"The memories that live and bloom in trees, that whisper of the loved and lost in summer leaves, are as imperishable as the seasons of the year—immortal as the love of a mother."—J. Sterling Morton.
I suppose the story of a successful pioneer will always interest and encourage people. The narrative of a strong, far-sighted man who makes something out of nothing seems to put heart into the average worker. That is why I am telling the story of how my father, J. Sterling Morton, and his young wife, set their faces toward the West, one October day in 1854, and built them a home on the prairies.
Arbor Lodge as it stands today, with its classic porticoes, its gardens, and its arboretum, the present country home of my brother, Mr. Joy Morton, is not the home that I remember as a boy. That was a much more modest edifice. Yet even that house was a palace compared with the first one, which was a little log-cabin standing on the lonely prairie, exposed to blizzards and Indians, and with scarcely a tree in sight.
My father was a young newspaper man in Detroit, only recently out of college, when he took his bride, two years his junior, out to the little-known frontier. Attracted by the information about the new country brought out by Douglas and others in the Kansas-Nebraska debates in congress, he conceived and acted on the idea that here were fortunes to be made. Taking such household goods as they could, they traveled to the new land, making the last stage up the Missouri river by boat.
Nebraska at that time was the Indian's own country. There were not over 1,500 white people in the entire state. All the country west of the Missouri was called in the geographies the Great American Desert, and it took a good deal of faith to believe that anything could be made to grow where annual fires destroyed even the prairie grass and the fringes of cottonwoods and scrub-oaks along the rivers. Today this section, within a radius of some two hundred miles, includes perhaps the most fertile soil in the world and has become a center of industry, agriculture, and horticulture for the middle west. There was then no political organization, no laws; men went about fully armed. There were no roads and no bridges to speak of in the entire state; it was "waste land."
This was part of the land of the Louisiana Purchase, and my father bought a quarter section (160 acres) from the man who preëmpted it from the government. The price paid was $1.25 an acre. Today the estate comprises about 1,000 acres, and the land is readily saleable at a hundred times this price.
On the spot where Arbor Lodge now stands, my father built his first log-cabin. This was soon replaced by a modest frame house; there was not then another frame house between it and the Rocky Mountains, six hundred miles away. On the same place two succeeding houses were built by my father, the present, and fifth, Arbor Lodge having been built by his sons after his death. My father called these first four houses, "seed, bud, blossom, and fruit."
The first winter was a mild one, fortunately, but there were plenty of hardships for the young people. There were no very near neighbors, the village of Kearny Heights, now Nebraska City, being then over two miles away. The Indians formed the greatest danger. I can remember a day in my boyhood when we had everything packed up, ready to flee across the Missouri to Iowa from the murderous Pawnees and Cheyennes, who, fortunately, did not come that time. A part of that first winter my father and mother spent in Bellevue.
When spring came they set about building their home. Later on they had young trees sent to them from the East, including some excellent varieties of apples, peaches, cherries, pears, etc. Things grew fast; it was only the prairie fires that had kept the land a desert so long, and year by year these fires had enriched the soil.
The farm was located on the Overland trail, the favorite route to Pike's Peak and the El Dorado. Many of the Mormon emigrants crossed the river at that place. I can remember the big trains of ox and mule teams passing the house.
My father's interests were always inseparably joined with those of the community; he was in public life from the start, and Nebraska's fortunes were his. His neighbors all had the same experiences, and many a farmer who started with nothing is now wealthy. The farmers had to bring in from Missouri and Iowa all the food for themselves and their horses and cattle the first year. They were living on faith. During the first spring and summer the anxiety was great, but they were rewarded by a good harvest in the fall. The success of that harvest settled the Nebraska question forever. It was a land that could support its inhabitants.
But the end was not yet. The "get-rich-quick" fever struck the community. Immigration was over-stimulated, and town lots were manufactured at a great rate. In a few months they increased in price from $300 to $3,000 apiece. Banks were created and money was made plenty by legislation. My father never caught this fever, being always a sound-money man and believing in wealth based on the soil.
At the end of the second summer the crop of town lots and Nebraska bank-notes was greater than the crop of corn. But the lesson was not learned until the panic of 1857 drove out the speculators and left the farmers in possession of the territory. With the spring of 1858 sanity came to rule once more, and there was less bank making and more prairie breaking. The citizens had learned that agriculture was to be the salvation of the new country. In 1857, two dollars a bushel had been paid for imported corn, but in 1859 the same steamers that had brought it in bore thousands of bushels south at forty cents a bushel, bringing more money into the territory than all the sales of town lots for a year.
The first territorial fair was held in Nebraska City in 1859, and on that occasion my father made a speech in which he reviewed the history of the new territory up to that time. I speak of these things because my father was always a man of public interests, and his fortunes were wrapped up in those of the territory. His hardships came when the community went crazy, and his fortune grew when sanity was once more restored.
I know of nothing that better illustrates my father's private character than an editorial which he wrote and published in The Conservative a short time before the untimely death of my brother Carl. The fact that both the author and the two loved ones of whom he so tenderly wrote have passed to the Great Beyond, imparts to this beautiful passage a most exquisite pathos:
"It was a bright, balmy morning in April more than a quarter of a century ago. The sun was nursing the young grass into verdure, and the prairie was just beginning to put off its winter coat of somber colorings. Tranquil skies and morning mists were redolent at Arbor Lodge of the coming resurrection of the foliage and flowers that died the autumn before. All about the cottage home there was hope and peace; and everywhere the signs of woman's watchful love and tidy care, when, suddenly, toned with affectionate solicitude, rang out: 'Carl, Carl!' but no answer came. Downstairs, upstairs, at the barn, even in the well, everywhere, the mother's voice called anxiously, again and again. But the silence, menacing and frightening, was unbroken by an answer from the lost boy. At last, however, he was found behind a smokehouse, busily digging in the ground with a small spade, though only five years of age, and he said: 'I'm too busy to talk. I'm planting an orchard,' and sure enough, he had set out a seedling apple tree, a small cottonwood, and a little elm.
