My Genealogy Hound

GEORGE WITTERS, a frugal and industrious farmer in Sherman township, was born in Blair county, Pennsylvania, April 16, 1845. His father, Samuel Witters, a tailor by occupation, was born in Blair county, Pennsylvania, in the year 1816, and died in 1857. His mother, Sophia (Glass) Witters, was a native of Pennsylvania. There were six children in the family. The paternal grandfather, John Witters, also a native of Pennsylvania, was a miller by occupation and lived to be eighty years old. His grandmother died when quite young, and of her little is known beyond the fact that she was a native of Pennsylvania. His maternal grandfather, George Glass, a school-teacher by profession, was born in 1776, and lived to be eighty-four years old. His grandmother Glass was a native of Maryland and lived to be eighty-two years old. Both great-grandfathers served in the Revolutionary war and were farmers by occupation. Beyond this fact nothing is known.

George Witters, our subject, attended school and helped his father on the farm in his boyhood days. He enlisted September 14, 1864, for one year, in Company H, Two Hundred and Eighth Pennsylvania volunteer infantry, 3d division, 9th army corps, took part in three battles, and was discharged June 3, 1865. He resided in Pennsylvania until something over twenty years old, and then came West, locating in Whiteside county, Ill., where he worked at masonry and farmed a place of seventy acres which he had bought. He resided there until the spring of 1878, when he again emigrated West and entered as a homestead in northwest quarter of section 28, township 5, range 15, Kearney county, Nebr., on which he still resides. There were but two houses within a radius of three miles of his place when he came. He built a sod house twelve by twenty feet, in which he resided nine years and then replaced it with the present fine frame dwelling. He had but little to start with when he came — having only three horses and but few implements. The first year he planted forty acres of sod corn, but got little in return for his labor. The second year his crops were destroyed by hail, and thus one evil followed another until he was reduced to such straightened circumstances that it was, indeed, difficult to provide a living for his family. He was compelled to burn buffalo chips and corn stalks, and when he had any wood he was obliged to haul it from Center creek and the Republican river — a distance of eighteen miles. He had to market his produce at Kearney — a distance of thirty miles — and to go to Juniata to mill — about the same distance. In 1880 he lived three months on seven dollars and had nothing to eat but “cotton wood” gravy and bread. He now has his farm under a high state of cultivation and his buildings rank among the best in the township. He was married, in 1864, to Susan A. McPhern, and has been blessed with the birth of six children, as follows — Laura J., born September 28, 1866; Sanford W., born April 4, 1868; Rolla J., born April 11, 1870; Bert, born January 25, 1874; Frederick, born August 21, 1875, and Dora M., born August 21, 1877. Both he and Mrs. Witters are members of the “Garden Plain” United Brethren church, he having been one of the prime movers in its organization and instrumental in having the old sod church built in 1879, which was replaced in 1887 by the present neat frame structure. Politically he is a republican and has held the office of justice of the peace ever since the organization of the township.