GEORGE BERRY

George Berry, a prominent Madison County farmer, sheep raiser and a pioneer stage coach driver was born near Boston, Massachusetts in 1849. He attended the public schools in his native state.

He came to Norfolk, Nebraska in 1870 with an aunt and a cousin. He took up a homestead in Antelope County, just east of the present site of Oakdale.

In the summer of 1872 he went to Wisner. There he was employed by George Canfield as a stage coach driver. Canfield had a contract for hauling mail across from the end of the railroad at Wisner to points west. Berry made his home in Wisner with the McMillan family who operated a hotel.

The only way the settlers of that early day could reach the railroad at Wisner was by walking so Berry gave many a ride in his stage coach to the German pioneers who came to Norfolk in 1866.

It was in this period that he met his future wife, Mary Hurford. She had come to Norfolk in 1870 with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. George Hurford and a sister Laura. In the year, 1875, Mary was deputy in the postoffice at Norfolk with Chas. P. Mathewson, postmaster. In 1878, Mathewson resigned and Mary Hurford was appointed in his place as postmaster.

Norfolk had become the distribution point for all the surrounding country and the mail was very heavy. Miss Hurford did all the work by herself except the distributing when she had the help of a Lew Taylor.

George Berry and Mary Hurford were married at Battle Creek in 1880. The Hurford family had moved to Battle Creek in 1875 where the father had a drug store.

When the Canfield contract with the government expired, Mr. Berry took over. As the railroad moved further west he moved his stage line ahead of it. He extended this route far into Wyoming and the Dakotas. He established a freight hauling service also, supplying the important forts in Wyoming, Nebraska and South Dakota with freight and mail. His way stations were the only inhabited places for hundreds of miles.

In 1890 he bought a farm north of Battle Creek and made this home until his death. Even while engaged in sheep raising and farming, he operated a stage line from Rawlins, Wyoming on the Union Pacific, north to Casper on the Elkhorn & Missouri Valley R.R. This route went through the Sweetwater region in Wyoming.

When he settled down on his farm and operated it as a means of making a living he was highly successful. He was one of the first to use ground alfalfa as a substitute for grain in feeding livestock. He with Dr. Carlson and Burr Taft of Norfolk organized and put into operation the Farm Bureau. He served two terms as its President. During World War I he served on

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