USA > Nebraska > York County > York County, Nebraska and its people : together with a condensed history of the state, Vol. I > Part 47
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On Saturday night we entertained fourteen people who had come up from the Blue and other localities to attend the dedication. I'll never tell where we put them to sleep, except that the reverend occupied a pile of sacks at the head of the stairs.
The doctor continued very suspicious about the exercises, especially the raising of money. "Where are the people to come from?" he asked. "I don't see any houses." And again, "Unless you are a better man than I think you are. William, you'll never raise the money." On Sunday morning the little church was packed. Teams stood thick all about the place, and men were standing outside the doors and windows. After the singing of the first hymn by the choir and congregation the doctor settled back with a look of solid satisfaction on his face. He preached one of his best sermons. The occasion seemed to inspire him. At the close of the. discourse the men and women from the little sod houses and dugouts scattered over the prairie, and the men from the lawyers' and doctors' offices in the town showed the material of which they were made, when out of their limited means they subscribed $1,100, and raised every dollar of the church indebtedness.
One little incident, which gives a light among these shades. I desire to recall. The parson. after the manner of parsons, had traded for a saddle horse, which he rode on his Sunday tours from York to Lincoln Creek and return. Now it chanced that the parson's horse had been at some time in his life used on the race track. and was an animal of no mean pedigree or paces. One Sabbath two of the young men of York, who have since achieved dignity with their years accompanied the parson on his Sunday rounds, they also mounted on horseback. On the road home the
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parson was riding leisurely along, a little in front, when something very much like a wink passed between the horsemen in the rear, and they immediately put their horses to their top speed. The parson's nag needed no spur. He "smelt the battle from afar," rose to the occasion and soon distanced his competitors. The parson always claimed that he pulled his horse up as soon as he could collect himself, but the "boys" tell a different tale, and have never ceased to relate how the parson raced horses on Sunday.
I might tell much more. Scene after scene of those days crowds upon my memory. How we fought fire and flood, grasshoppers and famine, and above all whiskey. How hot the battle raged at times, till even the staunchest trembled. But God gave us strength to hold on, until finally victory perched upon our banners, and the saloon forces beat an ignominious retreat.
And now the shadows are gathering over our pathway. The faces of the pioneers show lines of care. Toil and sorrow have whitened the onee sunny hair. We are facing towards the sunset. Soon the places that have known us will know us no more. But among the cherished memories that we shall carry with us into the land of the hereafter will be the memory of our pioneer days in York, and among those who shall meet and greet us in the bright beyond, there will be none dearer than our old friends of York County.
SPEECHI DELIVERED BY MRS. GEORGE BOWERS AT AN OLD SETTLERS' PICNIC
We were living at Fairbury, Ill., when we made up our minds to go west. We joined a colony that was locating homesteads at Gibbon, Buffalo County. We packed our goods and shipped them to Gibbon, having a promise of reduced freight. George's brother Amos came down from Joliet and they started with their teams to drive through. George thought he would let me stay about six months, or until he got some kind of a house for me and the baby. When they crossed the Missouri River they fell in with eight more old soldiers coming after homestead lands, among them being John Lett, William Cross, Robert Lytle and Art Draucher. They went to the land office in Lincoln and were told that there was no govern- ment land in York County, so they thought they would have to strike for Fillmore County. In the meantime George and Amos had given up all thoughts of Gibbon, deciding that it was too far west and the ten old soldiers were going to locate near each other. When they reached Beaver Crossing they met Zachariah Heath, who had been here and taken a homestead and was on his way back looking for work. He told them that there was plenty of government land in York County and told them which way to go to find Aikins Mills post-office and that Mr. Aikins would locate them. When they reached Aikins they left their Inmber wagons and drove on to Hamilton County to look around, where they found Mr. Spafford trying to bore a well. He had got down eighty feet and broke the auger. They were disgusted with the country and the whole bunch, and they came back and located within a few miles of each other with Aikins Mills as their post-office. They then piled up some sod to hold their claims till they could go to Lincoln and file on them. Next they broke out an acre in the northwest corner of our claim and, while doing so, dropped a few potatoes in the furrow and plowed them under and planted a little corn the same way. They broke a fire guard next to the road, then broke on the line between George's land and his brother's (N. hf. sec. 8-10-3). Then
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they went up one side and down the other breaking as much on one claim as on the other, about ten acres. They had been here about six weeks when George wrote for me to come at once or he would not stay. Ile had our goods shipped back to Columbus from Gibbon, and the railroad was so put out because he did not locate at Gibbon that they charged double rates for shipping them back, and he did not have money enough to pay the freight so he broke out ten acres of land for Dr. Greer, who had filed on the southeast quarter of the same section our land was on, and thus secured enough money to pay the freight. George had taken the cook stove, two chairs, mattress, besides some boxes of canned goods, some potatoes and seed corn when he drove through. There was a water hole at the back of our homestead in a draw where George set up the stove. He stood two large boxes on end a few feet apart, laid some poles across and then covered them with a quilt to set the table under, which by the way was another box, staked the wagon cover over it, and we slept in it. We lived that way about a week, and then they all worked together and built a sod building for a stable, and we lived in it all summer. As I was the first woman to come, they built ours first, then they put up sod houses for nearly all.
