Kerr, J.B.

LOWDEN, RICHLAND, LUCAS, SHAW, DIBBEL, WATTS, KRUEGER

Posted By: BCGS
Date: 12/20/2009 at 20:57:22

J.B. Kerr has lived in Bremer county since 1854 and has witnessed the growth and development of the state. Through his long period of connection with agricultural interests he has contributed in substantial measure to the work of upbuilding and has gained, moreover, an individual success which now permits him to live in honorable retirement. He is a veteran of the Civil war and thus further entitled to mention among the representative and loyal citizens of this locality. His birth occurred in Brooklyn, New York. October 20, 1842, and he is a son of Francis G. and Elizabeth (Lowden) Kerr, the latter of whom died in Clay county, Kansas, several years after her marriage. The father came to Bremer county in the early '50s and settled in Franklin township. He found this a frontier territory with only three families within its borders. A trip to Dubuque, the nearest trading point, required six days with the ox teams then in use and the conditions of living were primitive in the extreme. The father purchased land in the township but lived only a short time after his arrival, dying September 22, 1854.

J.B. Kerr was ten years old when he came with his parents to Franklin township and he grew to manhood amid pioneer conditions. He often made one of a party traveling with ox teams to Dubuque and he once hauled forty bushels of wheat with one yoke of oxen. This he sold for twenty-five cents a bushel and then after paying seven dollars and a half for a barrel of salt and high prices for other commodities found himself two dollars and a half in debt. This wheat had been cut with an Armstrong reaper and threshed in a homemade threshing separator made by an early settler named Richland. It was constructed of wood and had wooden pins instead of nails, not a particle of iron being used in the entire machine.

When Mr. Kerr was nineteen years of age he enlisted in Company B, Fourteenth Iowa Volunteer Infantry, under Captain S.V. Lucas, of Bremer county, and Colonel Shaw, of Anamosa. He served in the Union army for two years and three months and participated in several important engagements. At Tupelo he received a gunshot wound in the left knee and was afterward in a hospital at Memphis, Tennessee, until his regiment was ordered north to be discharged. He walked on crutches for three years thereafter and still suffers from the effects of his wound.

After he returned home Mr. Kerr's father bought from the government forty acres of land in Franklin county, paying a dollar and a quarter an acre, and upon this property Mr. Kerr resided for forty years thereafter, witnessing during this time the development of the county and to a great extent assisting therein. By his able management and practical methods he made the farm one of the most valuable and productive in this locality. After he sold it he engaged in farming in Dayton township until 1902, when he moved into Tripoli, turning his attention to the livery business. In the spring of 1913 he disposed of all of his interests and since that time has lived in retirement.

Mr. Kerr married Miss Eleanor Dibbel and they became the parents of two children: Frank, a resident of Sumner; and Rose, the wife of A. Richland, of Nora Springs. After the death of his first wife Mr. Kerr married Miss Pannie Watts and they have three children: G.W., whose home is in Montana; Zella, the wife of William Krueger, of Tripoli; and Robert, of Bremer county.

Mr. Kerr is a republican in his political beliefs and is a member of O'Brien Post, No. 24, G.A.R., which he aided in organizing. He does all in his power to promote the permanent interests of the community in which he has resided over sixty years and where his influence has always been on the side of advancement and growth.

History of Bremer County, Iowa Vol. II 1914