USA > Nebraska > Lancaster County > Portrait and biographical album of Lancaster county, Nebraska > Part 36
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Among the citizens of Laneaster County there are few, if any, who surpass the subject of this biography in ability, generosity, manliness, moral courage, fidelity and popularity ; whether we view his life from the standpoint of home, business, finanee, political or representative position. In 1884 he was nominated by the Republican Convention of Lancaster County as a candidate for the Legislature, and the same fall was elected by a large majority, and served a term of two years, was re-elected in 1886, and still occupies the seat. In the balls of legislation he has distinguished himself in vari- ous ways, in a manner which has greatly en- hanced the prevailing feeling in his favor among the citizens of the county; only two or three of the more noteworthy may be culled for mention in this epitome. An action, which has brought him
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much popularity, is his introduction of bill No. 220, an act to provide for the organization of the students of the State University of Nebraska into a military battalion ; also, to provide for the com- missioning of officers for the same. Another bill introduced by Mr. Liesveld was No. 257, an act to provide for the employment of a County Prose- cutor and the payment thereof in cases where change of venne has been taken in criminal cases from one county to another. This list might be lengthened wellnigh indefinitely. Suffice it to re- mark that our subject has always been true to the principles of his party and to the interests of the people, and if, at any time, these should appear to be antagonistic or opposite, the people receive his first consideration.
Mr. and Mrs. Liesveld are among the most con- sistent and faithful members of the German Pres- byterian Church at Hiekman, in which the religions instruction of their family is also received. In our subject the Republican party has one of its stanchest adherents and warmest supporters. He is a Republican through and through, and in cam- paigns and other special work his large popularity, influence, vigorous thought. powerful argument and telling eloquence, are at the command of his political coadjutors.
OHIN F. HAY. Another of the representative citizens of Lancaster County, whether we speak of him relative to his social, religious, political or business relations, is John F. Hay, whose residence is situated on section 28, Yankee ITill Precinct, where he owns 240 acres of land. He is a native of Calhoun County, Mich., where he was born, June 20, 1853, to Alexander and Sarah A. Hay. His mother, who is still a resident of Calhoun County, is of an Eastern family, and a native of Saratoga County, N. Y. His father was a native of Washington County, and is now deceased. His paternal ancestry are Scotch.
Our subjeet is the only son of the family, and spent his early years, youth and manhood, amid the seenes in which he was ushered into life. His par- ents were among those few brave, self-reliant, un- daunted men and women for whom the boundaries
of Eastern civilization were all too narrow and eon- fining. Like other bold spirits of the time, they gathered together their possessions and pushed out into the great unknown; to new scenes, new sur- roundings. difficulties and dangers. This pioneer life was that into which our subject was ushered, in which he was reared. From hoyhood up he was active about the farm, and became intimately con- versant with the many and intricate details of the farm work, the divers kinds and qualities of seeds and soils, the most combatable, those which prom - ised most success. The variety and differences of stoek and cattle all became familiar to him.
In Washington County, N. Y., resided James H. and Catherine Van Ness. This family, as is clearly expressed by the cognomen, was of Dutch extraction. The immediate forerunners of James H. Van Ness were among the very early Dutch colonists who settled in the Mohawk Valley. N. Y. On the 8th of March, 1845, the home of Mr. and Mrs. James Van Ness was made glad with the brightness of a new life. The little girl was named Cornelia. As she approached the years of womanhood she devel- oped such traits of character and displayed sueh ad- mirable qualities, that the acquaintanceship which our subject about this time began more to appre- ciate, speedily ripened into stronger sentiments, and on Feh. 11, 1879, they united their fortunes and lives in wedlock. The principal event in her life up to this time had been the death of her father, which occurred when she was seventeen years of age.
In 1879 our subject removed from Michigan to Lancaster County, and took land and settled in this precinct. Mr. Hay is practically a self-made man, as were so many of those hearty pioneers from the very necessity of their circumstances. We must remember how far they were from educational in- stitutions of any large caliber; how few and how far between the school-houses were; the miles the child must traverse in going to and fro; and their difficulties of travel in this untamed country; the dangers to which we are now happily strangers, but which were liable to become very real to them at any step of their journey, and last, but far from least, the crudeness and inconvenience of their edu- cational apparatus. The workman who turns out good work with poor tools we honor and admire.
