Jerry Hussey

JERRY HUSSEY. One of the most interesting old timers of Kansas is Jerry Hussey, now living retired at Williamsburg. He served faithfully and loyally as a soldier during the Civil war, and soon after the close of that great struggle identified himself with the State of Kansas, where he helped to reclaim a part of the wilderness and make it a fertile and valuable farm.

Of New England ancestry he was born in the State of Vermont in August, 1845, and when very young was left an orphan, so that he had to fight his own battles at a time when most boys have the care and direction of parents. When he was thirteen years of age in 1858 he came west and for a time worked as a farm hand near Loveland in Clermont County, Ohio. He was working on a farm when the Civil war was declared, and in 1861, though only sixteen years of age, he enlisted in Company D of the Thirty-fourth Ohio Volunteer Infantry, which was afterwards merged with the Thirty-sixth Regiment. Most of his service was in the East on the great Virginia battle ground, and in the closing months of the war he was with Sheridan, his regiment having been mounted, in the Shenandoah Valley campaign, participating in the battle of Winchester. At Beverly, West Virginia, he was captured, and spent four months of suffering and hardship entailed by incarceration in Libby Prison. That was an experience which no man would be likely to forget, and in fact he has never fully recovered physically from the effects of the imprisonment.

After the close of hostilities Jerry Hussey returned to Ohio, where he married Belinda S. Stump. In April, 1868, he brought his family to Kansas, first making his home near Baldwin, and subsequently moving to a farm on the Sac and Fox Indian Reservation in what is now Osage County. There he lived for many years, developed his own place, and in the meantime witnessed the miraculous changes that have succeeded one another on the face of Kansas, and have made the great state what it is today. During the last few years Jerry Hussey has had his home at Williamsburg, where he is now able to retire and relieve himself from the more active cares of business.

In 1887 he was elected register of deeds for Osage County, and filled that office until 1892. So popular was he a citizen that notwithstanding his stalwart uncompromising republicanism, he still commanded popular support during the populistic upheaval that swept the state. Mr. Hussey is a member of the Methodist Church and is affiliated with the Masonic Order and the Grand Army of the Republic. Temperamentally he is a positive character, forming his likes and dislikes, loyal in his friendships and a man honored for his unblemished character.

By his marriage to Miss Stump he had two children, Lewis T. and a daughter that died in infancy. The mother of these children died October 6, 1882.

Jerry Hussey married for his second wife Miss Sarah E. Barnes, who was the mother of a daughter named Mary E. After the death of his second wife, Mr. Hussey married Mattie H. Benn and she is still living, but there were no children by the third union.

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