USA > Nebraska > Hamilton County > History of Hamilton and Clay counties, Nebraska, Vol. I > Part 75
USA > Nebraska > Clay County > History of Hamilton and Clay counties, Nebraska, Vol. I > Part 75
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Vol 1-42
652
HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY
loaded the old gun with buck shot and started after the deer, but hardly ex- pecting to get it ; he crawled toward the deer until it got up, when he gave it both barrels, killing it. It was a young doe, fine and fat and made mighty good eating.
The principal supply of fresh meat in Sutton during the winter of 1871 was buffalo beef brought in and sold by hunters. Good buffalo meat could be had at five and six cents a pound; elk and antelope meat brought a little more. Pork was shipped in from Lincoln and sold at ten and twelve cents a pound ; many rabbits and some grouse were killed and consumed. Hams and bacon were sold at stores. People with money had no difficulty in obtaining fresh and salt meats, but few of the settlers were well supplied with cash, most of them having to depend upon what game they could secure. We were able to kill a jack rabbit occasionally, and when stewed with pork, made good eating. Cottontails were scarce on the prairie then. We had plenty of good potatoes and lived fairly well. It was a long, cold winter, the ground being covered with snow from the middle of November to the first of April, and we were mighty glad to see spring. During the winter we had procured seed wheat, oats, barley and corn. As soon as the ground was in condition we started the harrow and seeder to work, and when we got done seeding we had twenty-five acres of wheat, twenty-five acres of barley, twenty acres of oats and about thirty acres of corn, which we put in by hand lever planter. We then put the mules on the breaking plow and kept them busy until harvest. As mother and the girls were coming out in May, we decided to put a plank floor in the sod house to make it more comfortable. The spring was favor- able and the crops grew fast. On May 24th mother and the girls arrived from Illinois, and we were mighty glad to see them. We had made some gar- den and had plenty of lettuce, radishes and onions, with other stuff growing nicely. Mother and the girls thought it would be more comfortable if we had a frame house before winter came. We all agreed on the proposition. The only thing to decide was the expense of the building. I made out a bill for material for a house 16x32 with basement and 16x24, and got an estimate of the probable cost. By doing all the carpenter work and painting myself we could complete the house for about $600, and we decided to build. We hired a man to dig the basement while we hauled the lumber and material from Sutton. After the excavation for the basement was completed, there came from the west an army of black and white striped bugs shaped like po- tato bugs, but four times as large, crawling slowly toward the east, but seem- ing to eat very little. Tens of thousands of the bugs tumbled into the base- ment and were unable to get out. A heavy rain left about an inch of water on the bottom of the basement and the bugs perished in the water and hot sun, and in about twenty-four hours a stench arose from the dead bugs, mak- ing it necessary to remove them. We shoveled ont over two bushels of dead bugs and hauled them away on a wagon. The live bugs disappeared. Never before or after have I seen any bugs of this kind.
Harvest was coming on soon and work on the house had to wait. We bought a Woods-Thompson self-rake from Thompson & Young of Sutton, to . cut our grain, which had to be bound by hand, as there were no self-binders then. Barley was the first grain ready to cut, and it took us about three days
653
HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY
to put the twenty-five acres in the shock, and about five days more to put it in the stack. It was our first crop of barley and a good one; next came the wheat and oats harvest which were fine crops and took five days to put them in the shock and about six days to stack the grain in good shape. On July 30, 1872, brother John died at York, Clark county, Illinois, aged 28 years, 2 months and 2 days. He was buried in York cemetery, leaving a young wife to mourn his untimely death. Had he lived he would have come to Sutton.
Late in the fall we got our threshing done and the yield was very satis- factory, the wheat making about 15 bushels, barley 30 and oats 40 bushels per acre. We sold the barley to W. D. Young of Sutton for 90 cents per bushel, but Joe Braun, representing the Crete brewery, offered $1 per bushel for it the next day; there were no elevators or regular gram buyers in Sutton. Our bayley brought us about $600 and was the first money we had realized off of our land, and we felt greatly encouraged as our acreage in crops would be doubled the next year. We got the new house finished, furnished and the folks moved into it before could weather commenced and were very com- fortably fixed.
