History of Gage County, Nebraska; a narrative of the past, with special emphasis upon the pioneer period of the county's history, its social, commercial, educational, religious, and civic development from the early days to the present time, Part 7

Author: Dobbs, Hugh Jackson, 1849-
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Lincoln, Neb., Western Publishing and Engraving Company
Number of Pages: 1120

USA > Nebraska > Gage County > History of Gage County, Nebraska; a narrative of the past, with special emphasis upon the pioneer period of the county's history, its social, commercial, educational, religious, and civic development from the early days to the present time > Part 7

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August left the fields practically bare. All Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Mis- souri, Kansas, Arkansas, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, and the territories of Wyoming, Dakota, and Idaho were involved in the dis- aster. In most of this territory the crops,

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

gardens, and orchards were in flourishing condition ; everything was swept away. This invasion marks an era in the history of the states affected and in the lives of all their in- habitants, a never to be forgotten circum- stance. It was the same story everywhere - destruction on a tremendous scale. It was the most startling plague of locusts of which we have any account outside of the Bible. Combined with the drought, this scourge was the cause of great destitution in Nebraska. On the 8th day of September, 1874, Governor Robert W. Furnas, by proclamation, appoint- ed twenty prominent Nebraskans as a relief commission to receive and distribute all con- tributions of money and clothing in aid of those who had been, through no fault of their own, practically reduced to beggary. These gentlemen formed a corporation known in our history as the Nebraska Relief and Aid Society. This society proceeded to organize the work throughout the state. It was esti- mated in January, 1874, that more than ten thousand people of our commonwealth were in need of aid. In the frontier counties the suffering was acute and often pitiful, but a great many benevolent persons interested themselves in the cause of relief and much was done by private charity to mitigate the poverty and want of the times.

By January 8, 1875, the society was able to report the receipt from various sources of $37,279.73 in money and nearly an equal amount in clothing. Early in 1875 congress appropriated thirty thousand dollars in money to be used in the purchase of food supplies and five times that amount for the purchase of clothing, its beneficences to be distributed to the people of the several states who were sufferers from the grasshopper scourge of 1874. A part of these funds came of course to our state. By far the most practical and noteworthy act within our borders was the passage of a law by the legislature, under date of February 17, 1875, providing for the issu- ing of state bonds, to the amount of fifty thousand dollars, "For the purpose of pro- viding seed for the citizens of counties devas- tated by grasshoppers during the year 1874."

Most of the counties in the state, including Gage, were beneficiaries of these relief meas- ures, and by these various means thousands of homesteaders were held upon their claims and the state was spared wholesale depopu- lation in many counties.

Great alarm existed during the winter of 1874-1875, as well as the following spring and early summer, on account of the billions and billions of grasshopper eggs that had been deposited in the ground the previous autumn. The exact facts of the case with respect to the deposition of grasshopper eggs staggers belief. Scarcely an inch of land or a clod of dirt but contained several nests of grasshop- per eggs, closely packed in a sealed mass, about an inch in length, numbering probably one hundred eggs to a package, shaped like and about the size of a small ant egg. When hatching time came in the spring, the sight was simply wonderful. Myriads upon multi- plied myriads of small, young hoppers ap- peared everywhere, so thick in places upon the rails of the railway tracks as to impede travel. Words fail to describe adequately the situation. The young hoppers were ravenous. In a large portion of the state every green, edible thing disappeared as if by magic. They matured rapidly and by the 20th of May or a little later the young pests got their wings and shape, after a succession of moultings, and became, by an almost instantaneous transition from a mere rusty hopper, a winged insect capable of prolonged flight. The migration began the moment their wings appeared. The young, wingless insects would begin hopping with a wind from the north, when suddenly with a mighty hop their wings would appear and, spreading them, they would sail away southward on the favoring breeze. In a few days all were gone and the replanting of the corn, oats, and gardens began. But on June 15, 1875, a south wind brought them back. Pale, anxious, frightened groups of men gathered in the cities and villages to discuss the situation, business came to a standstill. and appalling disaster seemed imminent. But Providence had intervened to avert the threatened ruin. It was soon observed that

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

although they had settled in multiplied bil- lions in the fields and gardens, no depreda- tions were committed. An examination showed that every insect was the victim of more than a single species of parasite, amongst them being a small, yellowish boring beetle, at the base of the wings. None ever again rose in flight. They remained stationary a few hours and perished. Here in Gage county, where comparatively little damage had been done to the growing crops by the young hop- pers, a cold rain set in the night of their re- turn, and when it was over there was not a single live grasshopper to be found. Their bodies were washed, by wagon loads, into the draws, frequently damming them and im- peding the flow of surface water from the rain. This was the last of the much and justly dreaded grasshopper scourges. More than two score years have clapsed since the final appearance of this strange and destruc- tive migratory insect, and the state of Ne- braska has become rich and powerful, but the man who was living in Nebraska in 1874 wit- nessed a scourge of locusts greater than that of Pharaoh.

