Warrick Ranches
1858 to 1900
Nebraska was opened up for homesteading by an act of Congress in 1862.
My grandfather John Wesley Warrick Sr. came from Elk Creek in Grayson County, VA. He was born on April 7,1858. He was too young to fight in the Civil War. However, being the eldest son, he was told by the family to take care of the livestock during the war. So he took the animals into the mountains, away from “marauding northern troops”. After the war, he attended teachers' colleges in Grayson County, Virginia, so he could teach in the local Elk Creek school. When not teaching, he managed a store in Elk Creek and rode across the county buying livestock. At age 30 he migrated to Nebraska.
Mr. F. J. Hale, another Virginian, who operated a grain and mercantile store in Meadow Grove, had offered Mr. Warrick $100 a month to come to Nebraska and run the store and manage the feeding operation. Mr. Hale owned 400 acres near Meadow Grove where he fed cattle. He also added a lumber business to his holdings in 1890.
Mr. Warrick was a natural businessman. When the railroad came to Meadow Grove in 1871,he became successful and was soon running his own store selling lumber, grain, and livestock.
John Wesley Warrick Sr.
Grace Shafer & John Wesley Warrick Sr. around 1890.
George Washington Warrick & family,1860.
John Wesley Warrick Sr. in upper right
Grace Shafer & John Wesley Warrick Sr. marriage April 7, 1890
Grace Shafer was a member of the Methodist Church which J. W. Warrick attended. She was one of six children, many of whom had died at a young age from diphtheria. All the Shafer children are buried in the McCoy cemetery across the road from their farm home. Their names are engraved on three sides of a small Shafer gravestone. Edward 1879, Theador 1879, Gertrude 1872, Catherine 1875, Donald 1880.
My great grandfather, Theodore A. Shafer, was a Civil War veteran with the 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry, raised by President Lincoln in 1863. He served three years and participated in six notable battles. One was the Siege of Atlanta, Georgia during General Sherman's infamous “ March to the Sea” which effectively ended the Civil War. Theodor and his wife Harriet moved from Ohio to Iowa where their daughter Grace was born in 1870. They then moved to Nebraska, where he filed for a Homestead Claim on land 2 miles west of Meadow Grove. It was patented in 1879: SW ¼, S28, in Madison County. Later he purchased the quarter section to the east of his homestead with a “tree claim”. This was a federal law that encouraged tree planting in exchange for land. It made him the proud owner of a half section of good Nebraska land.
Theodore Shafer did not get along well with his son-in-law. He always considered Mr. Warrick a "southern rebel”, since grandfather Warrick's father had served in the South’s Confederate Army as a member of Co. C of the Grayson County Cavalry under General Stonewall Jackson. He had a horse shot out from under him during a military skirmish against northern troops.
In 1897, great-grandfather Shafer filed for a pension under a law for Civil War veterans, passed by Congress. He sold his farm to his son-in-law, who by that time was already a successful businessman in Meadow Grove. Shafer moved to Oregon and later to California. He and his wife, Hattie, are buried in Los Gatos, CA.
While still in Meadow Grove, both Theodore Shafer and John Wesley Warrick Sr. belonged to the same Methodist Church and worked together in the construction of the first Methodist Church in town.
A certificate from the Land Office in Norfolk, Nebraska granting a homestead right to Theodore S. Shafer of 160 acres in the SE ¼ section 28 township 24 range 4 west of Madison county. Signed by Rutherferd B. Hayes, President of the United States of America,1879.