RESIDENCE OF JOHN F. HAY, SEC. 28. YANKEE HILL PRECINCT.
新年
RESIDENCE OF .S. P. BINGHAM, SEC.33 , GARFIELD PRECINCT.
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All honor and admiration, therefore, to men who, like our subject, faced the difficulties, braved the dangers, and succeeded in fitting themselves for the happenings of life.
We must not forget, however, to pay, as is justly due, some tribute of respect to the truly noble woman who shared with him through all these years the often hazardous and certainly checkered life. Ilow often might he have given up but for her words of encouragement and cheer; how often might be have made mistakes of grave, and even disastrous, import, but for her wise and cautious counsel; how often the results which were ascribed, and justly so, to his energies and enterprise, would never have been entered upon but for her thought and advisement.
For three years Mr. Hay has served conscien- tionsly and with much ability as Justice of the Peace, which service has been justly cominended and generally recognized by the entire community. Ile is an acknowledged friend and liberal supporter of every enterprise which looks toward the eleva- tion of society and the improvement of the county. In the Methodist Episcopal Church our subject and his wife find their religious home, and if in the community generally they are respected, in the church they are beloved. He has officiated in the Steward's office for about one year.
To Mr. and Mrs. Hay have been born three chil- dren : Sarah A., born May 28, 1880, and died June 5, 1882; Frederick G., born Nov. 26, 1882, and died Feb. 27, 1883; and Mark I., born Sept. 6, 1885, who is the only surviving child.
It only remains to be stated what has doubtless already been surmised, that in his relation toward the State and Government, Mr. Ilay espouses, up- holds and advocates Republican principles, and that his influence, eloquence and activities are never commanded in their behalf, but they meet with the heartiest response. A view of Mr. Ilay's home- stead is presented in this connection.
ILLIAM CLAY is entitled to be recorded as one of Panama's earliest pioneers, and his family is the only one of the sixteen who came here together in the early days of the settle-
ment of the town who is still residing here. Ilis pioneer experience was a rich one, and would form an interesting chapter in the history of Lancaster County. Ile says that this was a beautiful prairie country, with scarcely a habitation, when he first settled here, without trees, and abounding with antelope, deer, wild geese, ducks, etc. Ile has watched the wonderful development of the county, and its gradual settling up as the tide of emigra- tion came this way from the Eastern States. Ile always gave a cordial and hospitable welcome to the weary and sometimes disheartened emigrants, and sent them on their way refreshed and encour- aged ; sometimes as many as fifteen teams laden with people seeking new homes on the broad prai- ries of Nebraska would stop in front of his house, and he would cordially invite them to pass the night with him. Mr. Clay has done very well, notwith- standing those disastrous years when he had to fight prairie fires. grasshoppers, drouths and blizzards, with the dread possibility of utter ruin staring him in the face, and he is well satisfied with his farm, and is contented in his comfortable home, wherein he enjoys the comforts of life procured by a suffi- cient competency.
Our subject is a native of England, a son of George and Catherine (Gracard) Clay, who were born in Lincolnshire, England. His father was a farmer, and was in prosperous circumstances in his early years, but later in life he failed, and died at the age of fifty. a comparatively poor man. The mother of our subject died in England in 1881, aged seventy-five years. Both she and her husband were people of sterling integrity and industrious habits, and were considered valuable members of the community in which they were residents. They were the parents of fifteen children, ten of whom grew to maturity.
