StettlerLocal.com March 17, 2022 @ 5:00pm
Joseph Nelson Tice (J.N) was born in Erie County, New York, in 1853. He attended school until the age of sixteen and then went to work on the family farm. His father died when he was 18, and Joseph stayed on the farm until the estate was formally divided among the family heirs. He continued to farm for himself until 1882, when he sold everything and moved to South Dakota. Tice farmed in South Dakota for 14 years and was the proprietor of a local hotel.
Tice came to Lacombe in 1895. During the ten years he lived and worked there, he worked as both the CP and Dominion Land Agent, was on Lacombe’s first town council and was in the livery business. He continued to operate a livery barn in Lacombe even after coming to Stettler in 1905.
Tice was voted onto Stettler’s first town council and became Stettler’s second mayor after two years, replacing N.B. McGillivray. One of his first positions in the community was as the Government Land Guide, and he started one of the first livery barns in town.
In addition to building one of Stettler’s earliest business blocks, he also lived with his family in one house they owned and rented out two more. This property was in addition to approximately thirty acres of land he owned in San Bernardino County in California, from which he shipped in large amounts of oranges grown on his California property to sell and give out as gifts.
In October of 1911, Tice and his wife left Stettler and moved to their property at Uplands, California. They would remain there until Mr. Tice’s passing in 1916, when his remains were shipped back to Lacombe in November of 1916 to be interred in a family plot.
Carson Ellis, Local Historian
Our Town Stettler
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