History of Richardson County, Nebraska : its people, industries and institutions, Part 58

Author: Edwards, Lewis C
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Indianapolis : B.F. Bowen
Number of Pages: 1742

USA > Nebraska > Richardson County > History of Richardson County, Nebraska : its people, industries and institutions > Part 58

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OLDEST HOUSE IN RICHARDSON COUN- TY. BUILT IN 1855, AT ST. STEPHENS. BY THOMAS MeMANUS. HAS BEEN OCCUPIED CONTINUALLY. NOW BY LEONARD BUCKMINISTER AND FAM- ILY, AND IS KNOWN AS THE LASON HOME.

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its surroundings were of great interest to the visitors and especially so to Mr. Cain who had known the place intimately from the days of his youth.

Mr. Cain explained that in the old days much of the tiniber that now abounds did not obscure the beautiful view that might be had from most any point in the village and there was presented a long sweep of the Missouri and the steamboats could be seen for miles up or down the river. The natural scenery in that vicinity is unexcelled in any part of the county and will be greatly enjoyed by anyone going there.

St. Stephens was laid out as a townsite by Gen. Benjamin F. Loan (a brother of Mrs. William R. Cain), and Stephen Story, in the spring of 1855. In September of 1855, Mr. Wm. R. Cain first visited the place and found a store kept by S. F. Nuckols & Company, Houston Nuckols being in charge at the time. A man by the name of Robert Archer kept a hotel, and these two houses constituted the town. While the elder Mr. Cain was there he was so charmed with the country that he built a log cabin adjoining the town tract, and in April of the following year, 1856, brought his family and house- hold goods to make a home. Sometime later this cabin was burned to the ground by some Indians in the absence of Mr. Cain and family, who at the time were visiting in Missouri. During that year Washington Morris built a house and Israel Price built and opened a blacksmith shop. In 1857 J. W. Case of St. Joseph, Missouri, started another store and during the following two years the town grew rapidly, reaching its highest growth in 1861, at which time it had two stores, one kept by Crane & Lewis and the other by D. J. Martin; two saloons, one kept by Henry Price and Henry Dunkes, and the other kept by George Cooley. Price & Dunkes called their house a grocery store, but a saloon might have been a more appropriate designation. Henry Smith kept a blacksmith shop, and Allan Gleason was in charge of the ferry on the Missouri river. The first sermon ever delivered in the town was given by Father Thomas of the Baptist church of Rulo. The first postmaster was T. C. Sicafoos, the first doctor was David Whitmire. Some of the citizens of the place prominent in those early days were Aury Ballard, B. H. Dixon and his sons, Noah and Ballard; Dr. Whitmire, J. W. Cain. Wm. M. Mor- rison, D. J. Phillips, Preston Martin, Houston Nuckols, William P. Loan, a lawyer, Price & Dunkes, Stephen Lyons and last, but not least, Mr. Stephen Story, who was the original owner of the townsite, Martin I. Martin, D. J. Martin & Company, Heath Nuckolls, James W. Hutton, George Mayfield, Huston Nuckolls, Joseph C. Lewis, G. W. Cooley, James Kinzer, Mann & Shepard, William T. Morris, E. H. Kinzer. George Faulkner. Jasper C.

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Lewis, Thomas Ashley, Joshua Campbell, W. D. Lamb, Ellis W. Lamb, Isaac Ogden, William R. Cain and family, B. H. Shuder, Miller & Borchas, James Pritchard, Richard Willis, E. P. Thompson, James T. Yates, N. D. Thomp- son, John W. Duskey, Ed Porter Thompson, James Burcham, Noah J. Dixon, Cyrus Farrington, Mrs. Francis Price, S. R. Twist, John Sellers, W. D. Lamb, Ephraim Vaughn, Nancy A. Brunstetter, Henry Thomas, Mary Ann Buckminister, F. John Layson, H. O. Layson and families.

CHAPTER XXIV.