THE GRASSHOPPERS EDWIN FORD PIPER

Down by the orchard plot a man and boy, The boy's hat just above the whitened floor Of oats half hiding the young trees and sway- ing

Under a strong breeze in the blazing noon. The man looks upward, blinks with dazzled eyes,

Then shading face with hand peers painfully ; Little winged creatures drive athwart the sun, High up, in ceaseless, countless flight to the north.

His mood runs hot envisioning the past.

"It was three years ago this very day.

"Three years ago that clinging, hopping horde Made the earth crawl. With slobbery mouths, All leafage, woody twig, and grain, and grass, They utterly consumed, leaving the land

Abominable. The wind-borne plague rained down

On the full-leaved tree where laughter rippled light

To answer odorous whispers of the flowers. Soon, naked to the blistering sun, it stared .

At the bones of its piteous comrades. After- wards,

A jest to strangers - charity - cattle hun- gering -

Women and children starving! But the power of the creatures !

The daughters of the locust, numberless, num- berless !

Jaws bite, throats suck, the beauty of lovely fields

Is in their guts, the world is but a mummy !"

Man and boy turn from the oats and the vigorous orchard ;

But as they go the lad is looking, looking

To see, high up, like gnats, the winged mil- lions

Moving across the sun. May God rebuke them !

As long as the human race was represented in Nebraska by wandering savages who dwelt sparsely in widely separted communities it was possible for every form of wild life to thrive and increase, but when the white man spreads abroad over nature's wide domain, maintaining fixed habitations, he dominates all forms of life. And the settlement of Nebraska by the palefaced race has brought tremendous changes in its primitive forms. Gone are the useful buffalo, the stately elk, the deer, the antelope, from which the Indian fed and clothed hint- self and manufactured many of the crude utensils for his own use; gone the larger felines that preyed upon them ; fish, bird, and even insect life have also been notably modi- fied by the presence of the white man. The game birds have almost totally disappeared, with the curlews and the plovers, while the wild goose, brant, crane, and duck are rarely seen except in their long, high, semi-annual pilgrimages to and from their breeding grounds on the Saskatchewan and the far north. The denizens of the streams have been depleted both in quantity and quality. many species having wholly disappeared, as the pike, pickerel, bullhead, sucker, chub, red horse, and perch. The waters of our county no longer abound with the buffalo fish or the cat, and even the vicious gar-pike has become scarce. While these are taken in limited num- bers, the carp, an alien fish, has largely sup- planted them. Even the great Missouri has

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

suffered similar depletions and invasions and the faithful and continuous efforts of the state through its fish commission to restock our streams with desirable edible fish have so far proved of doubtful value.

The beaver and the otter, which once were found in numbers about the water courses of southeastern Nebraska, have almost wholly disappeared. The mink, muskrat, and skunk are still occasionally trapped or shot, but their pursuit is no longer a profitable occupa- tion. The wolves, badgers, mountain lions. and other noxious carnivora have either been driven away or hunted and killed, until only an occasional coyote, bob cat, or badger is

found where once they abounded. Few repre- sentatives of the reptilian family remain and these are mostly of an innocuous kind.

Animal life of the state has been affected too by the additions to it which man has con- sciously made or which have followed his course. Besides the domestic animals which replaced the buffalo, elk, and deer and made civilization possible on the "Great American Desert," wherever man builds, plants, sows, gathers, or reaps, there is found in its greatest perfection the house fly, the Colorado potato- beetle, the chinch bug, the cut-worm, and other insects that prey upon the roots, stems, and leaves of his fields, gardens, and orchards.

