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 8

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 8

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Adams 19 sections

Nemaha 19 1-2 sections

Highland 8 sections

Clatonia 3 1-4 sections

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

Grant 14 1-2 sections

Holt

23 1-2 sections

Hanover 29 1-2 sections

Hooker

29 1-2 sections

Filley 19 1-2 sections

Logan 20 3-4 sections

Midland 14 3-4 sections

11 1-2 sections

Highland ( Michael Weaver). 1

Grant

Hanover

Filley 26

Midland

Lincoln

Rockford 54

Island Grove

Liberty

Nemaha

Clatonia

Holt

Hooker

Logan

Blakely

Riverside 16

Sherman

Blue Springs

Elm 10

A total of four hundred and forty-four en- tries. Assuming that each entry covered the maximum of one hundred and sixty acres, the total acreage embraced in these homestead en- tries is 71,040. Subsequent to January 1, 1871, the public lands in our county subject to homestead entry were almost wholly con- fined to Nemaha, Highland. Clatonia, and Grant townships, with an occasional entry in some of the other townships, usually growing out of the relinquishment and cancellation of a previous one.

In these calculations the lands of the Otoe and Missouri Indian reservation, which were ceded to the United States in 1881 and which were afterward sold for the exclusive benefit of these Indians, for cash, to actual settlers only, under virtually the same conditions and restrictions as prevailed under the homestead law, are not considered. But if we add the

In the northern portion of the county at that time, most of Nemaha township, practically all of Highland, and a large part of both Cla- tonia and Grant townships had been with- drawn from public entry as state selections under the grant by the general government to the state of Nebraska of 500,000 acres of the public domain for internal improvement, under the act of September 4, 1841. In 1871 these lands were opened for homestead entry, the state's application for the reservation of such lands having been rejected by the general land office at Washington, and were thus saved from the predatory effects of the Agricultural College Land Grant Act. In the south part of the county the Otoe and Missouri Indian reservation, of course, escaped speculative spoliation of the college scriptor. The dense population of those townships, where practi- cally each quarter-section of land went to an actual settler, shows what would have taken place had not more than one-half of Gage county's fair domain gone to increase the edu- cational facilities of the wealthy eastern states and line the pockets of speculators in college scrip.

It may interest the reader to know that, not- withstanding the donation of this large acre- age of Gage county land in the way here de- scribed, a great many homestead entries were, in fact, made in the county by actual bonafide settlers prior to 1871, when the opening of the

lands in the northern part of the county notice- ably increased the number of such entries.

In the several townships of the county where homestead entries could be made prior to the above date, the number of such entries exclusive of cancellations, was :

Adams 46

Blakely

.20 3-4 sections

Lincoln

Riverside 24 3-4 sections

Rockford 18

sections

Sherman 31 1-2 sections

Island Grove 15 1-2 sections

Blue Springs 7 3-4 sections

Sicily

12 1-2 sections

Elm

8 sections

Sicily

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

acreage of these lands to the acreage covered by homestead entries in our county, it will be seen that even then less than one-half the ter- ritory of Gage county passed from the govern- ment of the United States to actual settlers.

Nor are the lands the titles to which were acquired under the preemption laws or cash entries with military-bounty land warrants, considered in the above calculations, but the lands so purchased from the United States were not of sufficient acreage to affect to any extent the foregoing results.

A moment's reflection will show the striking

contrast between the beneficent influence of the free-homestead law and the effects of the agricultural-college act, not only in the early settlement and development of our county but in existing and future conditions. The one operated as a gift from heaven, descending upon an independent, self-respecting and in- dustrious population; the other forms the basis of nearly every large landed fortune in the county. Without it there would have been no such individual domain as the Scully es- tate, and the problem of landlordism in Gage county would be scarcely worth considering.

CHAPTER IX

THE PIONEERS

FIRST GLIMPSE OF GAGE COUNTY - HOME BUILDING ON THE PRAIRIES - FOOD SUPPLIES - FRUITS - FISH - GAME - THE BUFFALO - CLOTHES - FOOD SUBSTITUTES -

FIRST WHEAT CROP - SPRING WHEAT - COMMON SALT - SOCIAL LIFE

It should certainly be the delight of every age to pay grateful tribute to a noble or valiant ancestry. The annals of mankind have but meager interest when stripped of the personal element and confined to a bare narra- tive of events. But when vivified by the rec- ord of the lives of those whose heroic daring lifted them far above the ordinary, common plane of living, history may become the most pleasing and instructive of all subjects of study.

