ON. ELI A. BARNES, president of the Board of Managers of the Nebraska State Agricultural Society, is a resident of Grand Island, and was born in Chemung county, New York. He resided on his father's

farm, improving all available school advantages until twenty years of age. He attended Ithaca Academy, where Cornell University is now located, for a period of three terms. He afterward taught school fifteen terms, commencing in Pennsylvania and ending in Illinois. He entered the service of his country in Company G,

Ninth Iowa Cavalry, and was a brave defender of the flag. He married February 22, 1865, and came to Nebraska in 1871, settling in Hall county, where he has resided ever since. Mr. Barnes entered a homestead and lived upon and cultivated the same for twelve years, during which time the early inhabitants of that new region were visited with destructive storms, grasshoppers and drought. The turn of the tide came to those who waited, and they now express their gratitude that the storms are gone, the grasshoppers have flown forever, and the new system of irrigation has dispelled the dangers of the drought. For twenty years Mr. Barnes has been a member of the State Board of Agriculture, and in 1895 and 1896 was president of that organization. He was a member of the committee on ways and means of the State Irrigation Association in 1896, and is always to be found in the front rank of those public-spirited men who devote a large share of their time to the development of the agricultural and commercial resources of this great young state.

APTAIN JACOB H. CULVER is one of the best known Union veterans in this state, and is recognized as an expert in military science. He was born in Mercer county, Ohio, in 1845, and came with his family to Wisconsin when a child. He received his early training in the schools of the neighborhood, and enlisted when only sixteen as a drummer boy in Company K,

First Wisconsin Infantry. When the color-bearer of his regiment was shot down at the battle of Perryville, the drummer boy grasped the flag and bore it in triumph to the close of the engagement, and continued to carry it through the service. He was in the battles of Chaplain Hills, Chickamauga, Mission Ridge, Lookout

Mountain, Chattanooga, and in the Atlanta campaign. He took a course in the Wisconsin University after the war. In 1870 he married Miss Ada Davison and they have five children. The same year he came to Nebraska, located at Milford, and was appointed postmaster. Since 1887, when he organized Troop A, N. N. G., he has con-

tinuously held the office of captain, having been the unanimous choice of his company for each succeeding term. He has been senior vice commander of the Department of Nebraska, G. A. R., was elected department commander in 1896, and served as postmaster of Milford during Harrison's administration. He was appointed commandant of the Soldiers' Home at Milford in 1895, which position he held until tendering his resignation to take effect April 1, 1897, on account of political change in the administration. Captain Culver is a citizen of the highest integrity, loyally devoted to the best interests of his comrade survivors of the war. He will return to the management of his stock farm with the confidence and respect of the people whom he has served.

ON. S. C. FAIRCHILD, of Antelope county, is one of the most active laborers in the field of monetary and political reform. He was born in Brant county, Ontario, in 1842, and was reared a farmer's son, coming to Illinois in 1854. At the outbreak of the civil war young Fairchild was among the first to respond to his country's call, enlisting in Company I, First Illinois Artillery. He served until the close of the war, participating in many engagements, and was three

times wounded, twice near Vicksburg, and again at Ringgold Gap, Georgia. In March, 1867, he was married to Miss Anna Atkinson, of Brooklyn, Illinois, and they have seven children living. In 1876 Mr. Fairchild located in South Dakota, where he lived on a homestead until removing to Nebraska in 1880, when they selected their present home, a fine farm near Oakdale. He was a leading spirit in the Farmers' Alliance, and was lecturer and organizer. In 1891 he was chosen assistant state lecturer, and was sent as a delegate to the St. Louis conference. He was a member of the reception committee of the national populist convention at Omaha in 1892, and was elected state lecturer of the N. F. A. and I. U. While assistant state lecturer he held over two hundred meetings. throughout the state. He made a gallant race for the legislature in 1896 and failed of election by a very close margin.

NE of the men whose life history is inseparably interwoven with the development of his state, and the establishment of its industrial greatness, is ex-Governor Robert W. Furnas, the veteran secretary of the State Board of Agriculture. He was born on a farm near Troy, Ohio, May 5, 1824. His parents were both Quakers from England. At the age of sixteen he learned the printers' trade at Covington, Kentucky. He was married in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1845 to May E. McComas, and of the eight children who were born to them, five are still living. In 1856 he came to Brownville, this state, and edited the Nebraska Advertiser. He was a