CHAPTER VIII

THE PUBLIC DOMAIN

NEMAHA LAND DISTRICT - BROWNVILLE LAND OFFICE - REGISTERS AND RECEIVERS - OF- FERED AND UNOFFERED LANDS - PREEMPTIONS - FREE HOMESTEAD LAW - AGRI-

CULTURAL COLLEGE LAND GRANT ACT - OPERATION OF THE ACT - COL- LEGE SCRIP ENTRIES IN TOWNSHIPS - HOMESTEAD ENTRIES

The public domain of the United States has dwindled to a mere fraction of what it was in 1854, when the territory of Nebraska was created by act of congress. The system by which the United States government under- took to dispose of its lands has worked as ef- ficiently as any department of the public ser- vice. In every state and territory where pub- lic lands were located, and particularly here in the west, the federal land office has always proved an effective and a most important fac- tor in the settlement and development of the country. The prospective settler has met, at the very outset of his inquiries, the organ- ized agencies of his government, prepared to lend him all possible assistance in selecting and locating upon a tract of land.

The local land office for the district in which Gage county was situated in the early pioneer days, was established at Brownville, Nemaha county, Nebraska, under an act of congress, dated March 3, 1857, and opened for business about that time. The land dis- trict was officially described as the Nemaha District, while amongst the people it was al- most universally designated as the Brownvillc land district. The office continued in opera- tion at Brownville from the date of its estab- lishment to July 7, 1868, when it was re- moved to Beatrice. The district was there- after known as the Beatrice land district, and it embraced Nemaha, Richardson, Paw- nee, Johnson, Gage, Jefferson, Saline, Fill- more, Thayer, Nuckolls, and Clay counties.

The office was maintained at Beatrice from July 7, 1868, to the 15th day of September, 1887, when the district was consolidated with the Lincoln land district and the records of the Beatrice office were removed to Lincoln.

For more than thirty years this office was a necessary and an important factor in the affairs of the inhabitants of the district which it served. Through its ministrations many homes were established and the foundation for many a fortune laid. The volume of business transacted at this office through the greater portion of its existence was enor- mous. Its officials were called upon to advise the settlers both with respect to the laws under which public lands were granted to in- dividuals and the methods of complying with these laws once the entryman had availed himself of their benefits. The officers of the local land offices of the United States are des- ignated as register and receiver. The fixed salary attached to each office was $500 and an additional amount, on the fee basis, was al- lowed, not to exceed $2,500, or $3,000 in all. The officers of the old Brownville-Beatrice land office were uniformly gentlemen of high character and excellent ability. Their names may be regarded as worthy of preservation in a work of this kind. At Brownville the offi- cials were:

George H. Nixon, Register, April 9, 1857, temporary ; April 16, 1858, permanent.

Charles B. Smith, Receiver, April 11, 1857. temporary ; April 16, 1858, permanent.

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

Richard F. Barrett, Register, May 27, 1861, temporary ; July 26, 1861, permanent.

I. Edward Burbank, Receiver, May 27, 1861, temporary.

George F. Watton, Receiver, June 21, 1861, temporary : July 26, 1861, permanent.

Sewell R. Jamison, Receiver, March 10, 1862, permanent.

Charles G. Dorsey, Register, July 25, 1865, temporary ; May 16, 1866, permanent.

Theodore W. Bedford, Register, Novem- ber 5, 1866, temporary.

Henry M. Atkinson, Register, March 7, 1867, permanent.

John S. Carson, Receiver, April 15, 1867, permanent

At Beatrice the officials were :

Hiram W. Parker, Register, June 2, 1871, temporary ; December 27, 1871, permanent ; January 22, 1876, permanent ; January 29, 1880, permanent.

Nathan Blakely, Receiver, August 10, 1869, temporary ; December 28, 1869, permanent.

Robert B. Harrington, Receiver, September 10, 1875, temporary ; December 17, 1875, per- manent ; December 22, 1879, permanent.

Hugh J. Dobbs, Register, March 7, 1884.

William H. Somers, Receiver, March 24, 1881.

Joseph Hill, Receiver, June 9, 1885, tem- porary.

Edward R. Fogg, Receiver, May 24, 1886, permanent.

In the beginning of the land office in the old Nemaha district, the public lands were classified as offered and unoffered lands. The former comprised all those tracts which had been formally offered by the local land office for sale at public auction, for cash, to the high- est bidder, the minimum bid allowed being one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre. The unoffered lands comprised all public lands which had not been placed on sale at public auction, for cash, to the highest bidder. This distinction in the public land laws was made by act of congress in the early '40s, and con- tinued from that time until May 18, 1898. when the law creating the distinction was re- pealed.

