of school at a salary of fifty dollars a month, and taught in one room
all the pupils of Fairbury and surrounding country.
Mr. Cross announced in the _Gazette_ that no town of its size in the
state was so badly in need of a shoemaker as Fairbury, and he hoped some
wandering son of St. Crispin would come this way. Just such a wandering
shoemaker came in the person of Robert Christian, with all his clothes
and tools in a satchel, and twenty-five cents in his pocket. He managed
to get enough leather from worn-out boots given him to patch and
halfsole others, and was soon prosperous.
During the summer of 1871 C. F. Steele built a two-story building on the
lot now occupied by the First National bank, the first floor for a
furniture store, the second floor for a home. When nearly completed a
hurricane demolished it and scattered the lumber over the prairie for
two miles south. It was a hard blow on Mr. Steele. He gathered together
the wind-swept boards and, undismayed, began again the building of his
store and business.
In the fall of 1871, William Allen and I built the Star hotel, a
two-story building, on the east side, with accommodations for ten
transient guests--large enough, we thought, for all time.
In the early days of my hotel experience, I was offered some cabbages by
a farmer boy--rather a reserved and studious looking lad. He raised good
cabbages on his father's homestead a few miles north of town. After
dickering awhile over the price, I took his entire load. He afterwards
said that I beat him down below cost of production, and then cleaned him
out, while I insisted that he had a monopoly and the price of cabbages
should have been regulated by law. Soon after, I was surprised to find
him in my room taking an examination for a teacher's certificate, my
room-mate being the county superintendent, and rather astonished, I
said, "What! you teach school?"--a remark he never forgot. He read law
with Slocumb & Hambel, was some time afterwards elected county attorney
and later judge of this district. Ten years ago he was elected one of
the judges of the supreme court of the state of Nebraska, and this
position he still fills with distinguished ability. I scarcely need to
mention that this was Charles B. Letton.
A celebration was held on July 4, 1871, at Mattingly's sawmill, and
enthusiasm and patriotism were greatly stimulated by the blowing of a
steam whistle which had recently been installed in the mill. Colonel
Thomas Harbine, vice-president of the St. Joseph & Denver City R. R.
Co., now the St. Joseph & Grand Island railroad, made the principal
address, his subject being "The railroad, the modern civilizer, may we
hail its advent." The Otoe Indian, Jim Whitewater, got drunk at this
celebration, and on his way to the reservation murdered two white men
who were encamped near Rock creek. He was arrested by the Indians,
brought to Fairbury, and delivered to the authorities, after which chief
Pipe Stem and chief Little Pipe visited the _Gazette_ office and watched
the setting of type and printing on the press with many a grunt of
satisfaction. I was present at the trial of Whitewater the following
spring. After the verdict of guilty was brought in, Judge O. P. Mason
asked him if he had anything to say why judgment should not be
pronounced. Whitewater proceeded to make a lengthy speech, ridiculed the
former sheriff, S. J. Alexander, and commenced criticizing the judge.
The judge ordered him to sit down. A look of livid rage came over
Whitewater's face, and he stooped slightly as though to spring. Then the
judge turned pale, and in that rasping voice which all who knew him
remember well, commanded the sheriff to seat the prisoner, which was
done.
The spring of 1872 marked a new era in the life of Fairbury. On March
13th of that year the St. Joseph and Denver City railroad built into and
through our city. From the time the track-layers struck Jenkin's Mills,
a crowd of us went down every day to see the locomotive and watch the
progress of the work. One of our fondest dreams had come true.
In the fall of 1873 Col. Thomas Harbine began the erection of the first
bank building, a one-story frame structure on the east side of the
square. George Cross was the bank's first customer, and purchased draft
No. 1. Upon the death of Col. Harbine's son John, in August, 1875, I
became cashier, bookkeeper, teller, and janitor of the "Banking House of
Thomas Harbine." In 1882 this bank incorporated under the state banking
law as the "Harbine Bank of Fairbury," and I have been connected with it
in various capacities ever since.
We had our pleasures in those pioneer days, but had to make them
ourselves. Theatrical troupes never visited us--we were not on the
circuit--but we had a dramatic company of our own. Mr. Charles B.
