George Buchanan Armstrong, a prominent farmer and stock-raiser in Nemaha County’s Bedford precinct, was born on June 25, 1856, in Jackson County, Ohio. He moved to Nemaha County, Nebraska, in 1864. His father, Josiah Armstrong, originally from Virginia, settled in Nemaha County in 1870. George married Lizzie Hughes on March 18, 1883. Together, they had five children. George owned 320 acres of farmland, focusing on cattle and hog raising. He was active in the Independent Order of Odd Fellows and the Woodmen of the World, and served as a school director for nine years.
George Buchanan Armstrong, one of the foremost farmers and stock-raisers of Nemaha County, residing in Bedford precinct, Howe post office, has lived here nearly all his life since childhood, and has made an unqualified success of his ventures. He is a man of progressive ideas and public spirit, and both in matters of individual interest and those affecting the general welfare, his course of action and counsel are reliable, and accomplish results.
Mr. Armstrong’s father, Josiah Armstrong, was born near Wheeling, Virginia, April 3, 1821, and died in Nemaha County, on the old home farm which he settled in 1870. He was married on Thanksgiving Day, 1838, in Pennsylvania, to Miss Catherine Morehead, who was born in Pennsylvania, September 10, 1816, and died in Nebraska, September 19, 1892. They came to Nebraska in 1864, and three years later settled on the prairie and began, without capital and in the pioneer fashion, to make themselves a home. They were successful people and lived irreproachable lives of industry. They were members of the Methodist church. Their children, all born in Ohio, are as follows: William, who died at the age of three years in Pennsylvania; Robert, a stock rancher in Rooks County, Kansas, has nine children living, eight daughters; one died in infancy; Mary Ann, the widow of Henry Halterman, lives at Verdon, Richardson County, Nebraska, and has six children; Telitha, the wife of Albert Douglass, at Hiawatha, Kansas, has seven children living; Elizabeth, the wife of George F. Huntington, died in California at the age of fifty, leaving four children; Lavina, the wife of Perry Montgomery, of Stella, Nebraska, has six children; George B. is the eighth in order of birth; Josiah, who was unmarried, was killed by his seven-horse team at Oxnard, California, where he was hauling beets for the largest beet-sugar factory in the world.
George B. Armstrong was born in Jackson County, Ohio, June 25, 1856, and was brought to Nemaha County, Nebraska, on October 12, 1864. He was reared to farm life and enjoyed a fair amount of schooling, stopping at the ninth grade, then the highest, in his nineteenth year. He remained at home until his marriage, which occurred when he was twenty-six years old, and then began farming on his own account. He now owns three hundred and twenty acres in two farms, and he makes stock-raising and buying his leading enterprises. He has as high as two and three hundred head of cattle at a time. He bought his present farm in 1889, paying six thousand dollars for it, and he has built all the buildings except the house. He planted his own orchard, and he has two of the finest barns in the vicinity. The cattle barn is fifty-two by fifty-six feet, with twenty-foot posts, and will shelter seventy tons of fodder and fifty cattle. His hay and horse barn is thirty-eight by sixty-four feet, with twenty-foot posts, and will stall fifty-seven horses and hold eighty tons of hay. He raises about one hundred hogs each year, and about twenty horses.
March 18, 1883, Mr. Armstrong was married to Miss Lizzie Hughes, who was born near Brownville, April 7, 1861, a daughter of R. V. Hughes and Elizabeth (Cullen) Hughes, the former born near Dayton, Ohio, and the latter in Pennsylvania. They were married in Indiana and came west in 1859. Mr. Hughes was a lawyer by profession and was honored with all the offices of the county during his residence here. He had been a school teacher and was a man of refinement and education, being a deep reader of all current and standard literature. He gathered the collection of fruit which took the premium among the exhibits from Nebraska at the World’s Fair in Boston. Mrs. Armstrong is one of ten children, and the others now living are: Jennie, the wife of Tom Ross, her second husband, has seven children; Mrs. Armstrong is next in age; Catherine is the wife of Charles Wheeler, of this county, and has eight children; Edward went to California at the age of nineteen and has a farm of one hundred acres there, and is the father of four children; John is unmarried and living in Howe; Minnie is the wife of Tom Lighthill, in Oklahoma; Rose is the wife of Lee Nunn, in western Nebraska, and has seven children. Mrs. Armstrong was educated in the Brownville high school and taught for three years.
The following children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong: Edna, who was educated in the normal and taught for a time, is the wife of Mike Beauchamp, who farms the old homestead; Rosa has finished school and has a teacher’s certificate; Boyd, born January 10, 1889, is at home and in school; Hope Mabel was born September 4, 1892; and Bob was born on Christmas Day of 1898. Mr. Armstrong has been affiliated with the Independent Order of Odd Fellows for the past twenty years, and has passed all the chairs; he is also a Woodman of the World, and he and his wife are charter members of the Rebekahs. In politics he is a Democrat, and has been school director for nine years. Mr. Armstrong’s parents held their golden wedding anniversary on November 29, 1888, and at their death, they had the unusual record of leaving thirty-three grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
Source: Lewis Publishing Company, A Biographical and Genealogical History of Southeastern Nebraska, 2 volumes, Lewis Publishing Company, 1904.