The subject of this sketch is one of the prosperous sons of Charles D. Avery, of the preceding sketch, and one of the most well-to-do farmers and stockmen of Sibley township.

Mr. Avery was born in Jackson county, Michigan, near the town of Parma, in 1870, and was but two and a half years old when the family emigrated to Kansas; hence he is practically a product of the state. He was educated in the old Sibley school house, No. 16, on the original Sibley townsite, and taught school for three years, two years in Lawrenceburg and one year near Aurora. With the exception of this school work he has always been a farmer.

Mr. Avery was married in 1895 to Miss Mary Anna Iverson, a very deserving and amiable young woman whose parents were old settlers in Sibley township. She is a daughter of the late Lotus and Christine (Hallson) Iverson, who homesteaded section eleven, the farm where Mr. and Mrs. Avery now live. The Iversons were of Danish birth. Her father was born in Schleswig-Holstein, March 28, 1827. He was a seafaring man for some years, making voyages from San Francisco around to Cape Horn. He subsequently located temporarily in California and engaged in the alluring occupation of gold mining, owned valuable properties and acquired a fortune, but lost the greater part of it in unwise speculation. After his wealth became shattered he gathered the fragments of his successes together, and acting upon Shakespeare's lines,

he came to America, sanguine that good results would yet follow his undertakings. He made two trips across the United States and had selected a site near Omaha, Nebraska, for a home, but fell in company with some of his countrymen in Junction City, who were coming to Cloud county, Kansas. He joined them, established a home, returned to Denmark and married. Mr. Iverson prospered in Kansas and founded a permanent home where he died, surrounded by the comforts of life, July 19, 1899. Mrs. Iverson was born in Denmark June 12, 1846. She was deceased March 1868, leaving two daughters. Two sons were born to their union, both of whom were deceased in early youth.

Ida Christine has gained prominence as an educational worker and a teacher of music. She is now pursuing a classical course in Stanford University. The rudiments of her education were acquired in joint district No. 1, Cloud and Republic counties, and she taught two terms of school before going to California eight years ago. She was one of a party of tourists who visited the Paris Exposition, including a trip to Austria, Ireland, England Scotland, Germany, Italy and many other places of interest. Her present aim and ambition is to complete a University course as a means of obtaining higher and more responsible positions.

Mrs. Avery was educated in the home school and is possessed of considerable talent in both music and art. She is a woman of many admirable qualities, and the interior of their home suggests the refined taste of its matron. After the mother's death, Mrs. Avery was her father's housekeeper. To Mr. and Mrs. Avery two children have been born Lloyd Lawrence and Helen Christine. Aside from the homestead Mr. Avery owns four hundred and forty-four acres of fertile bottom land along the Republican river that is in a highly cultivated state. He keeps a herd of about one hundred and twenty-five head of native cattle and has a pasture of eighty acres along the river. He raises on in average over one hundred head of hogs and has made his money in stock. Like most of the farmers along the Republican he raises corn and ships it in the form of cattle and hogs. Mr. Avery has enlarged the residence, built commodious sheds and otherwise improved the homestead. From one of his adjoining farms Mr. Avery sawed thirty thousand feet of cottonwood lumber from a grove and avenue of trees that have sprung up into giants within a little more than a quarter of a century.

Politically Mr. Avery is a Republican. He has been treasurer of the school board for five years. Mr. and Mrs. Avery are among the representative people of the community, are members of the district No. 95 Methodist Episcopal church and associated with all worthy measures for the improvement of the locality in which they live.