Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1891
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 381
SAMUEL S. BEEM

Samuel S. BEEM, an enterprising farmer, who now resides on section 35, of Union Township, has been a resident of Harrison County since 1885. He came in the spring of that year, and paid cash rent for land in Union Township, for two years, giving a share the third year, at the end of which time he bought the land he now occupies. This farm consists of eighty acres, which was under cultivation, at the time he bought; and the price paid was $25 per acre.

Mr. BEEM is a son of the "Hawkeye State" born in Madison County, Iowa, June 1, 1861, which was the first year of the great Civil War, and his posterity can date their father's birth from that event in American history, should all family records be destroyed. Our subject is the son of Michael and Margaret BEEM, natives of Jackson County, Ind., who reared a family of eleven children, of whom our subject was the sixth child. The children were as follows -- Erasmus N., Elizabeth A., William P., deceased; John L., Louis C., Samuel S., Jefferson L., William W., George P., Arnetta B. and Margaret E.

The parents with their entire family moved to Kansas, in the autumn of 1878.

Our subject remained at home until eighteen years of age, and then returned from Kansas to his native State (from which it is hard to wean a man) and commenced working out by the month, on a farm. He worked for others for two years, and then rented land in Pottawattamie County, for three years, after which he came to Harrison County.

March 6, 1887, Mr. BEEM took to himself a wife, in the person of Annie M. KEMMISH, daughter of Peter C. and Susan KEMMISH, who had seven children, of whom our subject's wife was the second. The children were Charles W., Annie M., James F., Nathan A., Curtis O., George H., deceased and Sada B. The KEMMISH family were natives of England.

Our subject and his wife are the parents of two children -- Charles W., born May 15, 1888 and Marvin S., September 29, 1890.

Politically, our subject is identified with the People's party.

Mr. BEEM is a self-made man, and now while surrounded with the comforts of home, with his intelligent family around him, he can relate to his children, how that when he left "Bleeding Kansas," he had but $2 in his pocket and was compelled to walk and beat his way on the railroad back to Iowa, arriving at Council Bluffs with twenty-five cents in his pocket.

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