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Loyal B. VanDyke, son of Robert and Rebecca (McGill) VanDyke, was born on March 15, 1862, on the family farm located 2 miles east of Harrisville, Pennsylvania. He also grew up there, in a good Christian home. In September of 1883, Loyal went to Nebraska to visit his older brother Otis, where he then was hired by Otis' brother-in-law, John Alexander "Alex" Hogg, to help with the cane harvest and sorghum making. He decided to stay in the area, and rented a quarter-section of government-owned school land a couple miles northwest of Alex Hogg's farm, where he built a sod house. While working for Alex Hogg, Loyal met Alex's oldest daughter, Mary Minerva.
Mary Minerva Hogg, daughter of Alex and Margaret Hogg, was born on December 7, 1866, in her paternal grandfather Robert Hogg's house in Butler County, Pennsylvania. When she was young, she couldn't pronounce the letter "r", calling herself "Mamie", and was called Mamie or Mame all of her life. In 1869, the family moved to Iowa, where Mamie's father started a general store. In 1879, when Mamie was 12, the family moved to Nebraska, where Alex traded his gold watch for homestead rights on a farm. They stayed with a neighbor until they built a sod house on their farm. This is where they were living when Loyal VanDyke was hired by Mamie's father to help with the farm work. Many of Mamie's memories and stories of her childhood were documented by her daughter Ruth.
Loyal and Mamie were married on July 21, 1885, in Gibbon, Nebraska, and they lived in their sod house on the rented school property. In 1889, their first child, Blanche Louis, died of typhoid fever. Fearing that the well on the property was contaminated with typhoid germs, the family moved in with Mamie's parents. Loyal worked for his father-in-law the next year, then was hired by a Mr. Stockwell, who owned a farm and raised sheep, about 2 miles east of Shelton, Nebraska. They were living in the frame house on the Stockwell ranch the year the big drought started so suddenly on July 6, 1894. With the whole area devastated, Loyal and Mamie decided to move the family to Colorado. The newspapers were advertising that irrigation using water from the Colorado River was making the area a "Garden of Eden".
The family lived in Colorado for the next 6 years, first in Fuita, just northwest of Grand Junction, then in the plateau country around Mesa, about 40-miles east of GrandJunction, where the family rented various farms. In the spring of 1900, Loyal became quite ill, and decided to move the family back to Nebraska.
In Nebraska, they rented a farm near Loup City. In 1915, they purchased a farm north of Broken Bow, where they lived until they retired from farming and bought a house in Broken Bow.
Loyal and Minerva had ten children:
| Blanche Louise VanDyke | Born June 7, 1886 |
| Inez May VanDyke | Born February 26, 1889. Inez married John Otto Neal. |
| Edgar Leslie VanDyke | Born September 7, 1890. Edgar married Hazel Bourassa. |
| Ruth Gladys VanDyke | Born December 8, 1894. Ruth married Russell Adams. |
| Ralph Burton VanDyke | Born Born June 7, 1898. Ralph married Ruth B. Lloyd. |
| Sidney Arnold VanDyke | Born November 9, 1899. Sidney married Lillian Henderson, and they had 5 children: Sidney Douglas "Doug" VanDyke (died August 23, 2018 in Salem, OR), David Cleve VanDyke (died May 16,2023 - Obituary), Donna Jane VanDyke (married Warren Thiel), Joyce Lillie VanDyke, and Judith Louise VanDyke. |
| Clara Margaret VanDyke | Born August 25, 1901. Clara married George Wirt. |
| Dorothy Helen VanDyke | Born August 7, 1903. Dorothy married Wesley William Sloggett. Died September 22, 1996. |
| Robert Clyde VanDyke | Born September 23, 1905. |
| Loyal Boyd VanDyke | Born October 25, 1907. |
Loyal died in his home in Broken Bow, December 24, 1946. Mamie died in the Good Samaritan Hospital in Kearney, on June 8, 1953. For a rich discussion on the lives of Loyal and Mamie VanDyke, see the memoirs of Ruth VanDyke, their daughter.
