My Genealogy Hound

J. F. DANIELS, known to the citizens of Kearney, where he resides and does business, as “Daniels, the Jeweler,” is an Iowan by birth, a native of Muscatine, where he was not only born but reared and where he also learned the business, the name of which has almost become part of his own. His parents were for many years residents of Iowa, moving to Muscatine from St. Louis, Mo., some time early in the “fifties.” The father, Julius Daniels, was a native of London, England, came to America about 1835 when a young man, and after drifting about through a number of the eastern states settled in St. Louis, where he met and married Laura J. Mahan, a native of that place and who afterwards bore him a wifely companionship till his death, which occurred in 1884 while in the sixty-seventh year of his age. The mother is still living. Of the children of this union the subject of this notice is the fourth in point of age, and the only representative of the family in this state. The eldest brother, James, is a journeyman printer, and, like the majority of his craft, a citizen of the world; George H. is a jeweler, of Creston, Iowa; Lucy, the only daughter, remains with her mother at Creston, Iowa; Emanuel is a clerk at Creston, Iowa, and Randolph is a stenographer in the employ of the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad Company, at Sedalia, Missouri.

The subject of this brief notice resided in his native place till after he had mastered his trade, and then, in 1878, went to Creston, Iowa, where he was employed by his brother George H. in the jewelry business, and remained there for two years. In 1880 he struck for the further West, coming to Kearney. He was then single and working as a journeyman. He sought employment with J. D. Hawthorne and remained with him about a year and a half. Returning to Iowa, he settled at Council Bluffs and formed a partnership with M. J. Michaels and engaged in business in that place for another year and a half as Michaels & Daniels. Going again to Creston, he remained there two years, marrying in the meantime, and finally in 1886 came back to Kearney, engaged in business and has since remained here. The exact date of Mr. Daniel’s marriage was October 16, 1884, and the lady whom he selected as a companion was Miss Jessie F. Battey, a daughter of S. W. Battey, then of Creston, Iowa, now of Hoxie, Kans.

Kearney is a distinctively young man’s town. The pluck, energy and superb business ability which have rendered it famous throughout the country as the great Midway City have been furnished mainly by the young men who have sought homes and fortune within its limits. Of these no one is more worthy of mention than J. F. Daniels. A thoroughly competent workman, a man of untiring industry, with an abundance of practical business sagacity, liberal in spirit and possessing that absolute confidence in the destiny of “the future Great” which all citizens of the Midway City hold in common, he has labored long and earnestly, late and early, freely and effectually in behalf of the home of his adoption, seeking its best interest by rationally attending to his own.