My Genealogy Hound

EDWARD KRICK, a farmer of Liberty township, Kearney county, is a native of Pennsylvania, and was born in July, 1843. He was reared in Schuylkill county, Pine Grove township, and was educated at the common schools until he reached his fourteenth year, when he entered upon an apprenticeship at the shoemaker’s trade. In 1861 he moved to St. Joseph county, Ind., where he followed his trade until October, 1864, when he enlisted in Company H, Ninety-first Indiana volunteers, but was afterwards transferred to Company C, One Hundred and Twenty-fourth Indiana infantry, and was assigned to the Western Department, under General Schofield. He served in Kentucky, Tennessee; he was also at Atlanta; reached Washington; took part at Fort Fisher, and throughout all his skirmishes and battles escaped without a wound or capture. He was mustered out at Greensboro, N. C., in September, 1865, and received his discharge papers and pay at Indianapolis. He then returned to St. Joseph county, Ind., and on October 21, 1865, married Miss Matilda Stewart, daughter of John Stewart, of Pennsylvania, who settled in Indiana in an early day, and followed farming until his death in 1861. For seven years after his return to St. Joseph county, Ind., Mr. Krick followed his trade as foreman of a shoe manufacturing company, and later carried on the boot and shoe business at Mishawaka, until his coming to Nebraska in 1878. Here he located his present homestead on the southeast quarter of section 9, township 7, range 14, Kearney county. To this quarter he has added one hundred and eighty-three acres of school land, and has improved both tracts. His residence is a good two-story frame house, and his farm is improved with groves of trees and bearing orchards, although, on settling, the whole prairie around him was one barren waste. He has two hundred and forty acres under cultivation in mixed crops, and has an abundance of live stock. Since he settled here he has always made a success of farming and has met with no failure, with the exception of the loss or great damage done to one crop by a hailstorm. All his accumulations are the result of his own industry; for he had, on arriving here, only 44 cents in cash and a worn-out team as personal property. The residence of himself and family for the first seven years in Liberty township was a dug-out; his present substantial two-story frame dwelling shows the good fortune he has met with by good management.

Henry Krick, the father of Edward, is a native of Pennsylvania, of German descent. He has been a shoemaker the greater part of his life, and is now a resident of Indiana. His wife, before marriage, bore the name of Sarah Shrafler. She also is a native of Pennsylvania, of German descent, and has borne her husband eight children, of whom Edward, the subject of this sketch, is the eldest and the only one living in Nebraska. To the union of Edward and Matilda (Stewart) Krick have also been born eight children, named as follows — Ellsworth, Ida, Sadie, Johnnie, Eleanora, Louis, Freddie and Gracie. Of these children, Ellsworth died in 1866, at the age of six months; Freddie died in 1882, at the age of six weeks, and three days later Sadie expired at the age of fourteen years.

Mr. Krick is a member of the I. O. O. F. and the G. A. R.; in politics he is a republican. He now looks back with pride on the success he has met with in Nebraska since his financial ruin by the panic in Indiana, prior to his coming hither, and thinks that all his early struggles in this state have been fully compensated for by fortune and the esteem in which he is held by his neighbors.