My Genealogy Hound

JAMES M. DEVALL is a native of Preston county, West Virginia, and was born February 20, 1821. Mr. Devall spent the early part of his life in Virginia and enlisted in the Union army from that state, on the fifth of October, 1861. He joined the Sixth West Virginia Regiment of infantry and saw his first service at the battle of Cedar creek. He chased Morgan along the Ohio river, when that noted rebel raider was playing havoc in Ohio. He was captured near Oakland, Md., while on the Jones raid in that state. He fell into the hands of the men who were his neighbors in West Virginia, and was paroled in the field and sent home for ten days. He returned to Wheeling, when his regiment was soon ordered down on the Potomac river. He participated in the engagement at Antietam and was for some time afterwards put on guard duty on the B. & O. R. R. He spent one month in hospital and was discharged at Oakland on the nineteenth day of December, 1864.

Mr. Devall came to Buffalo county, Nebr., on the twenty-eighth day of March, 1874, and filed on a homestead on section 4, in Sharon township. He was among the very first settlers in that section of the county and has endured some of the vicissitudes of a pioneer life. The grasshoppers took all he raised for three years in succession, but he never gave up. He still had faith in the ultimate development of the country, and, though disheartened by loss of crop, he never gave up.

Mr. Devall was married in 1882 to Mary M. Kirkpatrick, a soldier’s widow from his native county. To this union has been born one child, Abigah L. He has filled the office of justice of the peace, but has never been an aspirant for political favors. In politics he is independent and will not allow himself to be dictated to by any party or faction. He has 240 acres of good land, 160 of which are under good cultivation.

Mr. Devall suffered untold exposures during his service in the army, from the effects of which he is now almost totally blind. He is an intelligent man and talks fluently upon any of the leading questions of the day.