Biographies - Lancaster County, Nebraska

Thomas L. Phillips has contributed much to the development of Elbert County through the establishment of the town of Elizabeth, which he laid out and which has become the leading railroad center of the county. He is engaged in ranching and is accounted one of the valued and representative citizens of the community. He was born upon a farm in Delaware on the 18th of February, 1844, and comes of good old Revolutionary stock in both the paternal and maternal lines. The family removed from Delaware to Illinois during the boyhood of Thomas L. Phillips, who was there reared and attended the public schools. It was in 1865, when twenty-one years of age, that he left the middle west and came to Colorado, taking up a homestead in Elbert County, a part of which is still a portion of the Phillips holdings of four hundred and twenty acres near the town of Elizabeth. In the early days he worked in a sawmill and as a cow puncher for Webber Brothers and he became familiar with all of the experiences, the hardships, the privations and the opportunities of those pioneer times. He recalls the Indian scares but was never in an actual fight with the red men. He remembers, however, that for some years he stacked grain with a loaded rifle near at hand ready for business. As the years have passed on he has witnessed many changes in conditions of life and in methods of farming. He has seen the rich, wild and undeveloped district into which he penetrated reclaimed for the purposes of civilization and it was he who laid out the town of Elizabeth during the early period of his residence in Elbert County. It is today a thriving and enterprising city, having enjoyed substantial growth. In the development of his ranching interests Mr. Phillips has followed progressive methods. He has placed acre after acre of his land under the plow and it has been made to bring forth golden harvests as the result of the care and labor which he has bestowed upon it. One proof of his marked enterprise is the present productivity of his land, while the buildings upon his place stand as monuments to his progressive spirit.
In 1887 Mr. Phillips was united in marriage to Miss Carolina Olson and to them have been born a son and a daughter: Arthur Lee Phillips; and Mrs. F. J. Burns, living at Lincoln, Nebraska.

Mr. Phillips is identified with Denver Lodge, No. 5, A. F. & A. M.. which is the oldest Masonic lodge in the state, and he has ever been a loyal adherent of the craft, true to its teachings and the beneficent spirit upon which it is founded. He has ever been recognized as a man of genuine worth during the fifty-three years of his residence in this state. There are few who have been connected with the state for a longer period and he recalls many interesting incidents of the early days when the work of progress and development seemed scarcely begun, when there were great open ranges and few fences to indicate that white men had laid claim to the land. The work, however, has been carried forward in keeping with the progressive spirit that has characterized agricultural life in the last half century and the home place of Mr. Phillips exemplifies what can be accomplished upon the western frontier when there is a will to dare and to do.

A native of Cleveland Ohio, was born July 16, 1850. He was married July 12, 1910 to Hattie E Speeke, of Lincoln Nebraska. They have no children. Mr. Marble is son of L. O. and Amanda Marble. He was in the jewelry business at Meringo, Iowa, in 1879 and 1880. Prior to that, however, he spent some time in the photo business at Vinton, Iowa; Lead City, South Dakota; Lincoln, Nebraska; Spokane Washington; Denver Colorado; Omaha, Nebraska. Two years ago he came to Kirksville {Mo}. He spent about thirty years in this business. For eight years he served as official photographer for the Burlington Railway. While in Kirksville he had a studio on the north side of the public square, which he sold April 01, 1911, and moved West. Mrs. Marble is also an artist, doing fine work in oil and water colors. She is talented and has become noted for her landscapes and musical talent.

Raymond John Pool, educator and scientist of Lincoln, Neb., was born April 23, 1882, in Wabash, Neb. He has received the degrees of A.B., A.M. and Ph.D. Since 1907 he has been director of the Nebraska Botanical Survey. He has been president of the biological section of the Nebraska State Forestry Association. He is the author of The Flora of Nebraska and other monographs.