Abner R. Loofbourrow, born January 2, 1829, in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, was a respected farmer who lived in or near Peru, Nebraska, for over 30 years. He moved to Nebraska in 1869, having previously resided in Iowa. Loofbourrow initially bought and improved prairie land in Jasper County, Iowa, before purchasing a farm in Richardson County, Nebraska, and later settling in Peru. He married Mary Jane Carr in 1851 and had six children. After her death in 1889, he married Millie Carl in 1892. Loofbourrow was known for his contributions to the community and involvement in the Baptist and Methodist churches.
Abner R. Loofbourrow, a retired farmer who has resided in or near the city of Peru for the past thirty years, and has lived in Nebraska since 1869, is well known and thoroughly esteemed and respected throughout Nemaha County and has had a career of unusual interest. While he is now seventy-five years old, he still retains his powers of mind and body and is able to enjoy the comforts which his past labors have given him. As a citizen, he has performed all the duties which have fallen to his lot, as a toiler in the world for his individual gain he has been successful, and as the father of a family he has placed his children well equipped on the road of life and won their undying love and respect as a father and kind friend.
Mr. Loofbourrow was born in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, January 2, 1829. His grandfather, David Loofbourrow, was born in Scotland in 1755, and after coming to America was a soldier in the ranks of the patriot army, afterward drawing a pension for the part he had rendered as a soldier of the country. He was an old-school physician and also a Baptist minister, and though he lived a life of usefulness to his fellow men, he was not a money-getter. He died at the age of ninety-three years, and his last resting place is in Jefferson County, Ohio. He was twice married. By his first wife, Amy Gaskell, he had three sons and two daughters. His second wife, the grandmother of Mr. Loofbourrow, was Catherine Rittenhouse, a native of New York or of New England.
David Loofbourrow, the father of Abner Loofbourrow, was born in Pennsylvania, January 4, 1799, and died in Van Buren County, Iowa, in June, 1877. He and his wife were members of the Baptist church. He was married about 1819 to Miss Jane Shanks, who was born in Fayette County, Pennsylvania, in 1800, and died in 1881. They had eleven children, eight of whom came to adult age: Malinda, the wife of Joseph Day, died in Jefferson County, Ohio, in 1870 at the age of forty-seven, leaving two sons and three daughters. Louisa died at the age of twenty-two, unmarried. William, who died in Fairfield, Iowa, in 1853, was a teacher, and in the year of his death he and his wife had come from Ohio to Council Bluffs, Iowa. Abner R. is the next of the children. David, a farmer, died in Humboldt County, Kansas, at the age of fifty-six, leaving seven sons. John, a farmer and teacher, died in Harrison County, Ohio, in 1871, and left two sons. Wade is a farmer in Wayne County, Iowa, and has eight children. James, now a farmer in Van Buren County, Iowa, was a soldier in the Civil War, and on one battlefield was left for dead and was supposed for six months to be dead; he lost an eye in the service and has been totally blind for years, but is very active, cheerful, and performs his farm duties with wonderful ability; he is a great favorite at the soldiers’ reunions, and recently attended one in Ohio; he has five sons and one daughter, all grown.
Abner R. Loofbourrow had a limited schooling in the district schools up to the age of sixteen years, and while his elder brother William was away at college, he was required for the work at home. He remained at home until he was past his twenty-second year, and after his marriage lived with his wife’s family until 1854. In that year he came west to Jasper County, Iowa, and bought a quarter section of new prairie land, where he made his home and engaged in the improvement of his land until 1869. He then sold his place for five thousand dollars, at a handsome profit over his original investment. In the fall of 1869, he came to Richardson County, Nebraska, and with four thousand dollars of his cash capital bought a farm of two hundred and forty-four acres, with fair improvements. He came to Peru on the first of January, 1873, and bought a farm of eighty acres nearby. This he soon sold at a profit, and bought a farm of fifty-five acres adjoining the town of Peru. He also disposed of this place at an advantage, and his present property consists of seven acres within the city limits. He has three houses, two of which he had built, and bought the other, the newest one renting for two hundred dollars a year. Before the death of his wife, they kept boarders, and he now takes roomers from the normal students.
On June 19, 1851, Mr. Loofbourrow was married to Miss Mary Jane Carr, who was born in Jefferson County, Ohio, in November, 1834. Her father, William Carr, married a Miss Bechtell, and they were farmers in good circumstances in Ohio, where they died past middle life, leaving Mrs. Loofbourrow as their only daughter. Mr. and Mrs. Loofbourrow had six children: William, who is a college-bred man and a minister of the Methodist Episcopal church, is located at Atwood, Kansas, and has been married twice, having seven living children, three sons and four daughters; Wade, born in Iowa in 1856, died in Red Willow County, Nebraska, in July, 1891, leaving a wife; Mary, the wife of Mr. N. E. Wagner, a shoemaker and dealer in Eureka, California, has four sons and two daughters; Rose, who graduated from the Peru normal at the age of nineteen and taught school for ten or twelve years, is now the wife of Mr. A. D. Brown, a machinist in the mills of Eureka, California, and they have two children; Lillian, the wife of Marion Newton, having been a teacher before her marriage, died at the age of thirty years; Thaddeus Lincoln, who graduated from Rush Medical College in Chicago and was one of the thirty out of a class of two hundred to carry off honors, is now practicing medicine in Eureka, California, and has four daughters.
The mother of this family died in Peru, June 2, 1889. On January 7, 1892, Mr. Loofbourrow was married to Mrs. Millie Carl, the widow of James Carl. Her maiden name was Thompkins, and she was born in Galesburg, Illinois. She was a teacher, and a noble and true Christian woman. She died January 16, 1903, at the age of sixty years. She was an active worker in the Methodist Episcopal church, although reared in the Congregational faith. She was of a most intellectual and high-minded family, and one of her brothers is a Congregational minister in Chicago and another is a physician. Mr. Loofbourrow voted the Republican ticket until about ten years ago, since which time he has supported the Prohibition cause. He has been connected with both the Baptist and the Methodist churches and has held official relations in both.
Source: Lewis Publishing Company, A Biographical and Genealogical History of Southeastern Nebraska, 2 volumes, Lewis Publishing Company, 1904.