USA > Nebraska > Furnas County > Pioneer stories of Furnas County, Nebraska > Part 11
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I remember one Sunday we were lonesome, so we went over and took dinner with O. Y. Harman and family. We were eating dinner when we heard someone coming on horseback. They rode up to the door and told the boys to get their families out of there -the Indians were coming-and they had killed several families. We all jumped up and began to put the things in the wagon, and no one needed to tell us to hurry. 1 carried my baby in my arms and helped load the wagon. I had two children at that time. We finally got started and went by Pat Cavany's to take his fam- ily with us. My sister-in-law and I got out of the wagon to help them get ready. I was hurrying around to get started, and his wife told me to go into the kitchen and get some bread, and when I went in there was Pat eating out of a pot of cabbage. I was tired to death to see him stop and eat cabbage and the rest all seared until we couldn't talk. We soon got ready and started. I could hardly breathe or talk. We went to Orleans to the hotel. I held my two little boys all night in my arms. The next morning we went to an old school house to eat breakfast. We found some of our neighbors there and all were laughing and talking and all
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ate but me. I told them if they felt like I did they wouldn't be so funny. In a few hours John came and told us it was Texas cattle going across. I wouldn't have been seared that bad for a whole section of land. I told John the next scare I would go farther than Orleans. The country sure looked fine.
We went back home and the next thing we had was rattle snakes. I could not kill one so it kept me busy running most of the time. We finally got settled on a homestead. John hauled goods from Kearney and helped to haul the lumber for the first church in Beaver City. Our homestead was northeast about five miles from town. We homesteaded in '79. We built a dugout and moved in. At this time we had four children.
In '80 we had another dry year, and John said he would have to hunt work, so I told him I would go home and stay awhile. I went east and he went west. I stayed three months and got grub enough to last another year. I was glad to get back to the old dugout in the spring. John commeneed breaking sod with a yoke of cattle. I would sit in the door and watch him awhile, and see- ing the trouble he was having with them, I laughed. As I was walking up to him he said I wouldn't laugh if I had those cattle to contend with. I told him that all went in life. We had to take the bitter with the sweet. He said he couldn't see anything sweet around there. I said "our home," and I got a smile on his face, so I went to the house to finish my cupboard. I made it out of goods boxes. All the women those days made their furniture. We just had two chairs in the house. The rest were goods boxes, but they answered the purpose all right.
Finally we got our place all broke out and I thought lots of our home, but we had to mortgage it, and it took everything we could rake and scrape to keep the interest up. Some years we would raise a piece of rye. I picked rye straw and braided the boys' straw hats. In the winter I would make them caps out of eloth. I tried to save all I could and not go in debt. Mr. Arm- strong had a herd of sheep and several died on account of cold weather, so he told John if he would pull the wool off the dead ones he could have it. Ile asked me if I could use it. I told him yes, to go get it. I washed and picked it and carded it in two rolls and spun it into varn : colored the yarn and knit stockings for the children, and mittens. We had eleven children, who are all alive and all married but three, so you see we didn't have any time to play. We had lots of siekness, having six children down
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at one time with diphtheria. Children were dying all around. The neighbors were so afraid they would not come in, and we stood over the children night and day. The doctor would not even come in, but would leave the medicine at the door. I just had my heart and hands full, but through God's merey He saved them all. I told John we lived off the skimmed milk and saw the other fellow get the cream. As I can bring to memory, one Sat- arday night as the children and I were sitting around the stove (I had washed their feet for bed) I looked at them and they looked sweeter to me than ever before. I just thought how I would like to have things to supply their little needs. I had to ask the Lord to help me and take away that heavy heart. That piece of scrip- ture came to me, "Ask in faith, believing thou shalt receive," and I felt better. I was sitting by the stove roeking the baby, when I heard a rap on the door. Somebody had sent me a basketful of groceries and $1.20 in money. I was so thankful I eried. I could see the good things as well as the bad ones. We went through thick and thin. Finally the mortgage took our home. We. stayed there three years longer, then moved to Oklahoma.
I would like to see the old-timers and neighbors and have a hearty hand-shake, but I have gotten something the mortgage can- not take and a clear title to it, and that is salvation, washed in His precious blood. But the toil of the road will seem nothing when we get to the end of the Way.
