My Genealogy Hound

JOHN SINGLETERRY. Among those who settled on the Divide in an early day with little or nothing to begin with, is John Singleterry; and certainly no one who started with as little has made a more marked success. He was born in Cambridgeshire England, on the twenty-eighth day of January, 1853.

His father, John Singleterry, a farmer by occupation, was born in England in the year 1819 and lived to the ripe old age of three-score and eleven years.

His mother, Jane (Lee) Singleterry, was also a native of England, born in the year 1826. These were the parents of nine children, five boys and four girls, three of whom live in America. Of the ancestral history of this family little or nothing is known.

John Singleterry, the subject of this sketch, lived in England until he reached his seventeenth year. His boyhood days were spent in school and helping his father on the farm. Arriving at the age of seventeen and realizing that he must take upon himself the responsibilities of life and desiring, as all ambitious young men do, to make the most of his opportunities, he cast about him to ascertain, if possible, in what field his activities were likely to meet with the greatest success. America, at that time in the midst of one of the greatest eras of prosperity ever enjoyed by any nation, was the most fitting field, for the activities of this ambitious youth, and it is not to be wondered at that he chose to leave his native land and seek in a strange country to carve for himself that future bright destiny which his own ambition craved. Having resolved upon America as his future home, he accordingly in, November, 1872, took passage by steamer for this country. Arriving without money or friends, he soon found employment at remunerative wages on the farm and in the stone quarries of Cook county, Ill. He continued to labor there for nearly eight years, when he decided to emigrate to the Western frontier in Nebraska. He accordingly, in October, 1880, came to Phelps county, having up to that time made but little advancement in the material world. He found employment on the farm of August Anderson, and for three years worked for this gentleman, accumulating in the meantime a sufficient sum of money to enable him to purchase the northeast quarter of section 34, township 6, range 17. This land had but little broken out and no improvements whatever at the time he made the purchase. He also bought a team, erected buildings and began to cultivate and improve his farm, which for richness of soil compared favorably with any in Phelps county. By industry and economy he has placed himself in comfortable circumstances, and with the competency already gained will be able to crown his youth of labor with an age of ease.

Mr. Singleterry married September, 1874, taking for a life companion Miss Anna Anderson, a most estimable lady who was born in Sweden September 15, 1850 and came to America in 1872. This union has been blessed with seven children, viz. — Elizabeth, John W., Freddie, Salma, Ester, Jennie and Henry W.

Mr. and Mrs. Singleterry are christian people of the Lutheran faith, although they have not yet handed their names to the church.

Politically, Mr. Singleterry is a strong believer in the principles of the republican party. As an evidence of the faith and trust the people of this community place in him, they have placed in his keeping the funds of his school district for the past three years. Certainly no young man surrounded by similar circumstances in early life, is worthy of more praise for the manner in which he has overcome all obstacles, and, as it were, risen above the surrounding circumstances of his life to a higher and nobler plane of living. He has an invincible determination, backed by industry and ambition equal to Hannibal, who crossed the hitherto unsurmountable Alps and thundered at the gates of Rome. And it is just such men as this that form the front rank of American citizenship.