USA > Nebraska > Furnas County > Pioneer stories of Furnas County, Nebraska > Part 2
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16
19
FURNAS COUNTY 1
that other kind of a site. I only wanted to help the "town to be " the coming county seat. Creswell, the name recommended for the new postoffice. would not go, so. at our request. Beaver City was substituted, and that was the way the town got its name.
About July 1st. Williams bought out Lester. and Haney sold to Moore, and later Moore sold to Denham. Nat and Ed. Ayers came with Williams. About this time or a little later came Caleb Jones, Howell, L. Kinsman, Cap. Freas, Jake Downing, J. Gould J. T. Sumney, Lawson, Laverack. the Sturtevants, Clark and Trent, Doc. Hobson and others, who settled on good claims close to Beaver City, with little or no timber.
Women were searce in the new settlement. Who will write up the pioneer women ? Early in the fall Jesse Iladley and I, saving never a word to each other about our private affeirs, drove down to Lincoln together, where we separated, he going to eastern lowa and I to Lawrenee, Kansas. It so happened that both of us were married on the same day. November 7th, and in the early winter brought our brides ont to share our fortunes and misfortunes of the new country. We were not the only ones. Others brought their wives and daughters, and soon there was school, and church and civilization. What woman will write an article about her pioneer sisters? About their "old Colonial furniture," the rat- tle-snakes under the bed? (My wife found a lively one in bed one evening.) About the pretty centipedes, and that ferocions animal, the flea? About the make-shifts for elothing, and the substitutes for meals? I once stopped for dinner at the house of a well known citizen on the Sappa, where there was nothing on the table but muskmelon and cream. and there was absolutely nothing else in the house to eat. Yet it was nicely served and the lady made no excuse or complaint, and it really tasted good to me.
How many remember old Mr. King, the harness maker. and his matrimonial troubles. or Wm. "Edge" Lebo, or the soft little French tailor who worked for me. blistered his hands and learned to be a farmer. or Homer Carpenter who usually rode a Texas steer, and afterward became a fine haired drummer for a wholesale house in Omaha, or Eads the shoemaker, with his. "now you see it and now yon don't," or Bachelor Smith and his story of cooking the rice-a nice little five pound package for his breakfast. How it boiled over. and he filled his enp, spoon, plate, skillet, and finally the wash basin. How it came out again over the stove, onto the floor, and out of the door, and he ran
20
PIONEER STORIES
for Beaver City for dear life. He was not sure, could not say positively, that it followed him. And there was good old Mrs. MeCormack, who found three babies, at three different houses, before breakfast. It was in this prolific community a few years later, that the over worked editor was obliged to refuse to pub- lish birth notices for Arth Allen and Man Hadley, without pay. Unlike unhappy France, the stork was always with us.
There were many freaks. yes, but we had many good sub- stantial citizens. Some of these were McKee, Denham, Jesse and Manly Hadley, D. H. and A. H. Lashley, Crutcher and Jones, Laverack, T. M. Williams, J. T. Sumny, N. M. Ayers, Doc. Ilob- son and L. Kinsman. These men may not have been all pure gold, but they were pushers, and if their hearts had been less stout, Beaver City would not now have been in the front. Whatever their luek in later life, there should be, and doubtless is, only friend- ship and good will between those living and the many good busi- ness men who followed and continued the good work. But they were the true pioneers, the men who blazed the way.
I shall have very little to say about the county seat fight. MeKee and I, slightly disguised, visited a rather rabid spot over in the river valley, and while I attended a public meeting, Me- Kee talked sweet to the lady postmaster (he was unmarried then), and obtained a complete list of all voters in that locality. The meeting was for the purpose of devising ways and means to down Beaver City. As a newcomer in that vicinity, I promised to help, so the story was told. But other stories were told. One was that Arapahoe gave town lots each to certain persons in the Beaver Valley for votes for their county seat. Another. that Bea- ver City traded away certain county offices, including the county judge, for county seat votes. However that may be, I never was jealous of those who received the lots or of the judge who received the fees, because, all told, the price of the lots, and the fees of the judge, did not probably amount to so much as my afore-mentioned emoluments. Anyhow, we had a long, fierce scrap, and the "boys squad" of Beaver City won ont.