"The delighted mother clasped him in her arms, kissed him, and said: 'This orchard must not be destroyed.'
"And so now
"'I hear the muffled tramp of years
Come stealing up the slopes of Time;
They bear a train of smiles and tears
Of burning hopes and dreams sublime.'
"The child's orchard is more than thirty years of age. The cottonwood is a giant now, and its vibrant foliage talks, summer after summer, in the evening breeze with humanlike voice, and tells its life story to the graceful, swaying elm near by, while the gnarled and scrubby little apple tree, shaped, as to its head, like a despondent toadstool, stands in dual shade, and bears small sweet apples, year after year, in all humility. But that orchard must not be destroyed. It was established by the youngest tree planter who ever planted in this tree planter's state, and for his sake and the memory of the sweet soul who nursed and loved him, it lives and grows, one cottonwood, one apple tree, one elm.
"'But O, for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still.'
"The memories that live and bloom in trees, that whisper of the loved and lost in summer leaves, are as imperishable as the seasons of the year—immortal as the love of a mother."
Social Aspects
As a girl graduate I came to Nebraska City from Virginia, at an early day. It seemed to me that I was leaving everything attractive socially and intellectually, behind me, but I was mistaken. On arriving here, I expected to see quite a town, was disappointed, for two large brick hotels, and a few scattered houses comprised the place. Among my first acquaintances was the family of Governor Black, consisting of his daughter about my own age, his wife, and himself. He was not only bright and clever, but a wit as well, and famous as a story-teller. Alas a sad fate awaited him. For leaving here to take command of a Pennsylvania regiment, he was killed early in the civil war.
Those were freighting days and Russell, Majors and Waddell, government freighters, made this their headquarters. Alexander Majors brought his family here adding much socially to the town. Major Martin, an army officer, was stationed here. He was a charming gentleman and had a lovely wife. Dancing was the principal amusement with the young people. Informal dances at private homes and occasionally on a steamboat when it arrived, brilliantly lighted and having a band of music on board. At the "Outfit" as it was called, where the supplies for the freighting company were kept, dwelt a family, Raisin by name, who were exceedingly hospitable, not only entertaining frequently, but often sending an ambulance for their guests. At these parties no round dancing was indulged in, just simple quadrilles and the lancers. Mr. and Mrs. J. Sterling Morton, who lived on a country place, a short distance from town, which has since become widely known as Arbor Lodge, were among the most active entertainers, dispensing that delightful hospitality for which in later times they were so well known.
And so we lived without railroads, without telephones, automobiles, or theaters. But I believe that our social enjoyment was greater than it is now. Instead of railroads, we had steamboats arriving almost daily from St. Louis, St. Joseph, and other towns. In carriages we drove to Omaha and back, and the social intercourse of the two towns was much greater than it is now.
Amateur theatricals took the place of the theater, and often brilliant, undreamed of talent was shown. Literature also was not neglected, many highly educated men and women were among our pioneers and literary societies were a prominent part of our social life. We played chess in those days, but not cards. This alone might be taken as an index of how much less frivolous that day was than the present.
In 1860 Bishop Talbot arrived here from Indianapolis and made this his home, adding greatly socially and intellectually to the life of the community. In his family was the Rev. Isaac Hager, beloved and revered by all who knew him, a most thorough musician, as well as a fine preacher.
Remembering old times we sometimes ask ourselves, where now are the men and women, equal to the ones we knew in those days, certainly there are none superior to them, in intellect, manners, wit, and true nobility.
My father and family came to Nebraska in 1858, living two years at Genoa. At this time the government assigned what is now Nance county, to the Pawnee Indians, as a reservation. When the white settlers sought other homes our family located eight miles east of Columbus, at McAllister's lake. Every fall my father hired about sixty squaws to husk out his crop of corn. Only one buck ever came to work, and he was always known as "Squaw Charlie" after that. He spoke English quite well. They were slow workers, husking about twenty bushels per day. They were very gluttonous at meals, eating much bread, with meat soup containing potatoes and other vegetables, cooked in large twenty gallon camp kettles. This was supplemented by watermelons by the wagonload. It required a week or ten days to harvest the corn crop. The Indians were very thievish, stealing almost as much as their wages amounted to. During these years I often witnessed their "Medicine Dances."
When fifteen years old I enlisted in Company B, Second Nebraska Cavalry, and went to Fort Kearny. Our company relieved the Tenth Infantry, which went to the front. In less than twenty days this company was nearly annihilated at the battle of Fredericksburg.
While at the fort a buffalo hunt was organized by the officers, and I had an opportunity to go. Our party went south to the valley of the Republican. The first night we camped at the head of the Big Blue, and the second day I noticed south of us, about eight miles distant, a dark line along the horizon extending as far east and west as the eye could reach. I inquired what it was and an old hunter replied "buffaloes." I could not believe him, but in a few hours found he was right, for we were surrounded by millions of them. They were hurrying to the east with a roaring like distant thunder. Our sportsmen moved in a body through the herd looking for calves, not caring to carry back the meat of the old specimens. Strange to say this tremendous herd seemed to be composed of males, for the cows were still on the Oklahoma ranges caring for their calves, until strong enough to tramp north again. We noticed an old fellow making good progress on three legs, one foot having been injured. One of the party wished to dispose of him, but his wooly forehead covered with sand, turned every bullet. Finally the hunter asked me to attract his attention, while he placed a bullet in his heart. In doing this, he almost succeeded in goring my pony, but I turned a second too quickly for him. I was near enough to see the fire flashing from his angry eyes. In a few minutes he fell with a thud.
