A. Belo, a representative farmer and stockman of Arion township, has achieved the competency he possesses by his own efforts and labor, and there is scarcely a day that he does not devote himself to toil; yet he is never so much engrossed or too busily engaged to meet friends or strangers with a courteous and hospitable bearing. He is a farmer of lifelong experience and began his career as foreman of Robert Stewart's extended farm in Buchanan county, Iowa, in 1876.

In the spring of 1878 he emigrated to Kansas and settled temporarily in Mitchell county, near Cawker City. In July of the same year he rented a farm in Cloud county, and the following autumn homesteaded forty acres of land adjoining his present home place. A year later he bought seventy acres one mile south, known as the Everett homestead. In 1887 he sold these two tracts and bought the farm of two hundred and eighty acres where he now lives and which he put under a good state of improvement. In 1881 he proceeded to build a comfortable six-room residence and a small, but well-built, barn. He has considerable fruit, including apples, peaches, pears and grapes. His chief farm products are wheat, corn and oats. He keeps a herd of from fifty to eighty head of native cattle, among which are some graded Polled-Angus, and feeds from fifty to one hundred and fifty fine-bred Jersey Red and Poland China hogs. In the summer of 1884 Mr. Belo farmed two hundred acres of land that was planted in corn; fifty acres of this ground grew corn that yielded eighty bushels per acre; on the two hundred acres he had a total yield of eleven thousand bushels. The shellers bid one cent per bushel, and at that figure their bill footed $110. The corn marketed from eighteen to twenty-three cents per bushel. In 1901 he had a field of wheat containing sixty acres that threshed twenty-eight bushels to the acre.

Mr. Belo was born on a farm near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in December, 1856. He is a son of John and Henrietta (Trebom) Belo. John Belo was born in Germany in 1837, emigrated to America in 1855, and settled in Wisconsin. In 1861 he emigrated with his family to Iowa and bought timbered government land in Buchanan county for one dollar and a quarter per acre, which he cleared and improved and where he still lives. Mr. Belo is one of ten children, five of whom are living: Our subject; Edward, a stone mason of Jessup, Iowa; Lena, wife of John Metchmier, a grain dealer of Jessup, Iowa; John; and Telia.

J.A. Belo was married in February. 1881, to Susanna (Burns) Sheridan, the widow of Thomas Sheridan. She was born in Ireland, came to America with her parents when a child and settled in the state of New York. Mrs. Belo died April 13, 1884, three years after her second marriage, leaving one child (and three by her first husband), John Edward, who is interested with his father on the farm and is a young man of good education in both English and German. In 1889 Mr. Belo was married to Mary Ann Driscoll, a native of Vermillion county, Illinois, and a daughter of Cornelius Driscoll, who became a farmer of Arion township, Cloud county, in 1878. Her parents were both of Irish birth. Her mother's brothers, General Humphries and Major Humphries, were distinguished officers of the English army. Mrs. Belo's father was found dead from natural causes March 3, 1896, in the field where he was herding horses. Her mother died in May, 1900. Mrs. Belo is one of seven living children, all but two of whom live in Cloud county. Mr. Belo is a Populist, but formerly voted the Democratic ticket. He has served several successive years on the township board. Himself and family are members of the Concordia Catholic congregation.