My Genealogy Hound

JABEZ COBELDICK, an early settler and an honored and much respected citizen of Prairie Dog township, Harlan county, Nebr., was born in England, June 10, 1816, and is the son of Richard Cobeldick, also a native of England and a shipwright in Her Majesty’s ship yards. His mother, Betsie (Sloggett) Cobeldick, was born in England and lived and died in her native country. Our subject spent his early life at home, and up to the twenty-first year of his life attended school and served an apprenticeship under his father at the trade of shipwright. Arriving at his majority and being of a somewhat romantic turn of mind, and desiring to see more of the world than his native land, he set sail in 1838, for Australia. Arriving there he soon found employment at his trade and continued working and viewing the country for fifteen months, when he took passage by steamer, and, after a voyage lasting some days, concluded to land at Van Dieman’s Land, where he worked nine months at his trade of shipbuilder. His next exploit was as carpenter on board a whale ship, bound for the China Seas. The voyage was a very successful one and lasted for three years and afforded him a great opportunity, which he took advantage of, to study the customs and manners of foreign nations. He next landed at Swan river, in western Australia, where he built a schooner and repaired a broken ship, spending five years there, and finally returned to England in the ship he had repaired. After a sojourn in his native country of six months’ duration, he embarked for America, landing in this country in December of 1848. He first located in Cincinnati, but remained there only a short time, finally settling permanently at Andalusia, Ill., where for nearly twenty years he ran a warehouse and bought and sold grain. Although well up in years at this time, he decided to come West and settle on the frontier and grow up with the country, so to speak. He accordingly did so, landing in Harlan county, Nebr., February 28, 1872. He at once homesteaded a claim of one hundred and sixty acres, lying half in section 25 and half in section 26. He was among the earliest settlers, there being a few further up the creek. The country presented a dreary appearance and looked anything but inviting to one who had almost circumnavigated the globe and lived in some of the most densely populated and most productive districts in the world. Wild buffalo were roaming over the unbroken prairie in herds of thousands, and deer, elk and antelope were almost daily seen along the creeks and within the draws of the neighboring hills. His success at farming, like that of every other settler in a new country, was somewhat varied, getting fair crops some years and again nothing at all. The drought and grasshoppers proved very destructive to the crops, and farming for the first five or six years was up-hill business, but, after the country became more generally settled, the rains fell oftener and more gently, and his crops gradually increased until complaint on account of failure entirely ceased. Of late years Mr. Cobeldick has been devoting his time and attention to fruit growing and he now has twelve hundred very fine, thrifty apple trees, just beginning to bear.

Mr. Cobeldick was married November 2, 1848, to Mary Ann Mitchel, a native of England, born February 24, 1810. Their happy union has been blessed with the birth of one child — Jabez S., born October 11, 1849, who is married and owns and farms a place adjoining that of his fathers. Mr. and Mrs. Cobeldick are both active members of the Methodist Episcopal church at Republican City. Politically, Mr. Cobeldick is a prohibitionist and a strong believer in the principles of his party.