SIDELIGHTS ON COUNTY HISTORY.

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS. By William Fenton.

The following, written by the Hon. William Fenton, at one time a mem- ber of the state Legislature and for years a prominent resident of Dawson. appeared in an issue of the "Pioneer Record", under date of December, 1893, 'and throws light on conditions in the county in an early day :

.Accepting a flattering invitation from the historian of the "Pioneer Record," I proceed to do so without further preface or apology.

The writer, though something of an old timer. cannot lay claim to being one of the party with Wiltse Maddox and Jesse Crook, when they dug the channel for the Nemaha, and from the zigzag joh they made of it, it is very evident a prohibitionist had no hand in the formation of the outlandish hiero- glyphics for water to follow.

The movement for the purpose of keeping green the memory of old times is a laudable and sacred one. The pioneers had their frailties and virtues like other mortals, but they were the vanguard of an advancing civil- ization and as such they are entitled to the respect and gratitude of a genera- tion that profited by their trials and tribulations.

However, it is not the province of an historian to dwell entirely upon sentimental gush about the hardships and privations of the settlers of the early fifties. The blood-curdling adventures, the hairbreadth escapes from hunger, strangulation by bears, decapitation by the Indian scalping knife. etc., recounted at old settlers' picnics, mostly originate in the brain of some dime-novel romancer and are flimsy fictions.

The pioneers of the decade from 1850 to 1860 were really more fortu- nate in being able to provide for themselves with the solid comforts of life. than were those who followed in the sixties; the former were in time to locate along the streams that afforded plenty of timber for the houses, stables, fences and fuel. They fenced and farmed the choicest of bottom lands and turned their fast-increasing herds to roam at will over the boundless prairie. Instead

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of want and misery, they lived like the lords of feudal ages and looked with great disfavor upon any encroachments on their domain by the plebians, who had the temerity to settle on their stock ranges.

At the close of the war the great tide of immigration set in, and it was the intrepid spirit and indomitable pluck of this class of settlers that moulded the future of our young state and made it what it is-one of the most enlightened and prosperous in the Union. The writer has no wish to speak aught but good of the dead, but the fact should be stated that most of the original pioneers gave a very coll reception to those who came at this time.

Of the number who settled in 1865 to 1868, many were the followers of Grant. Sherman, Sheridan, Logan and the dashing fellows who followed the fortunes of the starry banner from Bull Run to Appomatox. These, with congenial spirits from the loyal states, were not the kind to be appalled by the selfish and unchristian attempt to "freeze them out." on the part of, the timbered proprietors: the effort to do so, however, created a wide diverg- ·ence of opinion between the two classes of settlers.

To protect themselves from the ravages of roaming herds, the home- steaders united for the passage of a herd law, which was opposed with equal zeal by the cattle men, many of whom did not yet know of the passage of the Homestead Act, and had the notion they could monopolize the air and the sunshine as well as the timber and the water.

The Herd Law fight terminated in favor of the homesteaders in 1867. and Hon. J. M. Deweese was elected a member of the first session of the state Legislature. The thousands of miles of live hedge in the county, and innumerable acres of groves surrounding happy homes are monuments to prove what the law had accomplished for the state.

The question of organizing school districts, locating and building school houses, voting taxes, were matters upon which the people divided with greater alacrity than they do on the latest fad of a president.

"CAP-A-PIE'S" RECOLLECTIONS.

From Nemaha l'alley Journal, published by Stretch & Cunningham. Thursday, August 4. 1870.

Falls City, Nebraska, July 16, 1870.

Editor, Daily Bulletin :

Your correspondent finds himself in the stirring little village of Falls City today-and when I say stirring. I mean all that goes to make full the term. I will speak of Richardson county.

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As you well know, Mr. Editor, there has been so many conflicting and erroneous statements regarding various localities, that it almost seems like presuming too much on the reading public's credulity, for a fair and impar- tial history or description of this country, to be read and appreciated. For that and one other reason, I will only notice a very few of its attractions as a county.