In districts where offered lands were lo- cated, those not sold at public vendue when offered, could be afterward bought without settlement for cash, at one dollar and twenty- five cents per acre. Unoffered lands were not open for cash entry. In both classes title could be acquired by entry and actual settlement under the preemption laws of congress. Like- wise military-bounty land warrants issued, under the acts of 1847 and 1855, to the soldiers and sailors of the Revolutionary war, the war of 1812, the Mexican war, and the various In- dian wars, could be used in purchasing public lands of the United States, regardless of the foregoing distinction. And under the home- stead act, effective January 1, 1863, this dis- tinction was also ignored and entry could be made anywhere on the public domain on lands not reserved or otherwise appropriated by con- gress.

The offered lands in the old Brownville- Beatrice land district were confined to the Missouri river counties. From first to last Gage county presented a clear field for entry of land under the preemption, homestead, and other acts for acquiring title on the pub- lic domain. Prior to the passage of the home- stead law the settlers acquired title under the preëmption act, where purchase was not made by military-bounty land warrants. The pro- cedure under the preëmption laws as applied by claimants was simplicity itself. It con- sisted in performing some act which amounted to notice to the world of an intention on the part of the settler to claim the tract selected by him- as the erection of some sort of a dwelling or the placing of a foundation for a cabin on the land selected; any act, in fact, which manifested an intent to claim a given tract of land and which at the same time amounted to notice of such intent to an ad- verse claimant. Such act must of course be followed by filing in the local land office a written declaration of intent on the part of the claimant to enter and purchase said land; it must also be followed by actual settlement on his part, and in twelve months by proof of settlement, of improvement, and the payment to the government of one dollar and twenty-

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

five cents per acre in cash or in military- bounty land warrants, or, at a later date, by college scrip at the same rate per acre.

A number of preëmption filings were made on Gage county land prior to the taking effect of the homestead law, January 1, 1863, but these were followed by comparatively few final entries. In actual practice, the squatter on the public domain performed his acts of settlement, filed his declaration of intentions in the local land office to appropriate said land and pay for the same, made improvements, es- tablished his residence upon the land, and in many instances, without perfecting his entry under the preëmption acts, remained in open, exclusive, adverse possession until the home- stead law became effective, when he availed himself of its benefits by changing his pre- emption into a homestead. Once in actual possession the "Squatter Sovereign" ran little risk of being disturbed hy a rival claimant. By a sort of freemasonry existing between them, the settlers allowed it to be understood that there must be no claim jumping, and claim juinpers in Gage county were pretty scarce.

The passage of the free-homestead bill by congress nearly two and one-half years before the close of the great Civil war, was followed, after the close of the war, by a tremendous influx of settlers on the public domain, wher- ever free homes could be found, and Gage county rapidly filled with actual settlers seek- ing permanent homes in this beautiful section of country, many of them veterans of the Civil war. But in 1867 this movement was sud- denly and permanently halted by the operation of what is known as the Agricultural College Land Grant Act.

Whatever one may think of the beneficent purpose of this act, whereby the national leg- islature was induced, without the slightest financial consideration, to appropriate nearly ten million acres of the public lands of the United States for educational purposes, there can be no difference of opinion as to the im- providence and wastefulness of this legisla- tion. As set forth in the title to the act, the purpose of this vast donation was to provide

for the establishment of one or more institu- tions in each state, "the leading object of which shall be, without excluding other scien- tific and classical studies, and including mili- tary practice, to teach such branches of learn- ing as are related to agriculture and mechanic arts, in such manner as the legislatures of the states shall respectively prescribe, in order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in the several pursuits and professions of life."

Had the operation of this act been confined to those states and territories whose wealth consisted chiefly in the public lands within their boundaries, and which, on account of poverty, were unable to make suitable provis- ion for the education and training of their young men and women, it would be beyond just criticism and worthy of all praise. Prob- ably that was the original intent and purpose of the act, but the selfishness of the old and wealthy states, where there were no public lands, resulted in a distortion of the original intent, and in the end imparted to the act the appearance of a land-grabbing device of colos- sal proportions, by which states with large delegations in congress profited enormously at public expense.