By that time they had learned more about breaking the sod, cutting and haul- ing it, when it was the toughest to handle, etc. Then in the fall they built a bet- ter house for our home. It had windows and doors and a floor in half of it. I put down a rag carpet which I brought with me. We put a lot of straw on the ground and put my carpet in the half that had no floor, but before our house was finished, George, with others, went out west to kill bulfalo for meat. My second son was just one week old and I was still living in the stable with blankets for doors and windows. When George had been gone about a week it began to rain and then it turned into snow and we had a regular Nebraska blizzard. The door was in the west and was drifted full, so I had to crawl out the window and drag in poles and chop them in the house to keep from freezing. I stayed in bed as long and as much as I could with my two boys (the oldest was two years). When the storm was over Mr. Eberhart sent his oldest son to see how I had stood the racket, with instructions for me to come there till George got home, so I took the two boys, one on each arm, and waded through the snow one-half mile while the Eber- hart boy carried a little grip. I stayed there several days. When George returned he had plenty of buffalo meat, and we got through the winter very well.
George hauled goods from Columbus for Aikins, who in the meantime had started a little store on Lincoln Creek (Aikins Mills). The first summer we had no cow, no chickens, no pigs, no milk, no eggs, no butter. In the fall our brother- in-law, O. D. Keeler, came out and took a homestead. He brought a box as large as he could get checked as baggage and my folks sent me a few things to eat, among which was some eggs. We took thirteen to Mrs. Aikins and got them to set them for us and then gave her a dollar for the hen. She hatehed seven chicks. and we brought her home and the second night something caught the hen. I then had to bring them in the house every night for a while, until George fixed a sod coop for them. While George was putting up hay (by the way, he broke two aeres of prairie for Lem Gandy to pay for a scythe to out his hay and had to ent it all that way), I crawled on my hands and knees and lifted the sod and picked up the potatoes, of which we had three grain sacks full, but when the blizzard came onr potatoes froze, and so did my chickens. We only had flour enough the first year to
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make gravy, and we lived on corn bread ; poor stuff, too. With no milk or lard, not enough lard to even grease the pan. After moving into our sod house I went down to the northwest corner where our little patch of breaking was, took an old hatchet and chopped holes in the sod and planted some cucumbers, beans and melons. There were quite a number of Indians around begging, so when my garden was ready for use I would get my baby asleep, put him on the bed and run for dear life to pick a few beans or cucumbers, for fear the Indians would steal him while I was gone. We gathered wild plums on the creek, and as we had no sugar wo cooked them with our muskmelons into a jam-the melon making the sweetening. In the spring when Keeler came out he chartered a car to Columbus and father sent me a cow, pig and a dozen chickens and we started in with bright hopes. We sowed wheat on the breaking and oats on the fire guard, and left a little garden and everything began to grow and look nice when, about the 20th of June, there eame a hail storm and everything was cut to the ground. We felt pretty blue. George hitched up his team and went to Beaver Crossing, where he broke four acres and took eorn for pay. Ile brought home with him a kitten, the first cat I had seen in Nebraska. After the hail I replanted my garden and had some late cucumbers and beans and the corn came out and made a few small ears. That fall my folks sent me a barrel of things, navy beans, dried apples, sweet corn and $2 worth of sugar. All this time the settlers hauled all their fuel from the Platte River. It took two days to make the trip. Those who came ahead of us had taken all the ereek claims with any timber. Sometimes George could wade around in the water on the railroad land, every other section was railroad land, and get a little driftwood.