The first Fourth of July celebration held in Sutton was in 1872 and was well attended, people coming from twenty miles around. R. G. Brown deliv- ered the oration. F. M. Brown organized the Clay County Agricultural Society in 1872. H. W. Gray was president, and F. M. Brown, secretary. The first fair was held in Sutton on the ground north of the B. & M. depot.
Expenses were paid by collections from business men and saloons, pre- miums were mostly special prizes offered by Sutton people. I remember I offered $10.00 for the best ten pounds of butter, and that Mrs. Marsh won it. One of the features of the fair that attracted much interest was the la- dies' horseback riding and racing contest. Miss Nellie Henderson of York county, now Mrs. Young of York, and Miss Mattie Brown, now Mrs. Dr. A. H. Keller of Sioux Falls, S. D., competed for the prizes ; first, a ten dollar gold ring ; second, $5 in cash. Miss Henderson rode a man's saddle, Miss Brown a side saddle. Miss Henderson won first, but Miss Brown did so well that Mr. Gray decided that she should have a ten dollar ring also, and she received it with the president's compliments. At that time there were a num- ber of saloons in the county paying no license except the federal tax; the county passed a resolution to tax saloons $25 a year, quite a number of saloons complied by paying the tax and procuring license from the county clerk. Three of the saloons were in Sutton. The saloon tax was the first money to come into the county treasury.
We raised a fair corn crop that year and now that we had feed for hogs, I went to Lincoln to attend a sale of hogs from Illinois, but they sold so high that I did not bid on them. After the sale was over, there were four head of culls left, the owner offering them to me for $75 for the lot. I bought them and shipped them home. They turned out all right and formed the basis of a large herd in a short time.
County business increased so that a county office building was badly needed, and in the spring of 1873 the board decided to build a small court- house, 16x40, with three rooms on the first floor for the clerk, judge and treas- urer, with the court room above. There was no money in the treasury and
654
HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY
county warrants were at a discount of 25 per cent. Bids were called for and F. M. Brown, being the lowest bidder, was awarded the contract at $1,600 in county warrants. I bought the lumber and material from Thurlow Weed who had a lumber yard south of the railroad on the ground now occupied by the Nebraska-Iowa elevator. As soon as the lumber was delivered we went to work on the job, and in about four weeks we had it completed, and the county officers moved in. The court house was located on the nrotheast corner of block 24, original town of Sutton, now occupied by Gns Bender's residence.
What was called the great Easter storm commeneed on the 13th of April, 1873, and lasted three days, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, the blizzard drift- ing the snow into banks as much as fifteen feet high, and School creek filled level with its banks. Mnch live stock in the state perished. Mrs. Fred Kaley residing northeast of Sutton, and child, attempting to go to a neighbor's, lost her way and both perished in the snow. Old settlers of Nebraska will never forget the great Easter storm of '73. But we raised a good erop that year.
August 3, 1873, Francis M. Brown and Mary C. Culver were married in Chicago and came directly to the homestead four miles north of Sutton, and lived there until late in the fall, when they moved to town and lived in the Jenkins house which stood on the ground where John Cook's residence is now located in east Sutton, where our oldest son, Charles, was born May 20, 1874. We lived there until our new house was completed in June, then moved into it.
Sutton was incorporated as a village October 15, 1874, by resolutions, adopted by the board of county commissioners, the board of trustees being F. M. Brown, chairman ; J. C. Merrill, J. J. Melvin, W. A. Way nad M. V. Clark ; J. A. Tout was appointed clerk, F. M. Davis treasurer and I. D. Emery marshal. The first term of district court in Clay county was held in Sutton in 1873, Hon. D. Gantt, member of the Nebraska Supreme Court, presiding, with F. M. Brown, clerk, and J. B. Dinsmore, sheriff.
In July, 1874, Nebraska was visited by a plague of grasshoppers that ate up all growing crops in two days; large fields of corn disappeared like magie in a few hours. Fortunately the wheat, oats and barley had been harvested and was saved by staeking. We had eighty acres in corn and not a stalk was left, but our small grain crops were good and we fed our horses, hogs and cows on oats and ground barley. Corn was shipped from Illinois and sold at $1.00 per bushel. It was a hard year for new settlers, and thou- sands abandoned their homesteads and left the state discouraged. Many men and women went east to solicit aid for destitute settlers, and the people of the east responded nobly with food and clothing. As county clerk I issued commissions under seal to solicitors and appointed committees to distribute the supplies needed. I know men who received aid that winter who are now well-to-do farmers. The grasshoppers left the ground full of eggs in the fall that hatched the next spring, and the ground was fairly alive with little hoppers, and the situation looked very discouraging when a cold rain and snow storm came along and killed nearly all of the little pests, so they did not do much damage that year. Hlad it not been for the providential storm killing the pests, we would not have raised anything.
