Dad went bare footed in the summer but I expect he had shoes in the winter for they went back to Ord for the winter for the first year.
Yes, there were rattlesnakes.  My sister was nearly bitten by one.  Mother had sent her out in her little chair and they had a small dog that began barking.  Mother went to see about her (Clara) and the snake was coiled ready to strike.  Somehow Mother was able to save her. (Written by Flossie Ewing Andrews)

EDNA BIVENS FINK

We used old-fashioned kerosene lamp sand lanterns.  We used old-fashioned sad irons heated on the range.  The mattress on my bed was a tick filled with hay, then a feather tick over that.  Father made the bedstead, just slats and no springs.

We had the first organ that I remember and my folks brought it from Tecumseh, along with a black walnut dresser, and a high-headed black walnut bedstead.  They also brought a flour chest that would hold about five hundred pounds of flour.  This besides a heavy black walnut table was the only furniture that we had that my Father didn’t make.

John Good and my brother-in-law Lafe Frizzell both played violins for dances.

I don’t remember the first baby born in the community.  The first person I remember being buried in Purdum was _____ Shriner from about fifteen miles west of Purdum.  They said the country was so healthy that they had to shoot a man to start a cemetery.  This cemetery was about a mile south of Purdum back against the hills.  The graves filled with water and the cemetery had to be moved.  The only other burials I remember in the old cemetery were George Sheik’s baby and the little Wolcott girl who was accidentally killed when cultivator shovels fell on her.   (Written by Edna Bivens Fink)

KATHERINE WALTERS CALDWELL

Dies, Bebouts, Shieks, Lowes, Walcotts, (Walcotts had turkeys and their gobbler gave me a bad time when we visited there one day.)  The Body Brothers, native of England came later as well as the Bivens family and Sauls.

Will and Tom Body came from N. Y. state in 1882, a few years later they came to Nebraska and helped build the B&M Railroad (Burlington) from Grand Island to Alliance.  Later Tom Homesteaded with his brothers Will and Jack in the West Purdum community.  The Burlington came through Halsey during 1886 or thereabouts.

It was there when my mother’s parents, youngest brother, and youngest sister (Aunt Jo) came from Germany and joined the folks on the farm in 1888.  Halsey was just a spot in the landscape with few accommodations to offer.  When they arrived in Halsey they could find no one to take them to Purdum so they walked from Halsey.  Aunt Jo related that walk to Purdum was one hill after another.

Mail was very uncertain.  The folks hadn’t received the letter telling them when they would arrive.

Our dog Muppy is worthy of mention, he was an intelligent, black Shepard, a good watch and cattle dog.  Grandmother Lotzien would take Muppy and walk to the top of a low hill northwest of the low hill northwest of the house.  A couple of the milk cows were breechy—always jumping the fence and going into the corn field across the river.  On top of the hill she would lift Muppy up on his hind legs, then, give the command.  Muppy would stop, look back to see if Grandmother was still on the hill.  She would give a yip and wave her arm and away the dog would go.

Muppy and I dug out a bull snake in the pasture one day.  There was quite a sizzle when we got down to the snake.  Rather startling since I didn’t know what the dog was digging for.

L. L. SIMONTON

We came to Halsey, Nebraska from North Manchester, Indiana by train.  We shipped some furniture by freight on the C. B. & Q Railroad.  We arrived January 10, 1896.

Our first house was a sod, laid up in  1896.  We lived in it until 1908.  Then we built the baled hay house.  It lasted 47 years.

At  that time Purdum had a very small store first run by Mrs. George White.  Later by Parker Giles.  Broken Bow was the largest town and the U. S. Land office was there.  Most of the homesteads were filed on at that place.  Darius Amsberry was the Land office Manager.

Many hogs were raised.  Two or three families would get together at one place and a butchering day.  Sometimes as many as eight two or three hundred pound hogs were butchered at one time.  Also, almost beef hanging up on a windmill tower for six months.  It got very black on the outside but was awful good meat.  At that time there were no crows or magpies to bother it and no cloth was put around it.

In the schools which averaged about five months.  The regular studies of reading, writing, and arithmetic with geography and grammar were taught.

The writer went to school until he was seventeen years old and then didn’t finish the eighth grade due to being unable to get to school only about four months in the year.

The fuel was principally cow chips, until corn was raised in quantities large enough so that corn cobs were added to the fuel list.  Most of these were picked up out of the pig pens, and when they got warmed up in the house they really put out quite a perfume that no company has been able to imitate to date.