Several years after the war being over, I worked for the Union Pacific railroad company. At Kearney, in 1869, we met the Buck surveying party, who had come west to lay out, for the government, the lands of the Republican Valley. In this company was a young man from Pontiac, Illinois, named Harry McGregor. He left a home of plenty to hunt buffalo and Indians, but found among other privations, he could not have all the sugar he wished, so at Kearney he decided to leave the party and work with us. This decision saved his life, for the rest of the surveyors, about ten in all, after starting south next morning, were never seen again. They were surprised and killed by the Indians. Their skeletons were found several years later, bleaching on the Nebraska prairie.
A party under the direction of Major Frank North set out with six wagon teams and four buffalo horses on November 13, 1871, to engage in a buffalo hunt. The other men were Luther North, C. Stanley, Hopkins Brown, Charles Freeman, W. E. Freeman, W. E. Freeman, Jr., and Messrs. Bonesteel, Wasson, and Cook. They camped the first night at James Cushing's ranch, eighteen miles out; the second night at Jason Parker's home at Lone Tree, now Central City, and the third night arrived at Grand Island. On the way to Grand Island one of the party accidentally started a prairie fire six miles east of Grand Island. A hard fight was made and the flames subdued just in time to save a settler's stable.
Leaving Grand Island on the sixteenth they crossed the Platte river and camped on the West Blue. From this point in the journey the party suffered incredible hardships until their return.
About midnight the wind changed to the north, bringing rain and sleet, and inside of an hour a blizzard was raging on the open prairie. The horses were covered with snow and ice and there was no fuel for the fires. The men went out as far as they dared to go for wood, being unsuccessful. It was decided to try to follow the Indian trail south—made by the Pawnee scouts under Major North. Little progress could be made and they soon "struck camp" near some willows that afforded a little protection to their horses and a "windbreak" was made for man and beast. This camp was at the head of the Big Sandy, called by this party the "Big Smoky" for the men suffered agonies from the smoke in the little tipi.
For two days the storm continued in all its terrible force. The wind blew and the air was so full of snow that it was blinding. The cold was intense. The men finally determined to find some habitation at any price and in groups of two and three left camp following the creek where they were sure some one had settled. A sod house was found occupied by two English families who received the party most hospitably. Charles Freeman, older than the other men of the party, suffered a collapse and remained at this home. During the night the storm abated and next morning, finding all the ravines choked with heavy snow drifts, it was decided by vote to abandon the hunt. They dug out their belongings from under many feet of snow, sold their corn to the English families to lighten their load and started back. The journey home was full of accidents, bad roads, and drifted ravines. Reaching the Union Pacific railroad at Grand Island Major North and Mr. Bonesteel returned to Columbus by rail, also Mr. Stanley from Lone Tree. The rest of the party returned by team, arriving on November 24.
Major North admitted that of all his experiences on the prairie—not excepting his years with the Pawnee scouts—this "beat them all" as hazardous and perplexing.
The foregoing is taken from my father's diary.
It is almost impossible for people of the present day to realize the hardships and privations that the first settlers in Nebraska underwent. Imagine coming to a place where there was nothing but what you had brought with you in wagons. Add to the discomfort of being without things which in your former home had seemed necessities, the pests which abound in a new country: the rattlesnake, the coyote, the skunk, the weasel, and last—but not least—the flea.
My father, Samuel C. Smith, held the post of "trader" for the Pawnee Indians under Major Wheeler in 1865-66. We lived in a house provided by the government, near the Indian school at Genoa, or "The Reservation," as it was commonly called. I was only a few weeks old, and in order to keep me away from the fleas, a torture to everyone, they kept me in a shallow basket of Indian weave, suspended from the ceiling by broad bands of webbing, far enough from the floor and wall to insure safety.
I have heard my mother tell of how the Indians would walk right into the house without knocking, or press their faces against a window and peer in. They were usually respectful; they simply knew no better. Sometimes in cold weather three or four big men would walk into the kitchen and insist upon staying by the fire, and mother would have hard work to drive them out.
The next year my father moved his family to a homestead two miles east of Genoa where he had built a large log house and stables surrounded by a high tight fence, which was built for protection against the unfriendly Indians who frequently came to make war on the Pawnees. The government at times kept a company of soldiers stationed just north of us, and when there would be an "Indian scare," the officers' wives as well as our few neighbors would come to our place for safety. Major Noyes was at one time stationed there. Firearms of all sorts were always kept handy, and my mother could use them as skilfully as my father.
One night my father's barn was robbed of eight horses by the Sioux and the same band took ten head from Mr. Gerrard, who lived four miles east of us. E. A. Gerrard, Luther North, and my father followed their trail to the Missouri river opposite Yankton, South Dakota, and did not see a white man while they were gone. They did not recover the horses, but twenty years after the government paid the original cost of the horses without interest. The loss of these horses and the accidental death of a brother of mine so discouraged my father that he moved to Columbus in 1870.
One of the delights of my childhood were the nights in early autumn when all the neighborhood would go out to burn the grass from the prairie north of us for protection against "prairie fires," as great a foe as was the unfriendly Indian of a few years before.
In the summer of 1874, which in Nebraska history is known as "the grasshopper year," my grandmother, Mrs. William Boone, accompanied by her daughter, Mrs. Mary Hemphill, and granddaughter, Ada Hemphill, came to make us a visit. For their entertainment we drove in a three-seated platform spring wagon or carryall to see the Indians in their village near Genoa. Their lodges were made of earth in a circular form with a long narrow entrance extending out like the handle of a frying pan. As we neared the village we came upon an ordinary looking Indian walking in the road, and to our surprise my father greeted him very cordially and introduced him to us. It was Petalesharo, chief of the Pawnees, but without the feathers and war-paint that I imagined a chief would always wear. He invited us to his lodge and we drove to the entrance, but my grandmother and aunt could not be persuaded to leave the surrey. My cousin, being more venturesome, started in with my father, but had gone only a few steps when she gathered up her skirts and cried, "Oh, look at the fleas! Just see them hop!" and came running back to the rig, assuring us she had seen enough. The Indians must have taken the fleas with them when they moved to Oklahoma, for we seldom see one now.
