Guilford Lilly, a retired farmer residing in Auburn, Nebraska, was born on October 3, 1829, in Old Deerfield, Oneida County, New York. He moved to Nebraska in 1859 after farming in Wisconsin. Lilly served in the Civil War as a member of the Second Nebraska Cavalry. In 1861, he married Elizabeth Johnson, originally from Vermont, and they had one daughter, Encie. Lilly retired from farming in 1893 and has lived in Auburn since 1897. He was active in his community as a school director and a Mason, and he was a Republican.
Among the retired farmers who are living quietly in the pleasant town of Auburn, Nebraska, is found the subject of this sketch, Guilford Lilly.
Mr. Lilly is a New Yorker by nativity, but for nearly half a century has been a resident of Nebraska. He was born in Old Deerfield, Oneida County, New York, October 3, 1829, a son of New England parents. Shubael Lilly, his father, was born near Lebanon, Connecticut, in 1798, and died in Dodge County, Wisconsin, at the age of fifty-six years. He and his wife were the parents of nine children, the family record being as follows: Harriet, who died in Beaverdam, Wisconsin, in 1901, at the age of seventy-nine years, was twice married, and had one child by her first husband, Mr. Clawson, and one by her second husband, Mr. Rising; the next three children, Sarah Ann, Fidelia, and Adaline, died of an epidemic, within three weeks of each other, when they were quite small; Elizabeth, wife of Maxson Crandall, a farmer of Valley County, Nebraska, has a large family; Guilford was the sixth in order of birth; Parker died at the age of ten years; Julia, wife of S. C. Saunders, of Milton, Wisconsin, has a family of three children; and George H., a farmer and teacher of vocal music, died in Albion, Wisconsin, in 1902, leaving one son and one daughter. The mother of this family died in Hartsville, Steuben County, New York.
Guilford Lilly was reared to farm life in New York State, spending his first five years in his native county and the next fifteen years in Steuben County. In 1850 he landed in Dodge County, Wisconsin, where he farmed rented land until 1859. That year he came to Nemaha County, Nebraska. The trip from Madison, Wisconsin, to his place was made in a “prairie schooner” with two yoke of cattle, Mr. Lilly being one of a party of five, and they were from April 1st to May 20th in making the journey. After his arrival here, Mr. Lilly traded his interests in the outfit for a yoke of oxen, and with the six hundred dollars he had saved and brought with him he bought ninety acres of wild prairie land, paying one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre for eighty acres, and one hundred dollars for ten acres of timber land, this purchase being in Bedford precinct. This land he sold in 1865, at a profit, and bought another farm, which he operated for a number of years and which he still owns.
During the Civil War period Mr. Lilly donned the blue and fought for the preservation of the Union. He enlisted in the fall of 1862, as a member of Company C, Second Nebraska Cavalry, and shared the fortunes of that command for nearly a year, their duty being in Nebraska, to watch the Indians on the west and the Bushwhackers on the east.
Mr. Lilly was married, February 24, 1861, in Dodge County, Wisconsin, to Miss Elizabeth Johnson, a native of Vermont. Mrs. Lilly was born September 29, 1842, daughter of O. B. and Helen Ann (Wood) Johnson, and granddaughter of Captain Nathan Wood. O. B. Johnson and wife were the parents of five sons and two daughters, of whom three are living, viz.: Mrs. Lilly; Julia, wife of George C. Bryant, of Riverside, California, is the mother of four children; and Henry P. Johnson, of Illinois.
Mr. and Mrs. Lilly have one only child, Encie, wife of E. P. Thomas; and the grandchildren now number five — Ethel, Elfie, Edna, Erica, and Edith — an interesting little group. Mr. and Mrs. Thomas also have a son and a daughter deceased.
In 1893, Mr. Lilly retired from the active duties of farm life and moved to Auburn. His pleasant home on Maxwell Street he has owned and occupied since 1897. For fifteen years Mr. Lilly was a school director. He is, politically, a Republican and, fraternally, a Mason.
Source: Lewis Publishing Company, A Biographical and Genealogical History of Southeastern Nebraska, 2 volumes, Lewis Publishing Company, 1904.