My Genealogy Hound

A. J. LINDBECK is one of the oldest settlers of Kearney county and an honored and respected citizen of Newark. He was born in Sweden, August 22, 1830, and is the son of Jonas and Margaret (Strong) Lindbeck, both of whom were natives of Sweden. The former, a farmer by occupation, was born in the year 1793, and the latter in 1799. He is one of a family of nine children- seven boys and two girls. He resided with his father in Sweden until fifteen years of age, during which time he attended school and served an apprenticeship at the tailor’s trade. About this time a new religious sect, called Johnsonites, was organized in opposition to the State religion, and he became convinced of its good principles and joined it. There was great opposition to the new religion, and its followers were stoned and beaten about by the followers of the old church, until they were finally compelled to seek refuge in fairer fields and “pastures new.” They accordingly, in 1845, embarked in five ships for America. Four of the ships arrived in Brooklyn March 5, 1846, after a tedious voyage of ten months, and the other was never heard from. There were originally 1,150 in the colony, but it is supposed that 350 of them found a watery grave. The remaining 800 were compelled to seek quarters in Brooklyn for two months until the canals were opened for traffic. They took lodging in vacant houses, and after two months of weary waiting, embarked on the canal boats for Buffalo, and thence to Chicago by way of Lake Michigan. Mr. Lindbeck remained in Chicago two weeks, and roomed in the first brick house ever built in that city, and afterwards joined the colony in Henry county, Illinois. That section of Illinois at that time was a new and barren country and anything but inviting to a new-comer. He pre-empted land and remained there until 1847, when he moved to Princeville, Ill., and engaged in the tailor business. He lived there and at Chillicothe and Peoria until 1852. He left Princeville April 12, 1852, for the far West and September 8th, of the same year, landed in California, having walked the entire distance. He engaged in mining at first, and later in the hotel and grocery business in San Francisco. He was taken with an attack of rheumatism in 1869 and went on a trip to the Sandwich Islands. In the spring of 1870 he returned to Henry county, Ill., and for six years worked at the carpenter trade, which he had learned while in California. In April, 1877, he again emigrated West and located in Kearney county, Nebr., where he entered as a homestead a quarter section in section 24, township 8, range 15, on which the town of Newark now stands. In the fall of the same year he took a timber claim of one hundred and fifteen acres, on which he has since set out one hundred and five thousand trees and cuttings, with a view of some day erecting there a home for destitute children. Although his financial ventures have not proved as successful as he at one time anticipated, he still has hopes of accomplishing his desired end. Kearney county was new and barren when Mr. Lindbeck first came, and deer and antelope were quite plentiful among the sand hills and along the Platte river. He built a store and blacksmith shop and wagon works, and started the town of Newark; he also donated eighty acres of land to the Burlington & Missouri River R. R. Company, to get them to place a station and elevator there, and after the town was fairly started he bought and had published a newspaper called the Newark Herald. He had two objects in starting the newspaper, one to advertise the town and the other to burst an obnoxious political ring in the county, which latter thing he accomplished. When he started the town of Newark he had numerous propositions from men who desired to open saloons, but refused to allow any such establishments to open within the corporate limits, saying that he would rather fail in his project of establishing a town without saloons than to succeed with them. He has remained in this belief, and it is to his credit that Newark has never had a saloon. Politically, Mr. Lindbeck is a green backer. He served as postmaster of Newark for six years and is at present supervisor of Newark township. He has never married, and although a member of no particular church, he has lived a life consistent with religious principles and has within him the hope of a better world beyond.