In the early history of the county, county warrants were thicker than the leaves on the trees (for trees were scarce then), and of money in the pockets of most people there was none. Those were the days when that genial plutocrat, William H. Waters, relieved the necessities of the needy by buying up county warrants for seventy-five cents on the dollar. Don't understand this as a reflection on the benevolent intentions of Mr. Waters, for he paid as high a price as anybody else offered; I mention it only to illustrate the financial condition of the people and the body politic.
Henry Mahan was postmaster and general merchant. The combined postoffice and store which, with a blacksmith shop, constituted the business part of the town of Osceola, was located on the west side of the square. It was a one and one-half story frame and on the second floor was The Homesteader (now the Osceola Record). Here H. T. Arnold, W. F. Kimmel, Frank Burgess, the writer, and Stephen Fleharty exercised their gray matter by grinding out of their exuberant and sometimes lurid imaginations original local items and weighty editorials. In those days if a top buggy was seen out on the open, treeless prairie, the entire business population turned out to watch it and soon there were bets as to whether it came from Columbus or Seward, for then there was not a top buggy in Polk county. The first drug store was opened by John Beltzer, a country blacksmith who suddenly blossomed from the anvil into a full-fledged pharmacist. Doctor Stone compounded the important prescriptions for a while.
I need not try to describe the grasshopper raid of 1874 for the old-timers remember it and I could not picture the tragedy so that others could see it. To see the sun's rays dimmed by the flying agents of destruction; to witness the disappearance of every vestige of green vegetation—the result of a year's labor, which was to most of the inhabitants the only resource against actual want, to see this I say, one must live through it. Many of the early settlers were young people newly married, who had left their homes in the East with all their earthly possessions in a covered wagon, or "prairie schooner" as it was called, and making the trip overland, had landed with barely enough money to exist until the first crop was harvested. Added to the loss and privation entailed by the visitation of the winged host was the constant dread that the next season would bring a like scourge.
On Sunday afternoon, April 13, 1873, I left the farm home of James Bell in Valley precinct for Columbus, expecting to take the train there Monday morning for Omaha. The season was well advanced, the treeless prairie being covered with verdure. It was a balmy sunshiny spring day, as nearly ideal as even Nebraska can produce.
As I left the Clother hotel that evening to attend the Congregational church I noticed that the clouds were banking heavily in the northwest. There was a roll of distant thunder, a flash of lightning, and a series of gentle spring showers followed and it was raining when I went to bed at my hotel. Next morning when I looked out of my window I could not see half-way across the street. The wind was blowing a gale, which drove large masses of large, heavy snow-flakes southward. Already where obstructions were met the huge drifts were forming. This continued without cessation of either snow or wind all day Monday and until late Tuesday night. Wednesday about noon the snow plow came, followed by the Monday train, which I boarded for Omaha. As the train neared Fremont I could see the green knolls peeping up through the snow, and at Omaha the snow had disappeared. There they had had mainly rain instead of snow. I may say that the storm area was not over two hundred miles wide with Clarks as about the center, the volume gradually diminishing each way from that point. It should be borne in mind that the farmers raised mainly spring wheat and oats. These grains had been sown several weeks before the storm and were all up, but the storm did not injure them in the least.
On leaving Omaha a few days later I went to Grand Island. At Gardner's Siding, between Columbus and Clarks, a creek passed under the track. This had filled bank high with snow which now melting, formed a lake. The track being bad the train ran so slowly that I had time to count fifty floating carcasses of cattle upon the surface of the water. This was the fate of many thousands of head of stock.
Nobody dared to venture out into that storm for no human being could face it and live. The great flakes driven by a fifty-mile gale would soon plaster shut eyes, nose and mouth—in fact, so swift was the gale that no headway could be made against it.
In those days merchants hauled their goods from Columbus or Seward and all the grain marketed went to the same points. Wheat only was hauled, corn being used for feed or fuel.
A trip to Columbus and return the same day meant something. A start while the stars still twinkled; the mercury ten, twenty, or even thirty degrees below, was not a pleasure trip, to the driver on a load of wheat. But the driver was soon compelled to drop from the seat, and trudge along slapping his hands and arms against his body to keep from freezing. Leaving home at three or four o'clock in the morning he was lucky if he got home again, half frozen and very weary, several hours after dark. Speaking of exposure to wintry blasts, reminds me of a trip on foot I made shortly after my arrival in Polk county. December 24, 1872, I started to walk from the Milsap neighborhood in Hamilton county, several miles west of where Polk now stands, to the home of William Stevens, near the schoolhouse of District No. 5. It was a clear, bitter cold morning, the wind blowing strongly from the northwest, the ground coated with a hard crust of snow. I kept my bearings as best I could, for it should be remembered that there were no roads or landmarks and I was traveling purely by guess. Along about mid-day I stumbled upon a little dugout, somewhere north of where Stromsburg now stands—the first house I had seen. On entering I found a young couple who smiled me a welcome, which was the best they could do, for, as I saw from the inscriptions on a couple of boxes, they were recent arrivals from Sweden. The young lady gave me some coffee and rusks, and I am bound to say that I never tasted better food than that coffee and those rusks. I did not see another house until I reached the bluffs, where, about sunset, I was gladdened by the sight of the Stevens house in the valley, a couple of miles distant. When I finally reached this hospitable home the fingers of both hands were frozen and my nose and ears badly frosted.
In the early days we traveled from point to point by the nearest and most direct route, for while the land was being rapidly taken up, there were no section line roads. Whenever the contour of the land permitted, we angled, being careful to avoid the patches of cultivated land. There were no trees, no fences, and very few buildings, so, on the level prairie, nothing obstructed the view as far as the eye could carry. The sod houses and stables were a godsend, for lumber was very expensive and most of the settlers brought with them lean purses. It required no high-priced, skilled labor to build a "soddy," and properly built they were quite comfortable.
