the leaves on the trees (for trees were scarce then), and of money in
the pockets of most people there was none. Those were the days when that
genial plutocrat, William H. Waters, relieved the necessities of the
needy by buying up county warrants for seventy-five cents on the dollar.
Don't understand this as a reflection on the benevolent intentions of
Mr. Waters, for he paid as high a price as anybody else offered; I
mention it only to illustrate the financial condition of the people and
the body politic.
Henry Mahan was postmaster and general merchant. The combined postoffice
and store which, with a blacksmith shop, constituted the business part
of the town of Osceola, was located on the west side of the square. It
was a one and one-half story frame and on the second floor was _The
Homesteader_ (now the Osceola _Record_). Here H. T. Arnold, W. F.
Kimmel, Frank Burgess, the writer, and Stephen Fleharty exercised their
gray matter by grinding out of their exuberant and sometimes lurid
imaginations original local items and weighty editorials. In those days
if a top buggy was seen out on the open, treeless prairie, the entire
business population turned out to watch it and soon there were bets as
to whether it came from Columbus or Seward, for then there was not a top
buggy in Polk county. The first drug store was opened by John Beltzer, a
country blacksmith who suddenly blossomed from the anvil into a
full-fledged pharmacist. Doctor Stone compounded the important
prescriptions for a while.
I need not try to describe the grasshopper raid of 1874 for the
old-timers remember it and I could not picture the tragedy so that
others could see it. To see the sun's rays dimmed by the flying agents
of destruction; to witness the disappearance of every vestige of green
vegetation--the result of a year's labor, which was to most of the
inhabitants the only resource against actual want, to see this I say,
one must live through it. Many of the early settlers were young people
newly married, who had left their homes in the East with all their
earthly possessions in a covered wagon, or "prairie schooner" as it was
called, and making the trip overland, had landed with barely enough
money to exist until the first crop was harvested. Added to the loss and
privation entailed by the visitation of the winged host was the constant
dread that the next season would bring a like scourge.
On Sunday afternoon, April 13, 1873, I left the farm home of James Bell
in Valley precinct for Columbus, expecting to take the train there
Monday morning for Omaha. The season was well advanced, the treeless
prairie being covered with verdure. It was a balmy sunshiny spring day,
as nearly ideal as even Nebraska can produce.
As I left the Clother hotel that evening to attend the Congregational
church I noticed that the clouds were banking heavily in the northwest.
There was a roll of distant thunder, a flash of lightning, and a series
of gentle spring showers followed and it was raining when I went to bed
at my hotel. Next morning when I looked out of my window I could not see
half-way across the street. The wind was blowing a gale, which drove
large masses of large, heavy snow-flakes southward. Already where
obstructions were met the huge drifts were forming. This continued
without cessation of either snow or wind all day Monday and until late
Tuesday night. Wednesday about noon the snow plow came, followed by the
Monday train, which I boarded for Omaha. As the train neared Fremont I
could see the green knolls peeping up through the snow, and at Omaha the
snow had disappeared. There they had had mainly rain instead of snow. I
may say that the storm area was not over two hundred miles wide with
Clarks as about the center, the volume gradually diminishing each way
from that point. It should be borne in mind that the farmers raised
mainly spring wheat and oats. These grains had been sown several weeks
before the storm and were all up, but the storm did not injure them in
the least.
On leaving Omaha a few days later I went to Grand Island. At Gardner's
Siding, between Columbus and Clarks, a creek passed under the track.
This had filled bank high with snow which now melting, formed a lake.
The track being bad the train ran so slowly that I had time to count
fifty floating carcasses of cattle upon the surface of the water. This
was the fate of many thousands of head of stock.
Nobody dared to venture out into that storm for no human being could
face it and live. The great flakes driven by a fifty-mile gale would
soon plaster shut eyes, nose and mouth--in fact, so swift was the gale
that no headway could be made against it.
In those days merchants hauled their goods from Columbus or Seward and
all the grain marketed went to the same points. Wheat only was hauled,
corn being used for feed or fuel.