On November 28, 1875, our second son, Fred L., was born. In 1875 J. B. Dinsmore was elected county clerk and assumed the office in January 1876.
655
HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY
In the spring we moved to the farm, and mother and the girls moved to Sut- ton. I built the little brick building now occupied by Hanke, the tailor, for a meat market. It was the first brick business house in Sutton. The market was run by brother Charles, and we did the butchering on the farm where we had a slaughter house. We closed ont the business in 1881.
Our eldest danghter, Estelle, was born on the farm, January 5, 1878, and our second daughter, Lela, was born December 11, 1879.
In 1878, R. G. Brown built the Occidental Hotel in Sutton; I had the con- tract and did the work. We had 500 acres of land in cultivation, which com- pelled us to keep from three to five hands in harvest, and threshing ten or fif- teen more. This made a great deal of work about the house, cooking and washing for so many persons, and it was almost impossible to get female help. It was too much for Mrs. Brown, and after five years her strength began to fail and we decided to leave the farm. We made a sale of the machinery and some stock, reserving four horses and about 75 head of cattle, which George drove to Custer county, where he had located a ranch on the south side of the Middle Lonp. We rented the farm, and I moved back to Sutton and engaged in buying and feeding stock. At that time there were no stock yards at Omaha, and we shipped all stock to Chicago.
While we lived on the farm sister Martha and Mary both married, leav- ing mother alone to keep house for Charley. Mary married W. L. Weed, B. & M. agent in Sutton. Martha married Dr. A. H. Keller of Sutton. Soon after George moved to Custer he married Miss Amy Lovejoy. Brother Charles went to Denver, and from there to California. He died on January 27, 1913.
At the city election in Sutton in 1879, R. G. Brown was elected mayor. C. W. Brown was a member of the city council in 1880. F. M. Brown was elected mayor in 1882-3-4: In 1883 the Sutton Building & Improvement Co. was organized and built the Sutton opera house. F. M. Brown was one of the original stockholders and its first manager, and still retains an interest in the company.
September 15, 1884, our third son, Joseph H., was born. June 1, 1886, I bought the Sutton Register, and am still on the job, and probably have set more type by hand than any other man of my age in Nebraska, and with the assistance of my son Charles, the Register is still able to get out once a week and has not missed an issue in 37 years. Can you beat it?
November 29, 1886, our fourth son, George R., was born. In 1888, F. M. Brown was elected police judge of Sutton and is still dealing out justice to local offenders. F. M. Brown assisted in the organization of Evening Star Lodge, No. 49, A. F. & A. M., and was its first secretary, and subsequently filled every station in the lodge; also a member of Lebanon Chapter, R. A. M., and council. And was also a member of the G. A. R. November 13, 1890, our daughter Anna May was born; May 11, 1893, our fourth daughter, Fay Evelyn, was born. R. G. Brown was city attorney in 1900, and served several terms .
afterward.
Death closed the history of quite a number of our family since we came to Nebraska. Brother John died in Illinois, July 30, 1872, aged 28 years and 2 months. Our son, Joseph, died November 12, 1886, aged 2 years 1 month and 28 days. Our daughter, Anna May, died November 8, 1893, aged 2 years 11
656
HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY
months and 25 days. Our mother, Mary R. Brown, died at Sioux Falls, May 14, 1897, aged 77 years 10 months and 8 days. Our son-in-law, Charles M. Calmes, died at Seward, July 13, 1898. Our son, Fred., died at Denver, April 25, 1903, aged 27 years 5 months and 26 days. Brother Charles died at Sawtelle, Calif., January 27, 1913, aged 74 years 9 months and 13 days, and was buried in the National cemetery. Brother George W. and family live at Sargent, Nebr., where he is in the banking business. Brother Robert G. and family live in Sutton. Sister Martha Keller and family live at Sioux Falls, S. D. Sister Mrs. Mary Weed and family live at Denver. Our son, Charles M., and family live in Sutton. He is business manager of the Sutton Register, and city clerk. Our daughter, Mrs. Estelle Calmes, and son, Franeis M., live in Sutton. Francis is one of the graduates of the high school this year. Our daughter, Mrs. Lela M. Walt, and family live in Lineoln. Our son, George R., and family live in Minnesota. Our youngest daughter, Mrs. Fay E. Deumeyer, and her husband live in Lincoln.