When I grow reminiscent and allow my mind to go back to those pioneer days, the span of time between then and now seems very brief, but when I think longer and compare the then with the now, it seems as though that sod house-treeless-ox driving period must have been at least one hundred years ago. It is a far cry from the ox team to the automobile.
In March, 1865, my husband, George Roy, and I started from our home in Avon, Illinois, to Nebraska territory. The railroad extended to St. Joseph, Missouri. There they told us we would have to take a steamboat up the Missouri river to Rulo, forty miles from St. Joseph. We took passage on a small steamboat, but the ice was breaking up and the boat ran only four miles up the river. They said it was too dangerous to go farther so told us we would have to go back or land and get some one to drive us to Rulo, or the Missouri side of the river across from Rulo. We decided to land, and hired a man to drive us across country in an old wagon. It was very cold and when we reached the place where we would have to cross the Missouri, the ice was running in immense blocks. It was sunset, we were forty miles from a house on that side of the river. There was a man on the other side of the river in a small skiff. Mr. Roy waved to him and he crossed and took us in. Every moment it seemed those cakes of ice would crush the little skiff, but the man was an expert dodger and after a perilous ride he let us off at Rulo. By that time it was dark. We went to a roughly boarded up shanty they called a tavern. It snowed that night and the snow beat in on our bed. The next morning we hired a man to take us to Falls City, ten miles from Rulo. Falls City was a hamlet of scarcely three hundred souls. There was a log cabin on the square; one tiny schoolhouse, used for school, Sunday school, and church. As far as the eye could reach, it was virgin prairie.
There was very little rain for two years after we came. All provisions, grain, and lumber were shipped on boats to Rulo. There was only an Indian trail between Rulo and Falls City. Everything was hauled over that trail.
After the drouth came the grasshoppers, and for two years they took all we had. The cattle barely lived grazing in the Nemaha valley. All grain was shipped in from Missouri.
The people had no amusements in the winter. In the summer they had picnics and a Methodist camp-meeting, on the Muddy river north of Falls City.
Over the Nemaha river two and one-half miles southwest of Falls City, on a high hill above the falls from which the town was named, was an Indian village. The Sac and Foxes and Iowa Indians occupied the village. Each spring and fall they went visiting other tribes, or other tribes visited them. They would march through the one street of Falls City with their ponies in single file. The tipi poles were strapped on each side of the ponies and their belongings and presents, for the tribe they were going to visit, piled on the poles. The men, women, and children walked beside the ponies, and the dogs brought up the rear. Sometimes, when the Indians had visitors, they would have a war-dance at night and the white people would go out to view it. Their bright fires, their scouts bringing in the news of hostile Indians in sight, and the hurried preparations to meet them, were quite exciting. The Indians were great beggars, and not very honest. We had to keep things under lock and key. They would walk right into the houses and say "Eat!" The women were all afraid of them and would give them provisions. If there was any food left after they had finished their eating, they would take it away with them.
Their burying-ground was very near the village. They buried their dead with all accoutrements, in a sitting posture in a grave about five feet deep, without covering.
The Indians cultivated small patches of land and raised corn, beans, pumpkins, etc. A man named Fisher now owns the land on which the Indians lived when I reached the country.
The people were very sociable. It was a healthy country, and we had health if very little else. We were young and the hardships did not seem so great as they do in looking backward fifty years.
Note—Thyrza Reavis Roy was born August 7, 1834, in Cass county, Illinois, the daughter of Isham Reavis and Mahala Beck Reavis. Her great-grandfather, Isham Reavis, fought in the war of the Revolution. Her grandfather, Charles Reavis, and her own father, Isham Reavis, fought in the war of 1812. She is a real daughter of the war of 1812. She is a member of the U. S. Daughters of 1812, a member of the Deborah Avery Chapter D. A. R. of Lincoln, and a member of the Territorial Pioneers Association of Nebraska. Her husband, George Roy, died at Falls City March 2, 1903.
I recall one reminiscence of my early life in Nebraska which occurred in 1876, when we first located in Seward. We could have gone no farther, even had we wished, as Seward was then the terminus of the Billings line of the Burlington railroad.
We soon learned that a county celebration was to be held on the fourth of July, and I naturally felt a great curiosity to know how a crowd of people would look to whom we had been sending boxes of clothing and bedding in response to appeals from the grasshopper sufferers. My surprise cannot be imagined when I saw people clothed as well as elsewhere and with baskets filled with an abundance of good things for a picnic dinner.
The same pretty grove in which this gathering occurred thirty-nine years ago is now our beautiful city park, where during the summer of 1914 our commercial club gave an old-time barbecue costing the members twelve hundred dollars. They secured the state band and fine speakers, and served a bounteous dinner to about fifteen thousand people. Everything was free to all who came, and a happier crowd can not be imagined. I speak of this because in the years to come it will be a pleasant reminiscence to many who may have been present.
Note—Elizabeth C. (Bennett) Langworthy, fourth state regent of the Nebraska Society D. A. R., is a daughter of Jacob and Caroline (Valentine) Bennett. Her paternal grandfather was also Jacob Bennett, a soldier in the Revolutionary war. He was taken prisoner and held in an English ship off the coast of Quebec for some time. Mrs. Langworthy was born in Orleans county, New York, in 1837. The family moved to Wisconsin in 1849, and the daughter finished her education at Hamline University, then located at Red Wing, Minnesota. In 1858 she was married to Stephen C. Langworthy, and in 1876 became a resident of Seward, Nebraska. Mr. Langworthy died March 3, 1904.
Mrs. Langworthy has been active and prominent in club work, and is widely known. She served for five years as a member of the school board at Seward and organized the History and Art Club of Seward of which she was president for several years. She was the first secretary of the State Federation of Woman's Clubs, and was elected president in 1898. Mrs. Langworthy is the mother of six children.
