History of Custer County, Nebraska; a narrative of the past, with special emphasis upon the pioneer period of the county's history, its social, commercial, educational, religous, and civic developement from the early days to the present time, Part 147

Author: Gaston, William Levi, 1865- [from old catalog]; Humphrey, Augustin R., 1859- [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Lincoln, Neb., Western publishing and engraving company
Number of Pages: 1180

USA > Nebraska > Custer County > History of Custer County, Nebraska; a narrative of the past, with special emphasis upon the pioneer period of the county's history, its social, commercial, educational, religous, and civic developement from the early days to the present time > Part 147

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SOLOMON D. BUTCHER. - The name, if not the wisdom, of Solomon still abides on the earth, and is located in Custer county. The exponent of this cognomen is Solomon D. Butcher, who from pioneer days has been a resident of Custer county - a homesteader and a photographer, and known, perhaps, to most of the present population. The data of his biographical sketch run something like this : He was born January 24, 1856, in Bur- ton. Wetzel county. West Virginia. He is a son of Thomas J. Butcher, a West Virginian by birth and a Custer county pioneer by early settlement and long residence. His mother was Esther ( CHlom) Butcher.

In the family of Thomas J. Butcher were five children. The first and eldest is Solomon

D. Butcher, of whom this sketch is written, Marinda ( Butcher ) Smith, Anna E. ( Butcher ) Wabel, George W. Butcher, and Abner Butch- er. In 1859 Thomas J. Butcher moved to Winona, Illinois, where for nearly twenty-one years he was employed by the Illinois Central Railroad Company.

S. D. Butcher says that he got hold of the foundation dollar upon which his present for- tune is erected by a trapping operation in which he secured a fine specimen of the mink family. the pelt of which netted him three dollars. Mr. Butcher ran the gamut of the common schools and graduated from high school. He took up the profession of photography, which he has plied as a vocation ever since. In addition to his high-school and photographic work he had one term in the Henry Military School of Ilenry. Illinois. This was during the winter of 1875-6.

In 1880 Mr. Butcher came to Custer county. Nebraska, and located a claim twenty-two miles north of Broken Bow, near where his father also had located. This was in the Middle Loup valley, near Gates. He stayed at this time six weeks, helping his father and family to get settled and to begin western operations. The first task was to dig a room in the clay bank and stretch over it. for a roof. a wagon cover. Then the erection of the regulation sod house commenced. It was laid out on a foundation twenty-one by thirty-one feet. Inexperienced in sod carpentry, Butcher and his father went to work, but it was not long until Solomon D. made up his mind that sod-laying was not the particular form of brick-masonry he would care to follow for a life occupation.

While excavating for a dugout stable, they exhumed a skeleton which seemed to be the remains of a very large man. The larger bones and skull were in fairly good state of preservation. The shape of the skull, as well as the posture of the remains, seemed to indi- cate that the bones once belonged to an Indian. It was evident that the corpse had been in- terred in a sitting posture with the face toward the setting sun.

Another incident Mr. Butcher relates is to the effect that about eight days before the house was finished the provisions ran out, and it was, it must be remembered. one hundred miles to the railroad at Grand Island. All . that they could rake up in the shape of edible food was a small sack of shorts on which coal- oil had been spilled. This gave the shorts and the shorts-bread a peculiar favor which was not altogether appealing to the appetite. But Butcher claims that it beat nothing away across the river, and after they became accustomed to

ABritcher 7

Mrs. Le. M. Butcher

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it and had a little milk and water to wash it down, it was not more than half bad.

Later, Mr. Butcher relinquished his home- stead and returned east, and in the fall of 1881 and the spring of 1882 he took a course in the Minnesota Medical College and Hospital at Minneapolis.

May 16, 1882. he was married to Lillie M. Barber, to which union a son and daughter were born. The son is to-day Captain L. J. Butcher, "somewhere in France" as will be seen by the captain's biography elsewhere in this volume. The daughter is Madge H. Rosso, concerning whom there is a more extended biographical sketch elsewhere.