In the first place its citizens claim for it the geographical center of the Union, reasoning on the hypothesis that our territorial extension is from the 30th to the 50th degree, north latitude, and from the 67th to the 124th degrees, west longitude. The southwestern part of the county being 40 degrees, north, and 95.5. west, is the spot claimed by every town for a hundred miles west of the Missouri river in northern Kansas, and the same in southern Nebraska. There is but one question in my mind at present, and that is. whether the seat of government will be moved to Falls City, where they already have nearly one thousand souls, and rapidly increasing, besides being the center, or whether Leavenworth will be the favored spot. True, you have in your city nearly 30,000 people, and Uncle Sam has nearly 6,000 acres of land joining the corporation on the north; but mind what I tell you, that nothing short of a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together, will ever defeat l'alls ('ity in this little move.

SETTLEMENT OF THE COUNTY.

In 1854 six families crossed the Missouri river and commenced the set- tlement of this portion of Nebraska. Previous to this, however, a few French had overcome the repugnance of color and race, and mingled and amalgamated with the Indians, by which they aided others, or rather opened up the way through which others might bring civilization, and peacefully reclaim this section from the vast wilderness which then existed. Since then, Richardson, as a county, has attracted much attention. Today, I find through statistics (kindly furnished me by Mr. C. C. Smith ), that Richardson county boasts of about 345,000 acres of as good land as can be found in one body in the United States, all of which is taken up. 1 find hundreds of farms in this county which would do honor to Illinois or any of the older states noted for their cereals. It was my pleasure to meet Mr. Charles Steele, who, by the way, is one of the staunch citizens and farmers of the county, and who informed me that wheat, oats, rye and barley had never yielded more abundantly than the present year, while corn throughout the county promised unusually large.

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TIMBER.

It is not unfrequent in my peregrinations, that I hear the scarcity of timber mentioned as the great and only objection to both Kansas and Neb- raska. But little argument is necessary to convince such persons that what a man actually needs is but very little in comparison with the amount which he thinks he needs. I sometimes meet wooden men-to all such, I recom- mend the pine regions. The Missouri is belted by a very heavy body of timber varying from three to six miles in breadth, comprising some of the very best quality of hard wood. In this county, the Nemaha, Muddy, Pony and their tributaries, are skirted by various kinds of valnable hard wood timber.

CONL.

There has not yet been sufficient demands in the immediate vicinity of Falls City, to induce the investment of capital in mining: although near the southeastern line, fine veins of bituminous coal are being worked, from which the demand is supplied.

FALLS CITY.

I will now ask the attention of your thousands of readers east of the Mississippi, while I say something for location, improvements, business and business men of the little village of Falls City, which is the capital of Rich- ardson county. Ten miles west of the Missouri river and four miles north of the Kansas and Nebraska state line, may be found Falls City, in one of the most beautiful valleys it has ever been my good fortune to see. South of the townsite, the north fork of the Nemaha, Pony creek and what is known as Muddy, mingle their waters. . All of these streams are fringed with heavy timber-to the north, east and west, as far as the eye will extend. may be seen vast fields of grain. The small grain is being harvested as fast as the most modern machinery will accomplish the work, while hundreds of acres of corn that may be seen, are all rank and black. I have the first field of sickly corn in the vicinity to see.

The Methodist congregation have a house of worship completed, while the Episcopals have a very good church contracted for, and the basement walls are already up and when finished, I am informed will be used for a select school.

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The citizens have levied a special tax of $5,000 to build a school house- this will be finished before next season.

About fifty buildings have gone up since last spring, and nearly as many more are under contract.

BUSINESS MEN.

I will now mention a few of the business men it was my pleasure to meet. In this I must be brief, as such a notice as I would like to make would infringe upon your valuable space :

A. Schoenheit and E. S. Towle are engaged in the law and real-estate business. I am indebted to both of these gentlemen for the use of their well-arranged offices and other courtesies.