No history of our county would be com- plete which failed to render justice to its pioneers. Three score and four years have passed since the first wave of immigation broke over the eastern boundary of our state, which marked the close of the long struggle that attended the creation of the territory of Nebraska. Accustomed as we now are to comfortable and often luxurious homes, to cultivated fields, well kept, well traveled pub- lic highways, to groves, orchards, meadows, churches and schools, to thriving villages and cities, to newspapers, manufactories, banks, business establishments, railroads, telegraph and telephone lines, to everything, in fact, that typifies modern living, we are too prone to for- get the hard, difficult pioneer days, when there were no homes save the settlers' lonely dug- out, sod-house, or log-cabin : when there were no fields or meadows save the rolling prairies, stretching away to the horizon on every hand, as far as the eye could see ; when there were no highways save the meandering paths of the buffalo and Indian; when there were no or-

chards, towns or cities, no railroads, telegraph or telephone lines ; when all the landscape was fresh from the hand of God, untouched and unchanged by the brain and genius of man.

Not only are we in our present state of hap- piness and prosperity prone to forget the as- pect that nature wore in these primitive soli- tudes to the wondering view of the first in- habitants of our county, but we may even be strongly inclined to hold as of trifling conse- quence the sacrifices required of pioneer life and to disparage the actual hardships, dan- gers, privations, and suffering which they en- dured whose heroism and courage made it possible for the lines of civilization to be ad- vanced upon the great plains region of the west.

The thin line of immigrants that gathered in the spring and early summer of 1854, on the eastern shore of the Missouri river, await- ing the signal to enter the new territory of Nebraska, rapidly spread over the eastern sec- tion of the territory contiguous to that mighty stream. And the early immigrants of Rich- ardson, Nemaha, Otoe, Cass, Sarpy, Douglas, and some other of the eastern counties, on ac- count of the navigation then existing on the river, were spared many of the privations of pioneer life. But those who later pushed on into Gage and other counties remote from this, the only source of water transportation avail- able, experienced in every degree the hardships of isolated pioneer existence.

If we turn back the pages that cover the

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

sixty-four years of our state's history, we will find that in 1854 when people of the New England, the Middle, and the South Atlantic states spoke of the west they meant Ohio, In- diana or, at the farthest, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, - or Iowa or Missouri when they mentioned our western border or frontier. The immigrants bound for Nebraska territory in 1854, and for several years thereafter, usually crossed the Missouri river at Omaha, Platts- mouth, Nebraska City, Brownville, or some less known village nestled amongst the bluffs on the western shore of that stream. The means of travel were in their crudest state. The intending immigrant might reach the river on foot, on horseback or by mule, ox or horse drawn vehicle, or by the deep-throated, side- wheel Missouri river steamboats, which in those days traversed the "Big Muddy" from St. Louis to the trading posts of the trappers, traders, and frontiersmen scattered along its banks to its source in the northwest. Once having crossed that turbulent stream, the im- migrant did not need to be told that he was on the very confines of civilization, since the crudity and newness of his surroundings were vocal with evidence of that fact. He found himself hundreds of miles from the nearest railway, while the future of the electric tele- graph was still wrapped up in a congressional appropriation of thirty thousand dollars, to en- able Professor Morse to perfect his wonderful invention. Eastward across the river lay the hamlets and sparse settlements of the new state of Iowa; toward the west, from every point as far as the eye could see, stretched the territory of Nebraska, until then wholly unoc- cupied by civilized man. Of one thing the im- migrant could feel assured, - when he turned his back upon the Missouri river and faced the western horizon he was like an army cut off from its base of supplies and lines of com- munication. Before him lay the undulating al- most treeless prairie, rolling away to the west, north, and south like the billows of the ocean, hundreds upon hundreds of miles. It was the "Great American Desert" of the old geogra- phers : the "Plains" of the military department at Washington; the El Dorado of the poor

homeseeker ; the unorganized, tenantless ter- ritory of Nebraska, inhabited only by wild ani- mals and by the red man, almost equally wild. As he advanced westward a little in the bril- liant sunlit plain, the last trace of the presence of civilized man soon vanished. The dim wagon trail grew dimmer and more uncertain and finally disappeared. Around on every hand the blue sky, descending to the horizon, encompassed him like a gigantic dome. A silence, a solitude that had brooded together over these vast areas since the world began. closed about him as his distance from the river settlements slowly increased. In these pri- meval solitudes he might remain for weeks, aye months, without seeing a single human face or hearing save his own, a single human voice.

