Biographical Memoirs of Wells County, Indiana, 1903. pp. 487-488.

GEORGE R. NEVIUS.

George R. Nevius, son of James and Nancy (McClelland) Nevius, was born in Lewisburg, Greenbrier county, Virginia (now West Virginia), December 22, 1842. James Nevius was a native of Rockbridge county, Virginia, but was of New Jersey parentage, the family having settled in Virginia in an early day where his father was a slaveholder and by trade a blacksmith. He died in the Old Dominion in 1840, his widow surviving him for ten years. In 1842 James Nevius removed to Charleston, West Virginia, where he was employed at his trade of blacksmith. He was a man of great physical strength and for a number of years was accustomed to work nineteen hours per day. He was of the strictest integrity and for half a century was a member of the Presbyterian church, in the faith of which he died in 1882. His family numbered nine children, of whom five are still living, George R. being the only resident of Wells County.

George R. Nevius was educated in the military school at Charlottesville, Virginia, after an attendance in an academy at Washington Court House, Ohio. In 1861 he came to southern Indiana and September 23, 1862, enlisted at Brookville in the First Indiana Cavalry and fought in the Missouri campaigns under Gens. Fremont and Curtis. He was a true soldier, never shirking his duty, and took part in all the marches, skirmishes and battles in which his regiment was engaged, his service expiring while stationed at Helena, Arkansas. On his discharge, in 1864, he located in Franklin county, Indiana, where he was engaged in farming for a short time and then for two years was a grain dealer at Oxford, Ohio, and then embarked in the same business at New Castle, Indiana, where he had an extensive trade.

In 1869 Mr. Nevius came to Greenwood, Wells County, and conducted a lucrative lumber trade until 1896, operating a saw-mill here for nearly thirty years. Mr. Nevius was united in marriage December 24, 1863, with Miss Emma Murphy, of Franklin county, Indiana, and to this union four children have been born, namely: Ida, who is the wife of C. W. Eastman, of Winchester, Indiana; Burton B., the present marshal of Huntington, Indiana; Minnie, wife of Woodson Archbold, and James D., who is a fireman on the Erie railroad.

George R. Nevius held allegiance for many years to the Republican party, though exercising his own common sense and right to think for himself, he decided, in 1896, to support the Democratic party, though he today is what may be termed an independent. He is plain and straightforward in expressing his views and is thus termed a plain-spoken man; but what he says is based upon sound, logical reasoning. He judges for himself and is willing to grant the same privilege to everybody else, but never indulges a sense of animosity on account of a difference in honest convictions.