Slocumb, afterwards famous as the author of the Slocumb high license
law, was the star actor in the club. A local critic commenting on our
first play said: "Mr. Slocumb as a confirmed drunkard was a decided
success. W. W. Watson as a temperance lecturer was eminently fitted for
his part. G. W. Hansen as a hard-up student would have elicited applause
on any stage."
Election days in those "good old times" gave employment to an army of
workers sent out by candidates to every precinct to make votes, and to
see that those bought or promised were delivered. John McT. Gibson of
Gibson precinct, farmer, green-backer, and poet, read an original poem
at a Fourth of July celebration forty years ago, one verse of which
gives us an idea of the bitterness of feeling existing in the political
parties of that time:
"Unholy Mammon can unlock the doors
Of congress halls and legislative floors,
Dictate decisions of its judges bought,
And poison all the avenues of thought.
Metes out to labor miseries untold,
And grasps forever at a crown of gold."
I do not care to live too much in the past; but when the day's work is
done, I love to draw aside the curtain that hides the intervening years,
and in memory live over again Fairbury's pioneer days of the early
seventies. Grasshoppers and drouth brought real adversity then, for,
unlike the present, we were unprepared for the lean years. But we had
hope and energy, and pulled together for the settlement of our county
and the growth and prosperity of Fairbury.
We dreamed then of the days to come--when bridges should span the
streams, and farm houses and fields of grain and corn should break the
monotony of the silent, unending prairie. We were always working for
better things to come--for the future. The delectable mountains were
always ahead of us--would we ever reach them?
THE EARLIEST ROMANCE OF JEFFERSON COUNTY, NEBRASKA
BY GEORGE W. HANSEN
One hundred and three years ago Hannah Norton was born "away down east"
in the state of Maine. Hannah married Jason Plummer, and in the year
1844, seized by the wanderlust, they decided to move west. One morning
their little daughter Eleanor, four years old, stood outside the cabin
door with her rag doll pressed tightly to her breast, and watched her
parents load their household goods into the heavy, covered wagon, yoke
up the oxen, and make preparations for a long journey.
As little Eleanor clambered up the wheel and into the wagon, she felt
none of the responsibilities of the long pioneer life that lay before
her, nor did she know or care about her glorious ancestry.
Only a few decades previous her ancestor, Major Peter Norton, who had
fought gallantly in the war of the Revolution, had gone to his
reward. His recompense on earth had been the consciousness of
patriotic duty well performed in the cause of liberty and
independence. A hero he was, but the Maine woods were full of
Revolutionary heroes. He was not yet famous. It was reserved for
Peter Norton's great-great-great-granddaughters to perpetuate the
story of his heroic deeds. One, Mrs. Auta Helvey Pursell, the
daughter of our little Eleanor, is now a member of Quivera chapter,
D. A. R., of Fairbury, Nebraska, and another, Lillian Norton, is
better known to the world she has charmed with her song, as Madame
Nordica.
But little Eleanor was wholly unmindful of past or future on that
morning long ago. She laughed and chattered as the wagon rolled slowly
on its westward way.
A long, slow, and painful journey through forests and over mountains,
then down the Ohio river to Cincinnati was at last finished, and the
family made that city their home. After several years the oxen were
again yoked up and the family traveled to the West, out to the prairies
of Iowa, where they remained until 1863. Then, hearing of a still
fairer country where free homes could be taken in fertile valleys that
needed no clearing, where wild game was abundant and chills and fever
unknown, Jason, Hannah, and Eleanor again traveled westward. After a
toilsome journey they settled in Swan creek valley, Nebraska territory,
near the present northern line of Jefferson county.
Theirs were pioneer surroundings. The only residents were ranchers
scattered along the creeks at the crossings of the Oregon trail. A few
immigrants came that year and settled in the valleys of the Sandys, Swan
creek, Cub creek, Rose creek, and the Little Blue. No human habitation
stood upon the upland prairies. The population was four-fifths male, and
the young men traveled up and down the creeks for miles seeking partners
for their dances, which were often given. But it was always necessary
for a number of men to take the part of ladies. In such cases they wore
a handkerchief around one arm to distinguish them.
