William H. McIninch, born March 20, 1836, in Tuscarora County, Ohio, was a retired farmer in Auburn, Nebraska, known for his significant contributions to the development of Nemaha County. Starting with no capital, he became a successful landowner, generously distributing land to his children and contributing to local education and religion. McIninch served in the Civil War with the 2nd Kansas Cavalry and endured nine months as a prisoner of war. He married Catherine L. Dunkle in 1859, and they had ten children. A Prohibitionist and Cumberland Presbyterian elder, McIninch was a respected community figure, known for his integrity and industriousness.
William H. McIninch, a retired farmer in Auburn, with a fine farm in London precinct, Brownville post office, is one of the oldest living settlers of Nemaha County and likewise one of its most successful farmers and businessmen. He began life in youth with no capital, and since earning his first money his record has been one of constant progress. He has been one of the large landowners of the county, but most of it he has either sold or allotted to his children. In addition to his material prosperity, he has been generous with personal work and means in aiding the cause of religion and education and has never failed to give a good account of himself in whatever relation he has been placed with society and his fellow citizens.
Mr. McIninch was born in Tuscarora County, Ohio, March 20, 1836. His grandfather, James McIninch, was born in Ireland and had two children, John and Sarah.
John McIninch, the only son of James McIninch, was born in New York City, July 29, 1808, and died in Nebraska, January 16, 1894. He was reared and educated in New York City, and was a schoolteacher in Ohio and Missouri. He was married in Tuscarora County, Ohio, April 2, 1829, to Miss Sarah Johnson, who was born on Laurel Hill Creek, Pennsylvania, September 22, 1813, and died in Andrew County, Missouri, in 1851. They were parents of eight children: Esop Edgar, born in Tuscarora County, Ohio, in 1830, died in Linn County, Oregon, in 1862, having been a pioneer there in 1852; he was unmarried and left an estate including the one hundred and sixty acres which had been given him by the United States government. Charles Postly McIninch, born in 1834, was named after his maternal great-uncle, a prominent and wealthy New Yorker, who has one of the fine monuments that adorn Greenwood Cemetery of that city; C. P. McIninch died in Oklahoma in 1901, leaving a family of sons and daughters who are now scattered throughout the southwest. Benjamin F. McIninch is in Nemaha County. William H. is the fourth of the children. Levi Johnson, a teacher, died while at his work in Canton, Ohio, in the prime of life, leaving a wife and a daughter. Catherine Ann died at the age of twenty-three while with her aunt and uncle Caldwell in New York City. Amos Anderson is a retired merchant in St. Joseph, Missouri, and has three sons. David G. is a farmer east of St. Joseph, and has three daughters and one son.
William H. McIninch was reared on a farm, having limited educational advantages in the primitive schoolhouses of the time and locality. At the age of seventeen, soon after his mother’s death, he left home and went with Hux Bivens to drive stock across the plains to Oregon. He was four and a half months from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Albany, Linn County, Oregon, and from there he went to the northwest corner of California in the spring of 1854. He was engaged in placer gold mining there until the fall of 1857, and then returned home by way of New York City, and in the same fall came to this part of Nebraska and pre-empted the one hundred and sixty acres which still form part of his farm, paying for it with a Mexican land warrant. There were but few settlers here then, the nearest neighbor being a mile away. The landscape presented a picture of an undulating stretch of prairie, covered with wildflowers and grass, and was a dreary scene to one accustomed to the roll and woodland of more eastern states. He made his first dwelling of one room, built of poles, with one door and one window, and its dimensions were fourteen by sixteen feet. He later helped a squatter prove up some land, and received a deed for forty acres on Snow Island, on which he built a log and mud cabin. In 1860, soon after his marriage, he bought seventy-five acres one mile southwest of his place, for one thousand dollars, and his later purchases were: five acres of timber on the bluffs near Brownville, for one hundred and twenty-five dollars; forty acres of timber for two hundred and fifty-five dollars; eighty acres of prairie southeast of this farm for two thousand dollars; eighty acres west for eighteen hundred; eighty acres of improved land for fifteen hundred; eighty acres which he purchased nearby in 