There was a Doctor (Dr. Irwin) at Brewster and one could get him by driving with team and rig to Brewster and when one could get him, and get back depended mostly on how long it would take to get him sobered up, some clothes on him, and get him loaded up.  One man in Brewster, Mr. Peter Erickson was a good helper to get the Dr. sobered up.  He used plenty of strong, hot coffee and cold water.  By the time he got to the patient he was rearin to go and really was a smart man.

Etta Mae Giles for Bweta, and Junior and Etta Mae Giles—children of Parker and Carrie Giles.) 

The Giles family came to Goose Creek 1884 to 1886.  George Giles and his sons, Lawrence, Parker, and Richard each took a homestead on Goose Creek Valley.  Lawrence was Charles Gile’s father.  Parker was the father of EttaMae, Bweta and Junior.  Richard was the father of Everett.  Grandfather Giles decided to buy the store at Purdum.  We think he bought it from a White.  Lawrence and Parker both managed the store for Grandfather but which was first or last we don’t know.  Parker was in the store in 1896 and 1898.  Lawrence took it from Parker, Bweta says.

Carrie F. Cooper whose parents lived on the Dismal River south of Halsey to teach the Purdum school in the fall of 1895.  It was not a nine month school as we know a term.  At Christmas time, the people made quilt blocks for her.  Each block had the name of a person in the community.  One block has the name, Mrs. Teaford, 1805.  The school house was of sod.  Several of the pupils were nearly as old as the teacher.  Among the pupils were Sam White, Sam Teaford, and Roy White.  Miss Cooper boarded with the Sanford Oldham family.  I believe Mrs. Olham was the country superintendent of Blaine County.

When her term was over, Miss Cooper, she had decided to marry the store keeper and live in the Purdum community.

The wedding date was May 12, 1896, the bride, Carrie F. Cooper, the groom, Parker Giles.  The place S. M. Cooper home on the Dismal.  When the couple came to Purdum the next day they came across the hills from the Dismal to Halsey and on to Purdum.  The day was very hot and the bride arrived with a severe case of sunburn.  So housekeeping was set up in a small sod house east of town in what is now the White’s field.  For many years two or three trees marked the place.

 In 1898, it was decided to start a store on the creek and Parker was to manage it.  That summer Parker built a sod building for the store, a sod house, a sod barn, and a sod hen house on his homestead, which he had filed January 2, 1886.  When November came, things were ready for the move.  Grandfather sold the Purdum store to the Holly Cox’s at that time.  In notes mother had she mentioned moving the stock of goods.

When looking for the wedding certificate of the folks so I learn how to spell the Ministers’s name I found the certificate telling of the appointment of Parkerson R. Giles as postmaster at Purdum, Nebraska.  It was dated May 6, 1897.

Belian was the name of the minister who married the folks.  He must have been the minister who served the Purdum area from things I have heard.

Names on that Quilt made from the blocks that the people gave Mother are: Edith M. Cox, Frank Greenland, Samuel K. Teaford, Dec, 1895, Mrs. E. S. White, Charlie Hammon, Mattie S. Teaford, Sadie B. Cox, Grace A. Oldham, Jimmy Oldham, Dora Hickman, Gertrude L. Teaford, Ralph E. Teaford, Mrs. Teaford, Dec 1895, Homer G. Cox, Haner W. Cox (Big), Same White, Myrtle Hickman, Roy White, Dora Hickman, Parker R. Giles, Frank White, Ray Hickman, Albert Greenland  (This article was written by Etta Mae Giles for Bweta, and Junior and Etta Mae Giles—children of Parker and Carrie Giles.) 

BELLE J. DUNN

One of these women deserving mention was a member of a family by name of Harvey who lived in Loup County with the first settlers there.  One daughter, Della, married Mr. R. R. Greenland in the year 1883.  Della Harvey knew only the life of the pioneer so did not hesitate at age of sixteen years to become the wife of a cowboy who wished to develop his own homestead.  Mr. Greenland had located his homestead on the bank of the North Loup extending south to the amount of one hundred sixty acres.  He chose this spot for the sole reason of having found a large spring near the bank of the river.  It was the only large one found for many miles around there.  He brought his wife to his new home in the summer.  “I came to what is now Blaine County in 1883.  We camped out the last night on Hawley Flats.  It being rather wild and desolate looking I had great fears that something might creep upon us in the night.  Soon after retiring my husband was sleeping soundly, but not so for me.  I never closed my eyes all night but kept watch by looking east and west and north and south expecting any moment that something would attack us.  But morning came at last and we were still alive.  When I mentioned my fears to my husband he only laughed and said “Why, I have been sleeping out on the prairie every summer for seven years and nothing ever harmed me.”

