Efnor, Oscar E.

EFNOR, MUDGET, MCGREAGOR, BELL, BALIS, MORBERLY, FITTRO, ERVIN

Posted By: Volunteer Transcriber
Date: 8/22/2009 at 13:31:51

Efnor, Oscar E.

For many years Oscar E. Efnor was regarded as one of the leading agriculturists and stock raisers of the vicinity of Reasnor, Jasper County, and he is now living in honorable retirement in Newton after an eminently active, successful and honorable career, maintaining a home that is comfortable, substantial and pleasant in all its appointments and which is regarded as a place of generous hospitality and good cheer by the host of warm friends which his genial disposition and honest relations with his fellow men have won.

Mr. Efnor was born in Fulton County, Illinois, April 9, 1857. He is the son of Oron and Frances (Mudget) Efnor, the father a native of Illinois and the mother of New York. The elder Efnor grew to maturity and was educated in his native state, coming to Iowa in the early fifties, locating among the pioneers in Jasper County, but a few years later he removed to Kansas where he died in 1861, while yet a young man. His wife, who survived him, married again, and is still living in Jasper County. Three children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Oron Efnor, two of whom are living, besides the subject, the other being Mrs. Nettie McGreagor, of Jasper County.

Oscar E. Efnor received a common school education and was reared on a farm, in fact, he has made farming his chief life work and he has been rewarded with a definite and very satisfactory reward, living near Reasnor, this County, most of the time, where he has a valuable, desirable, well-improved and attractive farm of two hundred and eighty acres, which he managed so skillfully from year to year as to bring him in a very substantial competence, so that he retired from active work two years ago, moving to Newton, where, as already stated, he has a fine home on North Farmer street. He has always been a lover of good horses and is regarded as one of the best judges of horses in the County, and he has always kept some good ones on his place, also other varieties of livestock. He is still interested in several large draft horses.

Mr. Efnor was married first to Lita Bell in 1882, and to this union five children were born: Maude died when twenty-one years of age; Grace is the wife of Robert Balis, of Green City, Missouri; Guy is farming in Jasper County; Earl is also farming in this County; Claud is a student in the Newton high school.

The mother of these children passed to her rest in 1895, and on December 16, 1908, Mr. Efnor was united in marriage with Mrs. Lillie M. (Ervin) Morberly, to which union there has been no issue. She is the daughter of William and Elsira (Fittro) Ervin. She was born in Highland County, Ohio, and her parents brought her to Iowa when she was fourteen years of age, and this family soon became leaders in their community, well known and highly respected. Mr. Ervin was a farmer and he was at one time overseer of the poor farm in Jasper County for a period of eight years, during which time he performed his duties in a manner that stamped him as a man of ability and worthy of every trust and confidence.

Mr. and Mrs. Efnor are members and liberal supporters of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and fraternally he belongs to the Newton Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons and the Woodmen of the World; Mrs. Efnor is a member of the Rebekah Lodge No. 227 and the Eastern. Star Chapter No. 100. Politically, Mr. Efnor is a Republican, and he has always supported such measures as made for the general progress of his County. Past and Present of Jasper County Iowa B. F. Bowden & Company, Indianapolis, IN, 1912 Page 1003.