USA > Nebraska > Antelope County > A history of Antelope County, Nebraska, from its first settlement in 1868 to the close of the year 1883 > Part 16
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When first they came from their eastern homes they were calm, silent, taciturn, and resolute in mood, but after inhaling that intoxicating ozone of the plains for a few years their manners changed; they became easily excited and almost insanely enterprising and altogether too venturesome. The intoxication of that prairie ozone was exhilarating, but not bestially inebriating; enthusias- tic, but not depraving. It made us too enthusiastic in community and county and municipal enterprises and too neglectful of private interests. There was a daring dis- position to contract debt because the ordinary processes of industry and economy were too slow. God seemed to goad all of them to their utmost capacity, mental and physical. Thus they did in one year more than their sires did in five; and more than their brothers left in Iowa could do in three years.
As to the pioneer women, they had to have level heads. The Lord had no more reliable material out of which to provide brakes and restraints on the delirious enthusiasm of the husbands and fathers. No wonder the home women of Nebraska declined the right of suffrage; it was all they could do to control the votes of their husbands and sons. I clearly realized after I had been here in Arizona a few
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years that God never especially needed my advice as to running the world, that my departure and leaving the "Old King" and the venerable judges Decamp and Thorn- ton as Antelope County's representatives in the celestial cabinet thereafter, enabled heaven and earth to move along more smoothly. For years I have not in the least offered advice to the Almighty.
But while I lay back in the super-calm enjoyment of this climatic paradise my appreciation of the almost super- human capacity of pioneer associations increases with each passing year, and I come near worshiping the restless heroism of the pioneer women.
The entrance of most of us veteran pioneers into Nebraska was more or less dramatic; mine was tragic; and why not relate it here and thus clear up some old-time mysteries ?
During the holiday week, 1876, I was laboring afoot on the seventy miles intervening between Columbus and Oakdale. As I left Columbus I was inexpressibly wretched. I felt myself not only an outcast from human habitations, but God-forsaken. Then I knew the agony of the soul dropped quick into hopeless perdition where the soul, cry- ing out, "Oh, my God ! my God ! grant but once in a century of time one instant of thy kindly consideration," is an- swered only with mocking echoes. That was not only a via doloroso but a sheer drop from the higher trail through purgatory deep in black perdition. I was a ruin, physical, mental, and moral, and no other hand than that of God could lift me up. What an experience was that! To realize while one's feet sank deep in snow the flames of hell leaped from his head and soul. No wonder that I was meditating suicide. But just then I looked up and to my left saw the little Catholic church of the Shell Creek Glea- son settlement. Not my will but something else led me off that road towards that church. I found it unlocked; I went in and fell prone upon my face before the altar. I cried out, "Oh, my God, behold me a human sparrow fluttering wounded on the earth. Is another chance for me possible, even to Thee !" For a half-hour revolving only
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that thought in my mind I lay face downward; my attitude was a prayer. At last I felt a beatific assurance suffusing my entire being, and stood up to gaze on the image of the crucified Christ reflecting the rays of the setting sun. I knew that some angelic presence was there and I felt (not heard) this, "Go forth now, for after a while complete renovation will be yours." And I knew that ere long some rehabilitation would come to me; as it did in a way that I had not dreamed of. The whole thing seemed supernatural. Robert and Mrs. Wilson can recite how suddenly success and glory enveloped a wretchedness and misery that was unspeakable. But I gained then that worth beyond Rockefeller's capacity to buy. A realization that God is, and that that grand originator of this era of time was indeed and in truth a materialization, a phase of the God- head. Having attained to such faith and such fruit of the cross I had that immeasurably, by any standard of this life. A life eventful and romantic makes a basis for pleas- ing reading, but, Oh, my God, it is an awful one to live. I am glad that mine is now in its evening twilight.
I wish that I had space to mention by name all the pioneers as one by one I came on them, but even the names are becoming elusive as I grow old. The first I came on near the county line was Hosea B. Thornton and wife, and they fed me, almost exhausted by hunger and fatigue. Then next the Fields brothers, Motter and son, the Palmers and Krygers. I need not mention more in and about Oakdale. The next to encounter were A. J. Leach and sons, Eggleston, Inman, and Swett. Next I met the Perry brothers and Clark brothers of Taylor valley; John Story and others of the Willow; the Contois and Patras of Frenchtown and Uncle Wilyum, then Duke of Neligh.
