Ebenezer Strong Phelps, Jr.

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Ebenezer Strong Phelps, Jr BIRTH 15 Oct 1817 Northampton, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, USA DEATH 30 Oct 1909 (aged 92) Aurora, Hamilton County, Nebraska, USA BURIAL Aurora Cemetery Aurora, Hamilton County, Nebraska, USA MEMORIAL ID 88194722 · View Source SHARE SAVE TOSUGGEST EDITS MEMORIAL PHOTOS 2 FLOWERS 0 The Aurora Republican Aurora, Hamilton County, Nebraska Friday, Nov. 5, 1909 Ebenezeer Strong Phelps Was born in Northampton, Massachusetts, October 15th 1817, then family being of English ancestry, but having lived in America since the days of the Pilgrims. He lived in New England, until the year, 1831 when at the age of fourteen he removed with his parents to Springfield, Illinois spending the years of boyhood and young manhood in the city where Abraham Lincoln and a number of the leading figures of the ere of the war of the rebellion lived and labored. In 1838 he attended a private school at Princeton and there became acquainted with Hannah Morse, to whom he was married in 1839. He begun his business life as a baker, serving apprenticeship to the trade of stone mason as well, and becoming proficient in each of these seemingly diverse callings. In succeeding years, he worked at his trades in Princeton, Hennepin, and Springfield, and in 1851 he entered a tract of governmental land at Wyanet, Illinois, where he resided until he came to Hamilton Co. in the spring of 1879. For more than thirty years he had lived among us, working steadily so long as he had strength to work, for the development of this beautiful wonderful land assisting in its transformation from a barren treeless plain to one of the richest and best farming localities in the world. In all this time he lived a life that was a credit to American citizenship, measuring every act by the standard of conscience and so far as God gave him to see what was best, doing what was right, abstaining from what was wrong. He could always be counted on as a force for good citizenship, and his vote, his influence and his efforts were always on the side of progress, enlightenment and the advancement of humanity. He was converted in the year 1835, and since the sixties had been prominent in Sunday school work, being among the early organizers. Before the sixties, he was an ardent abolitionist, and as a member of the underground railway aided slaves to escape from their masters, and to find a place of refuge and employment in the north. When he came to Nebraska, he took a timber claim four miles south-east of Aurora, on which he and his family lived until 1904, since which time they have resided in Aurora. In the spring of that year he had a stroke of paralysis, from which he never fully recovered, and which together with the weakness of advanced years, doubtless contributed to the fall that cost him his life. His wife Hannah Phelps, died February 27th, 1909, preceding him by but eight months and three days, dying at about the same hour. They had journeyed together for 79 years, 6 months, 15 days and were a rare example of a long and happy married life. On Sunday morning, Oct. 24th, he got up from his bed and in some way fell so as to break the upper part of his hip in such a manner that it could not be set, and this caused his death six days later. He suffered greatly until the last two days, being conscious and rational on Friday evening. To his family eight children were given, but two only remain. Their names are A. W. Phelps of Wallace, Nebraska, and Otto C. Phelps, of this city. The end came very peacefully to this patriarch who approached a century of right living. As a plow passes through the soil he passed through the dirt and defilement of this life but none of it stuck to him. For many years he had been honored for his simple, clean, upright and useful life, and at least annually his neighbors and friends would gather to spend a few hours at his home on his marriage or birth, and assure him that neither he nor his god wife were forgotten by them. It was a tribute that few of the great ones of earth receive, and it was a testimonial that even this world appreciates those who do common, necessary things in a right spirit more than those who dream of doing great ones. To use the words so often applied to the life of America's best president, whom he personally knew and admitted, He has fought the good fight, He had finished his course, He had kept the faith.

Family Members

Parents Photo Ebenezer Strong Phelps 1783–1872

Photo Anna W Wright Phelps 1791–1873

Spouse Photo Hannah Maria Morse Phelps 1822–1909 (m. 1839)

Siblings Photo Epaphras Hinsdale Phelps 1813–1899

Children Photo Ancil Wright Phelps 1854–1935

Otto C. Phelps 1862–1945