My Genealogy Hound

MRS. SARAH L. LAYTON came to Nebraska in 1872, locating at Loup City. She remained there one year, and then took up her residence where she now resides, consisting of the northeast quarter of section 35, township 9, range 15, it being then in the military reservation. Here she lived as a squatter two years before she could file papers for her claim, and seven years before proving it, as the papers were filed in the name of her husband, he having died before the claim could be proven. She is, in fact, one of the pioneers of the county, there being but a few houses in Kearney when she came. Time brings its changes, and she has lived to see the then struggling village of Kearney grow to be a prosperous city — one that is gradually assuming a metropolitan air. With her own hands and very little help, she has so improved her farm that it is now producing excellent crops, and is estimated as one of the best in the county, it having always yielded well, excepting only the grasshopper year of 1874. Mrs. Layton is the daughter of Solomon Kinner, a native of New York, who is at present residing in Pennsylvania at the advanced age of ninety-three, being perfectly deaf and blind. Mrs. Layton’s mother was born in 1813, and is still living at the age of seventy-seven. Mr. and Mrs. Kinner were devoted members of the Methodist Episcopal church, and were the parents of nine children.

Mrs. Layton, the sixth child, was born July, 1845, in Pennsylvania, and passed her childhood there. In 1865 she married Jacob Layton, and the couple went to New Jersey, where they remained four years; thence they went to Virginia. Not liking the climate, they removed to Nebraska, where her husband died. She has three sons, viz. — Carlos S., Arthur P. and Walter A. Mrs. Layton belongs to the Evangelical church. To her as well as to many others is due the gratitude of the noble sons of Nebraska for the cheering of the weary days when they toiled to make the great country which at the present is before the citizens of this state as an example of what industry can accomplish.