Let me make a brief special mention of a few old pioneer notables. Lambert, a lovable and universally popular man, has been some years with God. Uncle Wilyum is still living and I presume as much averse, as in old time, to me being mentioned as his nephew. I am thinking now of a day when the county clerk's office was on the first
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floor of Taylor's brick block of Oakdale, and Sol King's office was just above. Sol got up to thump, thump that wooden leg of his on the floor. For a moment Robert Wilson clawed nervously at his bald head and then mur- mured, "How can I stand that!" And then he exclaimed, "Help, Lord!" Next, as Sol came down the stairway like a load of brick, he called out, "Here I come Robert! What do you want?"
A few years ago I got a letter from Sol, who was then at Rodondo Beach, not far from Los Angeles. He wanted to know of me if southern Arizona climate might help or increase his rheumatic ailments. I replied, "Sol, I love you, but aren't you forgetting that I am in - well, Arizona is hot in midsummer and I don't want to share my misery with you. You be content to play seven-up with Doctor Cox awhile longer." And I am recollecting how Putney used to haul his grists past the Oakdale mill on the way to the Neligh mill and James Crum hauling his grists past Neligh down to the Oakdale mill.
Then there were Judge Decamp and Lambert who never did seem to appreciate the fact that they were fathers to two of the handsomest young women in Nebraska. Those girls were types of the femininity that that climate could mature. The Nebraska girl has an intellectual beauty that shines through a [perfect complexion. The Spanish type of this region, ripe and luscious at too tender an age, soon fades, but the beauty of such Nebraska belles does not begin to fade until middle age, and at thirty is in full bloom, while the Arizona Spanish at twenty is rapidly fading. Our sons and daughters reared in that climate, I think, will be in many respects superior to us.
Some persons reviewing as I am now the reckless debt contracting and real estate mortgaging of too many of these Antelope County pioneers, might condemn, and in- dulge in moralizing that is offered too late in life. But I am not condemning; for it seems to me that when those veteran pioneers enlisted in the Civil War, that they got a training in those unconquerable regiments of Iowa,
.
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Wisconsin, etc., that shaped their very souls for lifelong fighting; and they died fighters, and some yet survivors are no less fighters now. I claim that God set them apart to make conquest of that Plains Empire, and that no other sort of men had such indomitable courage and restless energy to ignore privation while engaging in a struggle with inimicable climatic conditions. The latest chapters of Mr. Leach's history give some idea of the unconquerable spirit of those pioneers. Young men, our sons, as you look on the pinched, deeply lined faces and gray heads of those surviving Antelope County pioneers, consider that God's hands were laid on those gray heads. Thanks be to God, they are all now close to the sleep which God giveth to his beloved and honored. Treat Grandma with studied kindness and veneration for she, like the mother of our Lord, was set apart by the Holy Spirit to do all that women can do; and on each recurring Decoration Day lay lilies by handfuls on her tomb. During her life few and short were her periods of rest, and she had next to none of the adorning trifles which the heart of woman craves; but now, dozing in her rocker, she dreams happy dreams, or passed out and into the other life she, reclining in the bosom of Divine Providence, smiles down on us her eternal contentment. Oh, blessed, blessed forevermore be the memory of Grandma, the Antelope county pioneer.
CHAPTER XXXVI
REMINISCENCES OF THE EARLY DAYS
BY L. H. SUTER OF NELIGH
I N 1871 while in Iowa I conceived the idea of going west to get a homestead. As I have no time or space to go into details, I will say that I landed in Norfolk, which was then thirty miles beyond the terminus of the railroad. Here I formed the acquaintance of Allen Hopkins, who told me that there were good opportunities in Antelope County, and I came with him and shared the hospitality of his home for the first night in the county. The next morning I started out on foot. The valley was very sparsely settled and there was no house between the John Nies farm on section 35 and the Trubadour Reynolds farm on section 7, in Neligh township. After passing the cabin of John Cowin, on section 5, Burnett township, I noticed a cow that had become entangled in a picket rope and had fallen on her back in a helpless condition. I retraced my steps to inform Mr. Cowin and helped him to extricate the animal, and then passed on. I came to where P. D. Thompson now lives, on section 22, in Neligh township. Here a dim road ran north over the hill. Through curi- osity I followed this trail and found the residence of Alex- ander Belmer, on section 15, in Neligh township. He told me that there was some fine land up the creek and if I would stay to dinner he would take me up to see it, and of course I acquiesced. He made the trip on a pony while I walked by his side, and being suited on section 10, in Neligh township, I retraced my steps for the land office at Dakota City.
