USA > Nebraska > Seward County > General history of Seward County, Nebraska > Part 4
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HISTORY OF SEWARD COUNTY, NEBRASKA.
fortunate enough to have an addition of bacon to our bill of fare we would have been in fear of gout from too high living, and eating might have been such a pleasure that other mat- ters would have been lost sight of. Soup made of water, salt, potatoes and a few wild onions for seasoning was a luxury we remember yet, while johnney-cake with gravy made of salt, water and corn meal made up the everyday bill of fare. In those days the most interesting and comfort- ing book, next to the Bible, to read was the history of the travels of Sir John Franklin and his comrades in search for the north pole. The story in this book was especially inter- esting where it gave the account of those men feasting upon soup made from strips cut from the soles of their rawhide shoes, an every day diet, changed to a feast by the addition of an extra strip of shoe. After reading this our "grub" tasted delicious. . And in those times we didn't have dyspep- sia because we eat only when necessary and didn't eat too much.
But no person could charge this condition to the country. The real fault was discernable in the fact that so many peo- ple with little or no means were trying to make a start upon raw land. It should be remembered that humanity creeps before it walks. And memory carries us back to the great, delicious squashes, pumpkins, mellons, and wild onions the country produced to add to the scanty eatables, the finest of their kind ever known.
It is natural for man to want to follow the methods, not only in farming, but in every other occupation that he learned in youth. If he was raised in a country where it never quits freezing till after the fourth of July he will hang to his over- coat till after that date on the sunny coast of Florida. Many of the first settlers in Seward county were New England people. Those who were not from the far east were gener- ally emigrants from more northern states of the west. And
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HISTORY OF SEWARD COUNTY, NEBRASKA.
they all had their special way to raise farm products. They would not plant corn until the twentieth of May, and some of them would wait till the "old of the moon in May" to plant potatoes. These rules strictly adhered to in Seward county, Nebraska, resulted unfavorable for the crops, es- pecially in dry years as the planting was done too late to get the benefit of the usual early rainy period. The corn was planted with hoes, and it was only an ordinary sight to see five or six persons covering corn with hoes while three or four were engaged in dropping it. Corn planted in this way usually made a light crop, but it was the way "father raised good corn." And it required the running of a risk to learn that corn planted with a planter made a better crop than corn planted in the old way, with a hoe, the same as it required an experiment, or an accidental disregard of old doctor theory to teach that a patient, sick with a fever would not die, but rather be bennefitted by drinking cold water. Occasionally a patient who the doctor said would die if he drank any cold water, would become reckless and thinking he was going to die anyway, would drink a gallon or two of water and surprise the doctor by getting well. And a few fellows got reckless and thinking they would not raise much corn anyway, took the easiest way to plant it, with hand planters, and the corn grew so even and yielded so much better that the hand planters became popular for a few sea- sons when they were superseded by horse planters, and as some one had become reckless and planted his corn a little earlier in the season than the schedule time, the opinion formed during the hoe planting after the twentieth of May period, that Nebraska was not a corn country, was reversed and farmers began to look upon it as the greatest corn coun- try of all corn countries. Corn proved to be king, and al- though it failed occasionally on account of grasshoppers and drouth, it has been and is today the grain that has made
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HISTORY OF SEWARD COUNTY, NEBRASKA.
Seward county land the "jewel" of the world.
After a period of sixteen years of almost entire failure to raise spring wheat, the only wheat said to be productive in Nebraska, some reckless fellow, thinking no doubt, that he couldn't raise wheat anyway, "took chances" on the fall variety, and so deeply embeded had the delusion become that fall wheat could not be produced in the country that this benefactor shut his eyes to keep out the vision of failure his folly had projected. But the grain continued on its mission to reverse the former hobby and show that while spring. wheat could not be successfully raised fall wheat was the stuff to promote the wealth of Seward county.
