My Genealogy Hound

ALEXANDER M. MINIGER. One of Westfield town’s prosperous and contented farmers is the gentleman whose name appears above. He is of German descent; a son of Orville and Mary J. (Riddell) Miniger, and was born in Westfield, Chautauqua county, New York, May 25, 1840. The family is indigenous to the town and county almost since its formation. In 1806 Low Miniger, the paternal grandfather of Alexander M., bought a tract in section 26, and a year later, a part of section 18 from John McMahan, who had secured it from the Holland Land company. Previous to the first date mentioned, Mr. Miniger had lived about two years at Fredonia. This would place his arrival from Pennsylvania at about 1804, which is believed to be correct. He served bravely with the American army in the war of 1812, and died when eighty-four years of age, being a whig in politics. When Westfield town was formed he was elected the first overseer of the poor and one of the fence viewers, a committee of three to pass upon the quality of a fence in case of damages by a stock.

Orville Miniger, the father of our subject, was born in this town in 1813 and is now living in Ripley, aged seventy-eight years. He has always been a farmer, in which avocation he is still employed, and his farm is characterized by the neatness of all its surroundings. He is a pushing, energetic man and pushes the seasons instead of letting them push him in his farm work. Mr. Miniger is a member of the Free and Accepted Masons, and also belongs to the Republican party. Like many of the best thinking minds of this enlightened day, he is strongly in favor of the temperance movement and hopes to live to see it successful. He married Mary J. Riddell, who still comforts his advancing years and is in her seventy-sixth year. She is a member of the Presbyterian church. They reared a family of several children.

Alexander M. Miniger was reared on the farm and has spent his life in tilling the soil. His education was acquired in the public schools of Westfield. He is now the owner of forty-four acres of well-kept land, lying two and a quarter miles west of Westfield, on the Buffalo road, where he devotes considerable attention to grape culture — a fine vineyard in excellent cultivation being part of his farm.

In 1867 he married Martha A. Webster, a daughter of Warren Webster, of Gowanda, Cattaraugus county, New York. They have one son and a daughter — George W., aged twenty, and Martha E., who was born in 1876. Mr. Miniger is a republican politically and is one of the town’s most enterprising men.