Walla Walla, Wash., Febr. 5 '21Editor of the Journal,
Hebron, Nebr.,Dear Sir:
The year 1871 - 50 years ago - was an important one to me, as well as to the Hebron Journal. In March, I left Burlington, Wis., with all of my personal belongs in a tool chest with my carpenter tools. I went first to Thompson, Carroll county, Ill., where my uncle, Wm. J. Green, then lived with his family. Also there was Barney Bofenkamp. We started out with two wagons and six horses for a drive to Hebron, Nebr. At the end of the twenty-one days of the worst March weather that I have ever known, we drove across the bad roads of Iowa to Red Oak, then shortly wnt to Shenandoah, Page county, Iowa. This new town help promising prospects, and Uncle Green had a notion that if Hebron was not what he hoped for, that he might come back to Shenandoah. He sold his team and outfit and I pulled out my tool chest and promptly got a job and remained there that summer, Green and Bofenkamp going on to Hebron. In the early fall I followed, going by way of St. Joseph and Denver railroad as far as the end of the line at Marysville, Kans. Here I took one of the famous Holliday stages to Meridian, Nebr. From there, I hired a lumber wagon outfit to take me to Hebron.
I recall, with interest, that some ordinary barn boards cost me $75 a thousand, from which I made my work bench. All our lumber and supplies were hauled from the end of the railroad line as it progressed westward.
James B. Smith had had a store at Thompson, Ill., and it was largely thru his interest that our trip to Hebron was taken. He established a store at Hebron, and I soon became a clerk for him, Thayer county had that year been segregated from Jefferson county and Smith was the County Treasurer. It fell to me to become his deputy. I wrote the first tax receipts that had ever been written in Thayer county, also assisted in making out the assessment rolls for the next year and the following year, made up a complete numerical index of title of all the lands in the county.
The Journal was some months old when I arrived. I recall seeing the old head that had been carved form local stone until your father could get a regular one from the East. I recall, also, frequently, setting type and helping on the press to get the Journal off on time during that first winter. I recall many pleasant evening with your father. He was a good singer and used to sing with great feeling and good voice, "Sweet Belle Mahone."
In the fall of 1872, my father, Thomas J. and mother, Barbara J. Thompson, with my sister, Jessie, came to Hebron, and I remember I drove to Fairmont in an express wagon, to get them.
The Journal has filled an important part in the development of Thayer County and indeed, the state of Nebraska. I always think with great satisfaction, of the loyal service given by the Journal to the cause of Woman's Suffrage. My mother was an ardent believer, in those early days, of what has only been recently accomplished - the extending of civil and political rights to women. It was our fortune to entertain, in those days many notable people who were by correspondence, induced to come here. I recall, with interest, especially, the visit of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who held in town several days by a snow storm and gave us an opportunity to know her well. My first public speaking, when I was twenty-one, was backing up my mother's campaign for Woman Suffrage.
I afterwards met most of the notable women of mark at that time in that connection and had the honor, in the National Republican Convention of 1888 to introduce Susan B. Anthony to the committe on resolutions and platform, of which I was a member and proposed a woman's suffrage resolution to the convention by request of the Woman's Suffrage workers. I will not record the long fight made for it in the state of Washington after I came here, but it was finally passed in the Territorial Legislature of which I was a member.
At all times, I repeat, the Journal and your father fought valiantly for Woman's Suffrage principle.
It is a satisfaction to me that the band that I established is still in existence and retains some of the same officers that were in the bank when I re-organized it 38 years ago, at the time I came to the state of Washington. I recall, with amusement, the remark of Jacob Heiber, when he said: "Humm, damn stout house," referring to the foundation walls of my new bank building now used, I think, for the post office.
flood of interesting memories come to my mind, but I leave them for some future recital - say ten or twenty years from now. I trust the Hebron Journal may be in existence 50 years hence, and that it wtill may be within the control of the Correll family.
Sincerely yours,
Walter J. Thompson
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