one hundred thousand trees, and here he has since been doing both a wholesale and retail business.
July 2, 1884, Austin C. Mutz married Miss Mary Seybolt, a native of Greenville, Orange county, New York, and a daughter of Luther R. and Harriet (Moore) Seybolt, both natives of Orange county, New York, and now residents of Cass county, Nebraska. Mrs. Mutz has an only brother, John B. Seybolt. Mr. and Mrs. Mutz lost their only child, a daughter, that died at the age of two months, August 31, 1888; but they have an adopted child, Otto Mutz, fifteen years of age, a native of New York and a son of German parents.
Politically Mr. Mutz is a Bryan Democrat. He has always been more or less interested in educational matters. When a young man he went to Jewell county, Kansas, homesteaded a tract of land and built a house, and in his own house taught a school. He was a member of the school board of Auburn three years. Mrs. Mutz is a Methodist.
John Hamilton Shook, of Auburn, Nebraska, is a man whose more than threescore years of life cover a varied experience, including a Civil war service, numerous travels and frontier incidents. Mr. Shook came to Nebraska at an early day and has done his part toward bringing about the development which has been wrought here. A detailed review of his army life and his pioneer and later experience would require a large volume, and would be interesting reading, too, but in his connection for want of space we can present only a brief sketch.
John Hamilton Shook was born in Carlinville, Illinois, July 31, 1838, and traces his ancestry on the paternal side back to his great-grandfather
Shook, who was of German birth and who was for many years engaged in farming in Pennsylvania, where he died at a ripe old age. James Shook, his father, was born in Pennsylvania about the year 1797, and was reared in Tennessee. He died in Macoupin county, Illinois, at the age of forty-five years. Abraham Shook, the father of James, was born in Pennsylvania about 1775 and died in Tennessee in 1845. He was a Presbyterian minister. Of his family of four sons and three daughters, all married and reared families, and two of his sons were ministers of the gospel-- Isaac, a Baptist minister in Ohio, and Abraham, a Presbyterian, preaching in Tennessee and Indiana. Each of these two sons lived to good old age and each was the father of four children. James Shook was twice married. By his first wife he had two sons and two daughters, namely: James, a farmer in Whiteside county, Illinois, died at the age of fifty-two years, leaving seven children, three sons and four daughters; Ellen, wife of Wilson T. Stout, died in 1863, leaving four children; Mary Jane, wife of Eli Daily, died in 1902, leaving seven children; and Robinson, who went west early in the fifties and was honored with a seat in the Oregon territorial and state legislatures, died some years ago, leaving three sons. In Carlinville, Illinois, in 1836, James Shook married for his second wife, Mrs. Good, widow of Ezekiel Good, and daughter of a British soldier whose name was Knickerbocker but was afterward changed to Bird. She was born in New York in 1800. By her first husband she had one son and three daughters, viz.: Sarah Ann, wife of a Mr. Bogess, died leaving two daughters and one son; Elizabeth, wife of Bennett Solomon, died about 1860 in Girard, Illinois, leaving two daughters; Minerva, wife of Lewis Johnson, of Carlinville, Illinois, has one son and one daughter; and Thomas Good, a bachelor, is a well-to-do farmer of Arkansas. The children of the second marriage of James Shook were four sons, as follows: John
Hamilton and William B., twins. The latter is resident of Lovington, Moultrie county, Illinois, where he is at this writing filling the office of probate judge; George R., now of Grand Valley, Colorado, was for a number of years a resident of Nemaha county, Nebraska, where he figured prominently in public affairs, serving six years as county surveyor and five terms in the territorial legislature, in both upper and lower houses. He is a veteran of the Civil war, having served in the Seventh and One Hundred and Forty-eighth regiments of Illinois Volunteer Infantry. He has reared a family of three sons and four daughters. The youngest brother of our subject, Albert, died at Hillsdale, Nebraska, in 1882, of disease contracted while he was a soldier in the Civil war. He left three sons. James Shook, the father of this large family, died in middle life, as already stated, and his widow did not long survive him, her death occurring in 1851. Side by side they rest in the little cemetery in Carlinville, Illinois. Both were church members, she a Presbyterian and he a Baptist.
