USA > Nebraska > Nebraska history and record of pioneer days, Vol I > Part 11
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Feb. 1835
Sept. 3. 1910
June 12, 1902
Conlon, Alphonse
Barber, G. F.
Dec. 25, 1825
Dec. 25, 1829
Conlin, Alphonse
Bourlier, James
Oct. 6. 1842
Nov. 30. 1820
Coulon, George F. , 244, 1861
Bourlier, Mary Dec. 17 1820 Dec. 10. 1891
Repose le corps de
Mosier. M. Victoria
decede Oct. 15, 1878
June 11, 1864
.Tule, fils do
Feb. 21. 1896
Auguste et Emile
Quante. David
Claire.
1008-1917
decede lo 8 Dee. 1887
Sattler. Caroline
1821-1906
Quante. Rosetta, 1849-1910
Daniel Carre took a homestead near Beatrice in 1867 and h: lived there ever since. On November 11 there was a reunion of tl relatives at the old Carre home to celebrate the eighty-fourth anr versary of his birthday.
Mr. and Mrs. C. M. Cherry of Weeping Water celebrated the ha 2 century anniversary of their marriage on September 30. Mr. Cher: y came to Nebraska in 1866 and Mrs. Cherry in 1854.
I'riez vous le
La igue Jean Jacques ne le Juillet 1820
decede le 25 Janvier 1898
4
Michon Willie
Died Feb. 13, 1894
Bazin, Jean Felix
Grivel Joseph
Jan, 30, 1911 Mar. 25. 1900
July 25. 1889
Dec. 20. 1916
Marchand. Pierre
: 22, 1911 Lavigne
3
Nebraska History and Record of Pioneer Days
Passing of the Nebraska Pioneer
Following is a record of the deaths since September 2 of pioneers who settled in Nebraska not later than the year 1867:
John Kennedy, a resident of Nebraska City for fifty-two years, , orn in Donegal county, Ulster province, Ireland, in 1844, died Sep- t. nber 22; came first to Pennsylvania; in 1866, with his brother James, settled in Nebraska City; was never married. (The News, ¡Nebraska City), September 23.)
M. J. Burns, Peru, born at Birmingham, Iowa, Marchi 15, 1844, died September 18. In 1862 he was a freighter from Nebraska City to Denver. (The Peru Pointer, September 20.)
Alfred P. Hoskins of Fremont, born in Hamilton, Ontario, April 17, 1346, died September 22; came to Omaha in 1866 and to Fremont four years later, where he engaged in banking; in 1884 went back to Omaha where he became interested with his cousins, Joseph Millard and Ezra Millard, organizers of the Commercial National Bank; after- ward went into the lumber business in Chicago and returned to Fre- mont in 1909. (Fremont Evening Tribune, September 23.)
George Gawthorne, born in England in 1834, died September 22 at his daughter's home in Whitesboro, Texas; came to Nebraska in the early fifties, where he lived until about two years ago. (The News, (Nebraska City), September 24.)
William Henry Banning, born in New London, Iowa, in 1837, died September 25; came to Nebraska City in 1857, where he had ever since lived. (The News, September 25.)
William Barnich, eighty-one years old, born in Germany, died September 25; a resident of Omaha since 1867; for forty years em- ployed in the Union Pacific railroad shops. (The Omaha Daily Bee, September 25.)
Mrs. Mary Tex, born in Luxemburg in 1847, died in Papillion Sep- tember 14; came to America in. 1855; lived a few years in Dubuque, Iowa; then moved to Omaha; a resident of Sarpy county since 1872. (The Gretna Breeze, September 27.)
Henry P. Coolidge of Columbus, born in Tazewell county, Illinois, October 6, 1835, died September 27; when a boy came with his parents to Omaha where the family resided several years; in October, 1865, he became private secretary of D. H. Wheeler, Pawnee Indian agent at Genoa, and conducted a tin shop at the same time; moved with his family to Columbus in 1868, where he lived until his death. (The Columbus Telegram, October 4.)
