming for twenty years, but the lure of the western country had ever held him and dis- posing of his farm at a handsome figure he returned to Nebraska, locating on a Kinkaid homestead in 1908. The new claim was in section twenty-one township twenty-one, range forty-six, Garden county, which he still calls "home" but has his land rented. Since becom- ing a resident of Alliance Mr. Wade has taken

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History of western Nebraska and its people, Vol. III, Part 70

Author: Shumway, Grant Lee, 1865- Publication date: 1921 Publisher: Lincoln, Neb., The Western publishing & engraving co. Number of Pages: 1056

Author: Shumway, Grant Lee, 1865-
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: Lincoln, Neb., The Western publishing & engraving co.
Number of Pages: 1056