In October, 1882, Mr. Butcher and his young wife arrived at the father's place on the Middle Loup, and together they began their Custer county career. During the winter Mr. Butcher taught school in the Predmore district and earned money enough to put up the first photo- graph gallery ever erected in Custer county. It was a unique building, eighteen by twenty- eight feet, made of lath and adobe. The adobe was made of clay mixed with straw. These adobes fashioned a fairly durable, if not pic- turesque wall, and it could be truthfully said that there was not another art emporium like it west of the Mississippi river. The roof was made of boards with skylights and windows composed of cotton sheeting. The floor was artistic, just as nature had fashioned it. An old wagon-cover was used for a background. but unfortunately the wagon-cover had been knawed by rats and was full of holes. Mrs. Butcher patched the holes, but when pictures were taken the patches in the background per- sisted in showing.

Necessity has always been the mother of invention, and it was true in this instance. Butcher hit upon the novel plan of taking off those patches and still leaving them on. Ile wired a coil bedspring to the ceiling of the gal- lery, and then hung the wagon cover back- ground to the bedsprings. When he wanted to make a picture he set the bedsprings to jumping and this danced the curtain up and down and blurred the background so that the patches were not visible. This was a novel invention, but was never patented. The only objection, or drawback, to the arrangement was the habit that the springs fastened upon Mr. Butcher. To this day he would rather hang to bedsprings - especially when there is a mattress on top of it and the morning is cold - than anything else.

In 1883 he succeeded in getting a postoffice, named Jefferson in honor of his father, which he located in this building so "wonderfully and

fearfully made." The mail came regularly to Jefferson from West Union, a distance of twelve miles down the Middle Loup river. The records show that the postoffices of that day were not the luscious, juicy plums they are under the present administration. Butch- er's salary was stamp cancellation, and for the first three months the salary reached the mam- moth proportion of sixty-eight cents. Butcher resorted to farm work at fifty and seventy-five cents a day, and did anything else he could, to support the family and keep the brown-gray coyote over the hill and away from the door. Photography, however, was his fad and the particular work he fancied. When anyone wanted a tintype picture, Butcher dropped the hoe or spade so quickly that it broke the handle, and, quicker than it takes to tell the story, he had the customer lined up against the back- ground and the bedsprings jumping.

At the first old settlers' picnic held in the Middle Loup valley in Custer county, which was at the Jefferson postoffice, July 4, 1883, Butcher offered a dozen pictures as a prize for the best-looking baby under two years of age. Mr. and Mrs. Robert Farley had the honor of carrying off the prize, as their little daugh- ter, now Mrs. Mary (Farley ) Huffman. was declared the winner by the judges. Mrs. R. G. Carr, Joe Rankin. and Mrs. Jerry Phelps served as judges on that occasion.

In the fall of that year the Butchers added a sod living-room to the gallery, for which they had to haul the sod more than a mile, and ex- change two days' work for each one the man and team worked hauling the sod. Mr. Butch- er put on a dirt and brush roof, stretching sheeting over the bed to keep it dry. They lived for some time in this "soddy." Butcher claims that it rained oftener during the time they were under that canvas than during any other period of his residence in Custer county. In fact, he says there were weeks at a time when the weather did nothing but drizzle. and often clouds would hang around in that vicinity and sail over his premises every few hours, just to get a chance to rain on that roof. Sometimes in the middle of the night he and his wife would have to pile out of bed, wrap the baby in a quilt, and make their way through the dark and storm to the residence of his father. Sometimes these trips were made when the night was so dark that they could find their way only by the flashes of lightening. The hard part of it all fell to the lot of Mrs: Butch- er, who, when the rain was over and the sun came out. had to haul everything out of the house and let it dry on the clothesline and the grass of the front yard. Butcher claims that

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HISTORY OF CUSTER COUNTY, NEBRASKA

L. D. NATION

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HISTORY OF CUSTER COUNTY, NEBRASKA

during his early career they moved around to much that when moving time came the chickens would lie down on their backs and cross their legs ready to be tied. This, how- ever, was probably due to the fact that from the Methodist minister's wife Mrs. Butcher got the eggs for the setting from which those chickens were hatched.

