Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1891
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 832
DANIEL KEMMISH

Daniel KEMMISH, whose history in Harrison County dates from October, 1865, when he came from Council Bluffs to these parts, with his parents, will form the subject of this biographical notice.

By nationality, Mr. KEMMISH, was an Englishman, having been born at Portsmouth, July 15, 1848. He is the seventh child of a family of eleven children, and when he was five years of age his parents emigrated to the United States, landing at New Orleans and thence up the Mississippi River to Keokuk, Iowa, from which point they started for Utah Territory by ox-teams, crossing the Great American Deseret, which at that time was the home of the Indian and the prairie dog. They remained in Salt Lake City three years and then removed to a poiint ninety miles south of Salt Lake and remained until 1859, and then returned to St. Joseph, MO, halted a few months and then came to Fremoent County, Iowa, where they rented a farm for two years. We next find the family at Pacific City, Mills County, Iowa, and later at a point five miles east of Council Bluffs, where in 1862 they bought forty acres of land; they remained on this only a short time, after which they moved into Council Bluffs and operated the pioneer hotel known as "The Farmers' Inn" and there remained until about three months before coming to Harrison County.

Mr. KEMMISH was united in marriage, April 2, 1870, in Pottawattamie County, to Nettie ENIEX, a native of Ohio, born August 16, 1853, daughter of Jerry and Francais (DENNY) ENIEX, and she is the youngest of a family of three children. Her parents came to Pottawattamie County in 1867. Mr. And Mrs. KEMMISH are the parents of the following children, Frances E., Katie M., Jerry C., Fourth M., Lee W., Blanche, Missie, and one who died in infancy.

In his political belief our subject is a supporter of the Republican party. Our subject started in life on his own account at the age of fourteen years, going to Denver, Colorado. He hauled lumber to rebuild Julesburg in 1865 and remained in that country about nine months, returned to Iowa but soon went back to the West, and was snowed in during the winter of 1866. In January he started back on foot in company with twenty others. He had been engaged at ox-team freighting in the West, but upon his return worked in the brickyard in Council Bluffs, continuing that until the date of his marriage, when he came to Harrison County to make a permanent home. He has always been a hard worker and earned, as well as lost, large sums of money. In one instance he lost $900 of wages, earned as freighting across the plains. He has had fully his share of frontier hardships, crossing the plains as he did at that early day, and not unfrequently lying all night behind a pile of ox yokes, watching for the red men. His life's story reads like a romance, but he knows full well its reality, and now seated by his fireside he may relate to his children these early day experiences, by which they may profit.

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