Pittsburgh, a flowing well, found I think at the depth of twenty-eight
feet in the year 1874 and continuously flowing since that. Strange that
no one was wise enough to take the hint and that it was twenty years
later before the second flowing well was struck at Beaver Crossing,
leading to the systematic search for them which dotted the entire valley
with their fountains.
"There were no high water bridges across the West Blue in those days. I
remember acting as mail carrier for a number of families on the south
bank of the Blue during the high waters of two or three summers,
bringing the mail from the city of Pittsburgh postoffice on the north
bank. A torn shirt and a pair of short-legged blue overalls--my entire
wardrobe of those days--were twisted into a turban about my head, and
plunging into the raging flood of the Blue which covered all the lower
bottoms, five minutes' vigorous swimming carried me through the froth
and foam and driftwood to the other side where I once more resumed my
society clothes and, after securing the mail, upon my return to the
river bank, tied it tightly in the turban and crossed the river as
before.
"I remember my first lessons in political economy, the fierce fight
between the northern and the southern parts of the county upon the
question of voting bonds to the Midland Pacific railway during the years
1871-72. It was a sectional fight in fact, but in theory and in debate
it was a contest over some first principles of government. The question
of the people versus the corporation, since grown to such great
proportions, was then first discussed to my childish ears. One incident
of that contest is forever photographed on my brain--a crowd of one
hundred farmers and villagers lounging in the shadow of T. H. Tisdale's
old store. A yellow-skinned, emaciated lawyer from Lincoln who looked,
to my boyish vision, like a Chinese chieftain from Manchuria, was
speaking with fluent imaginative words in favor of the benefits the
people of Seward county might secure by voting the bonds. This was H. W.
Sommerlad, registrar of Lincoln land office. A short Saxon opponent,
Rev. W. G. Keen of Walnut creek, was picked from the crowd by
acclamation to reply to the Lincoln lawyer. The impression of his fiery
words denouncing the aggressions of capital and appealing to the
memories of the civil war and the Revolutionary fathers to arouse the
people's independence is with me yet.
"Next in the economic vista is the old Brisbin sod schoolhouse east of
Walnut creek where a grange was organized. Here a lyceum was held
through several winters in which the debates were strongly tinctured
with the rising anti-monopoly sentiment of those hard times. George
Michael and Charley Hunter, leaders of the boyish dare-deviltry of those
days, were chosen as judges upon the debates in order to insure their
good behavior, and they gravely decided for the negative or affirmative
many deep discussions of doubtful themes.
"Beaver Crossing in the early days was remarkable for the great number
of boys in its surrounding population, and I have observed in these
later years when visiting there, that the custom of having boy babies in
the family does not appear to have entirely gone out of fashion. That
great swarm of restless boy population which gathered, sometimes two
hundred strong, Saturday afternoons on the Common! What 'sleights of art
and feats of strength' went round! What struggles of natural selection
to secure a place upon the 'First Nine' of the baseball team! For years
Beaver Crossing had the best baseball club in three or four counties,
and some of her players won high laurels on distant diamonds.
"One custom which obtained in those frontier days seems to have been
peculiar to the time, for I have not found it since in other frontier
communities. It was the custom of 'calling off' the mail upon its
arrival at the postoffice. The postmaster, old Tom Tisdale--a genuine
facsimile of Petroleum V. Nasby--would dump the sacks of mail, brought
overland on a buckboard, into a capacious box upon the counter of his
store, then pick up piece by piece, and read the inscriptions thereon in
a sonorous voice to the crowd, sometimes consisting of one or two
hundred people. Each claimant would cry out 'Here!' when his name was
called. Sometimes two-thirds of the mail was distributed in this way,
saving a large amount of manual labor in pigeon-holing the same. Nasby
had a happy and caustic freedom in commenting upon the mail during the
performance, not always contemplated, I believe, by the United States
postal regulations. A woman's handwriting upon a letter addressed to a
young man was almost certain to receive some public notice from his
sharp tongue, to the great enjoyment of the crowd and sometimes the
visible annoyance of the young man. At one time he deliberately turned
over a postal card written by a well-known young woman of Beaver
Crossing who was away at school, and on observing that the message was
written both horizontally and across, commented, 'From the holy mother,
in Dutch.' If I should ever meet on the mystic other shore, which poets
and philosophers have tried to picture for us, old Tom Tisdale, I would
expect to see him with his spectacles pushed back from his nose,
'calling off' the mail to the assembled spirits, the while entertaining
them with pungent personal epigrams.