1894 for thirty-six hundred; forty acres one mile south at fourteen hundred; and in 1901 he purchased a half a block in Auburn on which he has erected a beautiful home for his permanent residence. He paid two hundred and seventy-five dollars to the Cumberland Presbyterian institution, Missouri Valley College, at Marshall, Missouri, and has a lot there on which he has paid taxes for ten years. He has sold and traded a great deal of land, and his present farm consists of three hundred and sixty acres, and in the family, there are over fifteen hundred acres, with eight sets of buildings. Mr. McIninch, with the help and co-operation of his wife, has made all he has. He earned his first money by working on a farm in Missouri for Tom McDonald at ten dollars and a half a month. The second house which he built in Nebraska was of hewn logs, and it is now doing duty as a stable. This was replaced by the present brick, story and a half, house, which was built twenty-three years ago, and is beautifully surrounded with flowers and groves which make it a bower of beauty nearly all year. He has an apple orchard of ten acres, besides a large variety of other fruits, especially peaches. He has sold one ten-acre orchard and has two others and has planted twenty acres to fruit. His leading crop is corn, of which he plants from one hundred to two hundred and fifty acres, and from one hundred and six acres in 1902 he sold 5750 bushels. He has often raised as much as ten thousand bushels of corn. He and his wife are about to ensconce themselves in the new home in Auburn and the maiden daughter and youngest son will remain on the farm and manage it.
Mr. McIninch volunteered on July 6, 1862, at Brownville, Nebraska, and was enrolled in Company G, Second Kansas Cavalry, with which he saw service until the close of the war, for three years. He was under Generals Blunt and Steele in Arkansas. He was captured at Poison Springs and was held a prisoner for nine months in Tyler and Camp Gross, Texas. After his capture, he knew he would be reported among the dead, and he took the first opportunity to ingratiate himself with the Confederate officers, who permitted him to send a letter to his young wife, informing her of his real circumstances. This prison experience was the worst of all his life, and he suffered every physical torment except death, two hundred and ten of his companions in misery dying of disease, mostly of yellow fever. He was finally paroled and sent north, being mustered out at Fort Gibson, Indian Territory, and paid off and discharged at Lawrence, Kansas. The government paid him for his horse and equipment and the clothing he had lost, and he also received twenty-five dollars a month while in the service, having furnished his own horse. He also got four dollars a month pension, which was later raised to eight dollars, and is now twelve.
Mr. McIninch was married on January 27, 1859, to Miss Catherine L. Dunkle, who was born on the banks of the Ohio River, in West Virginia, April 8, 1842, a daughter of Henry and Nancy (Smith) Dunkle. Henry Dunkle was a carpenter and boatbuilder and died at the age of twenty-six, leaving his wife and this one daughter, having lost one daughter at the age of four. His widow afterward had eight children by James Emmons, and she died at Tecumseh, Nebraska, in the fall of 1902, when nearly eighty-three years of age. Mrs. McIninch came with the family in 1856 by water as far as Omaha, thence to Atchison County, Missouri, and her stepfather took a claim in Nemaha County. The latter died in 1890, when about seventy-eight years old.
Mr. and Mrs. McIninch have had ten children: Ophelia is the wife of Casmer Barnes; James H. is a farmer near here and has a wife and one son; Willa Kate, born in 1864 while her father was in the army, was named after her father and mother; David P. is a farmer on the Auburn road and has two sons and one daughter; Clara Belle is the wife of D. E. Zook, a farmer near here, and has six children living; M. S. is an attorney in Auburn and is married; Charles D. died at the age of sixteen months; Barnett J., unmarried, is on the home farm and in partnership with his father; one son died in infancy; and Julia Nellie is a student in the Auburn high school, class of 1904.
Mr. McIninch now votes the Prohibition ticket, having come over from the Democratic ranks. He is one of the surviving members of the Grand Army of the Republic. He has been a school director but has had little time for active participation in public or political affairs. He and his wife are members of the Cumberland Presbyterian church, and the children have been baptized in the church. He is an elder and has been a member of the assembly three times.
Source: Lewis Publishing Company, A Biographical and Genealogical History of Southeastern Nebraska, 2 volumes, Lewis Publishing Company, 1904.