During the period when efforts to raise spring wheat brought nothing but heart rending dissapointment to the hard laboring and ever economizing, destitute farmers, other products of grain were tried as substitutes. Barley and flax came to the front for a short time, the latter being resorted to by many farmers that become destitute through the fail- ure of their spring wheat, of seed to sow, the flax dealers furnishing the seed "on time" under contract that the said dealers should have the crop at so much per bushel. But barley and flax soon disappeared from the list as main crops being found difficult to handle on account of the usual wet harvest time and the lack of barns and sheds to cover such productions.
Vegetables were bountious products to raise in Seward county. Potatoes yielded enormously, but a market for more potatoes than the producer's own use was entirely out of sight. And along about 1874 the Colorado beetle or hard shell potatoe bug made its advent into the potatoe patches, and as there was no remedy known at that time for the destructive pests, farmers labored under grave difficulties to save enough potatoes to supply their own tables with this kind of food staple. But after a few years of suffering some
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HISTORY OF SEWARD COUNTY, NEBRASKA.
reckless fellow made another beneficent discovery by spray- ing his potatoe plants with a solution of the deadly poison, paris green and water.
Seward county early settlers did not draw wheat two hundred miles to market, but their first market for grain was at Lincoln, thirty-five miles away from many of them, and the lumber to build Ross Nichols' house, standing yet in the east part of the village of Beaver Crossing, was drawn by team from Nebraska City, a distance of ninety miles. And that lumber was freighted by steam boat up the Missouri river from Kansas City. With the approach of the C. B. & Q. Railway into Seward county, in March 1873, a market for that year's crop was assured at Seward. And this prov- ed to be the principal market for Seward county, and for a considerable portion of York county. Although the market had come nearer home, all the inconveniences immaginable for handling the thousands of loads of grain that were drawn to the Seward market that and the following season, were prominent and disheartening features for the early grain pro- ducers of Seward county to bear and remember. There were no elevators nor dumps of any kind for several months, grain having to be unloaded by hand from the farmers' wag- ons either to small warehouses or to the cars for shipment. There were only three or four buyers with limited capacities for storeing grain, many times being unable for various rea- sons to secure cars the market would become clogged and prices cut in two nearly in the middle. We have seen five thousand bushels of shelled corn piled up on the ground and the snow drifting onto it and around it in the Seward market for the want of store room. Many times buyers would all excepting one declare their room for grain all filled up and refuse to buy when the one would cut the price all the farm- ers would bear and take all the grain that appeared upon the market. We have drawn loads of wheat eighteen miles to
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HISTORY OF SEWARD COUNTY, NEBRASKA.
market on such days, and after being forced to take a cut price for it were obliged to take our place at the end of a long string of wagons and wait from the middle of the fore- noon until nearly sun down, our poor, tired horses going without food or water, for our turn to unload. Of course grain buyers were not tricky and didn't want to make any more money when buying wheat than the farmers made when raising it. But it did seem a little strange to us that one buyer with no more room than his competitors should have store room to unload forty or fifty loads of wheat after the said competitors had their houses all full. But time solves many mystries. In 1875 the honest grain buyers in all the small town markets, wishing to be on the safe side, introduced a system of testing and grading wheat. This was all right, but there was another mystry to it in the fact that with the rich, grain producing soil of Seward county farmers could not raise number one wheat. It all graded number two, three or "rejected." We recollect taking a load of wheat to the Seward market in the fall of 1875, when the elevators, warehouses and grain market were just east of the prisent location of the B. & M. depot. We crossed the bridge almost into the grain market and were met by two young gentlemen who offered us twenty-five cents a bushel for our wheat, saying: "That is all it is worth today." We thought it might be as well to take it up to the city and see what people there thought of it. We drove up and halted in front of Beaty & Davis' store and Mr. Beaty came out, looked at the grain and said: "That wheat is worth fifty cents a bushel today." We told him he could have it and he directed us to his grain house where the same gentlemen who made the first bid for it unloaded it. They wished to buy it for rejected wheat, the lowest grade; Mr. Beaty did buy it and pay for No. 3 wheat when it really should have brought the price of No. 2. But if there was an honest grain
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HISTORY OF SEWARD COUNTY, NEBRASKA.