"One startling picture arises from the past, framed as Browning writes
'in a sheet of flame'--the picture of the great prairie fire of October,
1871, which swept Seward county from south to north, leaving hardly a
quarter section of continuous unburnt sod. A heavy wind, increasing to a
hurricane, drove this fire down the West Blue valley. It jumped the Blue
river in a dozen places as easily as a jack rabbit jumps a road. It left
a great broad trail of cindered haystacks and smoking stables and
houses. A neighbor of ours who was burnt out remarked that he had 'been
through hell in one night,' and had 'no fear of the devil hereafter.'
"At the other end of the scale of temperature are recollections of the
'Great Storm' of April 13, 14, 15, 1873. There burst from a June
atmosphere the worst blizzard in the history of the state. For three
days it blew thick, freezing sleet, changing to snow so close and dense
and dark that a man in a wagon vainly looked for the horses hitched to
it through the storm. Men who were away from home lost their lives over
the state. Stock was frozen to death. In sod houses, dugouts, and log
cabins settlers huddled close about the hearth, burning enormous baskets
of ten-cent corn to keep from freezing.
"In these later years of life, Fate has called me to make minute study
of many historical periods and places. Yet my heart always turns to
review the early scenes of settlement and civilization in Seward county
with a peculiar thrill of personal emotion and special joy in the risen
and rising fortunes of those who there built the foundations of a great
commonwealth. No land can be dearer than the land of one's childhood and
none can ever draw my thoughts further over plain or ocean than the
happy valley upon West Blue whose waters spring spontaneously from
beneath the soil to water her fortunate acres."
PIONEERING
BY GRANT LEE SHUMWAY
On September 15, 1885, I crossed the Missouri river at Omaha, and came
west through Lincoln. The state fair was in full blast but our party did
not stop, as we were bound for Benkleman, Parks, and Haigler, Nebraska.
After looking over Dundy county, Nebraska, and Cheyenne county, Kansas,
the rest of the party returned to Illinois.
I went to Indianola, and with Mr. Palmatier, I started for the Medicine.
He carried the mail to Stockville and Medicine, which were newly
established postoffices in the interior to the north, and his conveyance
was the hind wheels of an ordinary wagon, to which he had fashioned a
pair of thills. He said that he was using such a vehicle because it
enabled him to cut off several miles in the very rough country through
which we passed.
The jolting was something fierce, but being young and used to riding in
lumber wagons, I did not mind. I was very much interested in everything,
but the things that linger most clearly in my mind after all these years
are the bushy whiskered, hopeful faces of the men who greeted us from
dugouts and sod cabins. The men's eyes were alight with enthusiasm and
candor, but I do not remember of having seen a woman or child upon the
trip.
It seems that men can drop back into the primitive so much more easily
than women: not perhaps with all the brutality of the First Men, but
they can adjust themselves to the environment of the wilderness, and the
rusticity of the frontier, with comparative ease.
I stopped for the night in Hay caÒon, a branch of Lake caÒon, at Hawkins
brothers' hay camp, and I remember when they told me that they had three
hundred tons of hay in the stack, that it seemed almost an inconceivable
quantity. On our old Illinois farm twenty-five or thirty tons seemed a
large amount, but three hundred tons was beyond our range of reasoning.
However, we now stack that much on eighty acres in the Scottsbluff
country.
In due time I went on over the great tableland to the city of North
Platte, and going down the caÒon on the south side of the south river, I
killed my first jack rabbit, an event which seemed to make me feel more
of a westerner than any circumstance up to that time.
My first impression of North Platte, with its twelve saloons, was not of
the best. And my conception of Buffalo Bill dropped several notches in
esteem when I saw the Wild West saloon. But in the light of years, I am
less puritanical in my views of the first people of the plains. In
subsequent years I rode the range as a cowboy, and drove twenty-mule
teams with a single line and a black-snake, and while always I remained
an abstainer and occasionally found others that did likewise, I learned
to tolerate, and then enjoy, the witticisms and foolishness of those
that did indulge. Sometimes the boys in their cups would "smoke up" the
little cities of the plains, but they never felt any resentment if one
of their number did not participate in their drinking and festive
sports.
