My Genealogy Hound

JOHN LINDBLOM. In a state like Nebraska, where the chief interests are agricultural, the farming communities oftentimes absorb some of the best business talent of a country, and they furnish in return some of the most signal instances of success to be found in a county. An instance of this is to be found in the subject of this sketch. John Lindblom is one of the most prominent and successful farmers of Phelps county. He is not an old man, either, and what renders his case the more marked is that he is a foreigner by birth and has been a resident of this country but little more than twenty-five years. He began, as most immigrants to this country do, on the bottom round of the ladder. He is deserving of prominent mention in connection with the history of his adopted county.

John Lindblom was born in Sweden, February 11, 1842. He was reared in his native country to the age of eighteen, coming thence in 1864 to America and stopping first in De Kalb county, Ill. He went at once into the government employ, becoming a member of the supply corps for the United States army, gathering commissary stores for Illinois regiments then on the front. He held this position till the war was over. Being then a young man, unmarried, and his fortunes yet to make, he started out like a stout-hearted fellow to carve his way alone. He found his first employment as a common laborer on the railroad. This he followed between three and four years, mostly in Minnesota. Afterwards he farmed some in Minnesota, having saved enough from his earnings to buy a small place in that state. In 1878 he decided to move to a new country where land was more plentiful and opportunities for acquiring wealth were better. He came to Nebraska that year and settled in Phelps county, taking a homestead and beginning on the raw prairie. Mr. Lindblom had the usual experiences of the early settler; saw all the hardships and privations which fall to the lot of the pioneer, but he never allowed his courage to weaken nor his faith in the country to be shaken. Like a prudent man, he bought up cheap land as he accumulated the means, improved these lands and held them for the advance in prices. He began handling stock as soon as he located, and he has increased his flock and herds from time to time since. He is now regarded as one of the largest and most successful farmers in his county, as well as one of the shrewdest, most intelligent business men. He is a live, progressive citizen, a reading and thinking farmer, and not a mere tiller of the soil.

Mr. Lindblom has a splendid farm, furnished with large and commodious buildings with comfortable appointments and conveniences, and an interesting family to share its pleasures with him. He married in 1868, while a resident of Minnesota, the lady whom he selected for his life companion being Miss Maggie Swanson one of his own fair countrywomen, who, like himself, left the friends of her youth and the scenes of her childhood to seek her fortunes in this country. This union has been blessed with a family of seven — Tillie, Albert, Lottie, Frank, Hilca, Otto and Nina. The rearing and training of these afford Mr. Lindblom not the least of the pleasures of his life.