Messrs. Holt and Scott have been engaged in the mercantile business since 1868. They carry one of the heaviest stocks of general merchandise offered in the city.

Reavis & Cameron are old merchants and enjoy the confidence of their numerous customers.

T. C. Coleman conducts the only harness shop in town.

J. J. Marvin is mayor and I should think from what conversation I had with him, he is the right man in the right place.

The Billiard Palace is conducted by A. Kerr, who is genial as the day is long.

E. R. L. Stoughton, having just completed a good two-story frame business house on Stone street, has opened a well-selected stock of piece goods, in connection with merchant tailoring.

Wilson Brothers are druggists; these gentlemen have the postoffice also.

Smith & Cunningham are real-estate agents and dealers in agricultural implements.

I met Mr. J. H. Burbank, who came to the county in 1858. I found him very interesting, and would space permit, would take pleasure in nar- rating the scenes of Falls City as witnessed by Mr. Burbank. Mr. Burbank disposed of a farm the first of the month. which he had improved. realizing the neat little sum of $20,000-not bad.

Fulton & Weaver are engaged in the law and real-estate business.

Heyd & Wicks have recently opened up a well-selected stock of furniture aud mattresses.

J. G. Good, proprietor of the Union House, will open his new hotel, which is now nearing completion about the first of next month. I think there

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is a good opening at this point for a blacksmith and wagon-maker. Parties wishing to engage in the lumber business will find this a good location.

J. Schuyler keeps a hardware store.

I go from here to Pawnee city, a distance of forty miles, where you may again hear from me.

CAP-A-PIE.

EARLY LIFE IN RICILARDSON COUNTY. By Mrs. J. R. Wilhite.

The following very interesting sketch of early life in the county was pre- pared by Mrs. J. R. Wilhite, now a resident of the city, who was a daughter of Uncle Jesse Crook, and tells as she remembers it the story of their coming into the county in 1855:

B. F. Leechman, still a resident of a farm north of Falls City, was the first white child born in Richardson county. This notable event occurred on August 18, 1855.

The first recorded marriage, that of Wilson M. Maddox to Miss Mar- garet Miller, occurred at Archer in October, 1855. Mrs. Maddox is still a resident of Falls City.

The first minister. Rev. Hart ( Methodist) came in the summer of 1855.

The first school was taught in 1856, by Mrs. Samuels, a one-armed lady. The school house was a small log hut near the Muddy creek ; the boys chopped the wood and built the fires, and the girls swept the cabin and carried the water from a nearby spring for the use of the school. The school children's dinner consisted for most part of corn bread and bacon. Wheat flour in those days was considered a luxury ; the writer remembers an incident where a fanily had bought a sack of flour and baked some biscuits for their break- fast and had sent 11s children some for dinner, and what a treat it was for us.

The first doctor was a Mrs. Sallie Dodge, as she was familiarly called.

Uncle Jesse Crook, with his wife and three small children, with a small colony from Tennessee, arrived on the Muddy creek in this county on the 17th clay of April. 1855. Jesse Crook in August, 1854, came over and took up his claim, and in February. 1855, came over and made other improvements. He crossed the Missouri river at sundown, at what was then known as St. Stephens, having his household goods in a wagon drawn by oxen, and in driv- ing off of the ferry boat. the wagon upset, throwing most of the household effects into the Missouri river, there being no landing other than what nature had made. We stopped over night at St. Stephens; and the next day, April

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17, 1855, started for and arrived at our new home, one and one-half miles northeast from where Falls City now stands.

A PIONEER CABIN.

We found our cabin with no windows. one door, a stick and clay chim- ney, completed only about half way the end of the cabin, and with no other improvements. Those of the men in the party were compelled to sleep in the wagons while the women occupied the cabin. The cooking was done on the outside by a campfire. There was nothing to be seen but the wolves, Indians and vast prairies, and the howling of the wolves was all the music we had. The Indians were very fond of coming to our cabin and watch us in our work.