Seward county shared with other counties all of the privations and experiences of pioneer life, though it seems to have had less trouble with hostile Indians than many localities in the state.
The struggles of pioneer settlers in the same country must necessarily be similar, though of course differing in detail. The first settlers deemed it important to locate on a stream where firewood could be obtained, and they were subject to high waters, prairie fires, constant fear of the Indian, and lack of provisions.
At one time the little band of settlers near the present site of Seward was reduced to one pan of corn, though they were not quite as reduced as their historic Pilgrim forefathers, when a load of provisions arrived that had been storm-bound.
Reminiscences are best at first hand, and the following letters, taken from the History of Seward County by W. W. Cox, recount some of the incidents of early pioneer life by those who really lived it.
Mrs. Sarah F. Anderson writes as follows:
"At the time of the great Indian scare of 1864, my father's family was one of the families which the Nebraska City people had heard were killed. It had been rumored throughout the little settlement that there were bands of hostile Indians approaching, and that they were committing great depredations as they went.
"One Sunday morning my uncle and Thomas Shields started down the river on a scouting expedition. After an all-day search, just at nightfall, they came suddenly upon an Indian camp. The men thought their time had come, but the redskins were equally scared. There was no chance to back out, and they resolved to know whether the Indians were friendly or hostile. As they bravely approached the camp, the Indians began to halloo, 'Heap good Omaha!' The men then concluded to camp over night with them, and they partook of a real Indian supper. The next morning they went home satisfied that there were no hostile Indians in the country.
"A day or two after this, my father (William Imlay) and his brothers were on upper Plum creek haying, when grandfather Imlay became frightened and hastened to our house and said the Indians were coming upon the settlement. He then hurried home to protect his own family. About three o'clock in the afternoon we saw a band of them approaching. They were about where the B. & M. depot now stands. We were living about eighty rods above the present iron bridge. My mother, thinking to escape them, locked the cabin door, and took all the children across the creek to the spring where she kept the milk. To kill time, she commenced churning. Very soon, four Indians (great, big, ugly creatures) came riding up to the spring and told mother that she was wanted over to the house. She said, 'No, I can't go; I am at work.' But they insisted in such a menacing manner that she felt obliged to yield and go. They said, 'Come, come,' in a most determined manner. The children all clinging to her, she started, and those great sneaking braves guarded her by one riding on each side, one before, and one behind. Poor mother and we four children had a slim show to escape. They watched our every movement, step by step. When we reached the cabin, there sat sixteen burly Indians in a circle around the door. When we came up, they all arose and saluted mother, then sat down again. They had a young Indian interpreter. As they thought they had the family all thoroughly frightened, the young Indian began in good shape to tell just what they wanted. They would like to have two cows, two sacks of flour, and some meat. Mother saw that she must guard the provisions with desperation, as they had cost such great effort, having been hauled from the Missouri river. The Indians said, 'The Sioux are coming and will take all away, and we want some.' 'No,' said mother, 'we will take our cattle and provisions and go to Plattsmouth.' 'But,' said the Indian, 'they will be here tonight and you can't get away.' Mother at this point began to be as much angry as frightened. 'I will not give you anything. You are lying to me. If the Sioux were so close, you would all be running yourselves.' At this point another brave, who had been pacing the yard, seeing mother grow so warm, picked up our axe and marched straight up to her and threw it down at her feet. She picked it up and stood it beside her. Mother said afterward that her every hair stood on end, but knowing that Indians respect bravery, she resolved to show no cowardice. We could all see that the whole river bend was swarming with Indians. Mother said with emphasis, 'I now want you to take your Indians and be gone at once.' Then they said, 'You are a brave squaw,' and the old chief motioned to his braves and they marched off to camp. The next day our family all went over to Plum creek and remained until things became settled.
"The following winter father was at Omaha attending the legislature; and I am sure that over a thousand Indians passed our place during the winter. It required pluck to withstand the thievish beggars. Sometimes they would sneak up and peep in at the window. Then others would beg for hours to get into the house.
"A great amount of snow had fallen, and shortly after father's return home, a heavy winter rain inundated all the bottom lands. We all came pretty near being drowned but succeeded in crawling out of the cabin at the rear window at midnight. Our only refuge was a haystack, where we remained several days entirely surrounded by water, with no possible means of escape. Mr. Cox made several attempts to rescue us. First he tried to cross the river in a molasses pan, and narrowly escaped being drowned, as the wind was high and the stream filled with floating ice. The next day he made a raft and tried to cross, but the current was so rapid he could not manage it. It drifted against a tree where the water was ten feet deep, and the jar threw him off his balance, and the upper edge of the raft sank, so that the rapid current caught the raft and turned it on edge against the tree. Mr. Cox caught hold of a limb of the tree and saved himself from drowning. A desperate struggle ensued but he finally kicked and stamped until he got the raft on top of the water again, but it was wrong side up. We then gave up all hopes of getting help until the water subsided. The fourth day, tall trees were chopped by father on one side and by Mr. Cox on the other, and their branches interlocked, and we made our escape to his friendly cabin, where we found a kindly greeting, rest, food, and fire."
The following from the pen of Addison E. Sheldon is recorded in the same History of Seward County:
"My recollections of early Seward county life do not go back as far as the author's. They begin with one wind-blown day in September, 1869, when I, a small urchin from Minnesota, crossed the Seward county line near Pleasant Dale on my way with my mother and step-father (R. J. McCall), to the new home on the southeast quarter of section 18, town 9, range 2 east—about three miles southeast of the present Beaver Crossing. Looked back upon now, through all the intervening years, it seems to me there never was an autumn more supremely joyous, a prairie more entrancing, a woodland belt more alluring, a life more captivating than that which welcomed the new boy to the frontier in the beautiful West Blue valley. The upland 'divides' as I remember them were entirely destitute of settlement, and even along the streams, stretches of two, three, and five miles lay between nearest neighbors.