About where John Malzacher now lives on section 31, in Elm township, I met two covered immigrant wagons. They stopped and plied me with all manner of questions, and when they could think of nothing more we passed on,
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and after going some distance I chanced to look back and the men were leaning from their seats looking after me. This was renewed several times with the same result and after my return to Antelope County I recognized Lewis Potter and W. Nunnaly as the persons whom I had met. They had been here and homesteaded the northeast quarter of section 14 and the north half of the north half of section 22, Neligh township, and had just returned with their families. They informed me that when passing Mr. Cowin's he hailed them with a warning to watch their horses that night, as a young man had passed by that forenoon on foot, on a pretense of hunting land, that he had stopped to help get up a cow that was cast and he was a very suspicious looking character, and of course they recognized me by the description when we met. They camped the ensuing night in Salnave's grove on section 36, in Neligh township, and took turns to sit in the brush all night with their guns to watch their horses while the writer was sound asleep at the log cabin of Mr.Rollins, on section I in Burnett township.
Well, I went to Cuming County and worked through the summer at fourteen dollars per month and taught school in the winter, but had taken pity on others who had families to support and let them have money, and in spite of bliz- zards, storms, grasshoppers, and other calamities I found at the end of four years that I had held my own financially that I had had nothing to begin with, and was still in the same boat. Well, I went to Iowa in the summer of 1875 and worked for a time and then concluded that what I lacked was a wife, and I got married, and then found that I lacked everything but a wife and upon our return to Antelope County in December I had two dollars and a half in money, no house except the little dugout unfit for habi- tation, no team, nothing with which to go to housekeeping, and the hoppers having taken the crop that season, the parties whom I had accommodated had left the county and moved to their wive's folks. I felt as though we should follow suit. Well, Samuel Lewis was batching on Samuel
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Lee's claim on section 14, in Neligh township, and he allowed us to move in with him. Early next morning as I went to Neligh to get the mail W. C. Gallaway asked me if I wanted to help to fan wheat in the mill that day, saying that he would give me a dollar and board or a dollar and a half and board myself. I had had my breakfast, a nickel's worth of crackers would suffice for dinner, and think what a joyful supper I would eat with my wife, but imagine her thoughts, newly married, and in a strange country, out on the frontier, husband promised to be back in two hours. Well, that dollar and a half pacified matters, and when I said that I had the promise of another day's work happiness reigned supreme. Such enormous wages at a time when there was a dearth of money, and cotton- wood lumber and breaking were the medium of exchange, it really seemed that providence had come to our rescue. Well, one dollar was invested in sugar, and we used the last of that sugar the next fourth of July.
The settlers were poor but very kind, and helped us build a log cabin twelve by fourteen feet in which we lived for many years, and one neighbor offered us the use of a pair of steers and a wagon, providing I would break the steers to work. The offer was gladly accepted and we managed to get in fifty acres of crop, worked two days for one to get my corn cultivated, and between times I cut cord and stove wood for J. W. Getchell in Neligh, making from fifty to sixty cents per day, and just as the small grain was ripening the grasshoppers came so thick that they obscured the sun, and in less than an hour there was neither silk, tassel, nor blade left in our twenty-acre field of corn.