A trip to Columbus and return the same day meant something. A start
while the stars still twinkled; the mercury ten, twenty, or even thirty
degrees below, was not a pleasure trip, to the driver on a load of
wheat. But the driver was soon compelled to drop from the seat, and
trudge along slapping his hands and arms against his body to keep from
freezing. Leaving home at three or four o'clock in the morning he was
lucky if he got home again, half frozen and very weary, several hours
after dark. Speaking of exposure to wintry blasts, reminds me of a trip
on foot I made shortly after my arrival in Polk county. December 24,
1872, I started to walk from the Milsap neighborhood in Hamilton county,
several miles west of where Polk now stands, to the home of William
Stevens, near the schoolhouse of District No. 5. It was a clear, bitter
cold morning, the wind blowing strongly from the northwest, the ground
coated with a hard crust of snow. I kept my bearings as best I could,
for it should be remembered that there were no roads or landmarks and I
was traveling purely by guess. Along about mid-day I stumbled upon a
little dugout, somewhere north of where Stromsburg now stands--the first
house I had seen. On entering I found a young couple who smiled me a
welcome, which was the best they could do, for, as I saw from the
inscriptions on a couple of boxes, they were recent arrivals from
Sweden. The young lady gave me some coffee and rusks, and I am bound to
say that I never tasted better food than that coffee and those rusks. I
did not see another house until I reached the bluffs, where, about
sunset, I was gladdened by the sight of the Stevens house in the valley,
a couple of miles distant. When I finally reached this hospitable home
the fingers of both hands were frozen and my nose and ears badly
frosted.
In the early days we traveled from point to point by the nearest and
most direct route, for while the land was being rapidly taken up, there
were no section line roads. Whenever the contour of the land permitted,
we angled, being careful to avoid the patches of cultivated land. There
were no trees, no fences, and very few buildings, so, on the level
prairie, nothing obstructed the view as far as the eye could carry. The
sod houses and stables were a godsend, for lumber was very expensive and
most of the settlers brought with them lean purses. It required no
high-priced, skilled labor to build a "soddy," and properly built they
were quite comfortable.
When I grow reminiscent and allow my mind to go back to those pioneer
days, the span of time between then and now seems very brief, but when I
think longer and compare the _then_ with the _now_, it seems as though
that sod house-treeless-ox driving period must have been at least one
hundred years ago. It is a far cry from the ox team to the automobile.
PERSONAL REMINISCENCES
BY MRS. THYRZA REAVIS ROY
In March, 1865, my husband, George Roy, and I started from our home in
Avon, Illinois, to Nebraska territory. The railroad extended to St.
Joseph, Missouri. There they told us we would have to take a steamboat
up the Missouri river to Rulo, forty miles from St. Joseph. We took
passage on a small steamboat, but the ice was breaking up and the boat
ran only four miles up the river. They said it was too dangerous to go
farther so told us we would have to go back or land and get some one to
drive us to Rulo, or the Missouri side of the river across from Rulo. We
decided to land, and hired a man to drive us across country in an old
wagon. It was very cold and when we reached the place where we would
have to cross the Missouri, the ice was running in immense blocks. It
was sunset, we were forty miles from a house on that side of the river.
There was a man on the other side of the river in a small skiff. Mr. Roy
waved to him and he crossed and took us in. Every moment it seemed those
cakes of ice would crush the little skiff, but the man was an expert
dodger and after a perilous ride he let us off at Rulo. By that time it
was dark. We went to a roughly boarded up shanty they called a tavern.
It snowed that night and the snow beat in on our bed. The next morning
we hired a man to take us to Falls City, ten miles from Rulo. Falls City
was a hamlet of scarcely three hundred souls. There was a log cabin on
the square; one tiny schoolhouse, used for school, Sunday school, and
church. As far as the eye could reach, it was virgin prairie.
There was very little rain for two years after we came. All provisions,
grain, and lumber were shipped on boats to Rulo. There was only an
Indian trail between Rulo and Falls City. Everything was hauled over
that trail.
After the drouth came the grasshoppers, and for two years they took all
we had. The cattle barely lived grazing in the Nemaha valley. All grain
was shipped in from Missouri.
The people had no amusements in the winter. In the summer they had
picnics and a Methodist camp-meeting, on the Muddy river north of Falls
City.