When we crossed the Muddy to our new home. the banks were so steep that ropes were fastened to the end of the wagon boxes and the men held the other end of the ropes to keep the wagons from tipping over forward on the oxen, in going down the banks of the stream.

The first Fourth of July celebration in Richardson county was held at Salem on the 3rd, 1856, as the Fourth came on Sunday, and another was held at Rulo on the 5th, 1856.

The first Fourth of July celebration ever held at Falls City was in 1857, and General Jim Lane was the orator of the day. Major Burbank ran the only confectionery stand, and the music for the occasion consisted of a fife and drum. The exercises were had and the dinner was served under a brush arbor. Mrs. Jesse Crook and other pioneer women, most of whom have long since passed to the great beyond, prepared the dinner for the celebration and the great feature of the occasion was a "war dance" given by the Indians, and we gave them their dinner for their part of the entertainment.

The Indians were friendly; their reservation was but about three miles south of Falls City, and was a most interesting place for the white settlers to visit.

RELIGIOUS SERVICES 11ELD IN GROVES.

For years we had no church houses, and our religious services were held in the groves on the banks of the streams and in the cabins of the settlers. The early people had great reverence for religious services and I have known men, women and children to attend these services in their bare feet.

The first church building ( Methodist) to be used exclusively for church purposes in the county was erected in Falls City, in 1867, and dedicated that same year.

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Most of the provisions, such as coffee and sugar, flour, etc., was brought from St. Joseph, Missouri, by teams, so that often we were short of the necessaries of life. I knew one family who lived for weeks in the winter of 1855 and 1856 on nothing but corn bread and coffee made of corn meal, and another family who had nothing to eat for weeks but parched corn. The father of this family went over to Missouri, more than twenty miles through sleet and snow, two or more feet deep, and returned home with only a ham of meat for his long journey.

The town of Archer was laid out in the summer of 1856, on the east side of the Muddy creek, and about three miles northeast of Falls City, on gov- ernment land, by J. L. Sharp and others, and near the claim of Judge Miller. who had moved thereon the same summer. Judge Miller was the father of Mrs. Margaret Maddox and her marriage to Wilson Maddox ( now deceased ) took place at the home of her father in Archer.

The town of Archer consisted of one hotel, owned by Judge Miller, two general stores, kept by Abel D. Kirk, and John P. Welty-the first men to engage in the mercantile business in Richardson county : one blacksmith shop. four or five dwelling houses, and two lawyers, William Loan and Abel D. Kirk. The first county officers were: F. L. Goldsbury, county clerk ; Louis Misplais, county treasurer ; McMullin, sheriff : Judge Miller, pro- bate judge, and Jesse Crook, surveyor.

The townsite of Archer was abandoned in the year 1857, by reason of the fact that the government survey in the allotment of the land to the Indians included the townsite.

Isaac Crook, brother of Jesse Crook, located here with his family on or about April 15, 1856, where his children grew to man- and womanhood, the father and mother having long since passed to their reward. Isaac Crook for a number of years served the county as treasurer.

PRAIRIE FIRES.

Among the many hardships we had to endure in those early days, not the least was the fighting of prairie fires. Very often the settlers would be com- pelled to turn out and fight the fire demon day and night in order to protect their homes, crops and stock from being totally destroyed, which in very many instances happened.

. David Dorrington and Mother Dorrington with their children located in Falls City in September, 1857, built their home and made many other valuable improvements in the city, and resided here until their death and where their

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children still reside, i. e., William E. Dorrington, Mrs. Anna M. (Dorring- ton ) Reavis, wife of Judge Isham Reavis, and Kittie L. (Dorrington) Towle, wife of Edwin S. Towle. William F. Dorrington is the oldest citizen in point of time, now a resident of Falls City. Squire Dorrington as he was familiarly called, held many important positions in the city-justice of the peace, men- ber of the city council, member of the school board, mayor of the city, and other important places of trust and responsibility.