MRS. RUPHENIA HARMAN.
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CHAPTER XVIII
Hubert Pettijean and His Honeymoon Journey of a Thousand Miles in a Prairie Schooner-and a Ruined Shanty at the End
IIubert Pettijean, who recently told of some of the hard- ships he endured in the early days of Furnas county, has con- sented to tell how he happened to come to Nebraska in the fol- jowing interesting article.
Editor Times-Tribune :- I am going to tell how I happened to come to Nebraska. Five families from Northern Wisconsin were coming in covered wagons and wanted me to come with them as their guide. There was Anton Delimont, his family team and wagon; Anton's mother and her two girls, and myself in one wagon. I was driving the team. The other three families had their own teams and wagons, but not liking the country, they went back. Anton Delimont's brother had taken his home- stead in Harlan county in the summer some time, and he had to be on his place before New Year's. We got here the first part of November, and commenced to dig his sod house. We had it dug six feet deep when it commenced to snow and the wind to blow. We were staying in the covered wagon while building the house.
I remember in the spring of 1881 we were planting corn ( Bill Frazer, who now lives in Harlan county, and myself) with a two horse planter. It was a hand dropper; one dropped the iever and the other drove the team. The first day we planted corn it was cold at night. We put the team in the shed and fed, then we took our supper and went to bed at 8o'clock. When we woke up next day it was 1 o'clock in the afternoon. When the storm came we worked no more. We had to make shelter for the horses so we took the ridge logs and laid them the best we could on the dug house, then we put the cover off of one wagon on top and put our teams in the dug house. There were seven horses and fourteen persons living together in the dug house,
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12 feet by 16 feet long. We had to stay in one corner. We stayed in there till the weather was better, and in the winter of 1878 and the first part of 1879 it was awfully tough, but we were always healthy and happy.
I was a young man at that time. I took my claim in 1878, worked on it and worked out, and in 1885 I proved up on it, got my deed, and went back to Wisconsin and got married. I put a cover on my wagon, and my wife and I started back to Nebraska in a covered wagon, the 1,000 miles alone. When I got back the fire had passed and had burned my dug house, so we built a sod house, 12x16. We built sod bedrooms on the ends and used ridge logs and poles for rafters, and willows for shing- les, and the sod to cover the willows, and also used canvas for the ceiling. Sod house walls are good places for mice. Sometimes we could see them run on the canvas. We had a mouse trap that would catch four at one time-one of these round ones-and one night I said to my wife, "I am going to put that mousetrap on
Present Fine Home of Hubert Pettijean, in Maple Creek Precinct, Which Has Replaced the "Dugout" to Which He Brought His Bride in 1885
the canvas and catch some mice." Before going to bed I put the trap on the canvas and the next morning we could see that trap moving above our heads, and we thought that this was the four mice in a trap. I got out of the bed to look at the trap and there was one mouse in it and a snake twisting himself around the mouse and the trap, and it was the snake above our bed.
This is a true story of some of my early times in Nebraska.
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It makes a person feel thirty years younger when he reads all those hard time stories.
One thing I had forgotten is about the wooden shoes Anton Delimont had. He had a pair of them and we went to Blooming- ton before New Year's, 1878, and he had them on. When we were at Bloomington we put the horses in the barn and stopped there for the night, sleeping in the office. Anton's wooden shoes had some iee on the bottom, and during the evening there were about a dozen men around the stove. Anton got up to fix the fire and his wooden shoes slipped and he landed on top of the stove, knocked down the stovepipe, and he came very near smok- ing the rest out of the barn.
HUBERT PETTIJEAN.
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CHAPTER XIX
B. F. Goble Came to the Beaver Valley in 1879, and Even Then There Were Some Rattlesnakes in the Land
Editor Times-Tribune :- After reading the pioneer stories in our Beaver City paper, I find them very interesting. I don't know as yon can call me one of the pioneers, but if you knew of my experiences after landing in Furnas county, I might pos- sibly be called an early settler.
