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Author: peggycont
Surnames: Chaney, Dowden, Hancock, Langdon,
Classification: queries
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http://boards.rootsweb.com/surnames.chaney/1181/mb.ashx
Message Board Post:
History of Idaho: a narrative account of its historical progress ..., Volume 2
By Hiram Taylor French
Samuel F. Chaney. A resident of the vicinity of Middleton for thirty-seven years,
Samuel F. Chaney during this time has shared in the wonderful progress which has been made
in this section, mostly under his own eyes, and has been identified in an eminent degree
with the industrial, financial and political life of Canyon county throughout his period
of residence here. His career has been one of great activity and uncommon success, due to
the exercise of good judgment and the exhibition, under all circumstances, of the
strictest integrity.
Mr. Chaney was born in Clay county, Missouri, August 3, 1847, and is a son of Joel R.
and Annie (Dowden) Chaney. His father, a native of Kentucky, moved to Missouri with his
parents as a child of five years, the family settling in Clay county among the pioneers,
and there Joel R. Chaney followed the trade of blacksmith and became the owner of
extensive tracts of land. His operations were very successful, but during the Civil war he
met with heavy reverses. His death occurred in DeKalb county, Missouri, about 1880, when
he was sixty-two years of age. His wife, who was born in Kentucky in 1819, passed away in
1903 in Johnson county. Kansas, while there on a visit. She was a resident of Missouri
from childhood.
The fourth of his parents' family of eight children, Samuel F. Chaney received his
education in the country schools of Missouri, which he attended until reaching the age of
eighteen years. In the meantime he had been spending the summer months in work upon the
home farm, and eventually he engaged in agricultural pursuits on his own account,
continuing to remain in Missouri until 1875.^ in that year first coming to Idaho. After
spending the winter in the Salubria Valley, in the spring of 1876 he came to what is now
Middleton and engaged in farming, in which he has been interested to the present time, now
being the owner of a finely cultivated tract of one hundred and eighty-five acres. As the
town of Middleton grew and developed, Mr. Chaney identified himself with various projects
of a business and financial nature, becoming one of the organizers and a director of the
Bank of Middleton. of which he was subsequently elected president, and an incorporator of
the Middleton Ir!
rigation Mill Ditch. He is also a director in the Canyon County Farmers Mutual Fire
Insurance Company and one of the organizers and a director since organization of the
Caldwell Commercial State Bank. Politically a Democrat, Mr. Chaney was elected county
treasurer of Canyon county in 1806, and in 1906 and again in 1908 was elected county
commissioner. At this time he is serving in the highest municipal office in the village,
that of chairman of the board of village directors. He is prominent in Odd Fellowship,
having gone through all the chairs and being a past grand of his lodge. With his family he
attends the Baptist church. Mr. Chaney's Middleton life is contemporaneous with that
of the thriving village and he has borne not an inconspicuous part in its busy industries.
The trackless prairie which greeted his sight when he first came to this section has given
way to a center of commercial and educational activity. It is given to few men to witness
during their mature life!
such a transformation and to participate, along so many practical lin
es, in the development of such a community.
Mr. Chaney was married first in 1868 in Missouri to Miss Mahala Hancock, who died in
1869, three days after the birth of her son, James R., who is a prominent farmer of
Franklin precinct, Canyon county. In 1874, in Holt county, Missouri, Mr. Chaney was
married to Delilah E. Langdon, a native of Missouri and daughter of Garrett Langdon. Five
children were born of this union: Samuel Edgar, born in Idaho in 1876 and now a resident
of California, and Frederick O., born in 1878, in Canyon county, and now a prosperous
farmer of Middleton, living, and two daughters and a son deceased: Ethel Bell and Othelm,
both of whom died in infancy, and Lee F., who died at the age of thirty years. Mrs. Chaney
died January 10, 1913.
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