James Thomas, born in Ohio in 1824, died in Lincoln, September 27, 1918, at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Mary Gould; came to Nebraska with his family in 1885, where he was a farmer until he was past eighty years of age. His first vote for a president was cast in 1848, for Zachary Taylor.
Albert Noyes, born at Portland, Maine, July 18, 1830, died Sep- tember 27; came to Nebraska in 1863, settling at St. Deroin, where lived to the time of his death. (Nemaha County Herald, Octo- ·r 4.)
P. S. Hall came to Nebraska in 1856; died at his home in Rock Bluffs early in October, aged eighty-eight years. (The Lincoln Daily Star, October 12.)
Miss Agnes McAusland, born in Scotland, died October 6 at Omaha, where she had lived for fifty-eight years, aged eighty-three years. (The Omaha Daily News, October 7.)
John Martin Osborn, born in Indiana in 1843, died October 10 at Gridley, California; came to Nebraska in 1867 and settled on a farm near Pawnee City; a member of the state senate from his district in the seventeenth legislature, twenty-fifth session, 1897. (The Pawnee Chief, October 18.)
Nicholas Rix, born in Schleswig, Germany, 1830, died at Fort Calhoun, October 10; came to America in 1852, landing at New Orleans; went thence by steamboat to Camanche (Clinton county), Iowa, where he worked as a carpenter; the next year, with his wife, crossed the state of Iowa, with two yoke of oxen, to Omaha; soon after settled on a homestead which included the site of Fort Atkinson, one mile west of the present city park of Fort Calhoun. (Fort Calhoun Chronicle, October 17.)
Mrs. Bertha Krueger, born in Germany in 1843, died October 17 at Germantown; came to Nebraska in 1865. (Blue Valley Blade, October 23.)
John Blankenship, born in Illinois, died October 19 at Peru, aged sixty-three years; when two years old came with his parents to Peru, where he had lived ever since. (Nemaha County Herald, Octo- ber 25.)
Henry W. Smith, born in Germany in 1844, died at Burkett, Ne- braska, October 19; came to America in 1847 and to Nebraska in 1865; homesteaded near Richland, Nebraska. (The Colfax County Press, October 25.)
Mrs. Albert Thies, born in Denmark in 1848, died at her home in Nebraska City, October 23; had been a resident of Otoe county since 1857. (The Nebraska Daily Press, October 24.)
Mrs. Louisa Stoll, born two miles north of Nehawka in 1859, died October 23; was mother of twelve children. (The Nehawka News, October 31.)
Mrs. Calvin G. Taber died October 24 near Inavale; settled on a homestead two miles northwest of Weeping Water in 1866. (Weep- ing Water Republican, October 31.)
Hugh Aird, born in New York in 1838, died at Bruning, Nebraska, in October; came to Nebraska City in 1864. (The News, (Nebraska City), October 26.)
Lewis S. Reed died in Washington, D. C., October 27, aged seventy-one years; came to Omaha in 1863; was a member of the House of Representatives of the eighth legislature, which impeached Governor Butler; was for twenty years president of the Equitable Trust Company, and vice president of the Nebraska National Bank in Omaha. (The Omaha Daily News, October 28.)
Mrs. Emma L. Barnard died in Los Angeles, California, late in October, nearly eighty-four years old; in 1856 was married to Edwin H. Barnard at Canajoharie, N. Y., ber birthplace. In August, 1856, Mr. Barnard surveyed the town site of Fremont which he and John A. Koontz had just appropriated as a claim. He was born in Kirk- land, N. Y., in 1830. The Barnard's lived in Fremont more than fifty years. (Fremont Evening Tribune, October 29.)
Christopher Bader, born in Ohio in 1863, died October 29 at Ne- braska City, where he came when he was a small boy. (The Daily Nebraska Press, October 30.)
Death of Frank Helvey
FRANK HELVEY.
