A Banker From Kendall

I was pleasantly surprised to learn while browsing around, that a very prominent business man was born and raised in Kendall, NY.  His name was Claudius Jones.

Claudius Jones was born in Kendall in 1827 to David and Cynthia (Whitney) Jones. David was a native of Wales.  He made his way to America, eventually settling and planting roots in Kendall.  David is the first pioneer settler who bought and cleared land in about 1815 on the west side of town.  Successful at farming, he later married his wife, who's also a Kendall native in 1824.  

Claudius Jones is one of  eight children.  He spent his childhood days here and received his education from the local school.  He engaged in farming for a while but because of his feeble nature, he left farming behind.  He married Harriet Irene Weed.  Like Claudius, her parents were also one of Kendall's earliest settlers.  Five children came from this union, one named Harry T. Jones (keep his name in the back of your mind).  In about 1859, the family followed the expansion of the railroad west. Claudius engaged in establishing banks in Galva and Monmouth, Illinois.  His health was failing, so they moved to Lincoln, Nebraska after the Civil War.  As patriotic as he was, he organized a regiment in Chicago but could not participate as colonel because of his ill health and debilitating nature.  He did name the commanding officer. 

 

 The family finally settled in  Lincoln, Seward County, Nebraska in 1870.  Claudius engaged in the handling of state and county warrants.  In about 1873 he was the president and sole owner of the State Bank of Nebraska.  Like with everything else, he was successful until about 1879 where his health issues came back again.  He disposed of this bank and turned his attention to successfully farm and raise cattle.  1883 rolled around and Claudius, along with his son, Harry T. Jones and a few others established the Jones National Bank and was its president until 1895.  At the time of his death in November 1896, he was the most extensive real estate owner and farmer in Seward County, as well as being the director of the Jones National Bank. 

He had great perseverance and he showed off the energy he had and accomplished so many things in spite of his poor health and feeble body.  He demonstrates what high spirit and strong will can do in spite of any anomaly.  Remember, he came from Kendall, NY.

Harry T Jones was the only living son of Claudius.  Harry was well known as a successful banker of Seward County.  He was educated and thwarted himself into a business career.  His father supervised him every step of the way.  In 1883 Harry entered the Jones National Bank as its cashier and in 1891 secured a controlling interest in the well known bank and became its president and active manager.  He too was also known to be the largest land owner in Seward County.  Harry married in 1894 to Emma Totten of that county.  Claudius Jones would be proud.  The business has been handed down for generations.

This photo hangs in the Jones National Bank as a reminder of how strong the family roots are.  A family that stays together, banks together!  (I know, bad joke.)

I included a modern day picture of the Jones National Bank, located in Lincoln, Seward County, Nebraska.
 

Today, The Jones National Bank and Trust Company remains financially strong and is devoted to Seward County.

Kendall Fun Facts.......Did you know.....

Did you know........in 1968,  at the intersection of Roosevelt Highway (Rt 18) and Kendall Road (Rt 237), the red and yellow caution light was installed.  It was an accident prone intersection.

Substitute Birth, Marriage and Death Sources

 When doing family history, obtaining birth, marriage and death certificates are not always easily obtainable .  To purchase a birth certificate, your ancestor's date of death has to be on file for 75 years and the person on the certificate is known to be deceased.  Marriage certificates are 50 years on file and both have to be deceased.   Death certificates are 50 years from the person's date of death.   

Are there ever exceptions?  Time periods are waived for direct line descendants. A direct line descendant is a person in the direct line of descent, i.e., the child, grandchild, great grandchild of the person whose record is requested. The direct line descendant applicant must provide the following:  Proof of their relationship to the person whose record they are requesting. Proof of the death of the person whose birth certificate they are requesting. .  If you are searching for birth, marriage, and death information for an ancestor who was born, married, or died before vital records were kept in the United States, use substitute or secondary sources. Substitute birth, marriage, and death records include:

• The U.S. Federal Census records which give the age and state or country of birth for each household member from 1850 to 1940, and the 1900 census gives the month and year of birth. Marriage information can be found on the 1850 through 1910 censuses (this includes whether a person had been divorced or widowed).
• Death certificates for birth information, although on a death certificate, birth information is considered a secondary source.
• More recent marriage records contain age or birth date of the bride and groom and their parents.
• Church records include birth date, place and parents' names in baptismal records, marriage information, and include the deceased's age in burial records.
• Military records: World War I and World War II draft records may include the birth date and place depending on the registration cards. Pension records can include the birth, marriage, and death date and place.
• Family Bible: Birth dates, marriage dates, death dates, and sometimes places for these events may be included in a family Bible.
• Obituaries usually contain a rich variety of vital and biographical information, including name and place of residence of close family and friends, descendant's death date and place and birth date and place, marriage date, occupation, military service, religion, schools attended, parent’s names, places of residence over time, and place of origin. Sometimes you can luck out and find a picture.  When you look on the right side under resources, find the genealogy link.  It will have online newspaper links.  It can be time consuming but can be very worth your while.

On this Day...

On this day Decemeber 9th:

1793:  Noah Webster establishes New York's 1st daily newspaper, American Minerva.

1907:  Christmas seals went on sale for the first time, at the Wilmington, Del., post office. The proceeds went to fight tuberculosis.

1941:  China declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy.

1941: Hitler orders U.S. ships torpedoed  

1965: "A Charlie Brown Christmas," premieres  

1975:  President Gerald R. Ford signed a $2.3 billion seasonal loan authorization to prevent New York City from having to default.

1984:  6 day hijack of Kuwaiti jet ends

1985:  Phoenix Arizona, gets 3 inches of snow.