In 1886 Mr. Butcher conceived the plan of getting out a history of Custer county. On this he worked for seven years, making one thousand, five hundred and thirty-five farm views, and also writing sketches of the settlers, in which he detailed their pioneer experiences. These pioneer sketches were unfortunately de- stroyed by fire, but the plates, or negatives, from which the pictures were made were saved. Butcher immediately commenced com- piling data for another book, and in 1901 he succeeded in publishing "S. D. Butcher's Pio- neer History and Short Sketches of Early Days in Nebraska."

In 1902 the Butchers moved to Kearney, where they remained for several years. Mrs. Butcher, who for a number of years had been a victim of ill health, finally succumbed to ailments which refused to yield to treatment, and she passed to that realm where pioneering is unknown and where rest and reward await those whose earthly lives merit this eternal compensation. Her death occurred on De- cember 29, 1915. She left many friends, a loving husband and two children to mourn her loss. She was a faithful, devout member of the Christian church for many years, a de- voted mother and loving wife.

While in Kearney, Mr. Butcher engaged in photography and handled real estate as a side issue. He also spent much time in com- piling data for a history of Dawson county. in connection with the Kearney Publishing & Engraving Company. After spending a thou- sand dollars in this enterprise. it was finally abandoned for the time being. During that time Mr. Butcher and his son made over 2.250.000 local postcard views for the local trade.

January 24, 1917. at Smith Center. Kansas. Mr. Butcher was united in marriage to Mrs. Laura M. ( Brachear) Nation. By her former marriage Mrs. Nation had two children - L. D. H. Nation, and Ruby Lorene Nation. L. D. H. Nation graduated from Central City high school at sixteen years of age, and at eighteen years of age graduated from the Gregg Business College in Chicago, Illinois. When nineteen years of age he was made a professor in the faculty of Story College, at

Portage, Wisconsin. Later he received calls from Cotner University; Mosher-Lampman Business College. of Omaha ; Central Business College of Denver, and Isaac Woodbury Col- lege, of Los Angeles. He was a finished Span- ish scholar and accepted a professorship in a leading California college. He learned every phase of commercial training and business science, teaching eight systems of shorthand. He enjoyed the highest esteem and commen- dation of every institution with which he was

RUBY LORENE NATION

connected. He was a member of the Chris- tian church, and the Knights and Ladies of Security. He died June 7, 1916. being twenty- five years old. Thus death cut short a very promising career. Miss Ruby Lorene Nation is eleven years of age and in the sixth grade of the Broken Bow schools. She has also reached the third grade in her musical edu- cation.

The present Mrs. Butcher is a member of the Eastern Star. the Rebekah Lodge, and the Royal Neighbors. She has passed through the chairs in the two lodges last named. Mr. and Mrs. Butcher and little Ruby are all mem- bers of the Christian church. S. D. Butcher took an active part in the Populist movement in Custer county, but was independent in pol- itics during the "scrappy days of the Pops."

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HISTORY OF CUSTER COUNTY, NEBRASKA

J. C. NAYLOR. - Prominent among the early residents of Custer county. one who took a leading part in the development which changed this locality from a practical wilder- ness to a fertile and productive country, furn- ishing homes for prosperous families and keep- ing pace in every way with the world's devel- opment, was the late J. C. Naylor, one of the best known attorneys of the early days of the county. He was born April 20, 1842, in West Virginia, and in his early life was engaged in newspaper work, later becoming owner of one of the big freight caravans that operated across the trackless plains of Nebraska, going from Plattsmouth, Nebraska, to Denver. While engaged in this work he took up the study of law, and at the age of twenty-two years he was admitted to the bar. He became one of the best known criminal lawyers of the state, prac- ticing first at York, and later at Broken Bow and Callaway. His death occurred November 20, 1899. He was one of the substantial men of the community and through his integrity and high personal character gained and retained the respect and confidence of the community. Mr. Nay- lor was married to Jane Kinnard in 1890, and to this union were born two children, James C., Jr., and Jane, who is now the wife of Charles S. Carothers, prominent Callaway bus- iness man. Mrs. Carothers is a graduate of the Kearney State Normal, and for four years prior to her marriage she was engaged in teaching in the public schools of the county. She is a member of the Methodist Episcopal church, and is the mother of one daughter, Doris.

