My Genealogy Hound

JAMES PRICE, one of the representative pioneers of Kearney county, was born in Cayuga county, N. Y., March 10, 1835. His parents, Aaron and Jemima Price, both died in 1889; the former was a native of New Jersey and the latter of New York, and both were members of the Congregational church. At the age of sixteen Mr. Price came west to Ohio and found employment in Fulton county, where he remained for six years. He was married March 28, 1885, to Miss Jane Porter, and this union has been blessed with eight children, namely — Mina (deceased), James (deceased), Elmer (deceased), David (deceased), Charles, William, Adelina and Guy.

Mr. Price enlisted September 12, 1864, in the Fourteenth Michigan regiment, but served on detached duty mainly, and was engaged in guarding recruits through to headquarters. He was mustered out May 16, 1865, and returned to Michigan, at the close of his military service, and resumed his favorite occupation as farmer. He emigrated to Decatur county, Iowa, in 1869, where he farmed for four years and then removed to Kearney county, Nebr., in the spring of 1873, and is one of the first settlers in Grant township. He took a soldier’s homestead and broke fifty acres of sod, but his entire corn crop was destroyed by the grasshoppers, and he was left without a thing in the world to support his family on, so he went to Arkansas, where he worked on the Arkansas river for some time. In the spring of 1875 he returned to Nebraska and resumed his efforts at farming. Many settlers became so discouraged at seeing their crops destroyed, that they offered their claims for almost nothing in order to get out of the country. In 1875 Mr. Price secured the crop on a half section of land for a horse. Lowell was the nearest town, and there was only one house between his place and that. It was not an uncommon thing for settlers to get lost in those days and be obliged to camp out on the prairie all night. Mr. Price has had experience of this kind frequently, and he knows what it is to spend a night on the prairie during a terrible thunderstorm. He has 320 acres of splendid land, for when he selected his homestead he had the pick of nearly the whole township, and he could not have selected a more beautiful piece of land. He has improved it from time to time, as his circumstances would permit, and has taken special pains with fruit trees, and now has one of the best young orchards in the county. He set his apple trees out in 1880 and during the summer of 1889 gathered 160 bushels of that fruit.

Mr. Price affiliates with the democratic party, holding pronounced views in regard to the tariff that are in harmony with that party.