I spent the winter of 1885 on the ranch of Hall & Evans, near North
Platte, and one of the pleasantest acquaintanceships of my life has been
that of John Evans, now registrar of the land office at North Platte.
In the spring of '86 the constant stream of emigrant wagons going west
gave one an impression that in a little time the entire West would be
filled, and I grew impatient to be upon my way and secure selections. In
May I arrived at Sidney and from there rode in a box car to Cheyenne.
When we topped the divide east of Cheyenne, I saw the snow-capped peaks
of the Rockies for the first time.
During the summer I "skinned mules," aiding in the construction of the
Cheyenne & Northern, now a part of the Hill system that connects Denver
with the Big Horn basin and Puget sound.
Returning to Sidney in the autumn, I fell in with George Hendricks, who
had been in the mines for twenty years and finally gave it up. We
shoveled coal for the Union Pacific until we had a grub stake for the
winter. I purchased a broncho, and upon him we packed our
belongings--beds, blankets, tarpaulin, provisions, cooking utensils,
tools, and clothing, and started north over the divide for "Pumpkin
creek," our promised land. In a little over a day's travel, one leading
the horse and the other walking behind to prod it along, we reached
Hackberry caÒon, and here, in a grove by a spring, we built our first
cabin.
Three sides were log, the cracks filled with small pieces of wood and
plastered with mud from the spring, and the back of the cabin was
against a rock, and up this rock we improvised a fireplace, with loose
stones and mud.
When we had rigged a bunk of native red cedar along the side of this
rude shelter, and the fire was burning in our fireplace, the coffee
steaming, the bread baking in the skillet, the odor of bacon frying, and
the wind whistling through the tree-tops, that cabin seemed a mighty
cozy place.
We could sometimes hear the coyotes and the grey wolves howl at night,
but a sense of security prevailed, and our sleep was sound. Out of the
elements at hand, we had made the rudiments of a home on land that was
to become ours--our very own--forever.
EARLY DAYS IN STANTON COUNTY
_Statement by Andrew J. Bottorff_
I came to Nebraska at the close of the civil war, having served during
the entire campaign with the Seventeenth Indiana regiment. I came west
with oxen and wagon in the fall of 1866, bringing my family. We wintered
at Rockport, but as soon as spring opened went to Stanton county, where
I took a homestead. Here we had few neighbors and our share of
hardships, but thrived and were happy.
One day I heard my dogs barking and found them down in a ravine, near
the Elkhorn river, with an elk at bay, and killed him with my axe.
The first year I was appointed county surveyor. Having no instruments at
hand, I walked to Omaha, over a hundred miles distant, and led a fat cow
to market there. I sold the cow but found no instruments. I was told of
a man at Fort Calhoun who had an outfit I might get, so wended my way
there. I found E. H. Clark, who would sell me the necessary supplies,
and I bought them; then carried them, with some other home necessities
obtained in Omaha, back to Stanton, as I had come, on foot.
I am now seventy-five years old, and have raised a large family; yet
wife and I are as happy and spry as if we had never worked, and are
enjoying life in sunny California, where we have lived for the last ten
years.
_Statement by Sven Johanson_
With my wife and two small children I reached Omaha, Nebraska, June 26,
1868. We came direct from Norway, having crossed the stormy Atlantic in
a small sailboat, the voyage taking eight weeks.
A brother who had settled in Stanton county, 107 miles from Omaha, had
planned to meet us in that city. After being there a few days this
brother, together with two other men, arrived and we were very happy.
With two yoke of oxen and one team of horses, each hitched to a load of
lumber, we journeyed from Omaha to Stanton county. Arriving there, we
found shelter in a small dugout with our brother and family, where we
remained until we filed on a homestead and had built a dugout of our
own.
We had plenty of clothing, a good lot of linens and homespun materials,
but these and ten dollars in money were all we possessed.