From my dozen chickens I raised about fifty more, so I had about thirty hens to start in with the next year. George got little ash poles and made some frames for chairs like the old-fashioned splint bottom, and I sewed grain saeks on them for seats. We had no bedstead for two years, instead we had stakes drove in the ground and poles laid on them, and the fleas nearly ate us."
NARRATIVE OF MRS. CAP. J. B. READ
For answer to a request for my experience during the pioneer days in York County, I will say, it was not that we were intending to profit by Horace Greeley's advice to "Go west and grow up with the country" that brought us to Nebraska. We drifted in, as it were, intending to go on to California. We drove from Omaha by way of Fremont, over the prairie from which the grass had recently been burned, and late one Sunday afternoon in April, 1870, we stopped at D. T. Moore's and asked for shelter for the night. It set in for a good rain, which con- tinued for three days and during that time my husband, J. B. Read. decided he would settle here. We pre-empted one hundred and sixty acres, three miles north of York, built a two roomed sod house, a sod stable, dug a cave and had a well dug. We had to go to Lincoln for our housekeeping outfit and I tried every place while there to buy feathers enough for two pillows, but not an ounce could I find, so when I returned home I made hay pillows and a hay bed which we used until we could get our bed and bedding shipped to us, which was a long tedious task, owing to our lack of mail facilities and so far from a railroad. We received our mail at Beaver Crossing and only once a week, and it was there we
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sent our letters to be mailed. Upon one occasion when I was so anxious to get that precious bed and bedding here, I found myself without letter paper, but a letter must be sent, so it was written on light brown wrapping paper.
Prairie chickens were numerous and as my husband was a good marksman we enjoyed many a feast on wild game. And here I will relate my own experience in the "chase." One day, seeing a deer enter a ravine and her fawn by her side, I was filled with a wild desire to capture that baby deer. So I started out with a dog, and when I came to the ravine the old deer bounded away over the Prairie with the dog in pursuit. After searching the weeds for a while I saw this little deer had slipped out and was going in the direction its mother had gone. Then came a race that I realized must be a "home stretch" from the beginning and I threw off my bonnet and bent every energy to the task. When within a few yards from it the little animal seemed to realize its danger and dropped in the grass to hide. I took it home and it became my companion in many rambles over the prairies.
When we had been here a year grief came to us in the death of our three months old babe, our first born. No cotlin could be procured nearer than Platts- mouth, so we sought the service of a carpenter, and that it might not look so much like a pine box. I sent a broad cloth cloak to cover it, but there were no tacks with which to fasten the eloth in place: none to be found nearer than Seward. Pins were cut in two and by crossing them made to do service. Another difficulty arose when time to close the cothin, there were no serews with which to fasten the lid. Judge Moore took one of his doors from the hinges that the screws might be used.
After paying for our one hundred and sixty aeres, we homesteaded an eighty two miles farther north and virtually began again at the bottom of the ladder to build, break prairie and plant trees.
Then the grasshoppers came, but we were better prepared to meet the disaster than in previous years. We had plenty of wheat, fattened two hogs on wheat and raised potatoes enough to last all winter and for seed at planting time.
Of the hardships and privations that were the common lot of all who came in the early days. I will not write. it is too well known to those who stood so loyally together on the bleak, black waste of the York County of that day.