[Illustration: MRS. CHARLES OLIVER NORTON
Tenth State Regent, Nebraska Society, Daughters of the American
Revolution. 1911-1912]
Over the Nemaha river two and one-half miles southwest of Falls City, on
a high hill above the falls from which the town was named, was an Indian
village. The Sac and Foxes and Iowa Indians occupied the village. Each
spring and fall they went visiting other tribes, or other tribes visited
them. They would march through the one street of Falls City with their
ponies in single file. The tipi poles were strapped on each side of the
ponies and their belongings and presents, for the tribe they were going
to visit, piled on the poles. The men, women, and children walked beside
the ponies, and the dogs brought up the rear. Sometimes, when the
Indians had visitors, they would have a war-dance at night and the white
people would go out to view it. Their bright fires, their scouts
bringing in the news of hostile Indians in sight, and the hurried
preparations to meet them, were quite exciting. The Indians were great
beggars, and not very honest. We had to keep things under lock and key.
They would walk right into the houses and say "Eat!" The women were all
afraid of them and would give them provisions. If there was any food
left after they had finished their eating, they would take it away with
them.
Their burying-ground was very near the village. They buried their dead
with all accoutrements, in a sitting posture in a grave about five feet
deep, without covering.
The Indians cultivated small patches of land and raised corn, beans,
pumpkins, etc. A man named Fisher now owns the land on which the Indians
lived when I reached the country.
The people were very sociable. It was a healthy country, and we had
health if very little else. We were young and the hardships did not seem
so great as they do in looking backward fifty years.
NOTE--Thyrza Reavis Roy was born August 7, 1834, in Cass county,
Illinois, the daughter of Isham Reavis and Mahala Beck Reavis. Her
great-grandfather, Isham Reavis, fought in the war of the
Revolution. Her grandfather, Charles Reavis, and her own father,
Isham Reavis, fought in the war of 1812. She is a real daughter of
the war of 1812. She is a member of the U. S. Daughters of 1812, a
member of the Deborah Avery Chapter D. A. R. of Lincoln, and a
member of the Territorial Pioneers Association of Nebraska. Her
husband, George Roy, died at Falls City March 2, 1903.
TWO SEWARD COUNTY CELEBRATIONS
BY MRS. S. C. LANGWORTHY
I recall one reminiscence of my early life in Nebraska which occurred in
1876, when we first located in Seward. We could have gone no farther,
even had we wished, as Seward was then the terminus of the Billings line
of the Burlington railroad.
We soon learned that a county celebration was to be held on the fourth
of July, and I naturally felt a great curiosity to know how a crowd of
people would look to whom we had been sending boxes of clothing and
bedding in response to appeals from the grasshopper sufferers. My
surprise cannot be imagined when I saw people clothed as well as
elsewhere and with baskets filled with an abundance of good things for a
picnic dinner.
The same pretty grove in which this gathering occurred thirty-nine years
ago is now our beautiful city park, where during the summer of 1914 our
commercial club gave an old-time barbecue costing the members twelve
hundred dollars. They secured the state band and fine speakers, and
served a bounteous dinner to about fifteen thousand people. Everything
was free to all who came, and a happier crowd can not be imagined. I
speak of this because in the years to come it will be a pleasant
reminiscence to many who may have been present.
NOTE--Elizabeth C. (Bennett) Langworthy, fourth state regent of the
Nebraska Society D. A. R., is a daughter of Jacob and Caroline
(Valentine) Bennett. Her paternal grandfather was also Jacob
Bennett, a soldier in the Revolutionary war. He was taken prisoner
and held in an English ship off the coast of Quebec for some time.
Mrs. Langworthy was born in Orleans county, New York, in 1837. The
family moved to Wisconsin in 1849, and the daughter finished her
education at Hamline University, then located at Red Wing,
Minnesota. In 1858 she was married to Stephen C. Langworthy, and in
1876 became a resident of Seward, Nebraska. Mr. Langworthy died
March 3, 1904.
Mrs. Langworthy has been active and prominent in club work, and is
widely known. She served for five years as a member of the school
board at Seward and organized the History and Art Club of Seward of
which she was president for several years. She was the first
secretary of the State Federation of Woman's Clubs, and was elected
president in 1898. Mrs. Langworthy is the mother of six children.
