The young men who have made and are making a fine success in the business world of Nez Perces County are a prominent class of the population and as a distinguished individual of this number, we are constrained to mention the gentleman whose name heads this paragraph. He is a native of Chautauqua County, Kansas, born on October 13, 1876, the son of Samuel W. and Almira (Jones) Pennell. The father was born in North Carolina in 1848, and is now a cattleman and farmer in Kansas. He was a soldier in the southern army and his father was a native Virginian, while his mother came from German stock. The mother of our subject was born in Iowa, in 1850, and is still living at the home place in Kansas. Her parents, H. V. and Hulda Jones, were natives of Iowa, also.
Our subject attended the common schools and worked with his father until he had arrived at the age of twenty and then he went to Valparaiso, Indiana, where he attended the state normal school. Graduating in 1898, he went to Chicago and accepted a position in a wholesale grocery house, after which he returned home. It was May, 1899, that he came to Lewiston, Idaho, and took up the business of the hardware and furniture merchant. He has won a good success in this line and is one of the well established business men of the city, having a profitable and extensive patronage. Mr. Pennell has brothers and sisters as follows, Charles W., Maude, Mollie, Grover Frank and Jennie. He has also the following named half brother, S. O. Tannahill, George W., and John.
Mr. Pennell is a member of the I. O. O. F., and is interested in fraternal insurance. In politics, he is allied with the Democrats and is an active and potent factor in the labors of the party in his County. The grandfather of Mr. Pennell, H. V. Jones, was one of the sturdy pioneers of the western plains.
On June 26, 1902, Mr. Pennell was married in Spokane, Washington, to Miss Edna Hilton, a native of California. Her parents were early settlers of Oregon and at present her father is a merchant at Leland, Idaho.
Back to: Nez Perce Biographies
Source: An Illustrated History of Northern Idaho, Embracing Nez Perce, Idaho, Latah, Kootenai and Shoshone Counties, Western Historical Publishing Company, 1903