“We spent our first two years living in a dugout.  We had to drive fifty miles to get lumber to line the walls and supply roof and floor.”

My most terrifying experiences with a blizzard happened in the spring of 1892, the thirteenth day of May.  We had been having a great deal of rainy weather.  My husband had been waiting for a fair day to go to the county seat, some twenty-five miles distant.  April the twelfth was a fair day so he took the lumber wagon and a team of work horses to make the trip.  It took at least two days in all.  We had not raised a crop for two years so had only hay for fuel.  Mr. Greenland had left a large pile near the house before leaving.

Late in the evening clouds began to appear, it started to mist, then changed to rain, which came down in torrents for hours.  As it became colder the rain turned to snow and we were in the midst of a terrible blizzard.

The next day, I burned the last spear of hay.  I must keep the babies warm.  The storm was so severe I could not step outside the door to get any more hay.  I thought of the straw ticks on the beds so removed them and burned that to the last piece.

Late in the afternoon I thought I must go to the barn to try to help the stock.  I took my eight year old boy and fought my way out.  Each animal was covered with a coat of ice; long icicles hung from their nostrils and their eyes were lumps of ice.  What could I do?  The  storm seemed to increase in it fury and I despaired of ever getting home again.  But I must!  I had left our four month old baby asleep in her cradle.  As we stood waiting, there came a lull in the storm and some way we got back to the house.  Never in my life have I been more thankful than to receive the shelter of that dear, old, sod house.  No sound has ever quickened my heart of beats like the crying of my little, baby girl.

In looking back over those years of hardships and privations, I realize that they were the happiest years of our lives.    Then we were young, had health and strength, and all of the future.  Now we are nearing the end of the journey, there is not much to work for, or any one who needs us.
(This story was taken from History and Development of Blaine County, Nebraska, by Belle J. Dunn, January 20, 1927.)

HUBERT COX

How well I can remember the blizzard on January 12, 1888, when we lived at Purdum, then called “Buffalo Flatts.”  The morning was so calm you could hear a rooster crow a mile distant and about 10 o’clock, or perhaps a little later, after all the children in the sparsely settled new country schools were assembled at school a huge black cloud appeared across the northwest and shortly after a terrific cold wind, accompanied by a wall of snow, swept the country.

Many heroic efforts by a number of teachers over the plains area were performed, many of whom perished in the storm, and a number who survived lost their hands or feet, and some both, from freezing.  In the winter of 1900-01 I attended school with a young man who had lost both feet and hands during that storm as his teacher had tied all the pupils together with a rope, then tying the little band to a dwelling not far from school.  There were several children lost their hands or feet in the band and the teacher almost lost her life.

I’m wondering if the pupils of today appreciate the advantages of an education of today as compared with those times?  I am afraid they do not.

Blaine County was organized as a county, less than two full years previous, in 1886.  E. H. Riggs was the first County Clerk, acting for a man named Smith who could to qualify.  I have forgotten who was the first County Treasurer, but do remember that Judge Aiken was County Treasurer in the early days and during his tenure of office was mortally wounded by some men while he had in his charge some men accused of cattle stealing and that John J. Mandeville, now deceased, was appointed Treasurer to fill out the term.  This tragedy took place, after dark, at an old sod stable about one-half mile south of where Walter Hannah’s ranch buildings now stand.

The first Board of County Commissioners were composed of Russell O. Dunning, T. C. Jackson and Taylor S. Northrup.  Jack Robbinault was the first Sheriff.

Through the mercy of Divine Providence I have been permitted to live in Blaine County and to share in its days of depression and sorrow, in mirth and prosperity, and as I look back over the years, I consider it a privilege and pleasure to have spent so many years among some of the best people in God’s Universe and still consider, all advantages and disadvantages taken into consideration, Old Blaine County and its people the best place on earth.   (Written by Hubert Cox)

IRIS JACKSON IHMSEN with MARY JACKSON ARNOLD

My father, T. C. Jackson, came to Buffalo Flats in 1883.  He filed on a timber claim where E. B. Arnold’s place is now and on a homestead just east of it.  He lived in a dugout on the side of a bluff and got his water from a spring down on the meadow.  He was born in 1856 at East Middlesex, PA.  His mother was Pennsylvania Dutch girl.  We have two quilts that she pieced for which she wove the muslin.  I have heard my father tell how they took their grist to the mill to have it ground, how the local blacksmith built their stoves and a shoemaker came around once a year or so to make their shoes.