Frank Helvey, born in Huntington county, Indiana, July 7, 1841, died in Fairbury, July 4, 1918, having lived in Nebraska con- tinuously since 1849. In 1846 Joel Helvey, with his family, comprising his wife and six children, started west. They first stopped at old Fort Kearny, but Nebraska at that time was not open to white settlement so they soon moved into a log cabin on the opposite side of the Missouri River. About three years later the Helvey family ob- tained permission of the caretaker of the remaining property of the abandoned fort to settle in the Nebraska country providing they would take their chances with the Indians. Thereupon, Mr. Helvey and his three sons built a ferry boat in which they profitably carried emigrants to Pike's Peak across the Missouri River, at Table Creek, in 1849 and 1850. On October 10, 1853, Joel Helvey was judge of an election at Table Creek, which came to be called Nebraska City the next year, for a provisional delegate to Congress, whose mission was to aid in the passage of the pending bill to organize the territory of Nebraska. Similar elections were held at other places on the eastern border of the Nebraska country, on October 11, but, probably by mistake, the election at Table Creek was held October 10. These were not legal elections, and neither of the two delegates chosen was recognized by the Congress, though both went to Washington with the purpose stated.
In April, 1859, the Helvey family started for Pike's Peak, but hearing discouraging reports from returning gold seekers they stopped on May 25 at Little Sandy and built a ranch house where the Oregon Trail crossed that creek. Frank Helvey, then eighteen years old, en- gaged in freighting across the plains. He also drove the Overland Stage and was a substitute Pony Express rider. Later he became a successful farmer and stock raiser.
For many years his bible, presented to him by Alexander Majors of Russell, Majors and Waddell, the famous freighters, was on ex- hibition in the rooms of the State Historical Society.
September 21, 1864, Mr. Helvey was married in Beatrice to Eleanor Plummer of Swan Creek, and ten children were born to them. Mrs. Helvey died July 16, 1910.
The Cook Weekly Courier relates that Martin Halfmann's house, situated two and a half miles north of the town, was torn down in September. It was built by a Mr. Ashton in the late sixties. Its original location was near a cottonwood tree famous for its enormous size.
4
Nebraska History and Record of Pioneer Days
Nebraska Public Schools in 1860-61
B. H. Groves, superintendent of schools at Falls City, Nebraska, has recently presented to the Nebraska State Hostorical Society a volume entitled "Second Annual Report of the Commissioner of Com- mon Schools of the Territory of Nebraska to the Seventh Legislative Assembly, Session 1860-61."
The report shows that the territorial school tax levied for 1861 amounted to $6,352.23 and that children of school age in the nineteen counties mentioned numbered 7,041.
A chapter is devoted to schoolhouses and grounds and to school furniture. Plans for building and equipment for work compare well with some of the most approved methods of to-day. The volume also · contains the school laws of the territory.
J. B. Weston, acting county clerk of Gage county and clerk oť the board of education in Beatrice township, reported that "There is now no regular schoolhouse in the county. [A commodious building begun in 1858 was destroyed by fire before it was completed.] Last summer a school was taught in this town in a vacant building fitted up for that purpose by Miss Frank C. Butler the average at- tendance was about twenty-five scolars. The teacher's wages [de- frayed by private subscription] were two dollars per week, I think, and board. This is the sum total of all that has ever been perpetrated in the way of schools in this county as yet."
For comparison the following figures are interesting:
The amount of money actually expended in Nebraska for the year ending July, 1917, was $11,921,859.05. Youth in Nebraska under twenty-one numbered 387,394; youth enrolled 292,362; average daily attendance 219,246.
For the year ending July, 1918, Gage county actually expended $320,894.17. The number of school age in the county was 2,092; en- rolled, 7,354; average daily attendance, 5,462.
Lancaster county was "hereby erected into a separate county" by an act of the first Legislative Assembly passed March 6, 1855, but no county government was established until 1859. No mention is made of Lancaster county in the report.