James C. Naylor. Jr., is one of the well known figures in journalism in central Ne- braska, and has exemplified in his career the true spirit of progressiveness and enterprise. He was born at Callaway March 28, 1894, and attended the Callaway public schools, gradu- ating from there in 1911 and later taking some work in the University of Nebraska. On January 1, 1916, he became editor of the Loup T'alley Queen, at Callaway, which had previ- ously been conducted for fourteen years by Roy R. Barnard. Mr. Naylor made a suc- cess of this venture. and is now the head of a corporation, The Central Nebraska Printing & Publishing Company. owners of the Loup T'alley Queen, the Kearney Democrat. and the Oconto Register, of which publiactions he is the editor. Mr. Naylor is unmarried and makes his home with his widowed mother, in Callaway.

Mr. Naylor is a Democrat, but has found no time to enter politics as a candidate for public

office, although, in the daily routine of his work, his influence may be counted upon to advance the interests of his party. He is pub- lic-spirited and has marked civic pride, and his work in behalf of beneficial movements in his community has always been of a construc- tive character.

WILLIAM POLAND. - The pioneer set- tles in the Sargent region of Custer county had many difficulties to encounter in the early days, but they were, in large part, hardy and persevering men, and many have lived to tri- umph over all obstacles and discouragements. Among these there have been individuals from all parts of this and other countries, all alike struggling to acquire a competence. Many have developed into excellent citizens, pub- lie-spirited and alive to the best interests of their community, and in this class is found William Poland, who settled in Custer coun- ty in 1883 and who is now a resident of the suburbs of Sargent.

Mr. Poland was born August 22. 1858, in Knox county, Missouri, a son of Jehu and Margaret (Reishman) Poland, natives of Ohio. Jehu Poland was a farmer, first in Ohio and later in Missouri, from which latter state he enlisted for service in the Civil war, in which he fought bravely through four years of struggle. During his army life he contract- ed a serious disease, from which he never re- covered and which finally caused his death, when he was about fifty-seven years of age. He was a Republican in politics, and he and his wife belonged to the Free Methodist church. In 1884 Mr. Poland came to Custer county and located on a homestead seven miles northwest of Sargent. There ne spent the rest of his life, his death occurring three years later. Mrs. Poland survived him until 1902, and of their eleven children seven are now living: Mary A., the wife of Thomas Moore, a retired citizen of Guthrie, Oklahoma : Will- iam: Melvin, a farmer of the vicinity of Tay- lor, Nebraska, who married Etta Ott ; Effie. the wife of Burton Hardenbrook, a barber of Douglas, Wyoming : Lillie, the wife of Thomas Banford, a dairyman of the same place; Viv- ian, a farmer of the Walworth community of Custer county, who married Hattie Van- derveen ; and George, who farms seven miles north of Sargent, the maiden name of his wife having been Maggie Vanderveen.

The educational training of William Poland was secured in the public schools of Iowa, where he was brought up on his father's farm, and at Harper, that state, he married Mary E.

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Todd, a daughter of William and Nancy (La- masters) Todd. Mrs. Poland's parents were born in Kentucky, went to Iowa about 1846 or 1847, and were always farming people, Mr. Todd dying at Oskaloosa, Iowa, in 1900. The Todds came to Custer county about 1886 and bought land, living here until 1898, when they returned to Iowa. Mr. Todd was a Dem- ocrat and a member of the Free Methodist church, to which Mrs. Todd, who died in Cal- ifornia, in 1913, also belonged.