We smudged the small grain as best we could, and borrowed an old-fashioned cradle and worked day and night until we had the thirty acres harvested. I did the cutting and Mrs. Suter the raking, and between us we bound it and took turns stacking. I stacked it first but the hoppers had trimmed off the blades which made it slippery and I put it all in one stack and then had it half way up, and
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larger at the top than the bottom, and the succeeding night a heavy rain fell and wet it to the ground. We then hauled it out and dried it, and my wife built four splendid stacks, and while we had lost our corn, potatoes, and vegetables we felt extremely grateful to think that we had flour. I have hauled wheat to Columbus and sold it for thirty-five cents a bushel, hauled hogs and sold them for one dollar and fifty cents per hundred, but in spite of all the disadvantages and hard times my early days in Antelope County were the happiest of my life. There was sociability on all sides. Everybody was on an equal- ity. They were all neighbors and ever ready to assist each other. I could come to Neligh barefooted, with patched trousers, driving a yoke of oxen, and not feel embarrassed. I also recall going with a crowd of young folks to a dance at Frenchtown, fifteen miles northwest of Neligh, in a lumber wagon drawn by a yoke of oxen.
CHAPTER XXXVII
CHARACTER AND NATIONALITY OF THE EARLY SETTLERS - THE COWBOYS - RELIGIOUS INTERESTS - SUNDAY SCHOOLS AND CHURCHES ESTABLISHED IN THE EARLY DAYS
I T is a matter of common belief that the frontier settlers consisted in a large degree of a lot of lawless, reckless adventurers, caring little or not at all for the usages of a well-ordered law-abiding community, having no inter- est in schools, churches, and other civilizing and refining influences. Such an opinion is wholly incorrect as applied to the early settlers of Antelope County or in fact to the whole rural population of the state of Nebraska in an early day. The first settlers of Antelope County were distinctly American by birth. The census of 1880 makes the following showing as to nationality and nativity:
Whole population of the county by the census of 1880, 3,953. Of this number 3,440, or a little over 87 per cent, were born in the United States and 513, or a trifle less than 13 per cent, were born in foreign countries. Those born in the United States were furnished chiefly by the following named states, to-wit:
Iowa. 614
Nebraska
603
New York
Wisconsin 374
345
Illinois 338
Ohio 278
Pennsylvania 252
Indiana 148
Michigan 145
Missouri 40
913
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HISTORY OF ANTELOPE COUNTY
The foreign born population was distributed chiefly among other countries as follows:
British North America I16
Sweden and Norway 92
German Empire 91
England and Wales 85
Ireland. 65
Scotland
29
Denmark I4
Our home-born immigrants came almost wholly from the progressive western and middle states directly east of us, Iowa giving the largest number of any, while New York, Wisconsin, and Illinois came next in order as to the number furnished. Of our foreign born immigrants Canada furnished the largest number, followed closely by the Scandinavians and Germans. Our foreign born settlers were as intelligent, progressive, law-abiding, and in every way as desirable as our own native born people. There were no more indications of lawlessness among the early settlers than are found in any of our well ordered neighborhoods of the county at the present time.
For two or three years both Neligh and Oakdale were the headquarters for a portion of the year during the winter months of some of the cowboys who were employed by the cattle ranchmen farther west. These cowboys were a careless, happy-go-lucky sort of fellows, spending their money freely and somewhat given to drinking and gambling, but were not of the criminal sort, nor were they bad men at heart. Once they shot up the town of Neligh, firing their revolvers and Winchesters up and down the principal street, the citizens meantime thinking it prudent to stay indoors. Once at Oakdale they had a little fun among themselves by shooting off their revolvers just as they had all mounted their horses to ride to a dance, doing no damage except to kill one horse on which one of their num- ber was mounted, the ball striking the horse just back of the rider's legs. They were here, however, only a short time,
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making their headquarters farther west as soon as the railroad was extended on up the valley.
