My Genealogy Hound

WALTER J. STEVEN. The subject of this sketch bears the distinction of being not only one of the first settlers of the locality where he lives, but also one of the most successful and influential citizens of his community. He has been a resident of Buffalo county since 1871, coming to the county when a comparatively young man and casting his fortunes with those of his adopted county at that date and remaining steadfastly by his choice since, passing through the grasshopper scourges, the dry years and all the hard times incident thereto. He has seen the country at its best and its worst, and probably knows as much about the ways and means of getting on amid the privations and hardships of frontier life as any man of his years and opportunities for observation and experience. Mr. Steven comes of the stock of which pioneers are made, being a Canadian by birth and of Scotch ancestry. He retains in his general make-up many of the most signal qualities of his people. That thrift, industry, strong personal energy, tenacity of purpose and marked endurance, all of which have been compressed into the phrase, “as sturdy as a Scot,” he possesses, and to these he is indebted for the success he has attained. Mr. Steven is a brother of James Steven, of Shelton, a sketch of whom appears in this work, and in which will be found the facts concerning their ancestral history. He is the third of a family of eight children, was born near Ottawa, Canada, April 1, 1848, and reared in his native place, receiving a good common-school education and being trained to the habits of industry and usefulness common to farm life. He resided at his birthplace near Ottawa till 1869, when, filled with a desire to see the world and to select a place where he might locate and grow up with his surroundings, he came to the United States, and, traveling for some months in the west and northwest, finally settled on Nebraska as his permanent home and located, in 1871, in Buffalo county, buying one hundred and sixty acres of land in Sharon township, four and a half miles northwest of the town of Shelton, where he settled, and, being then unmarried, began the bachelor life of the West. His experience during the first few years of his residence was such as fell to the lot of all the old settlers. Hard work, great privations and many discouraging adversities made up the daily, monthly and yearly course of life. He pulled patiently and courageously through all those trying times, improving his place and adding by purchase from time to time to his original holdings, until he now owns eight hundred and eighty acres of good land, a large part of which be has in cultivation. He continues to reside on his old homestead where he first settled, having transformed it from a claim on the open prairie into a pleasant, prosperous home. To the casual observer, this transformation seems simple and natural enough, but it represents a world of experience which the casual observer knows not of. Such a place serves as a milestone on the highway to mark the progress of the country in its advance from savagery to civilization; it serves to show the capabilities of the race; it serves as an everlasting memorial of the achievements of the sturdy pioneers who opened this country to settlement; and more than all does it show the pluck, energy and endurance of the man who, moving onto it while its virgin soil was yet marked only by the track of the buffalo, reclaimed it from nature, and after numerous disastrous experiments and unrecorded failures, has finally made of it a peaceful, happy home.

In addition to being identified with the best interests of his locality as a farmer, Mr. Steven has filled the usual number of local offices, having been active in promoting the school interests of his district and serving his township as supervisor. In 1874 he married, selecting as a life companion Miss Annie M. Henninger, a daughter of one of Buffalo county’s best and most popular citizens, Solomon F. Henninger, a sketch of whom appears in this work. Mrs. Steven was born in Warren county, Ohio, and was mainly reared there, coming to Nebraska with her parents in 1872. She is a lady eminently qualified to bear her husband the companionship which he sought with her hand, possessing the strong sense and many domestic virtues for which her race and sex are distinguished. Mr. and Mrs. Steven are the parents of two children — LeAnna and Edna. They have a pleasant home, and within its walls friend and stranger alike are welcome, for they both possess, in addition to their many other good qualities of head and heart, that greatest of all domestic virtues — genuine, unstinted hospitality.