KARMANY, URIAH S. — Born February 18, 1827, near the city of Lebanon, Pennsylvania. His parents, Henry and Mary (Smith) Karmany, were of German ancestry whose family had settled in Lebanon County approximately 200 years earlier.

He spent his boyhood on the farm, attending district school during the winter months. At age sixteen, he was sent to an academy in a neighboring village. The family later removed to Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, and a year afterward located at East Hanover.

In the spring of 1853, Mr. Karmany came west to seek his fortune, spending a few months with an uncle at Freeport, Illinois. In September of that year, he went to St. Paul, Minnesota, and from there to Mankato, arriving December 20, 1853.

He first made a claim on Agency Hill but abandoned it the following spring. During the summer of 1854, he worked for the Russell brothers, who were engaged in running a flatboat on the Minnesota River for Nathan Myrick. That fall, the small steamer Iola replaced the flatboat, and Mr. Karmany retained many vivid recollections of his river experiences.

He spent the winter of 1854–1855 clerking for Robert Wardlaw, who conducted a store in the Wardlaw Building on Lot 1, Block 6. In the spring of 1855, he located a claim on the hill back of the Cement Works, which he later sold to Samuel Walker.

For a time prior to the Civil War, he was engaged in the butcher business. On July 15, 1861, he enlisted in Company H, Second Minnesota Infantry. On September 21, 1863, while detailed to hospital duty at the Battle of Chickamauga, he was taken prisoner. For twenty months, until the close of the war, he endured the horrors of Confederate prison life—first at Libby Prison, then at Andersonville, Savannah, Milan, Blackshire, and finally at Andersonville a second time. Possessed of indomitable courage and practical resourcefulness, he survived the ordeal in which thousands perished.

After the war, Mr. Karmany engaged in the meat and grocery business for more than twelve years, much of that time in partnership with his brother, James M. Karmany.

In 1875, he married Mrs. Mary Jane Fero, née Hinman. Mrs. Karmany died May 5, 1899, leaving, besides her husband, two children by her first marriage: Dr. Claud Fero of Minneapolis and Mrs. F. A. Halstead of Mankato. Mrs. Karmany was a daughter of Nathaniel Hinman and descended from a prominent Connecticut family.