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C. H. MORRILL Charles
H. Morrill was a Civil War veteran, having served as private in the 11th
New Hampshire Volunteers from 1862 to 1865.
Just before entering the army, he married Harriet Z. Currier of Nashua,
N. H. As
one of the early settlers, Charles H. Morrill was prominently identified in the
growth and progress of Polk County and the state at large.
His early experience as a farmer and stock raiser in Iowa was one of
hardships and privations, and the future looked dark, but Charles Morrill was
not a quitter. He managed to keep
his head above water in the face of adversity and was able to lay back a small
sum after having paid his debts. In 1871, C. H. Morrill came to Polk County from Boone County, Iowa, with J. P. Smith. Morrill purchased 160 acres of land on the Blue River from the union Pacific Railroad. Smith located east of what was afterward Stromsburg. They returned to Iowa and in 1873, Mr. Morrill drove six yoke of oxen overland to the little farm home he had prepared the year previous for the protection of his family upon their arrival. At that time, he also took up additional land under the Homestead Act. This land adjoined that which he had purchased the previous year. During the summer of 1873, he broke one hundred acres of prairie. Several years were spent in the original home, 16 feet by 16 feet, before it was enlarged. As times and financial conditions permitted, additions were built to the old home.
In
1873, the first crop of wheat on the Morrill homestead was cut with an
old-fashioned cradle. It consisted
of about twenty acres. 000 p;That
same year, with J. P. Smith, Morrill opened up an agricultural implement store.
Business was mostly done on credit and, as the early settlers were all
poor, the firm found going difficult at times.
Two years later, Mr. Morrill sold his interest to Smith.
Morrill then became a partner of Lewis Headstrom and John B. Buckley in a
general merchandise store, the only store in Stromsburg at that time. For
more than twenty years, Mr. Morrill farmed the homestead and was an extensive
stock raiser. In the year 1883, he
became interested in banking in Stromsburg and Osceola.
He was connected with the Stromsburg Bank from 1885 to 1887 and president
of the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Stromsburg from 1890 to 1892.
In
addition to his farming and Stromsburg business activities, he was private
secretary to Governor Nance in 1881, served on the Board of Regents and was
president of the Board of Regents from 1897 to 1901. He was also the founder of Morrill Geological Yearly
expedition from the University of Nebraska and the donor of the Morrill Hall at
Lincoln, with its wonderful pre-historic and geological collections.
Morrill Hall is a monument to a public spirited Nebraska citizen.
The town of Morrill and Morrill County were named in his honor. Morrill
published a book in 1918, The Morrills and
Reminiscences, which devoted a few chapters to early Nebraska, Polk County,
and Stromsburg. In his book, Mr.
Morrill gives a fine tribute to the Swedish settlers of this county? “Nearly
all the early settlers in the western part of Polk County were Swedes.
Nearly half of them had come without horses or oxen.
They took homesteads and exchanged work with their neighbors for teamwork
to break a few acres, and to haul sod for their houses and stables. These Swedish settlers were a very honest, industrious and
hardworking people. Generally they
had large families. With crop
failures, it was often impossible for them to meet their obligations, but they
never repudiated a debt. In all my
transactions with Swedish people, in the sale of merchandise, and for many years
in the banking business, I never lost one dollar by giving them credit.”
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