The land office was at Omaha and it was necessary for me to walk there
to make a filing. I had to stop along the way wherever I could secure
work, and in that way got some food, and occasionally earned a few
cents, and this enabled me to purchase groceries to carry back to my
family. There were no bridges across rivers or creeks and we were
compelled to swim; at one time in particular I was very thankful I was a
good swimmer. A brother-in-law and myself had gone to Fremont, Nebraska,
for employment, and on our return we found the Elkhorn river almost out
of its banks. This frightened my companion, who could not swim, but I
told him to be calm, we would come to no harm. I took our few groceries
and our clothing and swam across, then going back for my companion, who
was a very large man, I took him on my back and swam safely to the other
shore.
While I was away, my family would be holding down our claim and taking
care of our one cow. We were surrounded by Indians, and there were no
white people west of where we lived.
In the fall of 1869 we secured a yoke of oxen, and the following spring
hauled home logs from along the river and creek and soon had a
comfortable log house erected.
Thus we labored and saved little by little until we were able to erect a
frame house, not hewn by hand, but made from real lumber, and by this
time we felt well repaid for the many hardships we had endured. The old
"homestead" is still our home, but the dear, faithful, loving mother who
so bravely bore all the hardships of early days was called to her rich
reward January 28, 1912. She was born June 15, 1844, and I was born
October 14, 1837.
FRED E. ROPER, PIONEER
BY ERNEST E. CORRELL
Fred E. Roper, a pioneer of Hebron, Nebraska, was eighty years old on
October 10, 1915. Sixty-one years ago Mr. Roper "crossed the plains,"
going from New York state to California.
Eleven years more than a half-century--and to look back upon the then
barren stretch of the country in comparison with the present fertile
region of prosperous homes and populous cities, takes a vivid stretch of
imagination to realize the dreamlike transformation. At that time San
Francisco was a village of about five hundred persons living in adobe
huts surrounded by a mud wall for a fortified protection from the
marauding Indians.
Fred E. Roper was born in Candor Hill, New York, October 10, 1835. When
three years old he moved with his parents to Canton, Bradford county,
Pennsylvania, and later moved with his brother to Baraboo, Wisconsin.
Then he shipped as a "hand" on a raft going down the Wisconsin and
Mississippi rivers to St. Louis, getting one dollar a day and board. He
returned north on a steamer, stopping at Burlington, Iowa, where his
sister resided.
In 1854, when he was nineteen years of age, Mr. Roper "started west."
His sister walked to the edge of the town with him as he led his
one-horned cow, which was to furnish milk for coffee on the camp-out
trip, which was to last three months, enroute to the Pacific coast.
There were three outfits--a horse train, mule train, and ox train. Mr.
Roper traveled in an ox train of twenty-five teams. The travelers
elected officers from among those who had made the trip before, and
military discipline prevailed.
At nights the men took turns at guard duty in relays--from dark to
midnight and from midnight to dawn, when the herder was called to turn
the cattle out to browse. One man herded them until breakfast was ready,
and another man herded them until time to yoke up. This overland train
was never molested by the Indians, although one night some spying
Cheyennes were made prisoners under guard over night until the oxen were
yoked up and ready to start.
[Illustration: OREGON TRAIL MONUMENT, TWO MILES NORTH OF HEBRON
Erected by the citizens of Hebron and Thayer county, and Oregon Trail
Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, dedicated May 24, 1915.
Cost $400]
The prospectors crossed the Missouri river at Omaha, which at that time
had no residences or business buildings. Enroute to Salt Lake City, the
South Platte route was followed, averaging about twenty miles a day.
Enough provisions were carried to last through the journey and as they
had some provisions left when they reached Salt Lake City, they were
sold to the half-starved Mormons at big prices.
Some perplexing difficulties were encountered on the journey. At one
point in the mountains, beyond Salt Lake City, the trail was so narrow
that the oxen were unhitched and led single file around the cliff, while
the wagons were taken apart and lowered down the precipice with ropes.
When crossing the desert, additional water had to be carried in extra
kegs and canteens. When the tired cattle got near enough to the river to
smell the fresh water, they pricked up their ears, stiffened their
necks, and made a rush for the stream, so the men had to stand in front
of them until the chains were loosened to prevent their crazily dashing
into the water with the wagons.
