Charles Miner Biography


	This biography is from "Memorial and biographical record; an illustrated
 	compendium of biography, containing a compendium of local biography,
	including biographical sketches of prominent old settlers and 
	representative citizens of South Dakota..." Published by G. A. Ogle & 
	Co., Chicago, 1899. Pages 431-432

	Scan, OCR and editing by Maurice Krueger,mkrueger@iw.net, 1998. 

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CHARLES MINER, the first white settler of Beadle county, South Dakota, 
is one of the extensive land owners of that section of the state. He is 
the owner of eleven hundred and twenty acres of land in the James River 
Valley, near the mouth of Pearl Creek, on which he conducts a 
successful stock business. 

Our subject was born in Iowa, February 11, 1856, the son of Captain 
Nelson and Cordelia (Gates) Miner, a brief sketch of whose lives will 
be found in the review of their son, W. L. Miner, given elsewhere in 
this volume, in which we note their settlement in Dakota in 1860. Our 
subject located in Beadle county at the age of twenty-three, in 1879, 
with two yoke of oxen, and began breaking land for others, investing 
the money thus earned in cows, soon owning a goodly number. He made 
filing on his homestead, April 14, 1879, the first land filed upon in 
the county. His nearest neighbor was twenty miles away, and to get his 
plow sharpened he was compelled to drive ninety miles with an ox team. 
The first house erected on his homestead was of adobe, and his outlay 
in cash was fifty cents, which was expended for a board door. He 
started a breeding herd of cows, and also raised young stock, but in' 
1895 he disposed of his cows, and has since engaged in buying and 
selling young stock, to which industry his farm is most admirably 
adapted. 

The bluffs near the river afford shelter for his stock, and water is to 
be had in inexhaustible quantities. A small spring in the hillside 
flows continuously, while a well from a depth of one hundred feet 
furnishes pure soft water. The improvements of his farm consist of a 
comfortable house, built at the foot of a sheltering bluff, and large 
barns, capable of accommodating three hundred head of stock, and eighty 
tons of hay. Our subject controls about two thousand acres of land, 
comprising three hundred and eighty acres of fine meadows, and the 
balance in grazing land. Mr. Miner was married in 1880, to Miss Eliza 
Jordan, a native of Clark county, Illinois, born October 7, 1855. Eight 
children have been born to them, and bear the following names: Nelson, 
James, Pearl, deceased, Grace, Cordelia, deceased, Charles, Belle and 
Ruth. 

Mr. Miner is a well known citizen and highly respected in the 
community. He has taken an active part in the upbuilding of Beadle 
county, and was appointed by Governor Ordway as a member of the first 
board of county commissioners. He is a Prohibitionist, and advocates 
equal suffrage. He is a member of the Methodist Episcopal church.