Help!

Ok friends—it’s your turn to help ME!

I love books (that’s no secret!)…and yesterday I had an extra hour (how’d that happen??) so I found myself at my favorite used book store.  I found some interesting (read: I hope they sell well on eBay!) ones:  a cookbook with recipes for meatloaf, history of the Shriners, a Mary Engelbreit (she always sells well) Christmas book, and a book about the history of shady ladies in the early 1900s. 

But, there’s one that really has me stumped—published in 1931, it is titled simply Nebraska. The title page tells me nothing either—it says it’s a Special Limited Supplement and it was printed by The Lewis Publishing Company (based in Chicago and New York). 

The book is full of biographies of prominent men in Nebraska, along with their official photograph and a copy of their signature. The men were from the middle 1800s through the early 1900s.  Most of the men were lawyers, judges, and legislators. Most of the men came to Nebraska from another part of the United States in the early days of the state. Most of the men had affiliations with social groups of the time.  Some were affiliated with the University of Nebraska in some way. The men represented different political views and a variety of religious groups. 

Each photo is protected with a ricepaper insert (which I folded back for this shot)

You probably noticed that I said “most” in my description—I was looking through the biographies for a common thread—but found none.  There is even a couple of women listed, and one church listed.  (Why a church is included is beyond me!)

The biographies are not in alphabetical order, nor are they in chronological order. The index lists the 77 entries in alphabetical order.  Another interesting note: there is one item in the index that is a reference to the Dempster Mill Manufacturing Company (they made & sold windmills in the southeast area of Nebraska). The Dempster Milling Company does not have its own page, it is merely mentioned in D. B. Dampster’s biography.

I was showing the book to a couple of history-buff friends last night and one jokingly commented that the only common thread she could see was that none were members of the KKK (which was big in the 20s and ‘30s).

So, help me out here!  What do you think this book might be?  Do you think it might be one of a series of books on prominent men in the individual states?