William Clay was the third child of his parents, and he was born July 10, 1826, in the parish of Gedney, Lincolnshire. Ile grew up in the home of his parents, but being one of the eldest in a large family of children, his education was necessa- rily limited, as his services were required on the farm. In December, 1847, at the age of twenty- one, he took unto himself a wife, in the person of Miss Maria Huson. Ile continued farming in his
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native England until after he was the father of three children, when he sold his possessions there, and sought this new world with his family, hoping to be able to build up a more commodious home .here than he could in the old country. He sailed with his family from Liverpool in December, 1852, and landed in New York the following Janu- ary. He went to Albion, Orleans County, where he worked for three years steadily, being employed by the day, and having carefully saved up some of his earnings that were not needed to supply the wants of his growing family, he left New York for Michigan, and bought a farm in Shiawassee County. He lived there for nine years, but he wished to go still further West, and we next hear of him in Mitchell County, Iowa, where he remained only a few years. He had the sad misfortune to lose his good wife there, she who since his early manhood had been his stay and help, and had cheerfully aban- doned her old home and friends to accompany him across the waters to a strange land, and had ever proved the kindest of wives and the most tender of motliers. In 1868, after her death, Mr. Clay broke up his home in Iowa, and with his children came to this State in a wagon, being four weeks on the road, and camping in the company of sixteen other families, known as the Iowa Colony.
They settled in Panama, and now our subject is the only representative of that colony still living here. He pre-empted his land the first year, not having sufficient means to get a homestead right. From the wild prairie he has evolved a good farm comprising eighty acres, under an admirable state of cultivation. Honesty and industry have char- acterized the life of our subject, and, with his kind- ness and consideration toward others, have won him the respect and esteem of his fellow-citizens. In his political views he is a strong Democrat. Ile is the father of nine children, of whom three are (lead-Catherine, Samuel and William. The others are settled in life, and are in prosperous circum- stances, and the following is their record: Henry, who is married and has a family, is in business in Kansas City; George is a successful farmer in Panama; Clara, the wife of Robert Dickson, of Panama, has three children-Agnes, Thomas and Ethel May; Ann, the wife of Amos Kennedy, of
Nebraska, has two children-Cora and George; Mary is the wife of Mr. McDonald, of Montana, and they have one child, Fay; William is a pros- perous farmer in Johnson County.
AMES E. DAVEY. A community is very much like a large piece of intricate machin- ery, with its many wheels, cogs and bands. all working together for the production of a given work. The men who first tilled the soil of Ohio and Indiana were compelled to dispose of their products at a ruinous figure, because of the difficulty of bringing them to the market, and they would have valued greatly the modern system; and so with every department of trade and com- merce; one cannot do without the other. The figure of speech, "the body," social, political or otherwise, is most happy, because every member of the body, however strangely diverse in fashion, shape or use, is absolutely necessary for the well- being of the perfect man. Hence the grocer and farmer, or grain buyer and shipper, are but compo- nent parts of the whole. To the farmer, as above noted, the grain buyer is an intimate and, perhaps, especial need, and in this biography we present a sketch of one of these important factors in an agri- cultural community.
Our subject is the well-connected and popular grain buyer of Malcolm, and was born in St. Law- rence County, N. Y., in 1844. His father was Will- iam Davey, a native of County Sligo, Ireland, where he was born in 1800, and where he was reared and married. Some years after this latter event he came to America, accompanied by his wife and seven children. He purchased a farm and set- tled in St. Lawrence, where he continued for some years, and was sufficiently prosperous that when he desired to change he was able to start well in mer- cantile life, in 1832, in Edwardsville, Canada West. He was in this associated with his eldest son, the other sons being left in charge of the farm at St. Lawrence, where he continued to reside and super- intend. This he continued until the year 1857, when he died, aged fifty-seven years.
Mr. Davey, Sr., was twice married. By the first
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marriage there were seven children-Francis, Pat- rick, Mary, William, Kate, John and Thomas. The maiden name of his second wife, the mother of our subjeet, was Hannah MeGovern, and of this union there were four children-Anna, Martin R., James E. and Elizabeth. Our subject at the time of his mother's death was four years of age, and was left fatherless when thirteen, and has, therefore, been left to fight alone the battle of life from the age when he most needed and would have appreciated parental care and aid.