Shortly after their marriage, Mr. and Mrs. Poland came to Custer county, where, in 1883, they settled on a homestead seven miles north- west of Sargent. On that property they re- sided about fifteen years, during which time they experienced all the hardships and vicis- situdes incidentat to pioneer life. During one particularly depressing period, when there was no money circulating in the county, they actually existed on the sum of five cents. Only the barest necessities were to be secured, and when meat was desired on the table, the only course to pursue was to take the family rifle and secure a partridge or a jack-rabbit and much of this kind of meat was dried for sum- mer use. In the early days the Polands had the only well in the community, this being 230 feet deep, dug by one Collins, who con- sumed three weeks in the task. Mr. Poland assisted in hauling the lumber for the first building at Taylor, and in other ways shared in the early events that preceded general set- tlement. He was persevering and industrious, made his labors count for something, and eventually developed a good property, but in 1897 he moved to the suburbs of Sargent, where he now carries on general farming. His career has been a successful one, and he is held in high esteem in his community, both as a skilled farmer and as a man of integrity and public spirit.

Mr. and Mrs. Poland became the parents of five children, of whom four are living : Clara is the wife of Charles Shaw, a machinist of Lincoln; Charlie, who married Gertrude Moore, is a farmer of the Walworth commun- ity: Nancy is the wife of Arthur Miller, a machinist of Lincoln; and Lloyd, single, re- sides at home and assists his father in the operation of the farm.

PRATT J. HARMAN. - Here is a home- grown, self-made man who is young in years, who has scored his initial success and whose life record, like that of almost any other youth- ful scion, is largely bound up in the record of his sire.

Pratt J. Harman was born on the Lafayette Harris place near Walworth, Custer county. He arrived in the fragrant month of June, 1890, a year subsequently to the practical end of the pioneer period, and yet his life has not been all roses and June sunshine. He is a son of Gustave and Lena ( Bullard) Harman, the former a native of Germany and the latter a representative of several native-born gener- ations through the Empire state. This excel- lent couple have transmitted to their progeny the desirable characteristics of two distinct races. The father, who was a farmer most of his life, came to the United States when but sixteen years of age, and in his youth he followed farm work most of the time. There were exceptions, however, and the exceptions consisted of railroad grading - in fact he took part in grading the Burlington line in Custer county, through Broken Bow, and still later worked on the grade of the Comstock and Sargent branch of the same road. He went to Brown county in 1876 and there worked for Major Morris and other cattlemen. There, at Ainsworth, he was married in 1879, to Lena Bullard, whose father lived, and still lives, in the state of New York. Mrs. Gus- tave Harman, mother of the subject of this sketch, was but thirteen years of age at the time of her mother's death. It was the next year after their marriage that Mr. and Mrs. Harman came to Custer county and began farming the place belonging to Lafayette Har- ris, where their son, Pratt J., was born. In the fall of 1890 they bought relinquishments of John Cain and they own that farm at the present time. This place they made their home until 1904, when they moved to the farm where they now live. Mr. Harman added to the original possessions until he now owns 640 acres of well improved farms. Good build- ings have just been completed in section 13 for the use of Pratt J. Harman, who does a general agricultural and stock-raising business. In the spring of 1907 Mr. and Mrs. Gustave Harman went to Idaho Springs. Colorado. but they returned to Nebraska that fall, locat- ing in Sargent.

Pratt J. Harman returned to Custer county with his parents and began the farming oper- ations in which he is engaged at the present time. He is the only child in his father's family. He received his early education in the schools of Sargent, and later took a busi- ness and normal course in the Broken Bow Business and Normal college. He has never married and has given practically all of his time to farming, except for a term or two when he taught school, as so many others

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THEODORE LIENS

MRS. THEODORE LIENS

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have done - making teaching a stepping-stone to some other profession or occupation. He also had a contract for carrying mail between Sargent and Berwyn, which he held for more than one year. He is at present engaged in farming the place which his father first bought. He comes of a prominent family, his father and mother have both hield the offices of mod- erator and school director for some time in district No. 100.