William Egbert Harvey, of Otoe county, was "territorial com- missioner of common schools" at this time. He came from New York state to Nebraska City in 1857. Until he was elected commis- sioner of schools, in 1859, he was engaged in his profession of civil engineering. Like his brother, Augustus Ford, the very prominent editor and politician and who laid out and at least partly planned the original town site of Lincoln, he had a talent for actuarial work, and after holding the educational office for six years, in 1866 he en- gaged in the life insurance business in Chicago. Two years later he became actuary of the state insurance department of Missouri. His brother Augustus succeeded him in this office about two years after- ward.
An act of the first Legislative Assembly, which convened January 16, 1855, established the office of librarian and superintendent of public instruction. The fifth assembly, which convened on September 21, 1858, established the separate office of territorial commissioner of common schools; the seventh assembly, which convened on Decem- ber 3, 1860, abolished this office and imposed its duties upon the auditor of the territory; this arrangement continued to the end of the territorial government.
The use of the term "Beatrice township" requires explanation. By authority of the organic act the governor of the territory desig- nated the "places of voting" at the first election and called them precincts. Under an act of the first Legislative Assembly, county government was administered mainly by the probate judge. The next year the second assembly adopted the commission form of govern- ment, and the act authorized "each board of commissioners" to "divide the county into convenient precincts .
. ."; but another act of the same assembly authorized the governor of the territory to designate the voting precincts for the third election, held in 1856. An act of the fifth assembly, approved November 4, 1858, provided "That hereafter each and every township in any organized county in the territory shall compose but one school district ."; but the act of 1856 empowering county commissioners to establish precincts was still in force (Revised Statutes of the Territory of Nebraska, 1866, chapter XLI), and no such division as a township had been
made or authorized. However, an act of the sixth assembly, approved January 1, 1860, cured the apparently inadvertent defect by providing that "for present school purposes, and until by further enactments, civil townships be formed in this territory, what are now known in the organized counties as precincts, or that may hereafter be formed as such, shall be known as townships." But civil townships were not formed during the territorial period, and in the revision of the statutes in 1866 "precinct" was substituted for "township" in the cases adverted to.
Anniversary of the "Stone Church"
On September 29, 1918, exercises commemorating the dedication of the "Stone Church" fifty years ago took place at Febing, a hamlet of about a score people, in Benton precinct, Nemaha county, seven miles southwest of Auburn, where the church is situated. The Nemaha County Herald of September 27, 1918, contains a history of the church in part as follows:
"The Stone church, located in Benton precinct, was dedicated September 27, 1868, the following pastors officiating: Rev. F. W. Beckman, pastor loci, and the following visiting pastors: Professor Grossman, of Stanberry Point, Iowa, of the German Iowa Synod, and its president, Rev. Ritter, of near Talmage; Rev. E. Duber, of Ne- braska City, and Rev. Nolte, of Langdon, Missouri. All of the pastors and all of the members at that time have passed into the beyond.
. "The Stone church is still standing and is used as a parochial school. A new frame church in later years has been built to accom- modate the congregation. This is the congregation that in 1874 had a church bell cast with a net weight of 1,526 pounds and made from French cannon captured during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. At the time it arrived it was the largest bell in the state.
.
. "Rev. F. W. Beckman, Jr., son of the first pastor, has promised to be present and preach. He was present fifty years ago, but was merely a boy. Also Rev. J. H. Dirks, pastor emeritus, of Columbus, has promised to be there. For thirty-seven years he was their pastor and spiritual advisor and I think I am safe in saying that he has been longer with one congregation than any other minister in any other denomination in the state of Nebraska.
"Today, the 23d of September, 1918, it is fifty years since the writer, J. D. Kuhlman, D. Holthus, wife and two children, crossed the Missouri River at Nebraska City and stepped from my native sta e onto Nebraska soil."