His mother died when he was about five years old and He and his sister Mettie and brother Tunis were cared for by their father’s youngest sister for a few years until their father remarried in 1863.  In 1867 they moved to Lincoln, Nebraska.  His father took a homestead just across the street from where the Wm J. Bryan home is located.  After their father died in 1877 their stepmother remarried and her new husband persuaded her to sell the homestead and use the money to move to Oregon.  The title was never clear because it had been sold without the consent of her stepchildren and the quarter section stood vacant for many years after the city had grown up all around it.

My father was one of the men who helped to organize Blaine County in 1886 and he was one of the first board of County Commissioners, the others being T. S. Northup and R. O. Dunning.  He also taught the first school after district seven (7) was organized in 1887.  When the big blizzard blew up in 1888 he sent the children home as rapidly as possible as they had very little fuel on hand.

My father’s sister and brother spent part of their summer with him on his homestead, and my mother told about one time when she and Mettie were invited to visit.  I suppose it was at Mrs. Whites.  The boys, Frank and Sam came after them.  My father loaned them his team of horses so the ride wouldn’t take so long as with the ox team but the boys drove the horses at the same gait as they were accustomed to with the ox team.

The railroad came to Halsey in 1887 so my Mother came by train.  I don’t know if the Oldhams did or not.  They came to Halsey to meet her.

Mr. and Mrs. Oldham started a Methodist Sunday School as soon as they were settled.  It was never discontinued even for a short time.  It was held in the sod school house until the church was built in 1908.  The attendance was quite large.  I recall that my mother’s Bible Class reached across the two back rows of seats in the new church.  There were also quite sizeable young folk’s and primary classes.  The young people’s class included every one who wasn’t married yet.  Mrs. Oldham taught it until 1910 or 11 when they moved to University Place and after that Tom Simonton was the teacher for several years.

T. C. Jackson and Mary Skliba were married in the spring of 1889.  He had proved up on his homestead so they lived on hers until 1892 when she also got the title to hers.  He then built a two room sod house on his timber claim on the site where the house now stands.  Later he added a kitchen on the west.  The well a square dug well just north of the kitchen.  The bucket was pulled up hand over hand on a rope that passed over a pulley.  About 1903 he hired Mrs. Trussell’s father, Mr. Graham, to drill a well for him.  This well was two or three rods north of the house.  It was about one foot in diameter, cased with wood and operated by a windlass.  The drilling rig was operated by horses.

The Graham family was among the early settlers.  Their homestead was just north of my father’s timber claim.  They moved to Thedford soon after Susie married M. B. Turssell.  The first school house was on their place, just across the trail road from our house.  My father and O. M. Walcott taught there.  About 1890 the school house was moved to a site one-half mile east of Greenland’s house on the north side of the road.  Two sod school houses were build on this site.  It was in the second of these that Mary and I started to school in January 1900.  Sam White was the teacher and our school mates were Frank, AB and Ruth Greenland, Tom and Lew Simonton, Margaret Mc Kee, Bill Murray, Morris Oldham and Roy White, who was a great trial to his brother.  We played “Fox and Goose” outside in the snow, and inside in bad weather on a “Fox and Goose” board with corn for the geese.  Everyone walked to school except in very bad weather when we might get a ride in the back of the lumber wagon on a bed of hay with a comforter over our heads.  This school house was used until 1911 when the frame school house was built which is still in use.

Mr. Loder was the carpenter who built the school house, also the Compton School house, and the church.  Mr. and Mrs. Loder homesteaded in the hills north in what is now part of Neubauer’s pasture.   He was an excellent musician and gave generously of his time and talents to his neighbors. He conducted a singing school and supervised the music for Memorial Day, Christmas, Easter and other special occasions.