Ilaving started my wife and two children back to Illinois "to my wife's folks, " I started, in company with my brothers, George and JJeff, and Paul Paulson, from my home in Grundy county, Ia., in February, 1879, thinking to get me a home in Nebras- ka, for that was about as far west as I cared to go. Brother George and I each had a team and wagon and that was about all, finan- cially. We found the rail- road went no farther west than Franklin; so we thought we surely could find homesteads near Blooming- ton: but kept on coming west until we arrived at Or- leans. There we met a Mr. Griffith who accompanied us to Mr. Troxwells, northeast of Arapahoe. But, oh, my ; what a dismal looking coun- try ; the prairie for miles and miles was as black as it B.F. GOBLE could be, for the Indians had
burned it over the fall before.
Mr. Troxwell said we could find a man over near Beaver ('ity by the name of Tryon, who would locate us. At last we
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found our man Tryon living about a mile east of where Hendley now is. Mr. Tryon told us there was no land along the streams. but what had been taken, for the settlers had come and taken it the fall before; and taken the six months act, and gone back east for the winter. That was a disappointment for we had thought to get land along some stream. So now it was divide
House on the Goble Farm in Vincent Precinct, Built by Mr. Goble in 1886 land or nothing. At last we got located eight miles north of Hendley, right on top of the divide between the Beaver and Re- publican valleys. We got the papers on our homestead on March 27, 1879.
We must have shelter for our horses so we built a stable in the bank of the canyon, made a stall for the horses in one end. and had our kitchen, dining room and bed room in the other. Then we thought we were pretty well fixed, except we had it so umhandy to get the water we had to use. We had to go seven miles to Isaae Meyers' for water. and haul it every day in a salt barrel, and when we got home the horses would drink the most of it. What spare time we got we broke prairie, put in sod corn. and was digging a well: got it one hundred and three feet deep. when one rope gave out, and money too : so we had to hunt work.
Our first job was a house to build for William MeKinnny
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on the Sappa. The next job was to make a log house over into a frame house for Harry Remington, on the Beaver; there I earned my first eow.
The post office at that time was at Isaac Meyers' in a sod house, called Lynden P. O. Later it was moved to the sod store of T. L. Jones, now our Representative to Congress. The first few years om trading point was at Beaver City with Crutcher & Jones.
In June Brother Jeff and Paulson got tired of pioneering and started back with team and wagon for Towa. And I lost one of my horses. Iler feet commenced to come off, so had to kill her.
In Angust we started to put up our sod houses, for I was getting anxious to see my family. After we got the houses ready for the lumber, we took the three horses left, and had to go to Bloomington for it. We had a good load, for we got enough flooring for both houses, besides the rest of the lumber that we needed. It took ns five days to make the trip. I finished the nonse by plastering the sides and tacking muslin overhead. We thought it quite cozy and comfortable.
MRS. B. F. GOBLE
Brother George's wife came from Iowa about the first of September, and my family came September 25th. We had to meet them at Plum Creek, or where Lex- ington is now. Having my family now to provide for, I had to make a trip to Bea- ver Creek for fuel. While I was gone there came up one of those hard rain storms, this climate was noted for at that time. When I got home what did I find, but my wife and children huddled up on a dry goods box, the only dry place in the house (the roof being made of willows across the rafters, and hay and sod on top of that.) That night all the place we
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had to sleep was to lay the sideboards of the wagon lengthwise on the bedstead; hang comforts over them and crawl in. We slept as snug and dry as could be.
A few days after brother George's wife came, we were all out one evening after sunset, and she called our attention to something moving out in the sod corn. We watched and waited, and as it did not get any closer, I caught up the ax and said. "I'll find out if that is an Indian, or what." I started out with a sort of creepy feeling down my spine and found-a big corn- stalk moving back and forth in the evening breeze. That was our only Indian scare. We saw no Indians or buffaloes, except- ing the tame one Mr. Hadley had. We were told the Indians and buffaloes left here the fall of '78, but the prairie was covered with trails and wallow holes. We were the first to strike a for- row on the divide.