The advent of a new family into the country was an important event, and
especially when a beautiful young lady formed a part of it. The families
of Joel Helvey and Jason Plummer became neighborly at once, visiting
back and forth with the friendly intimacy characteristic of all
pioneers. Paths were soon worn over the divide between Joel Helvey's
ranch on the Little Sandy and the Plummer home on Swan creek, and one of
Joel's boys was accused of making clandestine rambles in that direction.
Certain it was that many of the young men who asked Eleanor for her
company to the dances were invariably told that Frank Helvey had already
spoken. Their dejection was explained in the vernacular of the
time--they had "gotten the mitten."
The music for the dances was furnished by the most energetic fiddlers in
the land, and the art of playing "Fisher's Hornpipe," "Devil's Dream,"
and "Arkansaw Traveler" in such lively, triumphant tones of the fiddle
as played by Joe Baker and Hiram Helvey has been lost to the world.
Sometimes disputes were settled either before or after the dance by an
old-fashioned fist fight. In those days the accepted policy was that if
you threshed your adversary soundly, the controversy was settled--there
was no further argument about it. At one dance on the Little Sandy some
"boys" from the Blue decided to "clear out" the ranchers before the
dance, and in the lively melee that followed, Frank Helvey inadvertently
got his thumb in his adversary's mouth; and he will show you yet a scar
and cloven nail to prove this story. The ranchers more than held their
own, and after the battle invited the defeated party to take part in the
dance. The invitation was accepted and in the morning all parted good
friends.
On August 6, 1864, the Overland stage, which had been turned back on its
way to the west, brought news that the Sioux and Cheyenne were on the
warpath. They had massacred entire settlements on the Little Blue and
along the trail a few miles west, and were planning to kill every white
person west of Beatrice and Marysville.
For some time the friendly old Indians had told Joel Helvey that the
young men were chanting the old song:
"Some day we shall drive the whites back
Across the great salt water
Whence they came;
Happy days for the Sioux
When the whites go back."
Little attention had been paid to these warnings, the Helvey family
believing they could take care of themselves as they had during the past
eighteen years in the Indian country. But the report brought by the
stage was too alarming to be disregarded; and the women asked to be
taken to a place of safety.
At this time Mrs. Plummer and her daughter Eleanor were visiting at the
home of Joel Helvey. They could not return to Swan creek, for news had
come that all Swan creek settlers had gone to Beatrice. There was no
time to be lost. The women and father Helvey, who was then in failing
health, were placed in wagons, the boys mounted horses to drive the
cattle, and all "struck out" over the trail following the divide towards
Marysville, where breastworks had been thrown up and stockades had been
built.
During the day Frank found many excuses to leave the cattle with his
brothers while he rode close to the wagon in which Eleanor was seated.
It was a time to try one's courage and he beguiled the anxious hours
with tales of greater dangers than the impending one and assured her,
with many a vow of love, that he could protect her from any attack the
Indians might make.
The first night the party camped at the waterhole two miles northwest of
the place where now an imposing monument marks the crossing of the
Oregon trail and the Nebraska-Kansas line. Towards evening of the next
day they halted on Horseshoe creek. In the morning it was decided to
make this their permanent camp. There was abundant grass for their
stock, and here they would cut and stack their winter hay.
A man in the distance saw the camp and ponies, and mistaking the party
for Indians, hurried to Marysville and gave the alarm. Captain
Hollenberg and a squad of militia came out and from a safe distance
investigated with a spyglass. Finding the party were white people he
came down and ordered them into Marysville. The captain said the Indians
would kill them all and, inflamed by the bloodshed, would be more
ferocious in their attack on the stockade.
The Helveys preferred taking their chances with the Indians rather than
leave their cattle to the mercies of the Kansas Jayhawkers, and told the
captain that when the Indians came they would get to Marysville first
and give the alarm.
Their camp was an ideal spot under the grateful shadow of noble trees.