There was no musical instrument in the immediate neighborhood prior to about 1900.  I can remember that my mother gathered a bunch of young folks to our house to practice new songs for the 4^th of July celebration.  She had learned the tunes first by the do-re-mi-fa- system.  Singers included Mollie and Gertie Cox, Homer Cox, Edith Dentler, Tom and Gertie Simonton, Sam White and probably others.  Long about 1900 the Sunday School decided to purchase an organ.  Grace Oldham had attended school for two years at Nebraska Wesleyan University, where she spent most of her time studying piano, so they knew they would have some one to play it.  She gave lessons to some of the younger girls, including Margaret McKee and Susie Schlasman.  Margaret became organist for the Sunday School for several years.

A tragedy occurred in the summer of 1904 when Ruth and Ruby Greenland contracted diphtheria.  Gertie Cox had the responsibility of seeing that some one took dinner over there every day for the family and the nurse they had.  One morning Kyle Cox arrived at our house all breathless-he was then five years old.  He played with Kent all morning, at dinner time he began telling us how his mother had waked him up that morning and told him he was to go over to Jacksons.  My mother fixed him with her eye, “Kyle” she said, “Did your mother send you here on an errand?”  “No” he said, we don’t have an errand, we have a bicycle but I didn’t come on that, I ran all the way.  She proceeded to search him and found a note pinned to his pocket telling her she was to furnish dinner that day, so she scratched up what she could in a hurry and took it over.

The Telephone Company had organized three or four years before this and most every one except us had telephones.  My father thought he couldn’t afford one, which was the reason for the note.  The little girls died after several days.  It was a terrible blow for Mr. and Mrs. Greenland.  They had already lost several children, and the loss of their two little girls was almost more than they could bear.

Long about 1895 or 96 a company seems to have been organized in Boone, Iowa, my mother’s old home town, for the purpose of building an irrigation systems for this Sand Hills country.  An engineer named Bennett, who was some sort of connection by marriage of my mother, came here to do the job.  He lived at our house as one of the family for several months while he worked on it.  He built a wooden water wheel.  It was about twelve feet long and eight feet or so in diameter as I recall it.  He also built a couple of pontoons or boats which were anchored on either bank of the river, and the water wheel was suspended between them.  A standpipe some fifty or sixty feet high was also erected.  It was as high as the fields above the river where the water was supposed to be used.  When every thing was in readiness the neighbors all gathered for the demonstration.  The wheel pumped the water all right and it ran out of the top of the stand pipe, but that was as far as it ever got.  I suppose the money was all gone by that time.  The old water wheel, or the skeleton of it, stood on the river bank for many years.  We would climb over it when we went down to the river for fishing or bathing or to pick the red lilies that grew all over the meadows then and blossomed in July.

Mr. Purdum seems to have been an intelligent and public spirited man who was held in great respect.

Mr. Greenland had been an early day cowboy and grazed cattle all over what was than the open range.  When he decided to marry and settle down he took his homestead and timber claim on the Buffalo Flats.  Mr. Greenland was an Athiest and so didn’t provide any support for the Sunday School but was well educated and responsible member of the community and a very good business man.

Mr. and Mrs. Levi Cox came to Purdum, Homer told me, in 1888 when he was nine years old and Hollie a few years older.  Levi Cox is best remembered for his many years as Sunday School Superintendent.  There could not have been a better one, kindly, dignified, with a gift of home spun eloquence, he had a simplicity and sincerity that endeared him to everyone.  About the year 1898 Hollie Cox purchased the Purdum Store from Parker Giles, who then moved to Elsmere and started a store there.  He also got the Post Office established there and suggested the name that was adopted.  He married Carrie Cooper about this time.  She had been the Purdum School teacher before her marriage.

The Purdum store was housed in a sod building when Hollie purchased it.  He replaced it with a frame building a couple of years later and also built the big house now owned by Greta McCreath.  It had to be large enough to accommodate the traveling salesmen of that era, who would come over on the mail stage one day and return to Halsey the next day the same way.  Hollie and Gertie were both busy with the Store and Post Office and Telephone Exchange and the cooking and house keeping at the Motel were attended to by a capable series of pioneer girls, among whom were Henrietta Haseberg, Anna Haumann, Katie Lowe, Edla Lilly and Verda Wilson.

A.H. Schlasman was an early settler in the valley.  He purchased the Purdum place when Purdums moved away.  He had married a young widow, Mrs. Maggie McKee, who had a little daughter also named Margaret.  She was a member of a pioneer family, the Reeds of Burwell,  Mr. and Mrs. Schlasman were noted for their generosity and hospitality.  He was also quite a sportsman and always kept a bunch of dogs.  Mrs. Schlasman was a famous cook.  Their daughter Susie was born about 1895 or 96.  Mr. Schlasman sheated the adobe house with wood siding and it stood until 1924 when it was blown down by a tornado.