NARRATIVE OF MR. CHRISTIAN HOLOCHI
Father and mother and we six children drove from Illinois with our old horses, took a homestead June 15, 1866. We first pitched our tent on the Blue River and went to work building a dugout, and to get ready for the winter as we had hard winters and lots of snow. This is what made it hard for us, the snow was so deep that a team could not get through, we had to go to Lincoln to get anything at all and no money to get anything with. It was too late to raise anything when we came and there wasn't anything in the line of work to be done, so we had to stay for we couldn't get away. Never will I forget the time when we didn't have enough to eat and many times I heard mother say "I don't know where the next meal will come from." For three weeks we lived on homemade hominy, in the making of which we took the wood ashes to hull the corn and we didn't even have salt to pour over it; for clothes, we had no shoes, mother made us rag
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shoes which we six children all wore. I remember the first pair of shoes I had after we came west to Nebraska. We saw buffalo, deer, antelope and wild turkeys, but hadn't anything to shoot them with. There were lots of Indians here then and we were afraid of them at first; they would beg the last mouthful we had and we would give them some of what we had for the reason that we were afraid of them and thought they would kill us; that was all we worried about as we had been told that they would kill us if we didn't give them something to eat.
We could catch fish any time we could go to the river and ent a hole in the ice and put a piece of red calico on the hook and the moment it was in the water we would have a fish bite; we didn't have anything to fry them in so mother used to boil them, but we got so sick of boiled fish that we children could hardly look at them. Thank you, no more boiled fish in mine. I can smell them yet and that is forty years ago. I wasn't very old those days but I can remember things better that happened then than I can remember things now. But those times were the happiest times in our lives, everybody was so good and sociable and that is more than can be said of the people of today, one would divide with the other.
NARRATIVE OF MONTRAVILLE ROBBINS
On the 2d of September, 1871, we left the town of Lawrenceville, Illinois, for Nebraska, arriving in York County on the 20th day of September. We made this trip in a covered wagon, and had made the same trip in the same wagon and with the same team of horses from Lawrenceburg, Indiana, the year before. Our trip took us through Missouri about three hundred miles, which was not a very pleasant journey as it was just after the war. Mrs. Robbins and I were alone several nights. I lay under the wagon with my rifle as we did not have a watch dog with us. The first thing I did in York County was to look up a piece of land and go to Lincoln and and homestead it. There was no railroad in the county at that time nor was there in Fairmont, as we passed the con- struction party at Dorchester. After the Burlington got to Fairmont we did our trading there, but before that time we went to mill with our grain to Lincoln. Then we had grist mills at Milford, later at Beaver Crossing, then one at Red Lion, and a few years later the town of York began to loom up. Doc Converse began the building of the Union Pacific Railroad as a competing line of the Burlington ; no corruption there you see. At that time all the settlers in the county were along Blue River, there were no houses on the high prairie. I did not wait to buy lumber, for I had nothing much to buy with ; I looked around for the best location I could find and dug a hole in the bank, a kind of combination, part dugout with a front made out of nice prairie sod covered with brush and soil, all in one room, there was no parlor, but we left a place on the side so we could build a parlor at a more convenient season. That winter we did not live sumptuously-no meat, butter or milk, barley coffee. The next spring I shot deer, also an antelope, then we had some meat. The next fall when I got a dressed hog at Beaver Crossing it was away in the night before I got home, and down about Blue Vale a pack of wolves came after me and I had to fight them off until I got up west of McFadden, they were on both sides of the wagon trying to jump in; I had no gun but they finally left me.