Possibly mine was the first old fashioned house raising in Furnas county. I furnished the meat. it was turkey, and Mrs. Anna Williams kindly furnished the dinner. Everybody seemed happy that day. but I was probably the happiest one. In the evening I could see the beginning of the new home, a hewed log
21
FURNAS COUNTY
house, 16x20, a story and a half high, with corners nicely laid. This became our home till 1880, when the new house was built.
And now, perhaps my story is too long. But I have written nothing about fishing and hunting, the many foolish Indian scares, the grasshopper raids, hot winds, hail storms, blizzards and other "set-baeks," the destruction of the buffalo, the set- tlement of the "divides" and of the days when aid came from the east. Nothing about the first hotel, the many little stores, the mill, the little broom factory that turned out sixty thousand dozen brooms, and other industries that helped start Beaver City. A letter is too short. I could write a book. But no, your other afflictions have been too numerous and severe.
Allow me to say in closing, the old pioneers have a friendship, a love for each other, second only to that existing among com- rades of the Grand Army. It is this feeling that has caused me to visit Beaver City twice, in the last few years. to shake the hands and look in the eyes of the boys and girls of "Auld Lang Syne," and whereever those living are, I hope they may receive this, my greeting and best wishes, through the Times-Tribune.
C. A. DANFORTII.
-
22
PIONEER STORIES
CHAPTER IV
Hubert Pettijean's Trilling Experience in a Blizzard of the Early Days
It is the purpose of the Times-Tribune to inelude in these Pioneer Stories reminiscences of oldl settlers relating some strange or thrilling incident of the pioneer days.
We have been favored with one story by Hubert Pettijean, who resides on the state line in the southern part of Maple Creek precinct.
He moved to Furnas county in 1878, and for many years lived in a sod house. lle now owns a fine, large farm house and is enjoying the fruits of his industry and frugality.
Mr. Pettijean is of French extraction. His mother was the daughter of a French soldier who served gallantly under the im- mortal Napoleon for fourteen long years. The family came to America and located in the big pine forests in the northeast corner of Wisconsin, and it was here that Mr. Pettijean was born. And as above related, he imigrated to Furnas county along with the grasshoppers in 1878 To tell the rest of the story we give Mr. Pettijean's own version of it :
"I landed in Nebraska some time in November. The grass had' all been burned that fall and everything was blaek, and there were no houses to be seen. The few there were seattered about were down in the draws out of sight. The traveler was tiable to walk onto the roof of a dugout without knowing it. On the 17th of December, 1878, it commenced to snow and the wind blew a gale from the north. I started for a flour mill on the Sappa, called the Burrs mill. I think. The road was crooked, and I got lost in going, but I finally got to the mill in the afternoon all right, and started back home with my pack of flour. I got along pretty well until I was about two miles from home. At that place there were two draws, and I took the wrong one of them. and I was lost for sure. The wind blowing bad by this time and it was bitter cold.
23
FURNAS COUNTY
-
"When I left Wisconsin, my mother had put in a pair of the old country wooden shoes with my other stuff. That morning when I started to the mill, I thought that I had better put those shoes on as they would come handy if I had to stay out all night. I had some horse blankets with me. I made a wall with the sack of flour. On it I put a blanket and crawled underneath. But my feet got so cold that I was afraid that they would freeze. I had some matches with me and I found some straw, which I put in the wooden shoes and set on fire. When the shoes got warm I put them on again and they felt mighty good. How many times I did this I have forgotten, but I kept it up all night and come out in the morning safe and sound, and found that I had wandered to within about forty rods of my own house. If it had not been for those wooden shoes I would cer- tainly have frozen to death -so I claim that my mother saved my life when she started me out from Wiscon- sin with those wooden shoes."
HUBERT PETTIJEAN With Coyote, Weighing 33 Pounds, Which he Killed in 1910
24
PIONEER STORIES
CHAPTER V
Jesse Hadley Relates How He and His Brothers Failed asį Breeders of Buffalo.
I think I was the first man, or boy, rather, to take advan- tage of the offer of Uncle Sam to bet $14 that one could not live five years on a quarter section of land in western Nebraska.