SEWARD COUNTY REMINISCENCES
COMPILED BY MARGARET HOLMES CHAPTER D. A. R.
Seward county shared with other counties all of the privations and
experiences of pioneer life, though it seems to have had less trouble
with hostile Indians than many localities in the state.
The struggles of pioneer settlers in the same country must necessarily
be similar, though of course differing in detail. The first settlers
deemed it important to locate on a stream where firewood could be
obtained, and they were subject to high waters, prairie fires, constant
fear of the Indian, and lack of provisions.
At one time the little band of settlers near the present site of Seward
was reduced to one pan of corn, though they were not quite as reduced as
their historic Pilgrim forefathers, when a load of provisions arrived
that had been storm-bound.
Reminiscences are best at first hand, and the following letters, taken
from the _History of Seward County_ by W. W. Cox, recount some of the
incidents of early pioneer life by those who really lived it.
Mrs. Sarah F. Anderson writes as follows:
"At the time of the great Indian scare of 1864, my father's family was
one of the families which the Nebraska City people had heard were
killed. It had been rumored throughout the little settlement that there
were bands of hostile Indians approaching, and that they were committing
great depredations as they went.
"One Sunday morning my uncle and Thomas Shields started down the river
on a scouting expedition. After an all-day search, just at nightfall,
they came suddenly upon an Indian camp. The men thought their time had
come, but the redskins were equally scared. There was no chance to back
out, and they resolved to know whether the Indians were friendly or
hostile. As they bravely approached the camp, the Indians began to
halloo, 'Heap good Omaha!' The men then concluded to camp over night
with them, and they partook of a real Indian supper. The next morning
they went home satisfied that there were no hostile Indians in the
country.
"A day or two after this, my father (William Imlay) and his brothers
were on upper Plum creek haying, when grandfather Imlay became
frightened and hastened to our house and said the Indians were coming
upon the settlement. He then hurried home to protect his own family.
About three o'clock in the afternoon we saw a band of them approaching.
They were about where the B. & M. depot now stands. We were living about
eighty rods above the present iron bridge. My mother, thinking to escape
them, locked the cabin door, and took all the children across the creek
to the spring where she kept the milk. To kill time, she commenced
churning. Very soon, four Indians (great, big, ugly creatures) came
riding up to the spring and told mother that she was wanted over to the
house. She said, 'No, I can't go; I am at work.' But they insisted in
such a menacing manner that she felt obliged to yield and go. They said,
'Come, come,' in a most determined manner. The children all clinging to
her, she started, and those great sneaking braves guarded her by one
riding on each side, one before, and one behind. Poor mother and we four
children had a slim show to escape. They watched our every movement,
step by step. When we reached the cabin, there sat sixteen burly Indians
in a circle around the door. When we came up, they all arose and saluted
mother, then sat down again. They had a young Indian interpreter. As
they thought they had the family all thoroughly frightened, the young
Indian began in good shape to tell just what they wanted. They would
like to have two cows, two sacks of flour, and some meat. Mother saw
that she must guard the provisions with desperation, as they had cost
such great effort, having been hauled from the Missouri river. The
Indians said, 'The Sioux are coming and will take all away, and we want
some.' 'No,' said mother, 'we will take our cattle and provisions and go
to Plattsmouth.' 'But,' said the Indian, 'they will be here tonight and
you can't get away.' Mother at this point began to be as much angry as
frightened. 'I will not give you anything. You are lying to me. If the
Sioux were so close, you would all be running yourselves.' At this point
another brave, who had been pacing the yard, seeing mother grow so warm,
picked up our axe and marched straight up to her and threw it down at
her feet. She picked it up and stood it beside her. Mother said
afterward that her every hair stood on end, but knowing that Indians
respect bravery, she resolved to show no cowardice. We could all see
that the whole river bend was swarming with Indians. Mother said with
emphasis, 'I now want you to take your Indians and be gone at once.'
Then they said, 'You are a brave squaw,' and the old chief motioned to
his braves and they marched off to camp. The next day our family all
went over to Plum creek and remained until things became settled.