About the turn of the century the men of the neighborhood organized a “Woodmen of the World” lodge, and constructed a sod hall for a meeting place.  It was on the road between the store and Hollie’s house.  Just inside the door of the left side was a partitioned off area where they hid their goat and other lodge paraphernalia.  The hall served as a general meeting place for funerals, Memorial Day services, Thanksgiving dinners, and almost everything except Sunday School, and the school programs which were always held at the school house.

We depended a good deal on wild fruit in the early days.  My father would take a couple of days off in September and go to Halsey where he would fill the wagon box with wild plums.  If he could still find choke cherries he would pile the laden branches on top of the plums.  We would sort over the plums and cook them as soon as they got mellow, then they were pitted by hand, cooked with sugar and stored in big stone jars.  This plum preserve, or “Numesa” as we usually called it in baby talk, was our main stay with bread, butter and milk.  It was rich and strong but tasted pretty good especially if stirred up with cream or mixed with the oatmeal porridge.  We had, as far back as I can remember, quite a patch of gooseberries north of the house.  We canned large quantities and also sold them for $1 per bushel.  I remember one year a couple named Lee from Brownlee drove down for a bushel of berries and spent the Fourth of July with us.

About 1897 my father entered into a contract with the Crete Nurseries for the commercial raising of fruit.  Mr. Stephens furnished the trees, we furnished the ground and labor, and the returns from fruit sold were to be divided 50-50.  It was quite a disastrous experiment for both of them as the trees didn’t do very well here.  We did grow quite a lot of our cherries for several years, also some apples, raspberries, strawberries, currants, dewberries, mulberries, etc.   We earned our pin money in our early years by picking cherries at 1 cent per quart box. And better yet we didn’t have to eat so many wild plums.

An interesting sight in early days were, the prairie dogs that were always popping out of their holes and whistling.  They seem to have shared their burrows with the rattle snakes.  When the ground was plowed for the first time they used to wrap the horses legs to protect them from the rattlesnakes.  Finally came the time when all the ground was plowed and not a prairie dog was left.

My mother made all our clothes including my father’s shirts, and denim pants.  She had a sewing machine as far back as I can remember.  I suppose most women did, however, Mrs. Greenland made all her girls dresses by hand.  I don’t know if she did all the boys sewing or not.  My mother also knit all our winter stockings and mittens.  We had one good summer dress each which had to do for about three years and while we were quite small we each had a “flannel dress” for winter which was made from some donated hand-me-downs from her family.  We wore this flannel dress every day under our pinafores and for dress up we wore it without the pinafore over it.

All our washing was done on a wash board until about 1902 when we bought a wooden tub washing machine from Geo Sheik.  It had three long spokes sticking down from the lid which agitated the clothes inside when a handle bar on the lid was pushed back and forth.  We also acquired a hand wringer about this time.  After the clothes were out thru the machine they were boiled in the wash boiler and rinsed in two waters.  All this water of course had to be carried in buckets from the well and heated over a cob or cow chip fire.

The kitchen floor was made of boards about eight inches wide that had to be scrubbed with soap and brush every week.  The other floors were covered with woven rag carpet over a cushion of hay.  The carpets were taken up every spring at house cleaning time, and thrown across the clothes line to be pounded.  The hay which was only dust after a years use was swept out and replaced with fresh hay before the carpet was tacked down again.

After the Nebraska Public Library Commission was established about 1910 my mother always sent for a couple of traveling libraries every winter.  There were about forty books in a library and we kept each for about three months, and paid the transportation cost.  These Libraries meant a lot to us and the neighbors made pretty good use of them too.