In the spring of 1872, my brother, Manly R. Had- ley, and 1, were vietims of the fever to "Go West and Grow up With the Country." I was 19 years old on April 2 and my brother was three years older. We started west April 12 in a prairie schooner. We had three horses, four 2-year-old heif- ers and three pigs, the lat- ter being tied on the back of the wagon in an Arbuckles coffee box. There were three other wagons in our party. We soon sold the heifers, as it was slow work driving them,and we were all anx- ious to get to the wild and wooly west before good land JESSE N. HADLEY was all taken. We didn't have any particular place in view when we started except to go to Nebraska. We stopped at Crete for a couple of days, and there heard of the Republican valley, and decided that there was the place where we wanted to locate. We went south from there to the old town of Meridian where we left the rest of our crowd
25
FURNAS COUNTY
except Wm. Kinzer. At Meridian they told us that this was the last place we could buy anything, so we bought a sod plow, a small cooking stove, and some grain. From there to the place where we located there was but one house with a shingle roof, and that was at Franklin.
The next place we stopped at was Stockdale, afterward called Melrose, about a mile west of Orleans. We were told that if we crossed over to the south side of the river that the Indians would sure get us. A man by the name of Cheasman said that for $5 he would locate us on good land with fine timber. He took us up on Spring Creek, 20 miles north of Oxford. The timber was good but the land adjoining was rough, so while Cheasman was out with a man by the name of Cream and his sons, we went back to Stockdale. From there we went back to the forks of the Beaver and Sappa Creeks, and there met Galen James, who had been with the government surveyors when southwest Nebraska had been surveyed. We told him that we would like to locate where .we would be near the county seat. and he said that Harlan, Franklin and Webster counties to the east were 24 miles square and that the next county would likely be the same size. We se- cured him to go with us. There were no roads and we had some trouble in crossing draws, but we arrived at about where Beaver City is now located May 10, 1872, at about 3 o'clock in the af- ternoon.
While we were up on Spring Creek, C. A. Danforth, Bill Haney, and a man by the name of Lester had located and started back to the land office at Beatrice. My brother, ME R. Hadley, took the claim where the Beaver City Mill is now located, Kin- zer the quarter just west of town and known as the C. M. Lew- elling farm, and myself the S. W. quarter of Sec. 17, being the west half of the present site of Beaver City. I built a log house. 16x18-not a nice hewn log house like C. A. Danforth, but of straight, round logs, sod roof and dirt floor. This was on the southwest corner of section 17. On September 13th. I started back to Iowa to get married. Got a free ride to Lincoln with C. A. Danforth, and there took the train. As stated by Mr. Dan- forth, it so happened that we were married on the same day. November 7, 1872.
I told my bride-to-be just what kind of a home I had pre- pared to take her to-the wild country and the danger of In- dians, and she bravely said she could go any place that I could.
26
PIONEER STORIES
That was forty years ago, and that same girl and I are going together yet.
We started on our honeymoon trip November 21, with a span of good horses and a double-covered wagon. When we drove mto Red Oak, Iowa, on a bright, clear morning at 9 o'clock, it was 30 degrees below zero In a day or two it had warmed up, and we had pleasant weather and fine roads. We arrived at Beaver City on December 13, and found that brother M. R. and Bill Kinzer had supper ready for us.
On Christmas Day, 1872, Mrs. T. M. Williams, had a wild turkey dinner, with all the neighborhood invited. On New Year's day Mr. and Mrs. Henry Moore had the same crowd, and when we got together in those days we had a jolly good time.
Early in 1873, the Armstrong boys, M. R. and myself started to Lowell where the new land office had been opened for the western district, and made proof on our pre-emptions, paying Unele Sam $1.25 per acre. At the same time all of us took out papers on a quarter section homestead and a quarter section tree claim. I then had in my name 480 acres of Uncle Sam's land, and was not 20 years old, and had not violated the law either, as I was "the head of a family." After paying out on our pre- emptions brother M. R. deeded to me the east half of 80 acres of his pre-emption, and I deeded to him the north 80 acres of my pre- emption
The following summer, 1873, J. HI. McKee, R. J. Denham, M. R. and myself hid out the town of Beaver City, A. Coppom doing the surveying.
I will say nothing about the long bitter contest that we had over the county seat, but as my friend Danforth said, the "boys" won. I never held a county office or had the postoffice, but the last of August, 1875, I carried a petition to have the county or- ganized and bounded, and got every settler in the south vart of the county.