It has been told in Chapter XXX how the county was divided up into school districts immediately after its organization in July, 1871, and how school-houses were built and teachers employed and schools established throughout the entire settled portions of the county. But before any move was made to establish common schools, Sunday schools had been organized and the pre- liminary steps taken to organize churches. In the month of June, 1870, the settlers on Cedar Creek gathered one Sunday at the house of H. W. Swett and held a prayer meeting. This was the first religious gathering in the county so far as it is known. At this meeting there were present members of the Presbyterian, Methodist, Congre- gational, and Free-will Baptist churches. The first steps were taken that day to organize a Sabbath school, and before the close of the month a Sabbath school was estab- lished, which has continued to the present time and is still known as the Cedar Creek Sunday school. The first home missionary to come to the county for the purpose of organizing a church was Rev. George H. Wehn, a Methodist Episcopal minister whose residence was at Fairview, near the center of Madison County, and who had for his circuit all of Madison County and all the settled portions of the territory west of Madison. He made his first visit to the county in the spring of 1871, and appointed preaching places and held meetings at Judge Snider's, in Burnett township, and at the Cedar Creek settlement. He organized a church at Cedar Creek, the old class-book which is still in existence reading as follows:
Cedar Creek class, organized September 24, 1871, by George H. Wehn of Madison Mission, Covington District, Nebraska Conference. The members of this class at the organization were Jesse T. Bennett, Helen L. Bennett, Samuel P. Morgan, Margaret Morgan, William A. Shepherd, Norman B. Eggleston.
This was the first church organization in Antelope
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County. The Cedar Creek class, however, was short lived. In the spring of 1872 Reverend Mr. Wehn organized a class of nine members at Judge Snider's, which soon became known as the Oakdale M. E. church. Soon after this the Cedar creek class was given up, most of the class uniting with the Oakdale class.
Although Reverend Mr. Wehn was the first missionary to take up the regular work of the church in Antelope County, he was not the first to preach or to hold religious services. The first sermon preached in Antelope County was in August, 1870, at the house of James H. Smith, in Blaine township, by Elder Thomas Dobson of the church of the Latter Day Saints. Elder Dobson also preached at the home of I. E. Kieth, in Ord township. These two were the first religious services held in the county at which there was a sermon preached.
At the time of the funeral of Fannie Snider, mentioned in Chapter XVII, which occurred October 6, 1870, there was no preacher nearer than Buffalo Creek, in Madison County, where Reverend Mr. Harvey, a local Methodist minister, had taken a homestead. Reverend Mr. Harvey was accordingly sent for and conducted the funeral services. This was the first funeral service held in the county, and Reverend Mr. Harvey's sermon was the first preached in the eastern half of the county.
Some time during the year 1872, although the exact date cannot be positively stated, Rev. J. W. Kidder of Norfolk came by invitation of the settlers of Cedar Creek and organ- ized in that settlement a Congregational church. This was the first Congregational church in the county. In the spring of 1872 Rev. Henry Griffiths came into the county direct from England. He was a minister of the Primitive Methodist Church in the Old Country, but after settling on a homestead in West Cedar valley, he cast in his lot with the Congregationalists and in 1873 organized the West Cedar valley Congregational Church. He traveled and preached extensively both in Antelope and Boone counties, organiz- ing churches wherever there was a favorable opening.
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HISTORY OF ANTELOPE COUNTY
As early as the year 1872, and possibly in 1871, a Catholic priest, Rev. Peter James Bedard, came to Antelope County from Sioux City. He was a French Canadian by birth, and cast in his lot with the Canadians who had settled in Frenchtown, taking a homestead, and becoming one of their number. He preached and visited not only among the Catholics at Frenchtown, but also at Oakdale and as far east as Battle Creek, in Madison County. When General John O'Neill founded his Irish colony in Holt County in 1874, Father Bedard served the settlers of that locality for a time.
In the fall and winter of 1873, through Father Bedard's exertions, the material was prepared and hauled to the grounds for a church which was built early in the spring of 1874. It was built of logs cut from the timber along the Elkhorn, and was the first church building erected west of Norfolk.
In the year 1881 the Methodist church building was completed at Oakdale, it being the second church built in the county and the first by a Protestant denomination. It was dedicated December 18, 1881.
It appears, therefore, that the Methodists, Congrega- tionalists, Latter Day Saints, and Catholics were the pioneers in church work in Antelope County. These were, however, quickly followed by others and we find that by January 1, 1884, in addition to those named above, the Baptists, Presbyterians, United Brethern, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and United Presbyterians, were all well estab- lished in the county.
It is the recollection of the writer that a spirit of good fellowship prevailed generally among the Christian people of the county in the early days, and that little attention was paid to sects or creeds or denominations. They were glad of the chance to go to church and Sunday school, and it was a very common occurrence to travel five or six miles on Sunday to attend a religious meeting.
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