My Genealogy Hound

E. J. PEASE, proprietor of the “Pioneer Lumber Yard” at Oxford, Furnas county, is a native of the town of Fairfax, Franklin county, Vt., and was born November 8, 1846. He is a descendant of two old New England families, being of English extraction on his father’s side and of Scotch-Irish on his mother’s. His father’s people were among the early settled families of Connecticut, and there are now traced to the first ancestor who came to this country over 6,000 descendants, residents of America. His mother’s people were among the first settlers of Vermont. His father, Joel H. Pease, was born in the town of Johnson, Lamoille county, Vt., was reared, always lived and died there. He established the first butcher market in the place and was well known throughout the surrounding country as an energetic business man of extensive interests. He died July 27, 1878, in his sixty-sixth year. His parents came from Stonington, Conn. Mr. Pease’s mother bore the maiden name of Lucinda Murphy, and she was a native of the town of Swanton, Franklin county, Vt.

The subject of this sketch was reared in his native place, and, in accordance with the New England idea of training the young, he received a good common-school education in the village schools where he was brought up. He was placed in a drug-store when a lad for the purpose of learning the business of an apothecary, and having mastered the arts of the calling he entered on the active duties of life on reaching his majority as a druggist. He followed the business for fifteen years in the towns of Cambridge and Fairfax, Franklin county, applying himself so industriously and so closely that his health gave way at the end of that time and he was compelled to seek a change of locality and calling. He decided to move West, and, closing out his interests in the fall of 1878, he came to Nebraska, reaching Bloomington, then the terminus of the Burlington and Missouri River railroad, on the sixth day of December, that year. He selected a location further up the valley on the east line of Furnas county, buying a tract of railroad land, part of which is now comprised within the thriving little town of Oxford. Mr. Pease’s purchase consisted of two hundred and forty acres, all raw land, but susceptible of cultivation. There he pitched his tent and began the serious and, to him, new and untried duties of farm life. It would make too long a story to tell all of his ups and downs during the first years of his residence in the West. The life of the pioneer, never too easy even to those inured somewhat to its hardships, was peculiarly trying to him. He had had no previous training as a farmer; he was launched at once into a calling, concerning which he had the most limited practical knowledge, and that, too, in a remote community of the West, unsurrounded by any of the helps and conveniences common in the older communities of the East. To say that his eyes turned longingly many times to his old home in “the Green mountains” of Vermont and that he wished himself again amid the scenes of his childhood and surrounded by the friends of his youth, would only be stating what any one might readily guess he did as often as he looked across the lone and cheerless prairies, swept by the howling winds of winter or scorched by the burning rays of the summer’s sun. Yet he never seriously entertained the idea during all that time of returning to the East. He came West to stay and he steadily stood by his resolution. He continued at farming, and as he grew in practical experience of farm life the world, as he says, “seemed to swing around more his way,” and he got on better each succeeding year. With the advent of the Burlington & Missouri River railroad, which crossed the Furnas and Harlan county line in February, 1880, the outlook became more hopeful, immigration increased, real estate rose in value and avenues for business pursuits began to open up. The town of Oxford was laid out on a portion of land belonging to E. J. Pease’s farm, the balance belonging to the farm of J. G. Struber, and a thriving business place at once sprang into existence. At this time a large portion of the town is on his original purchase, and the land which he was the first to seam with a furrow is dotted over with comfortable homes and spacious grounds tastily arranged and carefully kept. The change has been marked, rapid and, to one accustomed to the staid Eastern ways of doing things, wonderful. Through these changes, however, Mr. Pease has passed, gliding easily through them from year to year, and having assisted in effecting many of them himself. Being engrossed with them in no small degree, he can not realize fully what has taken place, and the time seems, as he says, only a very few years. Retaining his farming interests at all times Mr. Pease has, in addition thereto, been variously engaged for the last ten years. He was with the Burlington & Missouri River Land Company in the capacity of topographical surveyor. Learning telegraphy, he subsequently took a position with the Burlington & Missouri Railroad as assistant station agent at Oxford. Then in September, 1882, he became the agent for the Frees & Hocknell Lumber Company and had charge of their interests at Oxford and remained in this capacity till January, 1887. At that date he bought out his employer’s stock, fixtures and good will, since which time he has owned and operated the yard himself, being the pioneer lumber merchant of the town of Oxford. Mr. Pease’s career has been that of a business man strictly. He has never aspired to any public position. While he is a jolly, good fellow, has a host of friends and might, with considerable show of success, ask public office, he has preferred the quiet pursuits of private life, devoting his time and attention to his own personal affairs. He is largely interested in the town of Oxford and takes an active part in matters of general concern in connection with his town and community, having an encouraging word for any deserving enterprise and giving liberally of his means for any industry looking to the upbuilding of the place.

Mr. Pease has a pleasant home and no man on earth loves his home better than he does. He married in his native county in Vermont on December 23, 1871, the lady whom he selected to share his fortunes through life being a neighbor girl whom he had known many years. Miss Clara P. Danforth, a native of Franklin county, a daughter of Porter Danforth and a descendant of an old and honorable family of the “Green Mountain State.” Mrs. Pease is one of a family of nine girls, and, like her husband, the pioneer of her family. Her sisters with but one exception all live within a few miles of where they were born and reared. If the men who came to this state at an early day and remained heroically through all the hardships and privations of pioneer life are to be remembered with biographical notices in connection with the history of their adopted counties, what place should be assigned to the heroic women who, forsaking the homes of their childhood and the association of their younger years, the peace and comfort to which they were reared, have come to the wild and rugged West, to brave the dangers and disappointments of pioneer life? They should not only be remembered in the history of the localities which they have helped to make blossom as the rose, but they should and will live in the memories of a free, happy and grateful people, for whom they, by their untiring industry, perseverance and courageous self-denial, have made possible what we now see and may still hope to see in this proud and prosperous commonwealth.