Our next experience was the Easter storm on the 12th day of April, 1873;
Vol. I-25
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a good many of the present settlers will remember this storm in our dugout ; we were covered over for three days and nights with a light burning all the time and we could hardly tell whether it was day or night. There were times when it tried men's souls and temper, but we were in a good humor, if I do say it myself, and did the best we could under the circumstances, I should have said that the fall before this I went away down on the Blue and got five bushels of potatoes and a half dozen chickens and expected to have eggs for sale the next summer. I buried the potatoes and made a nice henhouse in the side of the bank for the chickens. In the meantime the potatoes all froze and the coyotes came in and just before daylight one morning cleaned up all the chickens. so with the snow storm, grasshoppers, the loss of the potatoes and poultry and but very few neighbors, things looked rather discouraging. Although we had neighbors that lived within one-half mile of us. Mr. and Mrs. George Brown, they were in the side of another bank and we did not know they were living there. We were young then and courageous, and little things like that didn't bother us. I got a well auger and made wells. I was gone from home a week at a time; during this time Mrs. Robbins would be living alone in the dugout with wolves and stray Indians about. Finally we got a sewing machine and several times Mrs. Robbins had to give the Indians demonstrations on this sewing machine. There were no roads then on section lines, and I can remember when we were coming to York we would take the nearest way possible. At first York consisted of a little frame house and one sod, but now as I stand on Hill Side and look over the city it is surely wonderful to see what a splendid city with its fine buildings and shade trees all built up where forty years ago there was nothing but the raw prairie. With all the hardships in the pioneer days, we have lived through them without having to go back to wife's folks and we feel fully repaid in staying by York County and sometimes I think probably we ought to be more thankful for what we have and for our health and friends,
REMINISCENCES OF PIONEER DAYS By L. D. Stilson, Soldier and Farmer
I was born July 26, 1839, in Erie County, N. Y., and lived there until the breaking out of the war of 1861-65, when on September 16, 1861, I enlisted in Company D, 49th Regiment, N. Y. Volunteers and went to the war and was soon partaker of the incidents of warfare. A bullet struck me in my chin passing up into my mouth thus rendering the eating of hard tack an unpleasant task. At another time I was put with others to digging trenches ; an accident occurred which nearly proved serious. A man behind me in the trench struck me across my back with his pick, accidentally of course. In the battle at Antietam I was wounded in the head and was unconscious for some time. When I came to the battle was over and dead soldiers lay all around me, but at last I was picked up and taken to the hospital; as soon as I recovered I was again at my post of duty. I received bullet wounds at other times. Once in getting away from the enemy at Libby prison by escaping between two guards, they fired a shot that entered the calf of my leg which I'll carry to the day of my death. I was discharged the 16th day of December, 1862. on account of physical disability,
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and lay in the hospital at Annapolis Junetion for three months from chronic difficulties caused from exposure in camp and field.
I came back to my "father's house" where kind friends cared for me most tenderly and I improved quite rapidly. In the spring I went to farming on my father's farm (my father and mother had moved to town some four miles away). I found it quite lonesome living alone, and I sought a companion to whom I was married on January 10, 1864, a Miss LaDelle Cushman, who has been a devoted wife and mother of four sons and one daughter.
I came to York County, Nebraska, March, 1870, locating on a homestead on section 22, township 10, range 2. I spent a few days looking around and went into lowa, where I superintended the building of my uncle's house. After an absence of two months I went back to York State and spent the summer settling up business and getting ready to go to my western home. 1 left there the last of August, leaving my wife and two sons to come later. My wife was con- valescing from a severe attack of spinal fever. At Lincoln, Nebraska, I was given a chance to work for the B. & M. R. R. Co., in the bridge and construction gang. from Crete to Kearney: I was with them until we reached the end of the line to Kearney. I then came to York and went to work. superintending car- penter work. I helped to build the first frame building in York. I put up some forty frame buildings in York, and several school houses in York County. I tried farming on my homestead by hiring the breaking done at four or five dollars an aere, I also put up a frame building 12x20 for a house on my farm and went back to York State for my family, July 26, 1872, returning the last of the month.
The next great event was the April storm. The day of the 13th of April had been a lovely day, but as night came on a huge black bank of clouds came up from the northwest, bringing a thunder storm and then growing cold as the north wind came, turning the rain to snow, beating against the windows and blowing the snow into every eraek and crevice. For three days we were without fresh water. As we had no well and it was unsafe to go to the neighbors, we melted snow and kept as warm as we could, burning corn on the ear and wrapping up in onter garments ; no meat in the house for three days, but the good Lord provided on the third day. In the afternoon the sun came out and looking out the south window on a pile of corn we saw a prairie chieken getting something to eat. The chicken was prepared and we enjoyed the feast.
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