dealer in the country J. N. Beaty was his name. In those days farmers went a long distance to market with their grain and before leaving home had, as a rule, planned with the other half of the family upon what necessaries must be pur- chased with the receipts from the sale of the produce, and felt obliged to accept just what they could get for it in order to avoid rehauling it back home and to be able to take home the articles needed there. This established a system of con- tinual forced sale of farm produce. It is a well remembered fact by many early settlers, some of whom tell the story in an almost lamentable tone, that at some future date, corn "sold for ten cents a bushel." This is a reflection, not of any market time, but of a time of no market, and represents "forced sales." Producers needed other things so much more than they did corn that they were forced to accept the price they could get at that time. While this was not a market price, being merely an occasional individual deal, it is only a fair representation of low prices on farm porducts as a result of pioneer needs. And corn in those days at ten cents a bushel brought as fair a price as good wheat which we sold shortly afterwards in the market for twenty-five cents a bushel. And taking into consideration the difference in the tax rate on land at that time, being on a greater portion not any, and the tax rate at the present time, together with the low price of living at that time as compared with the high prices now; and again taking into consideration the dif- erence in the cost of production of corn during the different periods, ten cents at that period was as good a price as some of the more recent prices.
CHAPTER IX.
Breaking Prairie-Sod Houses, Dug-Outs-How to Build Them.
One of the important matters for consideration after a homesteader had located a home on the prairie was to break a few acres of sod and prepare to raise something to "keep the wolf from the door" when he got a door, and frequently the breaking plow was started before there was anything like a dwelling place provided-the family living in a tent or prairie schooner while the breaking season lasted --- generally during the months of May and June. And in those days everybody wanted breaking done, thousands of acres of prairie being turned over in Seward county and made into crop producing land almost simultaneously with the rush of emigration to the county the first two years of the seventies. But prairie breaking was no child's play. While it is called and supposed to be plowing it is vastly different from any and all other kinds of plowing. The earth under prairie sod is solid and hard. The grass roots run deep and are so compact as to form almost a solid mass of very tough, woody fiber, requiring a sharp plow and one that runs under and cuts the whole mass together. The breaking plow must be skillfully adjusted or it will not run and do the work required of it any more than a clock or watch will run without proper adjusment. And the next regirements after the plow is in proper shape are first a good, strong team to draw it, and then a file to keep the plow sharp, a hammer and an iron wedge, old axe or other solid utensil to keep the "lay" or shear bent in proper shape. After these requirements have been supplied the work may progress under difficultes.
During the few years of the breaking period in Seward county there were many different kinds of schemes brought
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HISTORY OF SEWARD COUNTY, NEBRASKA.
forwad to facilitate the work and lighten its burdens. Many new inventions were put upon trial and had the breaking continued and with it the spirit of invention until the present time the sod might be rolling over by the force of electricty, and with an Edison attachment reproducing the music of Gilmore's band. But it was all cut short for the want of sod, and at the present time it would be difficult to find enough good prairie sod in Seward county to build an or- dinary sod house.
In the first place the old fashioned steel moldboard was used, but many plowmen thought that the suction of the sod upon the long, solid steel surface caused the plow to run very heavy and the rod moldboard was brought into exten- sive use. Then a plow with a moldboard made of small rollers which were expected to roll under the sod and turn it over was introduced. But this plow was not a success as it was soon discovered that the fine sand worked into the roller bearings and cut them off. Still another invention for easier work was the box plow. It was made in the shape of
a box without a cover. The bottom of the box was the shear and run under the sod upon a level and cut the roots while the sides were the cutters to part the sod up and down. This box was made of sheet steel, a rod moldboard following the box turned the sod. These plows were used by many people who pronounced them very good. And in their de- sign the greatest burden in prairie breaking, the penetrating of the solid rock like earth and cutting the mass of tough roots in the most practicial manner was aimed at more di- rectly than in any new moldboard invention.