The songs of birds in the branches above them, the odor of prairie
flowers and the new-mown hay about them, lent charm to the scene. Two of
the party, at least, lived in an enchanted land. After the blistering
heat of an August day Frank and Eleanor walked together in the shadows
and coolness of night and watched the moon rise through the trees. And
here was told the old, old story, world old yet ever new. Here were laid
the happy plans for future years. And yet through all these happy days
there ran a thread of sorrow. Father Joel Helvey failed rapidly, and on
September 3 he passed away. After he was laid to rest, the entire party
returned to the ranch on Little Sandy.
The day for the wedding, September 21, at last arrived. None of the
officers qualified to perform marriage ceremonies having returned since
the Indian raid, Frank and Eleanor, with Frank's sister as chaperon,
drove to Beatrice. On arriving there they were delighted to meet
Eleanor's father. His consent to the marriage was obtained and he was
asked to give away the bride. The marriage party proceeded to Judge
Towle's cabin on the Big Blue where the wedding ceremony was solemnly
performed and "Pap" Towle gave the bride the first kiss.
And thus, just fifty years ago, the first courtship in Jefferson county
was consummated.
EXPERIENCES ON THE FRONTIER
BY FRANK HELVEY
I was born July 7, 1841, in Huntington county, Indiana. My father, Joel
Helvey, decided in 1846 to try his fortune in the far West. Our family
consisted of father, mother, three boys, and three girls. So two heavy
wagons were fitted up to haul heavy goods, and a light wagon for mother
and the girls. The wagons were the old-fashioned type, built very heavy,
carrying the customary tar bucket on the rear axle.
Nebraska was at this time in what was called the Indian country, and no
one was allowed to settle in it. We stopped at old Fort Kearny--now
Nebraska City. In a short time we pulled up stakes and housed in a log
cabin on the Iowa side. Father, two brothers--Thomas and Whitman--and I
constructed a ferry to run across the Missouri river, getting consent of
the commandant at the fort to move the family over on the Nebraska side;
but he said we would have to take our chances with the Indians. We broke
a small patch of ground, planting pumpkins, melons, corn, etc. The
Indians were very glad to see us and very friendly--in fact, too much
so. When our corn and melons began to ripen, they would come in small
bands, gather the corn and fill their blankets. It did no good for us to
protest, so we boys thought we would scare them away. We hid in the
bushes close to the field. Soon they came and were filling their
blankets. We shot over their heads, but the Indians didn't scare--they
came running straight toward us. They gave us a little of our own
medicine and took a few shots at us. We didn't scare any more Indians.
When word came in the fall of 1858 that gold had been discovered in
Pike's Peak by the wagonload, that settled it. We got the fever, and in
April, 1859, we started for Pike's Peak. We went by the way of Beatrice,
striking the Overland trail near the Big Sandy. An ex-soldier, Tim
Taylor, told us he believed the Little Sandy to be the best place in
southern Nebraska. We built a ranch house on the trail at the crossing
of Little Sandy and engaged in freighting from the Missouri river to
the Rocky Mountains. This we did for several years, receiving seven to
eight cents per pound. We hauled seven thousand to eight thousand pounds
on a wagon, and it required from seventy-five to eighty days to make a
round trip with eight and ten yoke of oxen to a wagon. I spent about
nine years freighting across the plains from Atchison, Leavenworth, St.
Joseph, and Nebraska City to Denver, hauling government supplies to Fort
Laramie. In 1863-64 I served as substitute stage driver, messenger, or
pony express rider. I have met at some time or another nearly every
noted character or "bad man" that passed up and down the trail. I met
Wild Bill for the first time at Rock Creek ranch. I met him often after
the killing of McCanles, and helped bury the dead. I was well acquainted
with McCanles. Wild Bill was a remarkable man, unexcelled as a shot,
hard to get acquainted with. Lyman, or Jack, Slade was considered the
worst man-killer on the plains.
The Indians did not give us much trouble until the closing year of the
civil war. Our trains were held up several times, being forced to
corral. We were fortunate not to lose a man. I have shot at hundreds of
Indians. I cannot say positively that I ever killed one, although I was
considered a crack shot. I can remember of twenty or more staying with
us one night, stretching out on their blankets before the fireplace, and
departing in the morning without making a move out of the way. The
Pawnees and Otoes were very bitter toward the Sioux and Cheyennes. In
the summer of 1862 over five hundred Indians were engaged in an all-day
fight on the Little Blue river south of Meridian. That night over a
hundred warriors danced around a camp-fire with the scalps of their foes
on a pole, catching the bloody scalp with their teeth. How many were
killed we never knew.
