S. J. Mitchell 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. Page 229

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

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S. J. MITCHELL.— For seventeen years S. J. Mitchell has been a resident 
of Sanborn county and has taken an active part in developing its 
agricultural interests, thus reducing the wild prairie land to richly 
cultivated fields. He was born in Ogle county, Illinois, and is the 
third in order of birth in a family of six children. His father was of 
Scotch-Irish descent and followed the occupation of farming. Mr. 
Mitchell was therefore reared upon a farm, and after assisting in the 
labors of fields and meadows through the summer months attended the 
public schools of the neighborhood in the winter season. At the age of 
twenty he left the parental roof and spent a year and a half in the 
employ of a railroad company in Kansas and the Indian territory. At 
that time the people still went armed, for the trouble known as the 
border warfare had hardly died out. 

On leaving the south Mr. Mitchell returned to Illinois, intending only 
to remain for a short time, but was married there to Augusta Post and 
began farming in Christian county. For twelve years longer he remained 
in his native state, and then desiring to secure a larger farm he came 
to South Dakota, locating in what was then Miner county, but is now 
Sanborn county. Here he erected a frame residence, but his barns and 
hen houses were built of sod, as were many others in this locality. He 
secured three hundred and twenty acres of good land, of which two 
hundred and twenty-five acres are now under a high state of 
cultivation, yielding to the owner rich returns for his care and labor. 
In order to break the land he used a team consisting of a mule, a 
horse, a bull, a cow and a steer. Many times his children have driven 
to school in a buggy drawn by a cow, but those primitive methods have 
since been replaced by more modern ones as civilization has advanced 
westward and railroads have brought the improvements of older sections 
of the country, and farm property which Mr. Mitchell now owns would 
compare favorably with many of the best found in his native state. 

Mr. Mitchell has held several public offices, having been continued in 
some township position since his arrival in the west. When Sanborn 
county was organized he was appointed county commissioner by the 
governor, and in 1890 was again appointed to the same position. In the 
fall of 1898 he was elected register of deeds on the Populist ticket, 
and is now acceptably discharging the duties of that office. He 
formerly gave his political support to the Democracy, but is now 
affiliating with the Populist party. Success has attended his efforts 
since coming to the west, and as the result of the careful methods 
which he has followed in his farming operations he is now the owner of 
a very valuable and desirable property.