John Hamilton Shook had limited advantages for obtaining an education in his youth. When only seven years old he was put to work driving a yoke of steers. His mother dying when he was only thirteen years old, he went to live with his half-sister, Mrs. Johnson, and remained a member of her family until he was twenty. Then in March, 1859, he came to Nebraska, in company with his brother William. They made the journey by boat to Kansas City and were en route for Pike’s Peak. Hearing discouraging reports from Pike’s Peak, they changed their plans and came to southeastern Nebraska. Here they bought six yoke of oxen and plows and spent the summer in breaking prairie. They entered one hundred and sixty acres of land, each giving his note for two hundred dollars for one year, at thirty per cent. interest. When they landed here John H. had one hundred and thirty dollars and his brother
ninety dollars, not enough with which to purchase their teams, but their credit was good and they went in debt and in due time discharged their obligations. That fall they returned to Illinois, and in the spring of the following year John H. came back to Nebraska, alone, and engaged in farming on his brother-in-law’s land. In 1860 the crop was poor, but it was better the next year and industry and good management brought success to Mr. Shook. He became the owner of two hundred and fifty acres, eleven acres of which were timber land. At this time civil was inaugurated, and Mr. Shook enlisted in Company F, Fifteenth Iowa Volunteer Infantry, October 10, 1861, and served until January, 1865. His service included thirty-six different engagements, prominent among them being Pittsburg Landing, Corinth, the siege of Vicksburg and the siege of Atlanta.
At the close of the war Mr. Shook returned to Nebraska and engaged in the sawmilling business on the Missouri river. His brother also became interested in this business and they were associated together under the firm name of Shook & Brother, until 1884, operating extensively, owning no less than three thousand acres in Nebraska at one time and employing forty men. They also owned three thousand two hundred acres of land in Texas. In Richardson county, Nebraska, where Mr. Shook made his home for some years, he owned a thousand acres of land and annually fed and sold two hundred head of cattle. He has disposed of all his holdings, however, and at this writing has only the five-acre place in Auburn, on which he built his present residence in 1890. He has a rented farm near Auburn, where he keeps a number of horses, cattle and hogs.
Mr. Shook married, in August 1870, Miss Ella Pike, a native of Iowa, born in 1852; and their union has been blessed in the birth of five children. Their eldest son, William, is a practicing physician at
Shuberg, Richardson county, Nebraska. He has a wife and one daughter. The next in order of birth is Arthur, a postal clerk on the Union Pacific Railroad. Charles T. is attending college in Bellevue, Nebraska, and John R. is at home. A daughter died in infancy.
Mr. Shook is a Master Mason and a member of the Grand Army of the Republic. Politically he is a Republican. During his long residence in Nebraska he has many times been honored with official position, and in whatever office he has been called he has responded with faithful and efficient service. He was constable in 1860. For seven years he was postmaster of Hillsdale, was on the school board twenty-nine years, and twelve years was county commissioner, elected first in 1874. In 1895 he was elected to the lower house of the state legislature, and while a member of that body served on the Soldier’s Relief Committee.
W. 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 matters, 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. Richards, another brother, is one of the successful dealers in pumps and windmills at Liberty. Mrs. Clara Dobbs, of Beatrice, is a sister of Mr. Richards.
W. H. Richards was born in Atchison county, Missouri, near Rock-
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 progressive business men, and always identify themselves with movements calculated to be for the best interest of Liberty. They are stanch Republicans 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 Northwestern 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, 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 of 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
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 Kansas. 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 delightful 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-
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 country. 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 private 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 returned 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 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
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, 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 Tennessee in 1816. Timothy Dustin was by trade a ship carpenter. In August, before the birth of the subject of this sketch in September, Timothy 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
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 Methodist 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 support, 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 1st. 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 yokes 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
Montana, where he remained for 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 invested 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 Thanksgiving day, 1889, he disposed of his last farm in that county and in January of the following year came to Auburn and bought the Minnick transfer 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 he 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
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 is a citizen of Beatrice, Nebraska, of twenty-three years’ standing, and with a life record of efficiency, integrity and honorable 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.
Mr. White was reared on a Tennessee farm and early learned the virutes [sic] 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 on November 7, 1862, enlisted in Company G, Fourth East Tennessee Volunteer Infantry, under Colonel Patterson and Captain West. The regiment 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 camp. 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, 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
city when the surveyors were running the base line in August and September 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 Kentucky 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