The first Christmas in the sod house, we had quite a family. for A. B. Wolfe came from Iowa, bringing his wife and six chil- dren, all living in our little sod house of two rooms, until he built him a dagout on his own place. How bright the future did look; every one was happy. thinging of their homes they had come to find in the west. We think now that the happiest times of our lives was while living in "Our Little Oldl Shanty on the Ciaim."
The sunner of 'SO we boys built several houses in Pickleville. now known as Cambridge, having to ford the Republican river whenever we had to cross it. In the spring of '81. I traded my one horse for a pair of Texas steers. I brought them home and they were so poor. I thought to give them the best chance for grazing. I would fasten one on a rope, and let the other run loose : ard it he didn't fall in the unfinished well, then. I only had the one after all. ! had to have a team, and having a large white cow. I broke her in with the ox and worked them all summer. 1 had to milk the cow three times a day while working her.
After the ox fell into the well. I found out what it was to have good neighbors. if they were few and scattering. I had some plowing to do and one morning here came A. B. Wolfe. Jeff MeKown, Mal Wolfe. J. II. Roberts, and others that I cannot re- eall to name, and did my plowing all in one day. I surely did appreciate it.
The fall of '81. we, with our neighbors, got a school started. in a small sod house, that had been vacated by William Pryor. It
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was about two miles from us. Our teacher was a one-armed man, Martin Reynolds by name, and we paid him individually.
About this time brother George completed a well on his place, two hundred and twenty feet deep. Then we had plenty of water, but had to draw it with a horse and fifteen gallon bueket.
In May, 1884, we had a three or four days' rain, and the sod house commeneed to go to pieces, great loads falling at a time. I thought it was not safe to remain in it over night. I had a small granary or grain bin covered with straw. I first took some quilts, then while it was raining torrents, I carried my wife and children to that, and we crawled in and slept without fear.
After that I built a part of the house that is standing on the homestead now. In the meantime it was not all plain sailing. We had prairie fires, dust storms, drouth, coyotes, rattlesnakes- yes, rattlesnakes galore, for we boys killed one hundred and twenty-five the first summer. This is a fact, for we saved the rattles.
My wife had a little scare with one of the reptiles. It hap- pened in the cellar in the new house. I will give it in her own words. "I had a cupboard in the cellar where I kept the milk. When the sun was in the west, it was rather dark in the cellar. I went down after a pan of milk for supper and had just picked up the pan when I heard a rattle, nearly at my feet. What to do I did not know, for there was no one in the house at the time. I made a dash for the stairs, got a light and spade, and there not four feet from the bottom step was a large rattlesnake coiled up. What little strength I had left I put onto that snake. It had eight rattles besides the button."
But such things were forgotten when we would see the beau- tiful antelope seurrying by in twos, threes and sometimes six in a group.
Of course we went through hardships, and had drawbacks, but with good health and energy, interspersed with hard work, faith, hope and happiness, we lived on the homestead until Jan- uary 9, 1907, when we moved to Beaver City. As settlers came in we made many friends, and our time being taken up in im- proving our home and visiting and entertaining our neighbors, the time soon passed away.
B. F. GOBLE.
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CHAPTER XX
M. C. Perkins Landed in the Beaver Valley in 1873, "Bled and Dried," Won Out, and Now Lives in the Boyhood Home in Maine
Oakland, Me., June 7, 1912 .- Editor Times-Tribune-Dear Sir :- You may think I am butting in where I have no business, but I have been greatly interested in reading some of the pioneer letters of the early settlers of Furnas county. I claim I am eli- gible to be elassed as one of them that "bled" and "dried" in the Furnas of Nebraska. I was born down here in the "Pine Tree State," sixty-one years ago (not with a silver spoon in my mouth.) I left home at thirteen years of age to become self-sup- porting, and landed 75 miles northwest of Chicago, Rochelle, Ogle county, Illinois. I was there about three years, making two trips to Maine. I went from there to Seward county, Nebraska, in 1872, and the spring of 1873, I started for the Republican river. We struck the river at Red Cloud, and traveled up the river to Melrose, near where Orleans now stands. We were fer- ried across the river by some Swedes, who ran the ferry just to accommodate those who happened to have money. From there I went southwest of Melrose, six miles on the Prairie Dog. There I took my homestead, never seeing that piece of iand after that. We started back to Lowell for the land office was there at that time. It was the month of June and very hot. In crossing the divide north of Melrose we saw a black cloud off in the north- west that did not seem to cover more than a few sections of land and it seemed to stay in one place for an hour. We drove to Turkey Creek where we camped for dinner. Staking out our horses, we got our slapjacks ready to eat, when we heard a terrri- De commotion up the creek. We thought it was a herd of buf- falo coming down through the bushes. In less than two minutes there was five feet of water standing over our camp fire. Wo made out to save our wagon, harness and horses, but lost the most of our grub and cooking utensils. We drove on to the
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Walker's ranch and ate our dinner and supper at the same time.