The bell was cast in Detroit, Michigan, from the metal of a cannon which had been shipped there from Germany. From Detro [ the finished product was transported to Brownville. In one of tl varying accounts of the incident, the gift of the gun was credited to "Wilhelm, emperor of Germany," which in later stories has been taken to mean William II, late, and as we hope the last kaiser. But he was then only a lad; so the reference must be to his grandfather William I, who became the first emperor of modern Germany thre years before the birth of the bell.
L. H. Badger, who lives near Fairmont, Fillmore county, com pleted fifty years of continuous residence on the same tarm, 01. October 20. His father located the claim in 1868, when Mr. Badge was twelve years of age, and the son has lived there ever since. The Fairmont Chronicle challenges anyone in Fillmore or York counties to show a like continuous residence for half a century.
The annual meeting of the Adams County Old Settlers Associa. tion was held at Juniata on September 26, with an attendance of more than one hundred. The newly elected officers are: T. A. Shattuck, president; Ora Lamoreaux, vice president; Mrs. Lucy Partridge, secretary-treasurer. The 1919 meeting will be held the last Thursday in September at Hastings.
An Indian arrowhead was recenty found in the trunk of one of the trees at the Cosmopolitan hotel, at Crete.
Holt County's First Safe
The editor of this magazine has seen many extraordinary devices used upon the Nebraska frontier, but one of the most remarkable is the burglar proof safe which held the county funds of Holt county at the time of its organization. This safe just came into the posses- sion of the State Historical Society and is now on exhibition at its rooms. It will be the wonder of future generations of Nebraskans, for there is nothing like it. The following letter from J. T. Prouty, the county treasurer who kept the funds in the safe, written at Spencer, Nebraska, July 16, 1918, is self-explanatory:
"Forty years ago the county treasurer's funds of Holt county
were safely kept in the only safe vault and bank combined in the county, described as follows: A cottonwood board 2 feet 4 inches long, 21% inches wide, receptacle 14 inches long, in which to keep the cash. This board was a part of the sheeting of a shingle roof dwelling house. I exhibited the board at the Holt county old settlers picnic yesterday as a souvenir of forty years ago. Would like to have this board kept as a relic on display at the State Historical Society. Now if this is considered in keeping with historical sup- plies and worth while of frontier life in Nebraska I will send it if you so advise."
NEBRASKA AND RECORD OF
HISTORY PIONEER DAYS
NEBRASKA HISTORY AND RECORD OF PIONEER DAYS
Published Monthly by the Nebraska State Historical Society
Editor, ADDISON E. SHELDON Associate Editors The Staffs of the Nebraska State Historical Society and Legislative Reference Bureau
Subscription $2.00 Per Year
G All sustaining members of the Nebraska State Historical Society receive Nebraska History without further payment.
( Entered as second class mail matter, under act of July 16, 1894, at Lincoln, Nebraska, April 2, 1918.
VOLUME I.
DECEMBER, 1918
NUMBER 8
The program of the annual meeting of the State Historical Society has been postponed on account of the influenza. The regular business session will be held January 14, 1919.
G. W. Ablot of Inland is still living on the homestead he ob- tained in pioneer days. Mr. Ablot and A. M. Lathrop are the only early settlers now living in the precinct of Adams county where he settled. He drove over the site now occupied by Hastings when it was open prairie. He remembers the terrible Easter storm of 1872, in which great numbers of cattle and other stock were frozen or smothered to death in snowdrifts. Many cattle were driven before the blizzard to perish in the Blue River valley. For some time afterward people roamed over the prairie procuring the hides of the frozen animals which they brought to the towns for sale. (Adams County Democrat, November 15.)
Mr. and Mrs. Albert Frank of Longmont, Col., have been visiting relatives in Minden, and Mr. Frank relates that in 1857 he was employed in a military wagon train which carried building material from Fort Leavenworth to Salt Lake City, that the train was burned by the Mormons in the Green River valley, and that he and other employees of the party walked back to Leavenworth-a distance of two thousand miles. (The Minden News, November 15.)
