My Genealogy Hound

I. D. LaBARRE, the first man who ever sold a dollar’s worth of goods in the town of Gibbon, is still a resident of that place and is yet engaged in mercantile business there. He settled on the present town site of Gibbon on April 7, 1871, being a member of the Soldiers’ Free Homestead Temperance Colony, by which the village of Gibbon and most of Gibbon township was settled. Most of the members of this colony, as appears in the history thereof, were from Ohio, but it was recruited by volunteers from other states who fell in at different points, there being in all representatives of more than twenty states. Mr. LaBarre came from New York, of which state he is a native. He is a descendant of two old York state families, the advent of whose ancestors on this continent runs back into the mists of the past, and he is of French extraction and Huguenot stock on both sides. The family name is variously spelled and abbreviated, appearing as La Bar, De LaBar, LaBarre and LaBaire, and representatives of the name are now found in many parts of the United States, especially scattered over the states of New York, Pennsylvania and western states. Mr. LaBarre’s father, grandfather and great grandfather were natives of York state, and it is highly probable that his first ancestors on American soil were as many as four or five generations removed from himself. The LaBarres, DuBoises, LeFevers and Beviers were early settled families of New York, as appears from the mention of their names in connection with the first settlement of the French Protestant refugees there. Whether his people belonged to the Ulster County colony or the Staten Island colony is not known, but in either case his ancestry would run back to the early part of the seventeenth century, as these colonies were settled about the same time the colony at Jamestown was.

I. D. LaBarre is the second of seven children born to John and Rosetta (Walker) LaBarre and first saw light August 4, 1834, in Hartford, Washington county, N. Y. He was reared in Washington and Essex counties, which join, and was brought up as a sailor on Lake Champlain and Hudson river and off the coast of New York. He married in January, 1856, Miss Mary W., a daughter of Minus Winter, his wife having been born and reared in the same community with himself and being like himself a descendant of old settlers of the northern part of York state. He engaged in business in his native county and in Essex, and was so engaged when he decided to move west. The circumstances which led to his coming to Nebraska were such as have happened to many others and doubtless have been given to print many times before. He became dissatisfied with the over-crowded condition of things in his own state and wanted to get into a new country, where opportunities for getting on in the world were better than they were where he was. He cut loose from friends, relatives and business connections in the spring of 1871, and started west, not knowing at that time where he would cast his lot. He left Washington county in company with Dr. I. P. George, who will be remembered by all the old settlers, and as above stated fell in with the Old Soldiers’ Homestead Colony and became one of the founders of the town of Gibbon, Buffalo county. Mr. LaBarre’s first experience as the first merchant of Gibbon was sufficiently novel to satisfy the taste of any lover of pioneer methods. He opened his first stock of goods in a boxcar, on a part of the train which was side-tracked where Gibbon now stands and used by the colonists until houses were erected, and this stock of goods he brought with him and began selling the day after his arrival. As soon as the town site was located he secured a lot and built a store house and moved in, becoming one of the fixtures of the place. This lot adjoins the one on the west of that on which his store now stands. Business, never very prosperous in the early days, grew distressingly dull after the first year or two. The men who settled in Gibbon and vicinity, like the early settlers of all new countries, were men of brawn and brain, but not men of means. They came west to better their condition. Their wants were few and their ability to buy limited. In the early days, at least, the town was not a place where small tradesmen could soon bloom out as merchant princes. The tradesman shared the lot that fell to the average citizen. In many instances he fared worse. When the hard years came, the years when the grasshoppers and drouth spread suffering over the land, the shopkeeper found it as difficult to maintain his foothold and keep starvation from his door as did the poor homesteader. Yielding to the pressure of hard times Mr. LaBarre went out of business in 1874, and remained out till the return of good crops brought a revival of trade. With the exception of this period of general distress, when all of the old settlers had to resort to one makeshift and another to live, hardly anyone remaining at his accustomed business, Mr. LaBarre has been engaged actively in the mercantile business in Gibbon since the date of the founding of the colony in 1871 to the present time. His is the oldest establishment of the kind in the place and he is in point of residence Gibbon’s first merchant. He has seen all the changes which have marked the growth and development of the town and vicinity — has seen a country which twenty years ago was one unending stretch of prairie rapidly settled up with a thrifty class of citizens and become dotted over with peaceful and happy homes. He has seen the spot where the pioneers of Buffalo county first pitched their tents grow from a train of box cars to a prosperous town of several hundred people, having all the conveniences and comforts of an eastern village, and he has seen many of the first settlers, whose earlier years on the plains were marked by a prolonged and arduous struggle for bread and butter, become well-to-do citizens, owning broad acres, well improved and furnished with commodious and elegant buildings. Thousands of dollars’ worth of goods have been brought to Gibbon, sold and consumed, since Mr. LaBarre sold his first article of merchandise from a box car in 1871. Store buildings have been erected by the score and merchants have come and gone, many of whom are not now remembered. Through all the changing years and all the varying seasons, except only the grasshopper period, the subject of this sketch has remained practically on the spot where he built his first building and has continued to supply the local trade with whatever was wanted in his line.

Mr. LaBarre, although an old-timer, is not a type of the Western rustlers in business such as have passed into common fame and newspaper notoriety. He is destitute of the grasping, money-getting spirit characteristic of the average Westerner. The restlessness, scheming, worry and annoyance that come of that spirit he is singularly exempt from. He believes to the fullest extent in the maxim, “Live and let live.” He believes in accumulating by natural but not by artificial means. As a merchant he sells to supply demand, but does not seek to create a demand by clap-trap advertising, or other means, that he may supply it. For this spirit of fairness, his equanimity and settled habits, he is largely indebted to heredity. The people from whom he is descended were distinguished for their liberality, their largeness of thought and fairness in dealing; for their settled convictions, the evenness of their temper and the general serenity of their lives. Strongly religious and shockingly persecuted for religion’s sake, they learned to deal with others in a spirit of charity unequalled by any other sect. They exemplified in their daily lives in a truly admirable manner the wholesomeness of the maxim, “Live and let live.”

It is hardly necessary to say that Mr. LaBarre has never mixed in politics. He has no taste for the wranglings of public life. He held the position of postmaster at Gibbon during Grant’s administration — the only position of a public nature he has ever filled. He is a republican in politics and a strong believer in the teachings of his party. In the matter of religion, he adheres to the doctrines of his fathers, being a member of the Methodist Episcopal church.

Mr. LaBarre has but one child, a daughter grown and married — Mrs. Cora LaBarre White, wife of Alva White, of Gibbon.

Socially, Mr. LaBarre and his family are among the foremost of the community.