Harrison County Iowa Genealogy

HISTORY OF HARRISON COUNTY, IOWA, 1891
BIOGRAPHIES
Page 795
JOSEPH W. NILES

Joseph W. NILES, a representative farmer of Raglan Township, residing on section 12, is numbered among the pioneers who found their way to Harrison county in the autumn of 1856. He pre-empted eighty acres of land and commenced improving it, and remained there four years. He entered the land on time, and finally lost the title to it. Upon coming to the county he did not possess a dollar, and went without his breakfast the first morning because he was too proud to make his case known to the pioneers. He rented land for one year, and was drafted into the Union Army in 1864, reported at Council Bluffs and was rejected on account of disability. He then purchased the farm he now occupies, upon which he built a log cabin 12x24 feet, in which the family lived fifteen years, when his present brick house was erected. The brick in his residence he manufactured himself. Upon his premises may be seen a good barn, granary and cribs; well provided with wind-mills, and an orchard of fifty trees. His present farm comprises two-hundred and sixty acres, ninety of which are under the plow, while the balance is in pasture, meadow and timber land, all surrounded by a substantial and good fence. Our subjects experience in Harrison County, may be divided into three eras, the hard winter 1856-57; the War period and the Railroad era.

He was born in Lyndon, Caledonia County, Vt., September 7, 1829. He is the son of Oliver and Sarah NILES, natives of the Green Mountain State, who had a family of eight children, who were born in the following order: Sarah A., Luther A., Joseph W., Lucius C., Clarinda D., and Annette J., deceased; Sophrona and Wilbur F.

He of whom we write this sketch remained in Vermont with his parents until he reached the years of his majority, at which time he went to Massachusetts and for one year followed the bakery business. We next find him working by the month in Philadelphia, but soon after returned to Vermont, and from there came to Pottawattamie County, Iowa, arriving November 1, 1856. From there he came to Harrison County, in company with his brother, and rented land one year of Lucius MERCHANT, in Magnolia Township, he acting as "matron and general housekeeper." Subsequently he took a claim in Raglan Township, as above referred to.

Believing in the Scripture that "it is not good for man to be alone," on October 28, 1858, he was united in marriage to Nancy M. ALEXANDER, daughter of Napoleon and Lydia C. (MARSHALL) ALEXANDER, natives of new Hampshire, whose nine children were as follows: Nancy M., Ann, Josephine, Eliza, deceased; Princetta, Flora, Joseph, deceased; Levi W., and Henry, deceased.

The children of our subject and his wife are as follows: Lydia R., born June 2,1859; Joseph Oliver, September 28, 1861; Lucius C., March 21, 1863; Clara E., April 15, 1865; Mary A., March 3, 1866; William Oscar, August 30, 1870; Albert F., July 30, 1872 and Sarah S., September 3, 1875.

Mr. NILES politically, affiliates with the Farmers' Alliance and Industrial Union, while in religious matters he is identified with the Christian Church.

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