Miles, George L.

MILES

Posted By: Joyce Hickman (email)
Date: 11/14/2008 at 16:13:00

George L. Miles

(From the 1883 History of Pottawattamie County, Iowa, by J. H. Keatley, p.263, Wright Twp.)
George L. Miles, farmer, P. O. Lewis, Cass County, was born in Steuben County, N. Y., April 15, 1857. He is the son of William and Nancy E. (Parker) Miles, both natives of Steuben County, N. Y., he born in 1822 and she in 1829. His father has been engaged in the lumber business most of his life, part of the time in New York, and latterly in Princeton, Bureau Co., Ill., to which place he removed in 1866. Up to the last few years, he dealt extensively in lumber and lands in Michigan. He has now retired from active life, and is still living in Princeton, Ill. The mother of our subject is also living. Our subject's advantages for an education were good. He graduated from the Princeton (Ill.) High School in 1875. The following yaer, he came to this county to overse his father's farm, and ran it in his father's interest up to 1881, since which time he and his brother have been operating it for themselves. Our subject owns 200 acres of land in Section 11, and with his brother, has the management of 1,400 acres in Sections, 11, 14 and 15, Township 75, Range 38. Their specialty is fine stock, which includes Cotswold sheep, Poland-China hogs, Short-Horn cattle, and the Percheron bree of Norman horses. They own the pure-breen Norman stallion Marquette, as it is their intention to breed draft horses also. Our subject was married, in Princeton, Ill., in May, 1881, to Flora M. Priestly, born in Princeton July 25, 1858. Her father is C. M. Priestly, a native of Cambria County, penn. he once owned the land on which Johnstown, Penn., is now located. He has been in the lumber business most of his life, and is now engaged in the hadrware business in Princeton, Ill. Mrs. Miles' mother was a Miss Crissy, a native of Ohio. She died about 1864. Our subject's parents had seven children - George L., Lucius P., William L., Edwin, James, Hattie M. (Mrs. Beach), and Louisa. Our subject is a member of the I. O. O. F., and in politics is a Republican. The following is the pedigree of Marquette as officially recorded: "Marquette (1657), gray, foaled 1880; got by Valiant (473), dam Julie (568), by Malbranche (293); second dam Jeanne (560), bread by W. H. Winter, Princeton, Ill., and sold by him, in the spring of 1882, to George L. Miles and Lewis Jones." It is claimed that Marquette is the only pure-breed Norman stallion in this section of the State.