Mr. Roper worked by the day for three months in the mines northeast of
San Francisco. While placer mining, he one day picked up a gold nugget,
from which his engagement ring was made by a jeweler in San Francisco,
and worn by Mrs. Roper until her death, October 28, 1908. The ring was
engraved with two hearts with the initials M. E. R., and is now in the
possession of their son Maun, whose initials are the same.
Mr. Roper was one of a company of three men who worked a claim that had
been once worked over, on a report that there was a crevasse that had
not been bottomed. The first workers did not have "quicksilver," which
is necessary to catch fine gold, but Mr. Roper's company had a jug
shipped from San Francisco. Nothing less than a fifty-pound jug of
quicksilver would be sold, at fifty cents a pound. This was used in
sluice-boxes as "quicksilver riffles," to catch the fine float gold,
when it would instantly sink to the bottom of the quicksilver, while the
dirt and stones would wash over; the coarse rock would be first tossed
out with a sluice-fork (similar to a flat-tined pitchfork). In three
years the three men worked the mine out, making about fifteen hundred
dollars apiece.
With his share carried in buckskin sacks belted around his waist under
his clothes, Mr. Roper started in a sailing vessel up north along the
coast on a trip, hunting for richer diggings. Then he went on a steamer
to the Isthmus of Panama, which he crossed with a hired horse team, then
by steamer to New York and by railroad to Philadelphia to get his gold
minted.
After his marriage in 1861 Mr. Roper returned to the West and in '64 ran
a hotel at Beatrice called "Pat's Cabin." When Nebraska voted on the
question of admission to statehood, Mr. Roper's ballot was vote No. 3.
Desiring to get a home of his own, Fred Roper came on west into what is
now Thayer county, and about six miles northwest of the present site of
Hebron up the Little Blue, he bought out the preÎmption rights of Bill
and Walt Hackney, who had "squatted" there with the expectation of
paying the government the customary $1.25 per acre. In certain
localities those claims afterwards doubled to $2.50 per acre. Mr. Roper
paid only the value of the log cabin and log stables, and came into
possession of the eighty acres, which he homesteaded, and later bought
adjoining land for $1.25 per acre.
Occasionally he made trips to St. Joe and Nebraska City for supplies,
which he freighted overland to Hackney ranch. At that time Mr. Roper
knew every man on the trail from the Missouri river to Kearney. On these
trips he used to stop with Bill McCandles, who was shot with three other
victims by "Wild Bill" on Rock creek in Jefferson county.
The first house at Hackney ranch was burned by the Cheyenne Indians in
their great raid of 1864, at which time Miss Laura Roper (daughter of
Joe B. Roper) and Mrs. Eubanks were captured by the Indians near Fox
Ford in Nuckolls county and kept in captivity until ransomed by Colonel
Wyncoop of the U. S. army for $1,000. Si Alexander of Meridian
(southeast of the present town of Alexandria), was with the government
troops at the time of Miss Roper's release near Denver. Her parents,
believing her dead, had meanwhile moved back to New York state. (Laura
Roper is still alive, being now Mrs. Laura Vance, at Skiatook,
Oklahoma.) At the time of the above-mentioned raid, the Indians at
Hackney ranch threw the charred cottonwood logs of the house into the
well, to prevent travelers from getting water. Fred Roper was then at
Beatrice, having just a few days before sold Hackney ranch to an
overland traveler. After the raid the new owner deserted the place, in
the fall of 1869, and in a few months Mr. Roper returned from Beatrice
and again preÎmpted the same place.
In 1876 Mr. and Mrs. Roper moved to Meridian and ran a tavern for about
a year, then moved back to Hackney, where they resided until the fall of
1893, when they moved into Hebron to make their permanent home. Mr.
Roper was postmaster at Hebron for four years under Cleveland's last
administration.
THE LURE OF THE PRAIRIES
BY LUCY L. CORRELL
The memories of the long hot days of August, 1874, are burned into the
seared recollection of the pioneers of Nebraska. For weeks the sun had
poured its relentless rays upon the hopeful, patient people, until the
very atmosphere seemed vibrant with the pulsing heat-waves.