The Fourth of July was the great day of the year for everyone.  We wore our very best clothes and some of the young ladies brought a tent on at least one occasion and retired there for two changes of costume during the day, the last time to dress for the dance.  A wooden platform was built for the dance, but I was to young to attend so that’s all I knew about it.  Then of course there was the store booth, with a big bundle of bananas for a centerpiece.  This was the only time when we ever saw bananas.  There was also oranges, pop, candy, gum, trinkets and all kinds of fire arms, fire works and fire crackers.  Every child tried hard to have at least 50 cents in spending money for the Fourth.  The day before was spent in preparation.  There was the first frying chicken of the summer to be killed and fried.  Some hills of potatoes were sacrificed to get the tiny little new potatoes to mix with the first garden peas in a cream sauce.  There were hard boiled eggs pickled in beet juice, and beets of course.  No potatoes so no potato salad and no coffee.  There was lemonade in a barrel and free home made ice cream also.  There were lots of cakes and pies and one year Mrs. Lafe Frizzell (Dora Bivens) brought the first Angle Food and Devil’s Food that had ever been seen or heard of in these parts.  She was on a visit to home folks.  In the afternoon there was a ball game and all kinds of horse races and foot races.  For the morning program there was always a patriotic address by a visiting celebrity, if we could find one, patriotic songs, and recitations by the school children.

My mother always waked us in the morning with a bunch of fire crackers in a dish pan.  The lunch was packed in the wash boiler and stored under the back seat of the spring wagon, for the trip to the grove.  The first celebrations I remember were held in Greenlands grove, later they were mostly held in Walter’s grove.

This is a story of a pattern of life now ended, and of events that helped shape it as remembered by a daughter of pioneer parents.  It is largely the story of my own family because that is the only one about which I knew enough to write in any detail.  There were many pioneer families whose contributions to the development of the region were more significant.  I believe it is quite accurate as far as it goes.  It would be a much better story if my father could have written it, or some of the other real pioneers.

Thinking of old times and of old time Fourth of July celebrations may cause us to ponder whether we aren’t losing sight of some of the virtues that helped make American great.  The pride in our Country and her history that inspired their children, the rugged self reliance and independence that tamed a wilderness, the simple faith and trust that were a heritage from our Pilgrim forefathers are perhaps needed more than every amid today’s confused challenges.  Tomorrow seekers after truth may be able to rediscover and revive them.
(Written by Iris Jackson Ihmsen aided by her sister Mary Jackson Arnold)

RICHARD R. GREENLAND

I came from the anthracite coal regions of Pennsylvania to Omaha in the summer of 1873.  In the spring a man named Simpson and I came to what is now Kent, Loup County.  The only inhabitants at that time were the elk, deer, and the wolf.  The buffalo trails were plain but they were gone.  I prempted a claim here and more settlers came that spring.

Through sickness and loss of funds I had to abandon my claim.  I went back to Omaha where I became acquainted with Mr. Paxton who had a big cattle ranch on the North Platte River, North of Ogallala.  I went to work for him in the spring of 1877.  He claimed thirty miles of the north side of the Platte.  He had a ranch at each end and three corrals, a horse ranch at the east end on the south side where horses ranged during the winter.  They kept about 20 thousand head of cattle and branded about four thousand calves a year.

These cattle were range herded on the owners range during the summer.  In the fall and winter they would go where they pleased.  They never crossed the river unless forced on account of the width and depth of the river and quicksand.  At that time there were no ranches between the North Platte River and the Niobrara River, west of the head of the Loup River.   The cattle would drift into this area and winter fine but they became very wild as they saw no people.

I worked for Paxton until 1880, then, I went to work for Pailerson and Stearns.  They had a ranch on the Dismal.  I helped drive about three thousand head of cattle east of the Black Hills in the Dakota Territory and they offered me winters work on the ranch where I took the cattle.  I concluded to come back to Nebraska.  I road down horseback and got to where Blaine County is now, sometime in November 1880.  I went on down the river to below Taylor and visited with Mr. B. J. Harvey who was one of the first settlers in Loup County and who later became my father-in-law.

Early in the winter of 1881 I came back up the river and went to work on  the Northrup ranch on Hawley Flats and for the Finch-Hattan ranch until they sold their land and cattle.  Then I went to work for F. A. Lisk.

I named five lakes besides Willow,  Enders Lake, I called Spring Lake, Clear Lake, I called Crystal Lake, Willow Long, Twin, and Skull Lakes still go by the names I first called them.

The only name Lisk ever gave to anything was Calf Creek because there was a creek farther west called Cow Creek.

I worked for Lisk from 1881 until the spring of 1884 when I went to work for Northrups again as foreman.  After the round-up was over about the first of July, I quit Northrups on account of the sickness of my wife.  I had been married by this time to Mary Harvey of Loup County and had a little patch of sand of my own on the Buffalo Flats.   (Signed R. R. Greenland) Taken from the Blaine County Booster, Dunning, Nebraska.)