"What has become of the Nebraska wind of those days? I have sought it since far and wide in the Sand Hills and on the table lands of western Nebraska—that wind which blew ceaselessly, month after month, never pausing but to pucker its lips for a stronger blast! Where are the seas of rosin-weed, with their yellow summer parasols, which covered the prairie in those days? I have sought them too, and along gravelly ridges or some old ditch yet found a few degenerate descendants of the old-time host.
"Mention of merely a few incidents seeming to hold the drama and poetry of frontier life at that time: 'Pittsburgh, the city of vision, at the junction of Walnut creek and the West Blue, inhabited by a population of 20,000 people, with a glass factory, a paper factory, a brick factory, oil wells, a peat factory, woolen mills, junction of three railway lines, metropolis of the Blue Valley.' All this and so much more that I dare not attempt to picture it; a real existence in the brain of Christopher Lezenby in the years of 1871-72. What unwritten dramas sleep almost forgotten in the memories of early settlers! When Mr. Lezenby began to build his metropolis with the assistance of Attorney Boyd of Lincoln and a few other disinterested speculators, he was the possessor of several hundred acres of land, some hundreds of cattle, and other hundreds of hogs, and a fair, unmarried daughter. What pathetic memories of the old man, month after month, surveying off his beautiful farm into city lots for the new metropolis, while his cattle disappeared from the prairies and his swine from the oak thickets along the Walnut; with sublime and childish simplicity repeating day after day the confession of his faith that 'next week' work would begin; 'next week' the foundation for the factories would be laid; 'next week' the railway surveyors would set the grade stakes. And this real rural tragedy lasted through several years, ending in the loss of all his property, the marriage of his daughter to Irwin Stall, and the wandering forth of the old man until he died of a broken heart in California.
"One monument yet remains to mark the site and perpetuate the memory of Pittsburgh, a flowing well, found I think at the depth of twenty-eight feet in the year 1874 and continuously flowing since that. Strange that no one was wise enough to take the hint and that it was twenty years later before the second flowing well was struck at Beaver Crossing, leading to the systematic search for them which dotted the entire valley with their fountains.
"There were no high water bridges across the West Blue in those days. I remember acting as mail carrier for a number of families on the south bank of the Blue during the high waters of two or three summers, bringing the mail from the city of Pittsburgh postoffice on the north bank. A torn shirt and a pair of short-legged blue overalls—my entire wardrobe of those days—were twisted into a turban about my head, and plunging into the raging flood of the Blue which covered all the lower bottoms, five minutes' vigorous swimming carried me through the froth and foam and driftwood to the other side where I once more resumed my society clothes and, after securing the mail, upon my return to the river bank, tied it tightly in the turban and crossed the river as before.
"I remember my first lessons in political economy, the fierce fight between the northern and the southern parts of the county upon the question of voting bonds to the Midland Pacific railway during the years 1871-72. It was a sectional fight in fact, but in theory and in debate it was a contest over some first principles of government. The question of the people versus the corporation, since grown to such great proportions, was then first discussed to my childish ears. One incident of that contest is forever photographed on my brain—a crowd of one hundred farmers and villagers lounging in the shadow of T. H. Tisdale's old store. A yellow-skinned, emaciated lawyer from Lincoln who looked, to my boyish vision, like a Chinese chieftain from Manchuria, was speaking with fluent imaginative words in favor of the benefits the people of Seward county might secure by voting the bonds. This was H. W. Sommerlad, registrar of Lincoln land office. A short Saxon opponent, Rev. W. G. Keen of Walnut creek, was picked from the crowd by acclamation to reply to the Lincoln lawyer. The impression of his fiery words denouncing the aggressions of capital and appealing to the memories of the civil war and the Revolutionary fathers to arouse the people's independence is with me yet.
"Next in the economic vista is the old Brisbin sod schoolhouse east of Walnut creek where a grange was organized. Here a lyceum was held through several winters in which the debates were strongly tinctured with the rising anti-monopoly sentiment of those hard times. George Michael and Charley Hunter, leaders of the boyish dare-deviltry of those days, were chosen as judges upon the debates in order to insure their good behavior, and they gravely decided for the negative or affirmative many deep discussions of doubtful themes.
"Beaver Crossing in the early days was remarkable for the great number of boys in its surrounding population, and I have observed in these later years when visiting there, that the custom of having boy babies in the family does not appear to have entirely gone out of fashion. That great swarm of restless boy population which gathered, sometimes two hundred strong, Saturday afternoons on the Common! What 'sleights of art and feats of strength' went round! What struggles of natural selection to secure a place upon the 'First Nine' of the baseball team! For years Beaver Crossing had the best baseball club in three or four counties, and some of her players won high laurels on distant diamonds.
"One custom which obtained in those frontier days seems to have been peculiar to the time, for I have not found it since in other frontier communities. It was the custom of 'calling off' the mail upon its arrival at the postoffice. The postmaster, old Tom Tisdale—a genuine facsimile of Petroleum V. Nasby—would dump the sacks of mail, brought overland on a buckboard, into a capacious box upon the counter of his store, then pick up piece by piece, and read the inscriptions thereon in a sonorous voice to the crowd, sometimes consisting of one or two hundred people. Each claimant would cry out 'Here!' when his name was called. Sometimes two-thirds of the mail was distributed in this way, saving a large amount of manual labor in pigeon-holing the same. Nasby had a happy and caustic freedom in commenting upon the mail during the performance, not always contemplated, I believe, by the United States postal regulations. A woman's handwriting upon a letter addressed to a young man was almost certain to receive some public notice from his sharp tongue, to the great enjoyment of the crowd and sometimes the visible annoyance of the young man. At one time he deliberately turned over a postal card written by a well-known young woman of Beaver Crossing who was away at school, and on observing that the message was written both horizontally and across, commented, 'From the holy mother, in Dutch.' If I should ever meet on the mystic other shore, which poets and philosophers have tried to picture for us, old Tom Tisdale, I would expect to see him with his spectacles pushed back from his nose, 'calling off' the mail to the assembled spirits, the while entertaining them with pungent personal epigrams.