My brothers and I went on one special buffalo hunt with three different
tribes of Indians--Otoes, Omahas, and Pawnees--about one thousand in
all, on Rose creek, about where the town of Hubbell is situated. We were
gone about four days. The Indians would do all the killing. When they
got what they wanted, then we boys would get our meat. There was plenty
for all. The prairies were covered with buffalo; they were never out of
sight. On the 4th of July, 1859, six of us with two wagons, four yoke
of oxen to a wagon, went over on the Republican where there were always
thousands of buffalo. We were out two weeks and killed what meat we
wanted. We always had a guard out at night when we camped, keeping the
wolves from our fresh meat. We came home to the ranch heavily loaded. We
sold some and dried some for our own use.
I homesteaded, June 13, 1866, on the Little Blue, five miles northwest
of Fairbury, and helped the settlers looking for homesteads locate their
land. My father, Joel Helvey, entered forty acres where we had
established our ranch on Little Sandy in 1861, the first year any land
was entered in this county. I was the first sheriff of this county;
served four years, 1867-1870. No sheriff had qualified or served before
1867. County business was done at Big Sandy and Meridian, and at the
houses of the county officers. We carried the county records around from
place to place in gunny sacks.
I am glad I participated in the earliest happenings of this county, and
am proud to be one of its citizens.
[Illustration: MRS. ELIZABETH C. LANGWORTHY
Seventh State Regent, Nebraska Society, Daughters of the American
Revolution. 1905-1906]
LOOKING BACKWARD
BY GEORGE E. JENKINS
Looking backward forty years and more, I feel as Longfellow so
beautifully expresses it,
"You may build more splendid habitations,
Fill your rooms with sculpture and with paintings,
But you cannot buy with gold the old associations,"
for in that time I have seen Fairbury grow from a little hamlet to a
city of the first class, surrounded by a country that we used to call
"the Indian country," considered unfit for agricultural purposes, but
today it blossoms as the rose and no finer land lies anywhere.
I have read with great interest of the happenings of ten, twenty, thirty
years ago as published each week in our Fairbury papers, but am going to
delve into ancient history a little deeper and tell you from personal
experience of the interesting picture presented to me forty-odd years
ago, I think in the year 70 or '71, for I distinctly remember the day I
caught the first glimpse of Fairbury. It was a bright and sunshiny
morning in July. We had been making the towns in western Kansas and had
gotten rather a late start from Concordia the day before; a storm coming
up suddenly compelled us to seek shelter for the night. My traveling
companion was A. V. Whiting, selling shoes, and I was selling dry-goods,
both from wholesale houses in St. Joseph, Missouri. Mr. Whiting is well
and honorably known in Fairbury as he was afterwards in business there
for many years. He has been a resident of Lincoln for twenty-three
years.
There were no railroads or automobiles in the country at that time and
we had to depend on a good pair of horses and a covered spring wagon. We
found a place of shelter at Marks' mill, located on Rose creek fifteen
miles southwest of Fairbury, and here we stayed all night. I shall
always remember our introduction there, viz: as we drove up to the house
I saw a large, portly old man coming in from the field on top of a load
of hay, and as I approached him I said, "My name is Jenkins, sir--" but
before I could say more he answered in a deep bass voice, saying, "My
name is Clodhopper, sir," which he afterwards explained was the name
that preachers of the United Brethren church were known by at that time.
This man, Marks, was one of the first county treasurers of Jefferson
county, and it is related of him that while he was treasurer he had
occasion to go to Lincoln, the capital of the state, to pay the taxes of
the county, and being on horseback he lost his way and meeting a
horseman with a gun across his shoulder, he said to the stranger, "I am
treasurer of Jefferson county. My saddle-bags are full of gold and I am
on the way to Lincoln to pay the taxes of the county, but I have lost my
way. Please direct me."