1992:   United States Marines arrive in Mogadishu, Somalia, to spearhead a multinational force aimed at restoring order in the conflict-ridden country.  Over the next 23 months, Somalia’s civil war killed some 50,000 people; another 300,000 died of starvation as United Nations peacekeeping forces struggled in vain to restore order and provide relief amid the chaos of war.

1992:  Britain's Prince Charles and Princess Diana announced their separation. (They divorced in 1996.)

2000:  The United States Supreme Court voted, 5 to 4, to stop the vote counting in Florida, ending Vice President Al Gore's presidential hopes.

2003:  Unseasonably low temperatures in Tehran, Iran, lead to the deaths of at least 40 people. Rarely do such large groups die at the same time.

On this Day....

On this day, December 8th:

1775, American Revolution:  Americans begin siege of Quebec.  Colonel Benedict Arnold and General Richard Montgomery lead an American force in the siege of Quebec. The Americans hoped to capture the British-occupied city and with it win support for the American cause in Canada. 

1776, American Revolution:  George Washington's retreating army crossed the Delaware River from New Jersey to Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary War.

1863, Civil War:  President Abraham Lincoln offers his conciliatory plan for reunification of the United States with his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction.  President Lincoln needed to make some preliminary plans for postwar reconstruction.

1925:  Sammy Davis Jr., the American performer famous for his singing, dancing and comedy routines, was born. 

1941 WWII:  The United States entered World War II as Congress declared war against Japan one day after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

1941, WWII:  Montanan Jeanette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress and a dedicated lifelong pacifist (a person who believes that war and violence are unjustifiable), casts the sole Congressional vote against the U.S. declaration of war on Japan. She was the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. involvement in both World Wars, having been among those who voted against American entry into World War I nearly a quarter of a century earlier.

1980:  John Lennon, a former member of the Beatles, the rock group that transformed popular music in the 1960s, is shot and killed by a deranged fan in New York City. 

1987:  President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed a treaty calling for destruction of intermediate-range nuclear missiles.

1993:  President Bill Clinton signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).



 

On This Day....

On this day December 5th:

1782:  On this day in 1782, Martin Van Buren, America’s 8th president, is born in Kinderhook, New York, to Dutch parents. He left grammar school with his sights set on studying law and pursuing a career in politics. 

1791:  Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart dies in Vienna.

1839:  Union General George Armstrong Custer is born in Harrison County, Ohio.

1848: President Polk triggered the Gold Rush of 1848 by confirming that gold had been discovered in California.

1933:  Prohibition ends.  The 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, repealing the 18th Amendment and bringing an end to the era of national prohibition of alcohol in America.

1955:  A bus boycott begins under the leadership of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in Montgomery, Alabama.

1959:  Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev is refused entry to Disneyland due to security concerns. 

1991:  Two German tourists discover the body of a 5000 year old man frozen, named "Ötzi", in a glacier in the Ötztal Alps, hence the nickname "Ötzi", near the Similaun mountain and Hauslabjoch on the border between Austria and Italy. 


2010:  The Deep Water Horizon oil leak (aka the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico) is finally sealed.  The accident happened on April 20 and ended on July 15 spilling more than 200 million gallons making this the worst oil spill in U.S. history.



 

Horsing Around

I want to share with you something that caught my attention.  As I  was digging around in the vault, I came across pictures of horses being driven down Main Street in Albion.  Why?  Upon investigation, it was Harry M. Nesbitt's doing.

Harry Maurice Nesbitt (1885-1948).   He would start a horse trading business, about 1901.  He built and owned a farm on Peter Smith Road, better known to us as Kendall John Stables (taken over by his grandson John Nesbitt Smith in 1964.) or as its called today, Kendall Ridge Stables.  Harry was a farmer but was also in the business of buying and selling horses and livestock.  Belgian and Percheron were his first choices.  He also dealt with saddle horses, mules, and ponies.  Horses of all breeds would come from Chicago, Illinois, Ohio or Iowa.  In a point in his horse career, he bought two carloads of wild mustangs from Pennsylvania.  They were loaded on the trains and shipped to Albion.  In the 1935 photo above, a wrangler drives the herd of horses down Main Street, Albion.......IN THE SNOW!  Can you imagine seeing that on Main Street?

After WWII the demand for work horses was dwindling because of more modern day farm equipment, tractors.  Most horses he now had were for riding. But after the war,  Harry and two other men from Ohio got a contract through the government to buy horses.   The above photo shows horses that are ready for export to Europe.  This was to replenish the horse population lost in the war.  It was also about the time when Harry started a tractor dealership.

This is NOT the photo, but did you know, Harry drove in 1929 a four horse team, on an old coach in A sesquicentennial?  On that coach sat one of our former Presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt.  At that time Roosevelt was governor of New York.  Then three years later became our president.

 

Draft Horses for sale

Harry Nesbitt and teams of work horses

The Holley Standard 1928 ad

The average at one time was about 70 horses.  Both draft and saddle horses.  Notice the barn in the background.  Come to find out, the wood used for the barn comes from another barn that was located on the Norway Rd.  The sheds that are behind the barn, the wood was  brought from a church that was in Murray.  The barn, as it is today includes an indoor riding arena attached on the north end. 

Harry Nesbitt was a successful business man.  But, even he couldn't escape the 1929 stock market crash and the Depression Era.  From what I gathered, he persevered.  He worked hard for years.  His business went on for about sixteen more years with successes before he died of a heart attack at home.  He was 63 years old.  After his death, the farm sat vacant until his grandson (mentioned above) and his wife started the Kendall John Stable in 1964.

1885-1948

It's still all about horses at the Kendall Ridge Stables 2015