Shortly after laying out the town. we negotiated with Mon- ell and Lashley of Lincoln, who built the Lashley block and the mill. As a bonus, McKee, Denham, my brother and I deeded them one-sixth of the 320 acres which we had layed out for the town My brother and I also gave five acres each for the town site, and brother M. R. gave the ground for the cemetery. Our little girl, Oral, 14 months old, was the first person buried there, and Mrs. J. A. Cluster, the second.
27
FURNAS COUNTY
I must tell you more about those pigs we brought out with us. They were the first swine brought to southwest Nebraska, and as my brother and I had been brought up on a farm, we thought that the only way to make money was to raise corn and hogs. We had fine luck with the hogs. I never saw hogs in- crease so fast. and one died. The first year we had a pretty good crop of corn, and the second year fine prospects until July 8, when a hail storm came and cut everything to the ground. Then we had hogs but no corn. We had to pay $1 per bushel for corn, and so let some of the hogs out on shares. We kept a few over and raised more next spring, thinking that we would have a corn crop. but the next three years. 1874-5-6, the grasshoppers came and took everything. However, by that time we had seat- tered hogs pretty well over the south part of the county.
When we first arrived, we were somewhat disappointed in not seeing any buffalo, but our guide, Galen Jones, said, "Don't worry about that, boys. It has been a late spring and they are late coming from the south. but you will see plenty in a short
time." We had been there about a week. One of us kept a plow going, while the other two built our first house. a dug-out with a pole front and sides. located on the north side of the sand knoll, close to the creek and a short distance from where the mill stands. We let our horses run out at night and usually found them out in the valley to the northwest. One morn- "Dick," an Early Settler ing Kinzer went up on the raise back of the house to look for the horses and called to brother and me to come up and see a sight. About one-half mile to the northwest there was a herd of about 500 buffalo. We got our horses and started on our first buffalo hunt. My brother had a squirrel gun, Kinzer a cap and ball revolver, and I had an old Spencer carbine, that would not hit the side of a barn 200 yards away. Before we got in shooting distance, the buffalo galloped off to the northwest and up a big draw. We followed them up, and the boys held my horse while
28
PIONEER STORIES
I went up the draw to get a close shot at the buffalo. ). was try- ing to keep out of sight, and in making a turn in the draw, came right onto a dozen big, shaggy fellows, the closest not over 15 or 20 feet away. I was too scared to run and stood and looked at them. They took a good look at me, and then seampered up the draw, while i ran the other way without ever firing a shot. We followed them up the draw until we could see buffalo to the north, east and west. 1 finally picked one about 75 yards away, and fired. He came partly down and i thought that I had him. But he recovered himself and started on. We followed him to the next draw west where we shot at him, one at a time. 1 had only what cartridges the cylinder would hold, brother had four or five for the squirrel gun, and Kinzer six in the revolver, all of which we used, and then left the buffalo standing. From there we went north to the top of the divide and west to about north of llendley. When we started south for the creek, we were in a seething mass of buffalo coming from the south They
would part about 50 yards for us, and the balance of the coun- try was one solid mass of buffalo. I think that all of us had serious thoughts of home and friends, and we all felt much safer when we got down to the creek where we were protected by the tim- ber. We found out from some trappers that the buffalo had been crossing the creek all the night before. I am not going to try to tell you how many buffalo we saw that day, but suffice it to say that when we were on the high divide they covered the ground in every direction that we could see.
By the next day the main herd had pushed north across the Republican and on north, but all of the rest of the summer one could go out on the prairie and see in any direction from a few hundred to thousands in a bunch. Many times during the next few months I have gone out to get our horses and could not see them for the buffalo, but when i would approach the buffalo would scamper off. The horses and the buffalo had been grazing side by side.
In June, 1872, a man by the name of Craig settled 3 or 4 miles west of us on the creek. Ile had not been there long when some government scouts rode through the country warning the settlers to be on the lookout for Indians. Mrs. Craig became so frightened that she told her husband that if he would not leave that she would go a foot and alone. So he loaded their stuff and started baek east. When they got to our place he was still
29
FURNAS COUNTY
pretty mad. He had six cows and two 2-year-old heifers he had brought from Iowa with him. We were wanting some cows and my brother and I looked them over and finally bought them for $200. Our next big idea was to catch buffalo calves, raise them on the milk of which we had a plenty, and drive them back east and make our pile. We had caught a few previous to that time, but they had died in a day or two, but we thought that with so much milk we could raise quite a herd.
