of the fertility and future of this, then frontier, he determined to sell and remove to Tekamah. His Pennsylvania farm was bargained to a neighbor, who a few months later, when Mr. Reinert had disposed of his personal effects and made all preparations for his journey westward, refused to stand by the agreement. With not more than enough money to bear the expenses of the journey he started out. They came by boat from St. Joe to Omaha and by team to Tekamah, reaching here May 15th, 1866, with only his wife, two children, and indominable (sic) pluck and energy to begin life anew on the frontier. He lived in Tekamah the first summer and then homesteaded the quarter section in Arizona where he resided until moving to this city in 1900, having in this time acquired 800 acres of Burt's best land.

   JACOB BAKER was born in Gurnsey county, Ohio, July 19th, 1838. In 1853 he accompanied his father westward to Wisconsin. Nine years later becoming infected with the gold fever he crossed the plains to California and traversed the Pacific coast and mountain states and up into British Columbia in search of gold. During the winter of 1862 and 1863 he carried the United States mail on horseback from Walla Walla, Washington, to Auburn, Oregon, 145 miles. During his prospecting he made a rich find in Idaho staking out a claim from which he took $100 a day in gold dust. A band of reckless, thieving miners coveting his rich find drove him, at the point of guns, from the claim and appropriated it themselves. In the spring of 1865 Mr. Baker landed in Burt county. He took, as a homestead, the quarter section of land lying east of Tekamah lake and now commonly known as the "White Elephant", but soon found that it was too wet and abandoned it, going farther out toward the river where he secured one of the best farms in the corn belt and there engaged for years in farming and stock raising. In the fall of 1865 he went to Wiscon-