My Genealogy Hound

GEORGE MEISNER. If in this volume of recorded personal achievements space should be apportioned among its several subjects according to the degree of their success, George Meisner, of the town of Shelton, whose part in the settlement and development of his adopted county this article commemorates, would demand an amount of attention at our hands which we fear his usually modest nature would hardly approve of. As Mr. Meisner has reached the position he now occupies by starting, in all his undertakings, at the very beginning of them, and proceeding, step by step, in an even, steady and orderly way, we shall imitate his example, at least to some extent, in the unfolding of his record by beginning with some facts which will be worth the recording concerning his earlier years and come down with the record to the present time.

He was born in the province of Bavaria, Germany, March 19, 1845, When three years of age, he came with his parents to this country, locating in Troy, N. Y. Here his father went into business and lived till 1853, when, on account of a disastrous fire, he lost all he had. Deciding, then, to come West, he moved to Iowa and settled in Tama county, going onto a farm and beginning life anew. There the earlier years of the subject of this sketch were spent, and it is no disparagement to the management of his father nor any discredit to Mr. Meisner himself to say that those years witnessed a series of long, hard struggles in the Meisner household. Those struggles did not consist alone in the difficult undertaking of making a start in a comparatively new country unsurrounded by the helps and conveniences found in the East; they were struggles, oftentimes, for bread and butter, with nothing with which to keep “the wolf from the door” save the willing hands and stout hearts of father, mother and children. Mr. Meisner told, in an amusing way, to the writer of this sketch, of the time when, as a lad, he was sent on the prairie with the only yoke of cattle to graze, and how, a storm coming up, they got away from him, drifted off and were lost, thus losing to the family the last hoof they had. A dozen yoke might be cut out of the fourteen or fifteen hundred head which he now owns and he would never miss them. Not so then, however. Those cattle were a sore loss. It was during those years that Mr. Meisner learned something of the value of money, and something also of the way to make it. It was then that he formed the habits of industry and economy which have been the chief sources of his success since. There was no idling around the Meisner homestead. There was no wasting either of energy or material. Everything was turned to account. Everything was made to pay. Such industry and management must of necessity win. The Meisners could not always remain in straightened circumstances. Each year hrought an improvement in their worldly affairs, and as the children grew up and added their aid to that of their parents the progress became more rapid. Old neighbors of Mr. Meisner, who lived by him in Tama county, state that the sons were regarded as good farmers when they were boys. Mr. Meisner himself was one of the largest farmers in his county before he was twenty-one years old. An instance showing this is told by the old soldiers who went from Tama county and who are now residents of this, Buffalo county. When the call was made for volunteers Mr. Meisner’s father, elder brother and brother-in-law volunteered and were accepted. Mr. Meisner, then just turned into his sixteenth year, offered himself at the first call and at each succeeding call, making five efforts to get into the service; but the committee of ladies to whom was delegated the authority to select those who should go, struck Mr. Meisner’s name from the list each time, and gave their reason that he was the best farmer in the county and he could be better spared from the army than he could from home — which opinion was concurred in by all who knew the facts.

