Milo Emerson Nettleton, born in Butler County, Iowa, in 1869, became a successful farmer in Lincoln County, South Dakota. His parents, Amos and Louisa Nettleton, were Canadian-born pioneers who settled in Lincoln County in 1872. Raised in the challenges of frontier life, Milo contributed to farm work from a young age and later acquired his own land in Dayton Township in 1892. He married Clara Anna Lyon in 1897, and they raised four children. Active in community life, Milo was a charter member and officer of the local Brotherhood of American Yeomen chapter, aligning with Republican values.
Milo Emerson Nettleton, a successful farmer of Lincoln County, is a native of the Hawkeye state of the Union, having been born on a farm near Shellrock, Butler County, Iowa, on the 21st of December, 1869, and being a son of Amos and Louisa Nettleton, both of whom were born in the province of Ontario, Canada, while in the lineage are found English, Irish, and Dutch strains. The ancestors in an early day emigrated from the state of New York to Ontario, Canada, and settled near Prescott, on the St. Lawrence River, and thence the paternal grandparents of our subject removed to Ogle County, Illinois, where they took up their residence in 1855, being numbered among the pioneers of that section. There, in 1858, was solemnized the marriage of Amos Nettleton and Louisa Hart, and they later followed the western march of civilization and immigration into Iowa, where they remained until 1872, when they came to Lincoln County, South Dakota, which was then on the very frontier of civilization, and cast in their lot with the first settlers of this section, while it was theirs to endure the hardships, dangers, and deprivations which marked the formative epoch of history in the great undivided territory of Dakota. The father here took up government land, and he and his wife are still residents of Lincoln County, having lived to witness the marvelous transformation which has here been wrought in the last quarter of a century, while with the development of the resources of the state they have become prosperous and are now enabled to pass the golden evening of their lives in peace and contentment and to rest from the strenuous labors which marked their early years in the territory.
The subject of this sketch was a child of about three years at the time of his parents’ removal to South Dakota, and he was reared under the influences and conditions of the pioneer era, assisting from his boyhood in the work of the farm and securing his educational training in the somewhat primitive common schools of the locality and period. He continued on the old homestead until 1892, when he purchased a quarter section of land in Dayton Township, Lincoln County, where he has developed a good farm, upon which he has made substantial improvements, while he is now numbered among the prosperous farmers and stock growers of the county and is one of its steadfast and loyal citizens, meriting the confidence and esteem in which he is held in the section which has so long been his home. In politics, he gives his support to the Republican party, and fraternally, he is a charter member of Homestead No. 680, Brotherhood of American Yeomen, at Harrisburg, which was organized in 1901, and of which he has been master of accounts from the time of its inception.
On the 28th of November, 1897, Mr. Nettleton was united in marriage to Miss Clara Anna Lyon, who was born in Oakland, Illinois, on the 28th of March, 1879, being a daughter of Henry and Ida Lyon, and they are the parents of four children, whose names and dates of birth are here entered: Emma Ray, March 19, 1899; Henry Tawney, January 19, 1901; Amos Arthur, September 13, 1902; and Floyd Lyman, February 16, 1904.
Source: Robinson, Doane, History of South Dakota: together with mention of Citizens of South Dakota, [Logansport? IN] : B. F. Bowen, 1904.