My Genealogy Hound

JOHN L. EVERSON was born in Louisville, Ky., November 10, 1838, and was reared in Cincinnati, Ohio. When a youth he learned the trade of a harness maker and followed his trade some time after growing up. He was also engaged, when a young man, in boating on the Ohio river. In 1870 he moved to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and in 1873 to Harlan county, Nebr. He took a homestead at that date in Harlan county, where he settled, building a sod house and launching on the life of a pioneer. He went through all the vicissitudes incident to the opening of the country for settlement, and saw as much of the hardships and privations as any of the old settlers. By hard work and good management his affairs have prospered, until today he is one of the best fixed farmers in the county, owning five hundred and sixty acres of land, three hundred acres of which he has in a fine state of cultivation, and on which he raises an abundance of farm products. In 1889 he raised seven thousand two hundred bushels of corn, one thousand two hundred bushels of wheat and two hundred and forty-eight bushels of barley. He has his barn well stocked with a superior grade of stock. His farm is furnished with comfortable buildings for man and beast, and ornamented with beautiful groves, all the result of his own patient labor and commendable foresight. He is credited with being one of the most intelligent and enterprising farmers of Harlan county, thoroughly in sympathy with all movements looking to the improvement of the condition of the farmer, and exceedingly popular, not only among his fellow-farmers, but all citizens of his county. He is a member of the Alliance of Harlan county, is its treasurer, and is assessor of Alma township.

In August, 1860, Mr. Everson married, taking to wife Miss Elizabeth Mitzger. This excellent lady died December 13, 1882, after bearing her husband, for more than twenty-two years, the companionship besought with her hand. She left surviving her, besides her husband, a family of nine children — Lotta, Edwin, John, Melissa, Annie, Philip, Susie, William and Lizzie. Mrs. Everson was a devoted christian and died in the full faith of her religion. She was a member of the Lutheran church. She was of German descent, having come from Bavaria to New York when only five years old, and from there to Cincinnati when thirteen. In the grasshopper years of 1874-5-6, in Harlan county — the starving years, as they were called by most of the old settlers — she never murmured at the hard times, but for the sake of a home bore everything patiently and died at the age of forty, when pioneering in Nebraska was a thing of the past.