At that time Walker's ranch was the only place we could get water from Melrose to Lowell, for at that time the dirty man's ranch did not have their well finished. I went back and worked that summer, intending to go onto my homestead that fall, but Frank Gapen came back there to work in the fall and he told me that lightning had set fire to the prairie and burned the whole country over, and there was nothing for stock to live on, so I did not dare to go on my land that fall.
The next spring I put out a erop and the grasshoppers took all of my corn and a part of my wheat. The people said there was not a bushel of corn raised in Seward county and I guess it was true. Ilalf of the people in the country went east to their "wife's folks" and half the people who remained on their claims lived on aid, that was sent there from the east. I packed up my little greasy bundle and hit the trail for California. I came back the next summer.
In the spring of 1876 I started for Furnas county and this time I had "blood in my eye." I was bound to become a free- holder of some of Uncle Sam's domain. At this time the creek land along the Beaver was taken up, so I went on the divide and took a timber claim on Section 26, south-west quarter, Town 3. Range 22 west. After that I took up a pre-emption. As I said above I lost my homestead right in Harlan county. For four years we raised little corn and some wheat. The year of 1880 came nearest to being a total failure. There were eight months there was no rain fell and I hope that no country will ever ex- perience the like again.
I recall some very funny things that occurred during my homesteading. We all became expert sod-house builders and well diggers. One of our best well diggers was John Bickford, but sometimes he ran up against hard luek. He had been away at work and was on his way home with the proceeds of the day's work in groceries. He laid them down on the prairie while he went off the road to speak to someone, and some stock came along and ate them excepting his tobacco. John Mosher was the best homesteader of all. He hanled water from one to five miles for over five years for stock and house use. Yes, John was on the water wagon, and when we would see his wagon coming we knew he had something to take. I hired an old man by the name of Goodwin, and also his boy Walter, to dig a well on my timber
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claim, and they were all winter at it. It would sometimes happen that Walter would be very late in the forenoon and I asked him what made him late. He said he was out late the night before "to see his gal." I said, "Walter, you should get married." He replied, "I shall marry next New Year's if I can only sell my turkey."
I made a trip east to get work. I was making a trip from Seward county in company with John Bickford, with one span of horses und two loaded wagons. As we were within a few miles of Minden. we met a young man with a span of mules loaded with barley. He saw we were heavily loaded and he gave us all the road. When he was getting into the road again his wheel tire eame off. We went back and helped him replace it. We thought there was something wrong by the way he talked and later we found that he was the man who the night before had killed a wo man and three little children near Walker's ranch, and a few weeks later killed Anderson the Swede, and was hung in Minden. His name was Richards.
The fall of the Indian raid, I started east for a load of pro- visions in company with several men. One of their names was ireland. He lived near Arapahoe, and I have seen him since and talked about this instance. We drove the first one-half mile east of Walker's ranch and camped close to the old freight trail. There were three teams of us and after it became a little dark an old man and woman came along in a buggy. They asked ns where there was a good place to camp. We told them about twenty rods ahead. They camped there and staked their horses out, and about midnight several horsemen came galloping into camp. They seemed to be excited and told us to get out of there for the Indians bad burned Orleans and were coming right on up the trail. We got up and geared up our horses and pulled for Jun- iata, for the old man and woman were not there. I have always believed that the old couple were murdered that night. I have seen some things that looked queer at Walker's ranch. I could tell lots about the fleas and bedbugs, snakes and drouths in the years of 1880, 1890, and 1894, however, it has all been told and that must suffice.
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