WILLIAM E. DORRINGTON'S RECOLLECTIONS.

David Dorrington and family arrived in Falls City from Kansas in September, 1857, and moved into the house located on lot No. 2 of block No. 71, and in the spring built a house on lots 11 and 12 of block No. 71.

The first store was run by I. L. Hamby on lot No. 20, block No. 70, and a short time afterward William Brooks erected a store building on lot 12 of block No. 90, and occupied it himself and it was run by F. M. Dorrington ; it was a branch store from his main mercantile establishment at Doniphan, Kan- sas, moving here just after the "unpleasantness" in Kansas between the Free Soilers and the border ruffians. Quite a number of the Free Soilers, "Jim Lane's men," came here. young men full of fun and fight. They naturally drifted this way.

Isaac L. Hamby and J. Edward Burbank laid out the townsite of Falls City. Tim Lane and his men on their way to Kansas in 1855-56 camped on the ground now occupied by the court house. The future of Falls City looked so good to Lane that he went into the town company.

Isaac L. Hamby built a house just on the brow of the hill (at the foot of Chase street in the south part of town), just south of the present home of Mrs. Sandusky, on lot 5 or 6, in the block just south of Ninth street on Chase street. He also built and ran a saw-mill on the five acres now (in 1917) owned by George Messter in northwest quarter 15-1-16, near the Leo cider and vinegar factory, and got water for the boiler from a spring still there: the mill was just east of the spring. Hamby also owned the one hundred and sixty acres now known as the Van Duesen land, just south of the old townsite. Mr. Hamby sold the mill to T. J. Meeks, who was afterwards killed in the struggles incident to the location of the county seat of justice at Falls City. He was killed in the old Minnick hotel, which stood on the ground now occupied by the Richardson County Bank, just south of the court house and facing Stone street.

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FIGHT WHICH RESULTED IN THE TRAGEDY.

The fight started back of the little brick law office of Judge Dundy. which was located on the west side of Stone street on lots 9 of block 71. Meeks was city marshal and tried to stop a fight that was started by Doctor Davis. of Rulo, and a Mr. Dunn, of Salem, to break up the election, as Rulo and Salem were fighting Falls City for the county seat. They forgot that they were up against a hard proposition, as this man Meeks and quite a number of others were some of Lane's men and would rather fight than eat. Meeks was hit three times while back of the voting place and went to the house we used to live in-as we were then living in our new house on lots 11 and 12 ( just across the street west from the building at present occupied by the Harry Jenne shoe store ), and the office was on lot 9 of block No. 71, to reload his gun. He went back to the voting place in the court house square and found none of the scrappers. He then went back to the Minnick hotel and Mr. Minnick would not admit him to the bar room as Doctor Dunn was there. He went around to the side door, on the north side of the house, which was locked while he was on his way around to it. The north door of the building faced toward the court house. Doctor Davis shot through the second story window at Meeks. He then knew where they were and being a big strong man he threw his weight against the hall door and burst it open. A man employed at the hotel grabbed him and undertook to prevent his ascent of the stairs, but he forced his way up and shot Davis. Doctor Dunn stuck his gun just under Meek's right arm and shot him clean through. Meeks walked to the bottom of the stairs before dropping dead and Davis died four days later. The last I ever heard of Dunn, he was throwing up dirt around the soldiers' tents in St. Joseph, having been arrested as a sympathizer at the beginning of the war. He, however, had no yellow streak in him, for he was around the country for some time after the murder.

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History of Richardson County, Nebraska : its people, industries and institutions, Part 58

Author: Edwards, Lewis C Publication date: 1917 Publisher: Indianapolis : B.F. Bowen Number of Pages: 1742

Author: Edwards, Lewis C
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Indianapolis : B.F. Bowen
Number of Pages: 1742