Such was the face that nature wore and the conditions that life presented to those who drew the first furrows in the virgin soil of Nebraska. But the true pioneer looks be- vond his present hard, uninviting surround- ings, and with prophetic vision beholds states and nations arise from tenantless wildernesses and naked plains. Others may grow weary or discouraged, and abandon the enterprise, --- not so the pioneer. Destiny points his course and with unswerving fidelity he calmly awaits the fruition of his hopes !

But the prospect that confronted the Gage county pioneer in that long by-gone day - three score and four years ago - was not wholly uninviting, nor his surroundings as desolate, nor his condition as desperate as to the unreflecting mind they might have seemed. Resourceful by nature, self-reliant from the hard school of experience, courageous, deter- mined, he was his own best guarantor of the successful issue of his venture as a pioneer in the new territory. If the winds of winter whistled and roared about his lonely cabin and drifting snows almost hid it from sight, within the blazing logs glowed on the rude hearth and all was warmth and cheer. If the winter seemed long, cold, and hard, it burgeoned at last into spring, whose vernal clouds and dap- pled sky, whose long twilight and dawn, song of birds and distant boom of prairie chicken

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

welcoming the rising sun, renewed his hopes and spurred him on to yet higher endeavor. Summer followed, always beautiful, with the wide billowy prairie garbed in green, white, pink, red, yellow, and gold; then autumn, with its brilliant and soothing colors outlining prairies and stream.

The occupations of the pioneer were many and varied. His first care was to pro- vide some sort of shelter for himself and family. Here in Gage county this usually con- sisted of a log cabin, or occasionally a sod house, generally comprising a single room,

constructed for that purpose, drawn by sev- eral yoke of oxen or sometimes by three or more horses or mules. The sod was usually broken to a depth of about three inches, the plows being equipped with either a standing or a rolling cutter, and the depth of the fur- row regulated by a device which held the plow steadily on a level. With the pioneers, per- fection in prairie breaking consisted in so turning the sod that the edges lapped in such a way as to give to a strip of breaking, the ap- pearance of the weather-boarded side of a frame house. The breaking could be planted

From drawing by Geo. Simons, in the frontier sketch book of N. P. Dodge

FIRST CLAIM CABIN IN NEBRASKA Built by Daniel Norton, between Omaha and Bellevue, in 1853

probably fourteen by sixteen feet in di- mensions, of a single low story in height, built in some bend of a stream or other sheltered spot. It was often scant quarters for a family, but children of pioneer parents soon learned to accommodate themselves to their surround- ings and the exigencies of circumstances. After his family the pioneer's next care was to construct shelter for such stock as he posses- sed and to provide for their maintenance. This shelter was apt to be a very crude affair, though warm and safe, while hay made from blue-stem and other grasses, and corn grown on the newly turned sod, furnished an abun- dant supply of animal food.

The water supply for man and beast, and fuel being provided, the pioneer turned his attention to breaking the tough prairie sod, which was accomplished as a rule with plows

as a corn field either by dropping the corn in every second or third furrow and covering with the next, or by cutting a gash in the up- turned sod with a sharp ax or spade and in- serting the seed, firming the earth above with the foot. Pumpkin seeds, watermelon seeds, beans, and other field or garden truck were planted in the same way, and this method carefully followed was most apt to give sat- isfactory results. If the season were favor- able, crops of sod corn were often raised yielding as high as twenty-five or more bushels per acre, and the rich, new soil produced po- tatoes, melons, pumpkins, squashes, turnips, and other vegetables in great profusion and of excellent quality. Ordinarily a very few months in the growing season of the year, under favorable conditions, were sufficient to place the family of the pioneer beyond the

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

possibility of actual want, as far as good wholesome vegetables and Indian corn could insure this result. For sugar a ready and a very wholesome substitute was found in com- mon sorghum, and in the production of a high grade of sorghum molasses the pioneer often attained great skill, the product being whole- some and pleasant to the taste. Beginning with the first settlement of the county, and extending until long after the close of the great Civil war, this nutritious product entered largely into the dietary of the people.

