The Sioux City Journal, Sat. April 30, 1927
USED TO TRADE WITH INDIANS.
Nebraska Woman Pioneer Has Lived in State 59 Years.
By Harry L. Peterson. (Special Correspondent to The Journal.)
Ponca, Neb., April 29.—Of the pioneers of Ponca, Mrs. Anna Stough, remembers more clearly, perhaps, than any of them, many of the important events of the drama of the early days. Mrs. Stough is 75 years old, but has the vigor of a woman of 60.
Mrs. Stough was born in Germany in 1852. In the summer of 1868 she sailed from Breman, with her parents and her brother, William, for America. The family landed in New York and purchased a ticket to Missouri Valley, Ia, as the New York agent did not know if the railroad had yet been completed to Sioux City. At Missouri Valley, they found that the road had been extended to Sioux City and they rode that far on the rails. She and her mother and father were met at the station by her cousin, Mrs. Adam Smith and her husband, who were the first white settler in Dixon county.
Jacob Stough, her husband, one of the founders of Ponca in 1872, and his brothers built and operated the first grist mill in northeastern Nebraska, on Iowa creek, which was dammed to furnish water power for the mill.
The Stoughs lived in a house near the dam and often pilfering gypsies used to come and take what food they could without paying for it. The grist mill was a boon to the new country and settlers as far west as Niobrara used to come to have their corn and wheat ground into meal and flour. While awaiting their turn for their grinding to be done, they would camp near the site of the mill. Mrs. Stough says the Ponca and Winnebago Indians were plentiful in those days and used to trade at the mill.
Lutheran for 61 Years.
Mr. Stough came to Nebraska in the fall of 1857 and lived for a year or two with his brothers on a homestead west of Ponca. One day, while his brothers were in Ponca helping build houses, he was bitten on the leg by a rattlesnake. Alone and facing possible death from the poison, he caught a live chicken which he tore open and bound to the wound so that the blood of the fowl would draw out the poison. it worked as he had hoped and the carcass of the chicken turned green from the poison.
Mrs. Stough has been a member of the Lutheran church for 61 years. She has one daughter, Mrs. M. I. Mellon, of Los Angeles, Cal. Her only son, Bert Stough, died a year ago in Los Angeles.
***** Further Research Revealed” The daughter, Mrs. M. I. Mellon was Lena Anna (1872-1926.) The only son, Bert Stough (1875-1926.)