This completes our family history up to date. As I said in the opening chapters of this family history, I believe it to be the duty of every man to leave to his family and friends as full and complete family history as possible. Most of this family history are recollections of the writer, as I had little or no records to refer to. There may be some errors and some omissions of ineidents in the history of the family, but it is the best I could do without assistance ; and you must remember that it was written by a man 77 years old, and he may have forgotten some ineidents worth recording. The history has run in the Register for 40 consecutive weeks; every word was written and every line set in type by my own hand, and completes a work long delayed, one that I probably shall never undertake again, but I trust that some one will take up the work where I leave off, and preserve the history for future generations.
Yours truly,
FRANCIS M. BROWN.
JUDGE DILWORTH ON THE EARLY DAYS
Within the past two years, succession of his predecessor, Judge Dorsey, to the Supreme Court Commission, which led to the appointment of William A. Dilworth to the District Judgeship, and a change of Clay County to his judicial district, brought to Clay County this jurist who was able to give the Clay County Sun, in September, 1920, a reminiscence of the early days of the county, which will supply still further angles upon some of the early and interesting incidents.
A MEMORY TOUR
I remember one time when my father was District Attorney, that court met at Lowell, a county seat at that time of Kearney County, there were seven murder trials. Of course this required the summoning of extra jurors. The sheriff of the county owned a span of Dun mares. To all appearances they were not extraordinary, but he used them in all his work. When he put his bill in for summoning those jurors, it showed that they had all been summoned in one day, and the mileage claim was for something like 3300 miles. He only
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HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY
had one team, and the county commissioners thought that was a pretty heavy mileage for one team, and they cut it down to 1500 miles.
Father, who at that time owned only a span of bronchos wanted that team as he needed such travelers to get over his district more rapidly, and he purchased them for $150.00. However we could never get the travel ont of them that the sheriff claimed to have done.
I remember very well, some of the history of Clay County. The Burlington railroad, when it constructed its line of road from the Missouri river to Kearney, laid out the town site and named the towns in alphabetical order, commencing with Ashland just east of Lincoln, and then Burks, at that time the first station west of Lincoln, then Crete, Dorchester, Exeter, Fairmont, Grafton, Harvard, Inland, etc. Somebody however had started a town down on the creek and had named it Sutton. The railroad was somewhat disgruntled at this and tried to kill the effort to build a town. The citizens however, located the county seat and the place was building up in spite of the railroad. In fact the Railroad refused to recognize Sutton as a station, and refused to stop its trains there for a long while.
They were trying to build up Harvard as the main town on the line in the county. At last an effort was made to move the county seat from Sutton to Harvard, and it was a contest long to be remembered. The election was called at the same time as the general election was held. In those days every- body almost, were Republicans, and everybody that voted in the election, not only voted on the county seat matter but also for the state officers, and the Republicans had an overwhelming majority. In fact, there were so many Republicans voted at that election that at the next Republican State Convention, Clay County had more delegates than Lancaster or Douglas County, or any other in the state.
POP DAYS
We used to have great times during Populist days, and many arguments were heard pro and con.
I remember one time of being out at Cambridge, and I went to hear a joint debate between candidates for the legislature. One a Republican and the other a Populist. I went and listened with a great deal of interest. The Republican made the first speech. He detailed at great length what the Republican party had done for the country, and amongst other things, he called the attention of the crowd to the fact that the Republican party had furnished them all with free land and free homes out in the west. I. as a Republican, sat there and listened with a great deal of satisfaction and won- dered how the Populist candidate was going to answer all these things satis- factorily, for the reason that the crowd consisted of homesteaders, most of whom had proven up on their land. Pretty soon the Populist candidate started in, and he answered all the arguments of the Republican very closely, taking up each separate detail and making a plausible explanation, until it came down to the free home proposition. I was taking a great deal of pleasure at the prospect of his falling down on that. There was a crowd of people who had enjoyed the privilege of such law, although it was true that the dry weather had been extraordinary for two or three years, and the prospects were mighty
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HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY
dubious, yet the fact remained that the government had furnished them free land. The Populist candidate at last said, "Friends, my opponent has called your attention to the law enacted as he claims, by the Republican Congressman giving us all free homes in Nebraska. Why, my friends, you all know and realize that the Government was only betting 160 acres of this land against $18.00 that you couldn't live on it five years, and that the Government is ahead of the deal today." I must confess that this got the crowd, and I had to laugh heartily.