Concerning the romance and experiences of early days, Pratt J. Harman states that when his father was paying attention to his mother prior to their marriage, he took her to a dance several miles distant from home, with an ox team. He also recalls their experiences in the dry years, when, after a dry summer, they found themselves in possession of more hogs than bushels of corn. Another year forty acres of wheat averaged two bushels an acre. On one occasion the father was caught in a blizzard which came up so suddenly that the wind turned the wagon around before they could turn the horses. They reached the barn with difficulty but could make their way from the barn to the house only by following a wire that had been previously placed for that pur- pose. These hardships are over and the young man faces the prospects of better times in the years that are to come.

THEODORE LIEHS, who is accounted one of the leading and prosperous agricul- turists of the Mason City community, is one of the self-made men of Custer county, and his experiences here have been diversified and in- teresting, ranging from the days of sod houses and frontier conditions to the comforts and civilization of modern life. Mr. Liebs is a native of Germany, and was born October 26, 1858, a son of Fred and Maggie (Reeder) Liehs. His father, who was a grocer and won a modest business success, passed his entire life in his native country, both he and his wife having been born in Saxe-Holstein, Germany. By his first marriage he became the father of two children, of whom Theodore survives, and after the death of his first wife he was again married, Julius, the son of this marriage, hav- ing, at last reports received, been still living in Germany. The family belonged to the Lutheran church.

Theodore Liels received his early education in the public schools, and was variously em- ployed in his native land, principally in his father's store. When he was twenty-six years of age he decided to try his fortunes in the United States, and accordingly he made his

way to this country, where he arrived with but a small amount of money and with even less knowledge of the conditions and the lan- guage of the land of his adoption. When he arrived at Chicago, he found his financial re- sources exhausted, but he was able to borrow one dollar, with which he managed to continue on to his destination at Clinton, Iowa, where he obtained employment in a lumber yard and later in a butcher shop. One of his first acts was to return the borrowed money to Chicago, for Mr. Liehs' entire career has been char- acterized by the strictest honesty and utmost fidelity to engagements and responsibilities. During the four years that he worked at Clin- ton he saved his money carefully, and when he came to Custer county, in the latter part of 1887, he was able to make a payment of $300 on a pre-emption of 160 acres, the purchase price of which was $800. This property formed the nucleus for his present large hold- ings, for when he had his indebtedness cleared off he began buying more land, and to-day he is the owner of 640 acres. all located in the Mason City community. At the time of his arrival he took up his residence in an old sod house, and for a number of years he accepted his share of the hardships and dis- comforts of frontier existence, but as his finances improved he began to install comforts and conveniences on his land, and these cul- minated in the building of a comfortable and commodious residence, large and substantial barns, and well equipped outbuildings. His land is under a high state of cultivation, and through his good management and agricultur- al ability it yields large crops. In addition to his general farming operations, Mr. Liehs has been successful in the breeding of cattle, hogs, and horses, and is accounted a good judge of live stock. His success rests entirely upon his own efforts and merit, as he has worked his own way to his present enviable position, unaided by influential friends or out- side financial support.

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History of Custer County, Nebraska; a narrative of the past, with special emphasis upon the pioneer period of the county's history, its social, commercial, educational, religous, and civic developement from the early days to the present time, Part 147

Author: Gaston, William Levi, 1865- [from old catalog]; Humphrey, Augustin R., 1859- [from old catalog] Publication date: 1919 Publisher: Lincoln, Neb., Western publishing and engraving company Number of Pages: 1180

Author: Gaston, William Levi, 1865- [from old catalog]; Humphrey, Augustin R., 1859- [from old catalog]
Publication date: 1919
Publisher: Lincoln, Neb., Western publishing and engraving company
Number of Pages: 1180