"One startling picture arises from the past, framed as Browning writes 'in a sheet of flame'—the picture of the great prairie fire of October, 1871, which swept Seward county from south to north, leaving hardly a quarter section of continuous unburnt sod. A heavy wind, increasing to a hurricane, drove this fire down the West Blue valley. It jumped the Blue river in a dozen places as easily as a jack rabbit jumps a road. It left a great broad trail of cindered haystacks and smoking stables and houses. A neighbor of ours who was burnt out remarked that he had 'been through hell in one night,' and had 'no fear of the devil hereafter.'
"At the other end of the scale of temperature are recollections of the 'Great Storm' of April 13, 14, 15, 1873. There burst from a June atmosphere the worst blizzard in the history of the state. For three days it blew thick, freezing sleet, changing to snow so close and dense and dark that a man in a wagon vainly looked for the horses hitched to it through the storm. Men who were away from home lost their lives over the state. Stock was frozen to death. In sod houses, dugouts, and log cabins settlers huddled close about the hearth, burning enormous baskets of ten-cent corn to keep from freezing.
"In these later years of life, Fate has called me to make minute study of many historical periods and places. Yet my heart always turns to review the early scenes of settlement and civilization in Seward county with a peculiar thrill of personal emotion and special joy in the risen and rising fortunes of those who there built the foundations of a great commonwealth. No land can be dearer than the land of one's childhood and none can ever draw my thoughts further over plain or ocean than the happy valley upon West Blue whose waters spring spontaneously from beneath the soil to water her fortunate acres."
On September 15, 1885, I crossed the Missouri river at Omaha, and came west through Lincoln. The state fair was in full blast but our party did not stop, as we were bound for Benkleman, Parks, and Haigler, Nebraska.
After looking over Dundy county, Nebraska, and Cheyenne county, Kansas, the rest of the party returned to Illinois.
I went to Indianola, and with Mr. Palmatier, I started for the Medicine. He carried the mail to Stockville and Medicine, which were newly established postoffices in the interior to the north, and his conveyance was the hind wheels of an ordinary wagon, to which he had fashioned a pair of thills. He said that he was using such a vehicle because it enabled him to cut off several miles in the very rough country through which we passed.
The jolting was something fierce, but being young and used to riding in lumber wagons, I did not mind. I was very much interested in everything, but the things that linger most clearly in my mind after all these years are the bushy whiskered, hopeful faces of the men who greeted us from dugouts and sod cabins. The men's eyes were alight with enthusiasm and candor, but I do not remember of having seen a woman or child upon the trip.
It seems that men can drop back into the primitive so much more easily than women: not perhaps with all the brutality of the First Men, but they can adjust themselves to the environment of the wilderness, and the rusticity of the frontier, with comparative ease.
I stopped for the night in Hay cañon, a branch of Lake cañon, at Hawkins brothers' hay camp, and I remember when they told me that they had three hundred tons of hay in the stack, that it seemed almost an inconceivable quantity. On our old Illinois farm twenty-five or thirty tons seemed a large amount, but three hundred tons was beyond our range of reasoning. However, we now stack that much on eighty acres in the Scottsbluff country.
In due time I went on over the great tableland to the city of North Platte, and going down the cañon on the south side of the south river, I killed my first jack rabbit, an event which seemed to make me feel more of a westerner than any circumstance up to that time.
My first impression of North Platte, with its twelve saloons, was not of the best. And my conception of Buffalo Bill dropped several notches in esteem when I saw the Wild West saloon. But in the light of years, I am less puritanical in my views of the first people of the plains. In subsequent years I rode the range as a cowboy, and drove twenty-mule teams with a single line and a black-snake, and while always I remained an abstainer and occasionally found others that did likewise, I learned to tolerate, and then enjoy, the witticisms and foolishness of those that did indulge. Sometimes the boys in their cups would "smoke up" the little cities of the plains, but they never felt any resentment if one of their number did not participate in their drinking and festive sports.
I spent the winter of 1885 on the ranch of Hall & Evans, near North Platte, and one of the pleasantest acquaintanceships of my life has been that of John Evans, now registrar of the land office at North Platte.
In the spring of '86 the constant stream of emigrant wagons going west gave one an impression that in a little time the entire West would be filled, and I grew impatient to be upon my way and secure selections. In May I arrived at Sidney and from there rode in a box car to Cheyenne. When we topped the divide east of Cheyenne, I saw the snow-capped peaks of the Rockies for the first time.
During the summer I "skinned mules," aiding in the construction of the Cheyenne & Northern, now a part of the Hill system that connects Denver with the Big Horn basin and Puget sound.
Returning to Sidney in the autumn, I fell in with George Hendricks, who had been in the mines for twenty years and finally gave it up. We shoveled coal for the Union Pacific until we had a grub stake for the winter. I purchased a broncho, and upon him we packed our belongings—beds, blankets, tarpaulin, provisions, cooking utensils, tools, and clothing, and started north over the divide for "Pumpkin creek," our promised land. In a little over a day's travel, one leading the horse and the other walking behind to prod it along, we reached Hackberry cañon, and here, in a grove by a spring, we built our first cabin.
Three sides were log, the cracks filled with small pieces of wood and plastered with mud from the spring, and the back of the cabin was against a rock, and up this rock we improvised a fireplace, with loose stones and mud.
When we had rigged a bunk of native red cedar along the side of this rude shelter, and the fire was burning in our fireplace, the coffee steaming, the bread baking in the skillet, the odor of bacon frying, and the wind whistling through the tree-tops, that cabin seemed a mighty cozy place.
We could sometimes hear the coyotes and the grey wolves howl at night, but a sense of security prevailed, and our sleep was sound. Out of the elements at hand, we had made the rudiments of a home on land that was to become ours—our very own—forever.