The pioneers of our county found grow- ing in great abundance along the streams thickets of wild plums and chokecherries. The plums were often of large size and de- licious flavor ; the cherries, large and meaty, hung in long, thick, grape-like bunches in profusion on the low bushes. These thickets were apt to be found in great perfection in the bends of the streams, forming a sort of fire break to the groves of tim- ber, of which they were the fringe. The mold produced by their thick leaves from year to year afforded almost ideal conditions for the spread of forest growth. In the early spring, when the elms, willows, cottonwoods, box elders, oaks, and other trees along the streams were putting forth their tender young leaves and the fresh green of the prairies was be- ginning to show on every hand, the milk- white, fragrant blossoms of the plum and cherry thickets afforded a pleasing diversity to the landscape, often outlining the course of the streams for great distances.

In the woods were found numerous vari- eties of excellent wild grapes and wild goose- berries, while at the edges of the prairies the wild strawberries grew in abundance- and these formed the staple fruit supply of the pioneers. These fruits were made into jellies, preserves, jams, butters, and other forms of food for winter use, and with the thrifty housewife's tomato preserves, pumpkin but- ter, dried corn, and other preparations of a like character, they formed an important feature of the homely family food supply it the early days, as they virtually took the place of the orchards and vineyards of the older

settled portions of the country. These native wild fruits have long since lost their value and importance as sources of food supply. The plum and cherry thickets have largely disappeared and even the wild grape and gooseberry no longer enter extensively into the dietary of the present population. The custom of pasturing non-tillable and timbered land with stock has proved almost fatal to the existence and spread of every sort of wild shrub, vine, and forest growth. The time is rapidly approaching when the scarcity and the high cost of coal and lumber will force a return, in the matter of forestation, to the primitive conditions of the country as respects the protection of growing timber from de- struction by pasturage.

The food supply afforded by these sources was not infrequently supplemented by the streams, the groves, and the prairie. The waters of our county in an early day abounded with several varieties of edible fish which were easily taken by the expenditure of a little time- and trouble. Many of the most desirable sort, the pike, the pickerel, the perch, the sun -- fish, the chub, the red horse, have long since disappeared. Throughout the pioneer days. our prairies abounded with grouse or prairie. chickens, the woods with squirrels, rabbits,. raccoons, and quails, with an occasional flock of wild turkeys.

Prior to the advent of the white man, Gage. county had been a favorite range of the wild buffalo, the elk, the deer, the antelope. As. late probably as 1855, when the Otoe and Mis- souri tribes of Indians were transferred from the Missouri river country to our county. these great game animals were here in large- herds and bands. The early settlers found their remains in every direction. They had slowly retired, however, before the red man, so that by 1857 the buffalo had wholly disap- peared from the confines of our county, but still could be found in great abundance in the region west of the Little Blue river. Small bands of elk were occasionally seen in the northern portions of the county, while deer and antelope, when the first settlers arrived, were still fairly 'abundant, especially in the-

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

winter about the heads of draws or wherever thick underbrush afforded shelter and food.

Of all the plains animals the buffalo was at once the most picturesque and the most useful. These huge beasts ranged the prairies by millions from the Height of Land in the far north to the tide waters of the gulf of Mexico. They spread over what is now Texas, western Louisiana, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa, the Dakotas, and Montana. To the Indian tribes inhabiting these regions they fur- nished clothing, food, materials for sewing garments, knives, arrow points, war clubs, and many other useful articles of Indian manufacture for both peace and war. The building of the trans-continental railway lines in 1867 and in subsequent years, by multiply- ing the means for their destruction, finally led to the wanton extinction of this wonderful and picturesque indigenous source of wealth. Such representatives of this once numerous and powerful denizen of the prairies as now remain are found only in parks or shows, in semi or complete confinement, regarded as curiosities and forming a sad commentary upon the careless wastefulness of a govern- ment to which conservation of natural re- sources of wealth has until recently been a subject of minor consideration - a high sounding phrase.

