When he was nine years old he moved with his parents to Jasper Co, Iowa. He lived in that county for 40 years, his occupation being farming and carpentry.
He also was a school teacher and taught many terms in the winters. He loved music. Was always ready to help a neighbor in need or sickness. When a young man he was the champion wrestler for miles around. He and his wife moved from Jasper Co in 1883 to Jefferson Co, NE. In 1884 She moved from there to Custer County, NE near Milburn, where they lived until their deaths.
All their children were born near Lynnville, Jasper Co, Iowa.
He was 89 years, 7 months and 20 days at his death.
Newspaper writeup on their 68th wedding anniversary.
According to scriptural writtings, the alloted time of man in this vale of ears is three score years and ten, with a few of the vast multitudes that begin life here by a few more years, became of a little stronger constitution, better observance of the laws of health, very little or no indulgence in the various forms of dissipation, and by the grace of God. Yet it is very seldom that a man and woman, whose lives have been linked together in holy matrimony, both live to such a good old age that they are permitted to celebrate a wedding anniversary lacking but two years of reaching the alloted time of man's sojourn here. But just this very thing has transpired within about twenty miles of Sargent, that is, the sixth-eighth wedding anniversary has been celebrated by a man and woman living at about that distance from this
city. We are now referring to Mr. and Mrs. William M. Stallings of Milburn.
Since Mr. and Mrs. Wm. Stallings took their marriage vows sixty-eight years ago, hundreds of millions, yes, perhaps two billions of human beings have come into this world, fulfilled their missions here and passed on into the unknown.
Some of the most momentous events of this earth's history have been enacted in that time. Some of the greatest wars of history have been fought. The map of the world has undergone great changes since then. In the United States great material and political changes have taken place. Presidents have come and gone. Political parties have been born and some of them have ceased to exist. The great civil war was fought and as a result human slavery in the United States was abolished. The United States has taken its place at the head of the nations in wealth and human achievement. Our constitution has been amended to prohibit slavery; to elect United States senators by a direct vote of the people; to allow the passage of income tax laws; to prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage; and to enfranchise women. Many of the great inventions have come since then such as the telephone, the phonograph, electric lights, the electric railways, air planes, wireless telephones, and telegraphs, the great ocean cables, and lastly radio machines, by means of which it is possible to hear in their own home near Milburn, Nebraska, people speaking in their old home in Jasper county, Iowa, and to hear them at Milburn just as quickly as they would if sitting face to face with them in that old time Iowa home. When it is all summed up,we believe that Mr. and Mrs. Stallings have, in the sixty-eight years of their married life, lived during the greatest period of human history.
It will be a pleasure for the editor of the Leader to be permitted to write about many more of their wedding anniversary celebrations.
(Details were then given of who attended, etc.)