ROBERT R. NEAL

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275

     ROBERT R. NEAL is perhaps the most extensive fruit grower in Lincoln county. He certainly has done considerable work and is deserving of great credit. His place is about six miles north from Hesseltine and consists of two hundred and forty acres, forty acres of it being irrigated. Mr. Neal has shown great wisdom in laying out and handling the place and has made himself a master, of the fruit business, as will be discerned by the results he has achieved.

     Robert R. Neal was born in Franklin county, Illinois, on March 29, 1852, the son of Aaron and Elizabeth (Clumpet) Neal. The father was born in South Carolina and moved to Illinois in 18 18. He fought in the Black Hawk war and was a prominent and well to do man. The mother was born near where the battle of Cowpens was fought. Our subject received an ordinary education from the public schools of Illinois and upon the completion of the same, spent six years in buying and selling cattle in Kansas. In 1882, he came to Sherman, Washington, and first filed on land in township 27, range 33. it being the township in which Sherman is now located. For four years, he remained there, meeting and overcoming the obstacles and hardships incident to a pioneer life. Then he remained in his present location, taking a homestead and bought eighty acres. Since that time, he has given his undivided attention to the study of the fruit industry, and carrying on the same. He has a large orchard of all leading varieties of apples, both winter and fall, a fine peach orchard, and also raises many pears, prunes, plums, cherries, grapes, strawberries, and so forth. Mr. Neal has never had a failure in the fruit crop in his section and in addition to making an undivided success himself has done an untold amount of good to the community in stimulating worthy efforts in this very important industry. He raised in 1893, thirty thousand quarts of strawberries on three acres and cleared nine hundred dollars on them. He also raises cotton, tobacco, and sweet potatoes, and in 1888 raised one yam weighing fourteen pounds. There were enough others in the same hill to make twenty-five pounds. He irrigates his land from a large spring on the farm.

     In 1878, Mr. Neal married Miss Louisa Van Dusen. She died in 1894. In 1898, Mr. Neal married Mrs. Tinnie (Park) Beers. He has the following children, William R., Ollie E., Fred O., Frank L., Roy R., Xora E., Mattie M., and E. Alice. He also has one step-son, Joseph Beers. In 1895. Mr. Neal was appointed fruit inspector for Lincoln county and held that office for six years. He is a man of progressive ideas and good sound judgment and the success he has gained is one of the choice bits of Lincoln county history.