From such sources of food supply as here given, the pioneer was able fully to supple- ment the products of his raw land and stock of domestic animals and to live in security against the demands of hunger through the most strenuous times, until his harvest ripen- ed again upon the rich soil of his homestead and the returns of his toil and foresight finally rendered him indifferent to the wild plum and grape, the bison, the deer, the antelope, and those conditions of living which his depen- dence on them implied.

Probably the most perplexing subject with which the pioneer had to deal concerned clothes. Even before the beginning of the war of the rebellion, in 1861, clothing ma- terials of all kinds here in Gage county were scarce and expensive. The cost of all

commodities was increased by the Civil war of 1861-1865, which also augmented the scarcity of many articles. But in the case of wearing apparel the cost was not only very much enhanced but there was often little of much value to be had. The scarcity of cloth- ing and the materials for it, as well as the cost of all clothing materials, was manifested in many ways, but chiefly by plainness and inexpensiveness of attire. Frequently the men and boys wore coats made by wives and mothers from blankets obtained from the In- dians by barter, while pantaloons constructed from meal sacks or any common, cheap mate- rial were much in evidence. Shortly before the close of the war, and for some time thereafter, army contract clothing which had been con- demned and rejected by the government was to be had at fairly reasonable figures, and a civilian partly clad in army blue was a com- mon sight on the streets of Beatrice and else- where long after the war had closed. Boots, shoes, socks, hats, caps, mittens, gloves, and other articles of wearing apparel for men and boys were often crude in manufacture as well as material. The common footwear for win- ter was brogans and cowhide boots and shoes, while in summer the country population dur- ing the war went mostly barefoot. Occasion- ally Indian moccasins would be worn and not infrequently rough homemade foot-gear, while the skins of animals - the badger, coon, coyote, squirrel, sheep, antelope, deer - were often used for caps, mittens, leggings, and vests. Leather straps, strips of buckskin, and even bedticking, often supplied the office of suspenders, and all articles of wearing ap- parel were more or less of home manufacture.

Wives and daughters dressed plainly in homemade garments. The sunbonnet was the most fashionable form of female headgear and crinoline was worn by all. Outside the villages, Beatrice. and Blue Springs, what might be deemed a well dressed lady or gen- tleman was, in fact, rarely seen amongst the pioneers, and none but beggars and tramps would now think of dressing as rural folks in that far off day were forced to dress.

In addition to his other privations, the

HISTORY OF GAGE COUNTY, NEBRASKA

pioneer during the opening years of our coun- ty's history was frequent:y unable to pro- cure tea, coffee, wheat flour, coal oil, salt, and many other commodities of common household consumption, nearer than the Missouri river, if at all. Even when procur- able, such articles were expensive and the cost often prohibitive. For tea and coffee substi- tutes were found which were relished by many. Often a burnt crust of corn or any bread, parched corn, or even corn meal stirred with sorghum and browned over the fire to the size and consistency of grape nuts, made a substitute for coffee. For tea the leaves of summer savory and various other herbs were used in place of Bohea, Souchong, Young Hy- son, and Gunpowder. The substitute for wheat flour was of course corn meal, and many a family was reared to strength and happiness largely on corn bread, milk, butter, garden vegetables, and such wild meat as was available. The common substitute for coal oil for lighting purposes was the tallow candle or the old fashioned homemade lamp, consist- ing of some sort of receptacle, as a saucer, teacup, or tin plate, with a twist of cotton cloth for a wick, immersed in lard.

Wheat was not grown in Gage county prior to 1861 or 1862, when spring wheat was introduced, and for many years it con- stituted the only variety planted. At first the settlers strove to raise only enough for their own use, as there was no home market for their surplus. And in addition the manu- factory of wheat flour was in its crudest state. The first mill for grinding grain of any kind in Gage county was at the Otoe res- ervation, and for several years corn meal and graham flour were its only products. The pioneer hauled his wheat to Brownville, Peru, Nebraska City, and even to points in wes- tern Iowa, to obtain his supply of wheat flour. But about the year 1864 Fordyce Roper came into possession of the milling franchise in Beatrice and erected a small mill, run by water power, on the present site of Black Brothers' fine merchant mill. At the same time the United States government began to make white flour at the mill on the Otoe reserva-

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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 8

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