"The following winter father was at Omaha attending the legislature; and
I am sure that over a thousand Indians passed our place during the
winter. It required pluck to withstand the thievish beggars. Sometimes
they would sneak up and peep in at the window. Then others would beg for
hours to get into the house.
"A great amount of snow had fallen, and shortly after father's return
home, a heavy winter rain inundated all the bottom lands. We all came
pretty near being drowned but succeeded in crawling out of the cabin at
the rear window at midnight. Our only refuge was a haystack, where we
remained several days entirely surrounded by water, with no possible
means of escape. Mr. Cox made several attempts to rescue us. First he
tried to cross the river in a molasses pan, and narrowly escaped being
drowned, as the wind was high and the stream filled with floating ice.
The next day he made a raft and tried to cross, but the current was so
rapid he could not manage it. It drifted against a tree where the water
was ten feet deep, and the jar threw him off his balance, and the upper
edge of the raft sank, so that the rapid current caught the raft and
turned it on edge against the tree. Mr. Cox caught hold of a limb of the
tree and saved himself from drowning. A desperate struggle ensued but he
finally kicked and stamped until he got the raft on top of the water
again, but it was wrong side up. We then gave up all hopes of getting
help until the water subsided. The fourth day, tall trees were chopped
by father on one side and by Mr. Cox on the other, and their branches
interlocked, and we made our escape to his friendly cabin, where we
found a kindly greeting, rest, food, and fire."
The following from the pen of Addison E. Sheldon is recorded in the same
_History of Seward County_:
"My recollections of early Seward county life do not go back as far as
the author's. They begin with one wind-blown day in September, 1869,
when I, a small urchin from Minnesota, crossed the Seward county line
near Pleasant Dale on my way with my mother and step-father (R. J.
McCall), to the new home on the southeast quarter of section 18, town 9,
range 2 east--about three miles southeast of the present Beaver
Crossing. Looked back upon now, through all the intervening years, it
seems to me there never was an autumn more supremely joyous, a prairie
more entrancing, a woodland belt more alluring, a life more captivating
than that which welcomed the new boy to the frontier in the beautiful
West Blue valley. The upland 'divides' as I remember them were entirely
destitute of settlement, and even along the streams, stretches of two,
three, and five miles lay between nearest neighbors.
"What has become of the Nebraska wind of those days? I have sought it
since far and wide in the Sand Hills and on the table lands of western
Nebraska--that wind which blew ceaselessly, month after month, never
pausing but to pucker its lips for a stronger blast! Where are the seas
of rosin-weed, with their yellow summer parasols, which covered the
prairie in those days? I have sought them too, and along gravelly ridges
or some old ditch yet found a few degenerate descendants of the old-time
host.
"Mention of merely a few incidents seeming to hold the drama and poetry
of frontier life at that time: 'Pittsburgh, the city of vision, at the
junction of Walnut creek and the West Blue, inhabited by a population of
20,000 people, with a glass factory, a paper factory, a brick factory,
oil wells, a peat factory, woolen mills, junction of three railway
lines, metropolis of the Blue Valley.' All this and so much more that I
dare not attempt to picture it; a real existence in the brain of
Christopher Lezenby in the years of 1871-72. What unwritten dramas sleep
almost forgotten in the memories of early settlers! When Mr. Lezenby
began to build his metropolis with the assistance of Attorney Boyd of
Lincoln and a few other disinterested speculators, he was the possessor
of several hundred acres of land, some hundreds of cattle, and other
hundreds of hogs, and a fair, unmarried daughter. What pathetic
memories of the old man, month after month, surveying off his beautiful
farm into city lots for the new metropolis, while his cattle disappeared
from the prairies and his swine from the oak thickets along the Walnut;
with sublime and childish simplicity repeating day after day the
confession of his faith that 'next week' work would begin; 'next week'
the foundation for the factories would be laid; 'next week' the railway
surveyors would set the grade stakes. And this real rural tragedy lasted
through several years, ending in the loss of all his property, the
marriage of his daughter to Irwin Stall, and the wandering forth of the
old man until he died of a broken heart in California.