This was the year of the outbreak of the Mormon rebellion. In October two supply trains were destroyed by Mormons in the Green River valley, distant about one thousand miles from Fort Leaven- worth by the route then traveled. Salt Lake City was about two hundred miles farther.
Mr. and Mrs. Henry Torpin of Oakdale celebrated the fifty-fifth anniversary of their marriage on November 17, and four generations of their family were represented. They were early residents of Fre- mont, but have lived at Oakdale for the last twenty-five years. Henry Torpin and Anna M. Bruner were born in 1841, he near Philadelphia and she near Carlisle, Pa. They were married on November 17, 1863, at Coe Town, Ill. In 1882 the firm of McDonald & Torpin, contractors, was formed and engaged in building railroads in Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota, Wyoming, and Nebraska. In the spring of 1886 the firm of Henry Torpin & Son was formed and it took part in the construction of many railroads in Nebraska. In 1891, Mr. Torpin and his son organized the Torpin Grain Company which bought or built a line of elevators on the Northwestern railroad. Lately, however, Mr. Torpin has devoted most of his time to the management of the Torpin Land and Live Stock Company.
COMMERCE CATCHES THE COYOTE.
Only twenty-five years ago there were people in Dawson county who thought it wasteful to pay bounties for scalps of coyotes, and they urged their objections in the Dawson County Pioneer. Though it was admitted that the numerous pests were destroying numberless fowls and other domestic animals besides, it was argued that the loss would not be as burdensome as the taxation to provide the pro- posed bounty and that Dawson would be flooded with scalps from adjoining counties. It was said that the pelts of these pirates were then worth only a quarter of a dollar each, a scarcely appreciable stimulus to procuring them. Now, however, in that part of the state the finest skins command the comparatively princely price of eighteen dollars. But this grade, used in the trade for imitation fox, is very scarce. The common grades bring from two dollars to nine dollars apiece, or a general average of about five dollars. But this auto- matic stimulus serves only as a check. The alert cunning of these little Ishmaelites preserves them from extermination. They are taken mostly by poison.
Legal Residence of Nebraska Governors
No resident of Lancaster county has so far become governor of Nebraska; but on November 5, 1918, Samuel R. McKelvie, of Lincoln, in that county, was elected governor, and, according to the constitu- tion, he will assume the office January 9, 1919. Following is a state- ment of the legal residence of each governor at the time of his election and his tenure of office:
David Butler, Pawnee county, March 27, 1867, to March 1, 1871. William H. James (acting governor), Dakota county, March 1, 1871, to January 13, 1873.
Robert W. Furnas, Nemaha county, 1873-1875.
Silas Garber, Webster county, 1875-1879.
Albinus Nance, Polk county, 1879-1883.
James W. Dawes, Saline county, 1883-1887.
John M. Thayer, Hall county, 1887-1891. James E. Boyd, Douglas county, 1891-1893. Lorenzo Crounse, Washington county, 1893-1895.
Silas A. Holcomb, Custer county, 1895-1899.
William A. Poynter, Boone county, 1899-1901. Charles H. Dietrich, Adams county, January 3, 1901-May 1, 1901.
Ezra P. Savage, Custer county, May 1, 1901-January 8, 1903.
John H. Mickey, Polk county, 1903-1907.
George L. Sheldon, Cass county, 1907-1909.
Ashton C. Shallenberger, Harlan county, 1909-1911.
Chester H. Aldrich, Butler county, 1911-1913.
John H. Morehead, Richardson county, 1913-1917. Keith Neville, Lincoln county, 1917-1919.
Governor Butler was removed from office on March 1, 1871, by virtue of the adoption of articles of impeachment against him on that day, and William H. James, then secretary of state, became acting governor according to a provision of the constitution. Holcomb and Poynter were populists, but elected as fusionists; Boyd, Shallenberger, Morehead, and Neville were elected as democrats; all the rest as republicans.
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