After the death of his father our subject con- tinned to reside at the homestead, which was now the property of an elder brother, who did what lay in his power to help our subject to an education in the common school, after which he assisted upon the farm until the year 1863, when he went to Ashley, Washington Co., Ill., and learned the trade of a carpenter and builder. Here he continued for three years and then went on to Kansas City, fol- lowing the same calling for another season, and still with success. In 1868 he first visited Lincoln, then but an insignificant town, we had almost said village, without any promise of its ever becoming the grand city of to-day, and the surrounding country was lying in all the rugged wildness of its virgin state. Our subject made only a short stay, then returned to Kansas City and remained until July, 1870, when he returned, and continued work- ing at his trade for about eight or nine years. Then, in 1879, having prospered sufficiently to en- gage in farming, he purchased 240 acres of good ground in Elk Precinct and continued to work the same for six years, greatly improving his property and bringing it into super-excellent condition.
The change from farming to that of grain buyer and shipper was made in 1885, at which time our subject rented his farm and removed to Malcolm, where he has continued to the present time. The same energy and attention to business which made him prosperous as a carpenter and builder, which converted his aeres of wild prairie into a very garden, have made him likewise continuously pros- perous in his new avocation. Mr. Davey is fortu- nate in having for his life companion and helpmate a lady whose affectionate solicitude has ever been in the interests and welfare of her husband and
family. Mrs. Rosaltha (Ilornung) Davey was born in Welkershausen, Germany, Sept. 11, 1854, and came to this country with her parents when over thirteen years of age. Her family settled in Ne- braska, where she made the acquaintance of her husband, to whom she was married at Lincoln, April 25, 1876, when twenty-two years of age. Of this happy union there are five children-James, Frank, Clara, Mabel and Lena.
Mrs. Davey was early instructed in the teachings of the church which bears the name of the father of German religious liberty and morning star of the Reformation in the Fatherland. She continues loyal to its creed and usages, and is affiliated with the congregation of the German Lutheran Church, in Elk Precinet, where also her children receive in- struction in things religious. Our subject is not connected with any church, but is at the same time liberal toward those who are, although they may differ from him in belief. Politically, he is a stanch advocate, firm adherent and friend of the party which was created by the genius of Jefferson, con- solidated by Jackson, and so ably and well repre- sented by President Cleveland and his charmingly fascinating lady. Mr. Davey enjoys the political confidence of his party, in behalf of which he is quite energetic, and as a man he is exceedingly well received in the community, by reason of his honorable, upright character.
RA F. RICKARD. On section 26, Nemaha Precinct, lies one of the most pleasantly situ- ated and well-cultivated farms of the entire district. It is the property of Ira F. Rickard, the subject of this sketch. Ile is the son of Frederick and Martha (Fanshaw) Rickard. His father was born in St. Lawrence County, N. Y., and his mother in England. The family fireside of Mr. and Mrs. Rickard, Sr., was brightened by the birth of ten little ones, of whom our subject was the second born. This important event occurred in Dodge County, Wis., on the 24th of January, 1854. Ilis father, after a short illness, departed this life Sept. 15, 1886, in Nemaha Precinct.
In the boyhood and youth of our subject there
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occurred nothing of especial interest or adventure. In due time he commenced the duties and studies of school life in the common schools of the county, and when not thus engaged there was always some- thing for him to do at home or on the farm. He quickly developed an aptitude for such tasks as were given him, and was careful and diligent in his school work. After he had progressed sufficiently to leave school he gave his whole time and sole atten- tion to agricultural pursuits.
In the fall of 1878 our subject accompanied his father to Nebraska, and after examination a site was selected in Lancaster County, where the family set- tled and have continued to reside. Our subject now owns about eighty acres of good land, in fine condi- tion for his purpose. He has also given considerable attention to the improvement of his stock. IIis farm buildings are substantially built, warm, and arranged with a view to convenience. Ilis residence is pleasantly situated and inspires one with the thought that it is a true home. Mr. Rickard may well be proud and highly gratified with the success that has crowned the labor expended and the efforts made since he first took the land, for although not so extensive as some farms that might be named he has given much careful thought, bestowed much steady labor, has been provident and heedful. so that to-day it presents a fair picture and will com- pare favorably with the best in the district.
