HON. CHARLES E. BENTLEY:

Nominee of the National Party for the Presidency.

THE National Party nominee for President, Charles Eugene Bentley, was born at Warner's, Onondaga County, New York, April 30, 1841. Mr. Bentley is the eldest of a family of six children, and is the only surviving one. The paternal grandparents were from Rhode Island, sturdy New England stock. Early in the century they removed to the then unexplored West of Central New York, coming in 1809 to the pioneer settlement at Warner's, and carving out of the primeval forest the farm of one hundred acres which for eighty-seven years has been occupied and owned by the Bentley family.

In the War of 1812, with Great Britain, the grandfather was enlisted for service as an American soldier, and was assigned for duty at Sackett's Harbor.

As a contrast to the nomadic habits that pertain to the West, it is an interesting fact that Mr. Bentley's father, himself and his oldest child were all born on the old farm. Mr. Bentley's father

died in 1877, but the mother, now nearly seventyeight years old, still survives, living at the old home. Mr. Bentley's parents were mentally and physically well endowed. While they had but few opportunities for schooling in those early times, when the old English Reader was sole text book, they nevertheless obtained a sound and practical education, becoming well informed upon all the questions of the day. They had decided literary taste, and read with discriminating care history, biography and poetry. Both loved politics as the science of government, and were ardent advocates of the principles of the Whig and Republican parties. Mr. Bentley has often said that he could not escape the marked conditions of a political heredity, that must environ one born at the close of the never-to-be-forgotten Harrison and Tyler campaign of 1840.

He has, however, cause for thankfulness, that while this law of heredity brings him into vital sympathy of the ballot-box sort with social and political reforms, heredity may be so modified by intelligent citizenship that its subjects never climb into a party band wagon that is run for monopoly, Wall Street, partial suffrage and the saloon. Mr. Bentley's education was obtained in the schools of the Empire State, and in Seminary courses at Elbridge and Cazenovia, N. Y. He lived on the home farm until he reached manhood's estate and

established a home of his own. He was married in 1863, to Persis Freeman, of Baldwinsville, N. Y., and in 1866 removed permanently to the West, locating in Clinton, Iowa, where he engaged in active business life. During the twelve years' residence in that city Mr. Bentley was almost constantly in public service, holding for a period of years positions as City Clerk and Treasurer, and Secretary of the Board of Education, until his removal to Nebraska in 1878. Although politically allied during these years to the Republican Party, he cherished an inborn hatred to the drink traffic and the rule of monopolistic wealth. This led him at times to open rebellion against the party policy which was annually bidding for both the church and saloon vote.

On removing to Nebraska Mr. Bentley returned to the farm, settling on a quarter of raw prairie at Surprise, in Butler County, and located about fifty miles from the State Capital. Here the family remained for nearly thirteen years. The school life of the children was so arranged that study and farm work were judiciously blended. Every mem- ber of the family contributed directly to the sum of the labor and toil required for developing the farm into one of the finest and most productive in the State. More than this, they contributed to the moral and social uplift of the community in the organization of churches, temperance and literary