HARD TIMES IN EARLY NEBRASKA
I lived over on the Platte river in Phelps County, during the dry time and grasshopper years, when everything went glimmering. The times were pretty hard in those days, and the effort to make something to live on was extreme. I venture to assert that for two years the early pioneers of this part of the country lived from picking up Buffalo bones which were scattered over all the prairie. It would take two or three days to pick a load of these bones, and hardly in any instance amounting to more than a ton, and then two days to haul them over to Kearney, where they got $4.50 or possibly $5.00 per ton. I remember one day four teams loaded with buffalo bones went by my place, driven by neighbors, and neighbors in those days meant anywhere from five to ten miles, on their way to Kearney. The next day I had to go to Kearney, and about one mile west of the Kearney bridge where the road ran along the Platte river, I found those neighbors camped, and I stopped to gossip with them. It was about two in the afternoon, and I asked one of them why they didn't drive into town and unload and go back and camp there for the night. They probably would have saved about 24 hours by doing that. One of them replied that his team was tired, and as time cut no figure with them, they decided to stop until the next day. In fact, they had got that far the day before, and were taking this day to rest up. I noticed under the wagon the ground was wet, and as there had been no rain for days and days, I was somewhat surprised at this and I remarked: "What in the world are you doing, there is water under your wagons." He looked up at me with a grin and said, "Bill, it is wonderful how much moisture those old Buffalo heads and bones will absorb during the night." I caught on, and I could not help but think that times were pretty hard when men would sit up all night and carry water and pour over dry buffalo bones to get extra weight.
CHAPTER IV
GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF CLAY COUNTY
THE STORY OF THE CENSUS-RIVERS-SOIL-GRASSHOPPERS-EARLY TRAFFIC-BLIZ- ZARD-STORM-PRAIRIE FIRE-HOMESTEADERS-AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY.
CLAY COUNTY
Clay County is known Congressionally as Townships 5, 6, 7 and 8 west, in Ranges 5, 6, 7 and 8 north. It is almost divided equally by the longitudinal line 21 degree west of Washington, between 40 degree and 41 degree north latitude. The estimated area is 576 square miles or 368,640 acres, and the estimated population is 14,795, this total being based on the 2,758 votes cast for the county treasurer in November, 1889, multiplied by five. In 1870 the population was 54; in 1874, 3,622; in 1875, 4,183; in 1876, 4,785; in 1877, 5,652; in 1878, 7,012; in 1879, 9,373; in 1880, 11,299 and in 1885, 14,157. The measured elevations above sea level are : Sutton, 1,680 feet; Clay Center, 1,687 feet; Spring Ranche, 1,717 feet; Fairfield, 1,782 feet; Edgar, 1,728 feet ; Glenville, 1,842 feet ; Verona, 1,776 feet ; and all below the elevations in Adams and Hall Counties. Its gradual growth in the past two decades is attested by the detailed figures of the 1920 census.
Minor civil division
1920
1910
1900
Clay County
14,486
15,729
15,735
Clay Center city
965
1,065
590
Edgar township, including Edgar city
1,449
1,507
1,572
Eldorado township
463
607
688
Fairfield township, including Dewesse village and
Fairfield city
1,450
1,776
1,926
Glenville township, including Glenville village
849
762
810
Harvard township, including Harvard city
1,605
1,716
1,502
Inland township
574
564
726
Leicester township, including part of Trumbull village
668
694
701
Lewis township, including part of Saronville village
610
712
735
Logan township, including Ong village
840
830
722
Lone Tree township
466
562
676
Lynn township
465
581
713
Marshall township
395
459
480
School Creek township, including part of Sutton city
637
667
708
Sheridan township
442
503
528
659
660
HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY
Spring Ranch township.
489
508
641
Sutton township, including parts of Saronville
village and Sutton city
2,119
2,216
2,017
Incorporated place
1920
1910
1900
Clay Centre city
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