My Genealogy Hound

EUGENE HUNTER, of Washington township, Franklin county, Nebr., was born in Ashtabula county, Ohio, 1852. His father, John Hunter, was born in the same county and state in 1822, and remained there until 1860, when he moved to Lafayette county, Wis., where, in 1861, he enlisted in Company E, Eleventh Wisconsin infantry. He was wounded in a battle in Arkansas and was also under Sherman for a time. At the end of his three years’ term of service he accepted a bounty of $900 from a drafted man and was sent to Leavenworth, and thence to Fort Kearney, but when about seven miles from the former place his regiment was ordered to return, and was mustered out at Springfield, Ill. He then returned to his home in Wisconsin, and was awarded a small pension. After a residence in Wisconsin for a number of years he moved to Caldwell county, Mo., and thence to Norton county, Kans. He is a very prosperous farmer; is a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, and of the G. A. R., and is temperate in all things. Alexander Hunter, the father of John Hunter, was a son of an Irish landlord and was born in the north of Ireland. At the age of sixteen he came to America, and settled in New York, where he became a school teacher.

John Hunter, in 1850, married Miss Lydia Moulton, who was born in Maryland, in 1827, and at the age of seventeen moved with her parents to Ashtabula county, Ohio, where she was married. She bore her husband four children, named as follows — Charles, in Inavale, Nebr., where he is engaged in the live stock and hardware business, having settled there in 1872; Eugene, the subject of this sketch; Flora, married to Mr. Van Note, a well-to-do farmer of Hamilton Mo., and Ursula, now Mrs. Baker, of Washington. Mrs. Lydia Hunter died in 1888 at the home of our subject in Riverton. She was an active member of the Methodist Episcopal church, was very quiet, but was a hard worker; was kind to persons in need, was a good nurse and was beloved by all who knew her. The father of Mrs. Lydia Hunter was Alonzo Moulton, a native of Canada, who came to the United States about 1824, and first located in Maine. He was a teacher, and later a contractor and builder; was well informed, was prosperous in his business, and died in 1887, at the age of eighty-four. His widow, Mrs. Priscilla (Prescott) Moulton, a native of Maryland, is still in good health at the age of eighty-one years.

Eugene Hunter removed from his native county to Caldwell county, Mo., with his parents, and in 1879 moved thence to Webster county, Nebr., where he took up a homestead on section 20, township 2, range 12, and this place he still owns. In 1886 he moved with his family to Riverton, Washington township, Franklin county; for the previous three years, however, he had been in business with a brother-in-law as a stock-buyer and agricultural implement dealer, which he still continues, and has, besides, about $4,000 invested in other business. He began his business life at the age of twenty-seven with no capital, and when he came to Nebraska possessed about $500 only. He now owns a quarter section of land, besides his home in town and a number of town lots and his business capital — thus affording another example to the young of what enterprise and industry will accomplish. He is a Master Mason, and, in politics, is a republican, having served under the auspices of that party a second term as supervisor, and also as township clerk and as member of the school board.