My brother and I didn't know anything about throwing a lasso, and had never seen anyone throw one at that time. We would start out on our horses after a bunch, and run them 4 or 5 miles until the calves fell behind, pretty well fagged ont. Then one of us would jump off his horse and catch the calf by the hind legs, get a rope around it and start the other way quick to get out of sight, while the other would keep after the herd to prevent the mother buffalo from turning on us, which she some- times did, when we would pour the lead into her. We caught thirty or forty calves that summer, sometimes one, never over two or three, in one day. We could have caught many more. and at last we did it more for sport than for gain. Some of them would die before we could get them home, others in a day or so. and others lived for a week and then died. We canght them from a few days to six months old. The larger ones sometimes gave us a pretty good fight, after which they would give up and afterward die from fright or a broken heart. We only raised one calf. At one time we had five for a month or more, and were doing fine. We had them in a pen where the pigs could go in and out, and every morning and night we would put in a couple of pails of fresh milk in a trough. After the ealves had drunk what they wanted, the pigs would clean up the rest. One very hot day the pigs didn't drink up the milk and it soured. and the calves drunk it and all died but one. So we gave up trying to make a stake raising a herd of buffalo.
The one buffalo that we raised we worked with one of the cows, as we had bad luck with our horses. In August, 1872, wo had two of our horses stolen and never heard from them. When I went east to be married I brought out another good team. Soon after I got back I traded one of the cows to Elder Mayo for a horse. Only had him a few days when one of the other horses kicked him, and he died. In the spring, when the grain got green, one of them took the colie and died. Then the other
30
PIONEER STORIES
one which I brought from lowa ran out on a cow shed that was dug in the bank, and she died. Brother M. R. then traded a cow for an old horse, and in a short time she fell in an old well and died. That left us with but one horse. In the spring of 1875 M. R. rode the remaining horse up to North Platte and worked while I put in the crop with the buffalo and cow for a team. I put in ten acres of wheat, broke the ground and har- rowed it. and took my wife buggy riding with this same buffalo and cow. In the fall of that year I went back to Towa and brought out another team. Started back in February. The same fall brother M. R. took the buffalo yoked with an ox, bought an- other team of oxen, and went up to old Fort McPherson, where he baled hay for the government. One night the buffalo strayed away from the oxen, and a hunter shot him, thinking that he was a wild one.
Brother M. R. then went to the Black Hills for a couple of years. When he came back, he secured two more buffalo and broke them to work, and with a yoke of oxen freighted from Plum Creek and Kear- ney, using trail wagons in coming across from the Platte to the Republican. On one of his trips, one of the buffalo became footsore, and he left him, going back in a few days to find him dead. The other one, which he called "Dick," and will be remembered by the old tim- ers, he kept until 1882. He was not cross nor vicious, but the town by that time had a population of 300 or 400, and it was a hard matter to keep THE LATE M. R. HADLEY Dick fastened up, and when he got loose he frightened some of the newcomers so that they would not go out for fear of him. When he was loose he visited sheds and gardens and helped himself to vegetables, and peo-
31
FURNAS COUNTY
ple were afraid to try to drive him away. Brother M. R. concluded to kill him, and led him down to N. M. Ayres' slaughter house, where I shot him and Nat Avers dressed the carcass. After keeping what meat we wanted and supply- ing our friends, we sold the balance at the store. Brother M. R. had the head mounted and the skin tanned. The head was burned when the Hadley Opera House Block burned. I think that iny brother's family still have the robe at this time.
I will say nothing about the various Indian scares and prairie fres. except that at one time we fought fire for two days and rights, only stopping to get a little something to eat. just to save rome winter pasture.
In September 1876. my wife and I went back to Iowa to re- ernit financially. and stayed until September, 1879, on my father's farm, then drove back to Nebraska, this making five trips I had made back and forth in a covered wagon, 550 miles, my wife making four of them with me.
In 1880 I made up my mind I would let other people till the soil. My brother and I were in the mercantile business for five , ears, when I bought him out and continued the business with the help of my wife. How well we succeeded some of my friends back there know. For ten or twelve years we made money. not as mueh as one man wants, but as one man needs. Then with bad speeulation and a Cleveland administration, it went like it did with a great many others. We are now happy and contented at Florence, Colo. We still have a warm spot in our hearts for Beaver City and friends back there, many of whom traded with us for sixteen years
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.