Mr. Meisner has made money from the beginning of his career and he was in good circumstances when he came to Nebraska. In fact he owned over four hundred acres of good land in Tama, county, Iowa, which he had well improved and well stocked and which was yielding a handsome revenue. But he wished to do better and he believed Nebraska was the place to do it. He decided to try it at any rate. He came to the state first in the fall of 1870 and bought a section of land in Buffalo county about two miles north of the present town of Shelton. He returned to Iowa, sold out, and in company with his father (Casper Meisner), T. J. Taylor, William Wallace and Thomas Carson, moved out in the spring of 1871 and settled. The tract of land which he bought was section 25, township 10, range 13 west. He was entitled to a homestead of 80 acres and he filed on that amount in section 24, where he located and began his career as a Nebraska farmer. His first years here were much like those of the average settler, except that they were marked by greater activity and closer management. He made no very lasting improvements on his homestead. He had no urgent need for any at that time. He was still a single man and he could afford to live in the primitive dug-out. After about six years spent in this way he built a combination barn and granary on a place which he had bought in the meantime, being the one where he now lives, got married and moved in, occupying his granary until he could erect a dwelling. He began his present residence in May, 1878, and soon after moved into it, and here he has continued to live since, excepting about three years of residence in the town of Shelton. Mr. Meisner has been farming and stock-raising since the day he came into the county, and no man has ever been in Buffalo county and discussed the conditions of agriculture there and the chances of success at farming, who has not heard of George Meisner. He has been a signal success and is universally pointed to as such. The most of his accumulations have been made since settling in this county, although, as already stated, he had a reasonably good start. He now owns between twenty-six and twenty-seven hundred acres of land lying in the famous Wood River valley at its junction with the Platte valley, nearly every foot of which is bringing in a revenue in some shape. This land lies in Buffalo and Hall counties and most of it in the immediate vicinity of the town of Shelton. Mr. Meisner is a large stock dealer, handling from fourteen to fifteen hundred head of cattle all the time. He is constantly buying, feeding and shipping. In the town of Shelton, he owns eight business buildings, these comprising some of the handsomest brick blocks in the place. He built the Opera House and the First National Bank block, both of which are a credit to the town and a monument to his liberality and public spirit. Besides these he owns something like a dozen residences, large and small, in the town. Mr. Meisner began to handle bank stock some years ago, before Shelton was large enough to support a banking institution. He then did his banking at Kearney. Later, however, he decided to establish a bank for himself, and in 1884 he started a private bank at Shelton with a capital of $35,000. This answered the purpose for which it was organized and ran successfully until June, 1889, when it was re-organized as a national bank, with a paid-up capital of $50,000, the charter members being George Meisner, J. H. Robbins, H. J. Robbins, M. G. Lee, Henry Fieldgrove and George Smith. Mr. Meisner was elected president, H. J. Robbins vice-president, and A. H. Sterrett cashier. These constitute the present working force of the bank, with the addition of F. H. More, assistant cashier. The First is the only national bank in Shelton. Although not the largest, it is, nevertheless, one of the most prosperous banks in the county. It owes much of its success to the wise counsel and judicious management of its efficient chief executive, and not a little also to the solidity of his reputation as a financier.

Let us turn again for a moment before closing this sketch to Mr. Meisner’s domestic life and record some facts which, if they may not seem of the utmost importance to the general reader, will, nevertheless, be of absorbing interest to the little ones now around him who will in after years read this record.

When Mr. Meisner’s father, Casper Meisner, enlisted in the army in the late war, he entered as a member of company C, Tenth Iowa infantry. He was with his regiment through its entire service and took his part in every battle it fought and did a soldier’s duty faithfully. When the war was over he returned to his home in Tama county, Iowa, and lived there till he came to Nebraska. He farmed for some years in Buffalo county, and then went into the mercantile business in Shelton, at which he continued successfully till his death, in March, 1879, in the sixty-seventh year of his age. He was a man of indomitable energy, and a hard worker all his life. Having met with some financial reverses he knew the value of a dollar, and thus learned to manage his affairs with care and discretion. He was devotedly attached to his family, and it may be said that the latter part of his life he lived chiefly for them. He gave his children the best of counsel, and he enforced all his teachings with a good personal example in himself.

George Meisner’s mother died in 1864, while the family was yet all together in Iowa. She was a good type of her race and sex, being an industrious, frugal housewife, and passionately fond of her children. Mr. Meisner is the youngest of three children, the eldest being a sister, Mary, now wife of Frederick Shaffer, living near Alburn, Iowa, and John, of Toledo, Tama county, Iowa. Both of these are in prosperous circumstances, having splendid homes and plenty around them, and themselves the heads of families.

In his own married life Mr. Meisner has passed through the sunshine and the shadows. He married October 3, 1877, his choice falling on a neighbor girl whom he had known for several years. Miss Rachel Fieldgrove, daughter of Hon. Henry Fieldgrove, an eminent and respectable citizen of Buffalo county. For more than twelve years Mr. Meisner’s wife bore him the cherished companionship which every true man seeks in marriage, sharing with him his joys and lightening for him his burdens, not only by the kind and generous offices which every true wife is supposed to perform, but by extending her help and sympathies beyond a wife’s usual sphere, entering actively into all his business matters and rendering him most practical and efficient aid. After a lingering illness of some weeks, during which her condition brought alternate hopes and fears, the shadow of the grim spectre finally crossed the threshold and her spirit passed away, her eyes closing for the last time upon the light of this world November 9, 1889. Besides her husband, four little girls survive her — Dora, Nora, Cora and Lulie. Around these now cluster the chief interest of Mr. Meisner’s life. For these only does he live.