The motive power in front of the breaking plows in the breaking period was the main object for consideration, but with all of the difficult and heavy tug for it the work went on steadily until it was finished. A majority of the settlers did their breaking with but two horses while others used three or
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HISTORY OF SEWARD COUNTY, NEBRASKA.
four. And occasionally a team of three or four yoke of cat- tle would be seen drawing a large breaker, the furrow being so wide it would appear like wide top tables turning over. Those large ox breakers were so constructed as not to re- quire guiding, the guiding of the cattle and keeping the plow sharp and in order being the principle part of the manual labor attached to the business.
SOD HOUSES AND DUG-OUTS.
While the prairie section, covering more than one-half of this continent, was handicapped in its early settlement by the lack of timber for fuel and building log houses with clap- board roofs and puncheon floors the difficuly was largely overcome by the use of sod instead of logs to make pioneer dwelling houses, covering them with dirt roofs and using the bare ground for floors. And the prairie land being generally of a dry nature, where there was a convenient hill, very comfortable dwelling places were made by digging what was called dugouts. It did not require much of a mechanic to make a sod house or dugout, and yet there was a difference in the skillfully made ones and those more carelessly and roughly constructed, both in appearance and the length of time they would last. Sod houses were short lived, becom- ing almost unhabitable in from ten to twelve years, but dugouts, with occasional recovering and repairing, were as perminent as the earth. The best sod to make houses of was found upon basin, or low land, where there was a kind of fiberous bunch grass, forming a lighter, tougher and more dureable sod than that found upon up-land. The sod was first turned over with a breaking plow, from twelve to four- teen inches wide and three or four inches thick. It was then cut into three or four foot strips or blocks with an axe or a sharp spade. The walls were laid with these blocks of sod just the same as walls of brick, stone or cement, with the exception that the sod house walls were made
.
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HISTORY OF SEWARD COUNTY, NEBRASKA.
four feet thick, the windows and doors resembling railroad tunnels in a hill at a distance. The roofs were made by raising the end walls to a gradual pitch from each side to the center, placing heavy logs or timbers, one in the center and one on each side between the center and the side walls to support the roof and then laying poles close together, reaching from the timber in the center over the side walls to a sufficient projection for eaves, covering these poles with just enough straw or hay when pressed down to hold the dirt and not enough to give mice room to work in, laying a thin wall of sod along the eaves to hold the dirt and then covering the building with a coat of dirt about a foot and a half thick. While this was not a very handsome roof it was good to keep out the rain and was unsurpassed by any other roof made by the hand of man to keep out cold in winter and the hot rays of sun in summer. In fact sod houses and dugouts were very warm dwelling places in winter and cool in sum- mer, their walls being almost impenetrable by cold or heat. Dugouts were missnamed. They should have been called dugins as they were generally dug in a hill, knoll or ridge of land. After digging the room the size desired the front of the dugout would be made of sod, logs or lumber in which all windows and doors were made. After the digging and work on the front of the dugout was completed the roof was made in the same manner as that of the sod house.
Although the sod house home may have been lonely to some people, its pleasures and enjoyments rank foremost among the rich rewards of memory, stored by ninety-nine out of every hundred of those who partook of its blessings. Although the sod house was not a handsome structure to look upon, it occupies a place among those things mentioned by the old adage as, "handsome is that handsome does." It certainly did the "handsome" part with its ever ready place of comfort and the greatest contentment possible. It
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HISTORY OF SEWARD COUNTY, NEBRASKA.
certainly must be remembered by many as "Home, Sweet Home" in the fullest sense of that sentimental term. It was the childhood home of many and the home where many spent their youthful days-the happiest days of their lives. In fact a majority of the early settlers were young people who making a start spent their happiest days in the sod house or dugout homes. And it is scarcely probable that many of the pioneers can look back upon the free and happy sod house period, now gone forever, without feeling a tinge of real homesick lonelyness. To understand the cause for the heartfelt regrets for the passing of those homely days of many deprivations we review the social equality, the ever present sense of independence and freedom from care to- gether with the cheerfulness of the homes, made doubly so by the absence of other attractions. Every man, woman and child were as good as their neighbors and their sod homes were the abodes of cheer, good will and friendship, unsurpassed and unequaled in any day or age of the world.