For the bill in its passage through congress to secure the support of the representatives of those states where there were no public lands subject to entry or purchase under federal laws, an ingeneous scheme was devised where- by scrip was to be issued to all such states for the full amount of their donative shares, at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, for the entire acreage due them on the basis of thirty thousand acres for each senator and rep- resentative in congress. The states holding this scrip could under the law either enter land with it themselves or sell it at private sale and use the proceeds of such sale as they deemed proper to carry out the purposes of the law. The result is perfectly obvious - the weak, helpless, needy states, rich only in the public lands within their borders, were restricted to the land itself at the rate of thirty thousand acres for each senator and represen- tative in congress, while the great, strong,

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

healthy, powerful states took their share in scrip, and either located it themselves at the rate of one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre on vast tracts of public lands or sold it upon the market for cash. Thus Nebraska received under the act ninety thousand acres of public land, which formed the nucleus for its State University, while the great state of New York received college scrip covering 989,930 acres, part of which was sold on the market at a fraction of its face value, the re- mainder being used to purchase vast areas of the finest pine land in the world, in Wiscon- sin and Minnesota. From her donative share New York realized $6,651,473.88, which vast sum constitutes the endowment of Cornell University. Not a single state or territory failed to avail itself of the provisions of this enactment, by which a grand total of 9,597,340 acres of the public lands of the United States were nominally dedicated to the cause of higher education. Only a comparatively few, however, actually received their donative shares in land. As might have been foreseen by any patriotic and prudent statesman, the vast profit of this legislation inured to indi- viduals. The process by which this curious and unexpected result was achieved was very simple. The scrip was thrown indiscriminately on the market and sold for cash to speculators, usually for a fraction of its nominal value, the purchaser or assignee succeeding to the rights of the states to select and pay for the public lands of the country with agricultural-col- lege scrip so purchased, at the rate of one dol- lar and twenty-five cents per acre. Thus, Alabama scrip sold for one dollar and six cents per acre, leaving a margin of nineteen cents per acre profit to the purchaser ; Arkan- sas scrip sold for ninety cents, Connecticut scrip for seventy-five cents, Delaware ninety- two cents, Illinois one dollar, Indiana eighty- seven cents, Kentucky sixty cents, Maine and Massachusetts fifty-six cents, Maryland and New Jersey fifty-five cents, Missouri and Pennsylvania fifty-two cents, Ohio fifty-four cents, New Hampshire thirty-two cents, North Carolina forty-six cents, and Rhode Island forty-one cents per acre. Even at these low

prices, some of the states were enabled, on ac- count of the vast amount of their donative shares of the public lands, to endow most lib- erally the institutions founded under the act. Thus, Pennsylvania, with 780,000 scrip acres, received, at the low rate of fifty-two cents per acre, from scrip sales alone the sum of $406,- 000; Massachusetts, with a donative share of 390,000 acres of the public domain, from scrip sales alone received $219,000; and the other wealthy eastern states profited from scrip sales proportionally. When we take into account the fact that the populous eastern states re- ceived the lion's share of this vast donation, and that the new prairie states and territories and the northern timbered states and terri- tories were despoiled of their rich and valuable lands under this act, to build up existing edu- cational institutions in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, In- diana, Illinois, and other landless states, the improvidence and the selfishness of this legis- lation must be apparent to the dullest mind.

Gage county suffered severely from this wasteful policy. Speculators thronged her prairies, their pockets and carpetbags stuffed with college scrip bought at nominal figures from Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Mis- souri, Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Rhode Island, New York, and other scrip states, and in the summer of 1867 her broad, fertile acres disappeared as by magic, at the very moment when Nebraska had ceased to be a territory. when the railroads had come or were on their way, and when the pioneer days were over and immigration was setting toward her in an ever increasing stream. Keen-eyed appraisers went leisurely over our county's finest upland regions and marked for entry every desirable tract of land. The following table shows ap- proximately the acreage thus entered in the several townships of our county during the years 1867 and 1868, by the use of college scrip :

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History of Gage County, Nebraska; a narrative of the past, with special emphasis upon the pioneer period of the county's history, its social, commercial, educational, religious, and civic development from the early days to the present time, Part 7

Author: Dobbs, Hugh Jackson, 1849- Publication date: 1918 Publisher: Lincoln, Neb., Western Publishing and Engraving Company Number of Pages: 1120

Author: Dobbs, Hugh Jackson, 1849-
Publication date: 1918
Publisher: Lincoln, Neb., Western Publishing and Engraving Company
Number of Pages: 1120