Our subject was married, in Bennet, Neb., Dec. 20, 1882, to Miss Laura Lohr ; this lady is the daugh- ter of Solomon and Sarah (Sidells) Lohr. Her father died in Stephenson County, Ill. ; her mother survives. The home circle of Mr. and Mrs. Lohr formed the happy circle of eleven children, of which the wife of our subject was the tenth. She was boru in Ste- phenson County, Ill., on the 1st of August, 1864.
The home life of Mr. and Mrs. Rickard has been no less happy than their farm has been successful. It is the abode of the peace and quiet joy of a true home; though being far removed from the distrae- tions and noises of the city it is marked with a simplicity which some might find uncongenial. They have one son, Freddie S., who was born March 20, 1884, at their homestead. Both our subject and wife are, religiously, associated with the Methodist Episcopal Church, in which assembly they are held
in high regard, and are ever found active in its inter- ests. Mr. Rickard thinks strongly on the question of temperance, and is an uncompromising, sincere advocate of prohibition, and his votes are and will be cast in favor of legislation upon these lines. Mr. Rickard has shown much ability in the school of- fices to which he has been called at different times. and it is safe to say that this gentleman has yet to be heard from in offices of larger opportunity, if not directly of more importance. Highly respected as a citizen; conscientious, exemplary, manly as a friend and church member; outspoken and sincere in politics; pleasant and cheerful, with a kind word for all in the ordinary happenings of daily life, our subject has won a high place in the regard of all who know him.
ENRY KRAMER might be called the patri- arch of Nebraska, and is so well known as to only require an introduction to those who are perfectly unacquainted with the history of the county. llis residence is now upon section 9 of Olive Branch Precinct, and includes 320 acres. Ile is one who gave largely to the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company, in order that a station might be established, which the citizens have named after him. His efforts have been directed from the first to the developing of the country, and his liberal policy and ceaseless endeavor have done, perhaps, more than any other one individual for this district. His residence dates from the begin- ning of the year 1865, and he has personally assisted in the settlement of every citizen in the precinct since, and has been a father, as it were, to the people. Ile was the first actual settler in the dis- triet, and was here when Nebraska was yet a Terri- tory, and very few thought of coming so far West. His home is substantial, and exceedingly pleasant in situation; his farm has been brought to the highest possible state of cultivation, and is well stocked.
The location of the farm of our subject is upon the Salt Creek, which is a living stream, and there- fore an exceedingly valuable addition to his prop- erty. When he selected this spot, Nebraska City, seventy miles distant, was the nearest town, the
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Western metropolis of Omaha was an insignificant hamlet, and Lincoln was unknown. The years have rushed rapidly by and brought many changes to the world around, but he has gone on quietly, build- ing up, extending and developing, not simply his own property, but as far as possible, the entire sur- rounding district. How many thrilling stories he must have stored away concerning the noble red- skin, who, at the time of our subject's coming to this country, was the only inhabitant of the vast country. Previous to taking up his residence in this State he resided in Clayton County, Iowa, and removed hither by the then usual but primitive mode of transit. During the time occupied in the removal his horses lived entirely upon the wild grass over which they were traveling. Iowa had been his home for thirteen years, eleven of them being spent upon one farm. Previous to this he had lived at St. Louis, and for a period of six years he had been very prosperous as a farmer on the outskirts of that city. He had journeyed from Prussia, his native country, to the United States, in the beginning of the year 1846, landing in St. Louis in the month of February. He was born in West- fall, Prussia, April 12, 1820, of pure German an- cestry. His father, Charles Kramer, was a farmer, and owned his land in his native country, and con- tinued to make it his home until his death at a very advanced age. His wife, Elizabeth, also lived in Germany all her life, and died at the age of fifty years. Their family consisted of ten children, of whom our subject is the eldest.
Our subject spent the years of youth and man- hood on the home farm, and received his education in the district school. In the year above mentioned he started with his brother William for the New World, and both settled together in Missouri, where his brother died a few years later. The cause of his death was consumption, which was believed to be induced by the confinement and cramped posi- tion necessarily incident to his calling, as was sup- posed, which was that of a tailor.
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