1905 History of Crawford County Kansas

Jesse Beeler, a prosperous farmer on section 29, Crawford township, Crawford county, is one of the early settlers of this county, having lived on the one farm for thirty-five years. He has already reached and passed the Psalmist's mark of threescore and ten, which is believed to indicate the period of man's usefulness on earth, but he is by no means compelled or willing to lay down the burdens of life for some time yet, and his vigorous manhood and his worth as a citizen make him still a valued and highly honored resident of his community.

Mr. Beeler was the youngest child of a family of seven sons and four daughters, all of whom are now deceased except his sister Martha Seeley, who is now living in Lee county, Iowa, at the advanced age of eighty-four years. Mr. Beeler was born in Montgomery county, Indiana, September 12, 1833, and his parents were Isaac and Jane (Hughes) Beeler, both natives of Tennessee. His father was a wagonmaker and a farmer. He became one of the pioneer settlers of Lee county, Iowa, where he took up his residence in 1836, when Iowa was still a territory. He entered eleven hundred acres of land in one body, and was a prosperous and influential farmer during the rest of his life, which was ended in death in 1871, when he had arrived at the great age of eighty-nine years. His wife died in 1860, at the age of sixty-seven.

Mr. Jesse Beeler was educated in a subscription log school in Iowa, and his boyhood was passed among the primitive conditions that existed in that state during the forties. He lived at home until he was twenty-seven years old, and from that time until the fall of 1869 he was an enterprising Iowa farmer. He made his advent into Crawford county, Kansas, in 1869, and bought one hundred and sixty acres of the railroad company, which land he has improved and made his home place to the present time. He has been known throughout the county since 1870 as the operator of a threshing outfit, having used in that period all the kinds of machines from the old-fashioned horsepower to the present powerful steam outfits. For the past ten years he has also run a feed grinder and sawmill.

Mr. Beeler married, in October, 1861, Miss Martha Permelia Moore, a daughter of John and Abigail F. Moore, of Virginia. Her father is deceased, but her mother still resides in Iowa. Mr. and Mrs. Beeler have had six children: Amelia Jane died at the age of twenty-five years; Mary died when ten years old; Ella and Nellie were twins, and the latter died at the age of two years, and the former is the wife of George H. Hanshaw, of Crawford county; Abigail Gertrude is the wife of A. C. Copenhaver, of this county; and Jesse Aiton is at home. The family are members of the Baptist church at Girard. Mr. Beeler affiliates with the Anti-Horse Thief Association. In politics he is a Republican, and was a school director for two terms.