Sheldon Ulysses Stearns

BIOGRAPHY
While a young man he followed farming in the Summer and worked at
logging in Winter, taking log rafts down the Deleware River from
Stockton to Trenton. In 1855, Sheldon, his family, his mother-in-law
and her two youngest children moved to Iowa, settling near Central
City, Linn County. They remained in Iowa until Spring of 1865 when
they moved to Linn County, Kansas (near the Kansas-Missouri border).
In Spring of 1870 the family came to what was then Howard county where
he had already taken a claim and built a house. The houses on Caney
were then few and far between. There were no houses then where Sedan
is now located and Peru contained only an unfinished log house.
Provisions were brought from Independence and Elk City, then only
small trading posts. After thirteen years of living on the farm,
Sheldon sold his farm and moved to Peru where he lived until his
death. While living in Chatauqua County, Kansas, Sheldon was
appointed the postmaster of the Sedan Post Office on 1 October 1874
when it was reestablished. He died on Tuesday night, 18 December 1888
of Dyspepsia (chronic gastritis) according to his obituary in the Peru
Weekly Call. Funeral services were conducted the afternoon of 20
December at the Christian Church by Father Davis of Oswego an old
friend and pastor of the Kansas Universalist Church of which Sheldon
was a member. "The remains were followed to the cemetery by a large
concourse of friends." He is buried in the Peru, Kansas cemetery,
about 50 feet South of the main entrance on the left as you go South.
His headstone reads Sacred/ To The / Memory of / Sheldon U / Stearns /
Departed this / life / Dec 18 1888 / Aged / 66 Ys 8 Ms / and 8 Ds /
STEARNS / then there are four more lines which are illegible. As a
point of interest, the last legible line showns the name Stearns in
capital letters with both the first and last S reversed. In Bond's
Watertown book, Sheldon is referred to as a Captain. According to his
obituary in the 28 December 1888 Sedan Times Journal he served for
several years as a Captain of the Militia of Wayne County,
Pennsylvania. During the political campaign of 1882, Sheldon's name
was used in the Sedan Times endorsing "a peoples convention." After
learning of this he wrote to The Chautauqua Journal, "DIDN'T SIGN IT,
Ed. Journal-I notice in the Sedan Times that ther is published a call
for a "Peoples Convention," stating that it will be held at the court
house, in Sedan, on Saturday, Oct. 14, 1882." Among other signatures
to said call, I observe that my name is appended, and I desire to
inform the public that I neither signed the call nor authorized any
one else to sign it for me, nor did I know that my name was attached
to it until Saturday last. I have always been a Prohibitionist, voted
for the Constitutional Amendment, and expect to sustain the law in the
future. I wish to say futher that I do not want my name mixed up with
any such clique. S. U. STEARNS Sedan, Oct. 9th, 1882."
(Prepared by Chester V. Swanson)