My Genealogy Hound

H. T. FERGUSON was one of the first men to engage in business in Orleans, Harlan county. He came to Orleans in March, 1879, began business there at that date and has been actively at it since. He came from Osceola, Iowa, but is a native of New York. He was born in the town of Owego, Tioga county, N. Y., January 13, 1845. He comes of New York parentage, his father, Hiram Ferguson, being a native of New York city and his mother, who bore the maiden name of Rachel Stedman, being a native of Tioga county. He is the second of a family of four children who reached maturity, the others being Albert, now a resident of Dixon, Ill.; Amzi M., a resident of Elmwood, Nebr., and Hannah, wife of Clifton Brown, of Freetown Corners, Courtland county, N. Y. Mr. Ferguson’s father died in New York State in 1853, in middle life. He was a manufacturer, a man who was reasonably successful in accordance with his means and opportunities. Mr. Ferguson's mother is still living.

The subject of this sketch was reared in his native place to the age of ten, when he was taken to Dixon, Ill., by his parents, and there grew up to manhood. He received an ordinary common-school training and entered the Union army at the age of eighteen, enlisting in the fall of 1863. He enlisted in Battery F, First Illinois light artillery, and served in the Fifteenth (Logan’s) army crops. Entering the Atlanta campaign in the fall of 1863, he was in all the engagements down to Jonesboro, Ga. From that place his, with nine other batteries, was sent back to Nashville to hold that point in anticipation of Hood’s raid into Tennessee, and was in the fight at Nashville and remained there for some time after the dispersion of Hood’s forces. He was mustered out at Chicago in July, 1865, and returned to his home in Dixon, Ill. He went to Iowa in 1870, settling in Osceola, where, after engaging in other pursuits for some time, he engaged in the drug business, following it successfully for some years. During his residence there he married on May 31, 1876, Miss Sadie Glasser, then a resident of Osceola, but a native of Pennsylvania and reared in Illinois. Coming to Nebraska in March, 1879, and settling in Orleans, he engaged a month later in the hardware business as a member of the firm of H. C. Williams & Co. After a year and a half he sold his interest to A. M. Barker and purchased of Manning Bros, a stock of drugs and embarked in this line. He has conducted a drug and book-store since that date and now has the best equipped establishment of the kind in the town of Orleans. In connection with his drug and book trade, Mr. Ferguson has been conducting a loan and insurance business for some years, operating on his own funds and meeting with marked success. Mr. Ferguson is a trained business man and has made the pursuit of his own personal concerns the exclusive object of his life. He has never held public office nor dabbled in politics. Being a man of broad views and generous impulses, he has taken considerable interest in the liberal fraternities and his feelings for his kind have taken the practical turn inculcated by these associations.