The above picture represents an oldtime residence in Seward county. The structure has the appearance of being ten or twelve years old and in a state of decay, but there were many such homes occupied during the pio- neer period and their occupants were reluctant about giving them up to go to ruin-it seemed like parting with a dear old friend, which was about true. The last one of those early abodes to shelter a family in Seward county stood in -N- precinct and was occupied until about 1893. It was one of the closing scenes of the pioneer period, and might have been twenty years old. Looking at one of these grand old homely things, one beholds one of the stepping stones to, and greatest assistants in the settlement of the wild west. No building-we care not how grand-had a greater mission in the upbuilding and settlement of any country than the sod house had in the settlement of Nebraska.
CHAPTER X.
Amusements .- A Popular Song by Two Popular Young Men .-- A .Fourtn of July Celebration of Pioneer Type.
"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" is an old adage and as true as Gospel. And it never suited the con- ditions of any place, at any time more than it did those of Seward county in the days of its early settlement. There were no public halls nor even churches where people could meet for social entertainment and a rest from the hum-drum monotony of every day tug at life's stearing wheel. It is true there was plenty of out-door sport, hunting and fishing, but this class of amusement became a form of labor, and the many sad reflections that crowded upon the over-worked body and at that time, seemingly unrewarded spirit caused a heart-braking lonelyness to overcome many who gave up their new homes and moved to other states. And looking back upon these matters it seems that no class of people can live, prosper and enjoy life in any country devoid of some kind of amusement-some place where stern realities of life, thought, care and bodily strain may be reversed and those sad reflections and continual depressing cares forgotten in a spirit of refresshing joyousness. .
Even wild Indians have their regular amusements, and it might seem that they pick a fight, one tribe with another, in oder to have a "war" or "scalp dance." And monkeys will collect in large numbers in the top of a tree and conduct some kind of a moving picture show, and dance in real time if they do not have any tune.
With the pioneer settlers the problem of "what shall
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HISTORY OF SEWARD COUNTY, NEBRASKA.
we do for amusement" was one of the despairing dilemmas of the day, but was solved and largely overcome by the sod house dances which became popular and pleasant diversions. Those entertainments were not for the display of fashionable style, but overflowing with cheer and good will, the real en- joyment reaped could not have been surpassed in any day and age of the world. Even the sawing of his fiddle strings by the fiddler to tune his fiddle was a pleasant opening over- ture to the occasion and a general tuning up of spirits and disbursing of weary cares were immediate results. Then "on with the dance; let joy be unconfined" was the sentiment with "no sleep 'till morn," that chased "the glowing hours with flying feet." And on it went, the dust flying out of the cracks in the old sod house floor until it appeared as though a thrashing machine had been in motion in the room. But with all of their homelyness there was nothing that could be supplied to fill the breach, or "missing link" in the chain of successful contentment like the sod house dances.
While these old time dances were social events among neighbors, enjoyed by old and young, amusing incidents fre- quently occurred in connection with them. Some of the quickest stepping chaps would immagine they were upon a race track and put on full steam and "throw off the breaks ' coming in at the end of the change a few jumps ahead of the music and everybody else. They were proud of their quick movements and generally called for "something quick and devilish." What they realy meant by this we were never quite able to comprehend, but they frequently expressed the limit at nothing slower than the "Arkansaw Traveler," which they whistled from morning till night from the end of one engagement to the opening of another, interspersing a few promptings such as: "First four right and left; ballance four; ladies change; alamand left; grand right and left; once and a half around, and keep a hook'n on, a hook'n on" as happy
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