Edward Dwyer, farmer, located on Section 27, Town 19, Range 5 west, P. O. St. Edward, was born in New York City March 6, 1834, shortly after his parents removed to Walden, Orange County, where they resided until 1848, when they moved West and located at Shields Town (near present town of Lake Forest), Lake Co., Ill. In 1854, E. D. left home to try the “struggle for existence” on his own account. From that time until the breaking-out of the rebellion in 1861, he drifted around through the lumber regions of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. steam boating on the Mississippi and its tributaries, distilling and teaming in Chicago, Ill. In September, 1861, enlisted in Company I, First Wisconsin Cavalry, at Ripon, Wis.; was afterward transferred to Company C. Was with the regiment at the battles of Chalk Bluffs, Ark., Cape Girardeau, Mo., Chickamauga, the capture of Shelbyville, Tenn., and the relief of Gen. Burnside at Knoxville, Tenn., besides about all the scouting expeditions and minor engagements participated in by that regiment up to January 9, 1864, when he was severely wounded in an engagement with Gen. Longstreet’s forces at Dundridge, Tenn., and was discharged on that account in August of that year. In the fall of 1870, he left Chicago, and after one winter’s experience in trying to live in the State of Mississippi he returned North and settled in the then unorganized territory of Boone County, Neb., where he took the first claim that was taken in the Lower Beaver Valley. His farm consists of 160 acres, one mile north of St. Edward, on the line of the O. N. B. H. R. R. He has nearly one hundred acres under cultivation, and about four acres of timber, natural and cultivated. Mr. D. is a Democrat. At the first special election for the purpose of organizing the county in 1872, he was elected County Commissioner, and although not a professional politician, he occasionally takes a prominent part in the political affairs of the county.
