Collection of Nebraska Pioneer Reminiscences Part 30

The winter before Rev. Adriance came Isaac Collins was conducting protracted meetings in De Soto and so much interest was being aroused that some of the ruffians decided to break up the meetings. One night they threw a dead dog through a window hitting the minister in the back, knocking over the candles and leaving us in darkness. The minister straightened up and declared, "The devil isn't dead in De Soto yet."

I was present at the Calhoun claim fight at which Mr. Goss was killed and Purple and Smith were wounded.

The first little log school was erected on the townsite of Blair, the patrons cutting and hauling the lumber. I was the first director and Mrs. William Allen _nee_ Emily Bottorff, first teacher.

I served as worthy patriarch of the First Sons of Temperance organization in the county and lived in De Soto long enough to see the last of the whiskey traffic banished from that township.

I have served many years in Washington county as school director, justice of the peace, and member of the county board.

In October, 1862, I joined the Second Nebraska cavalry for service on the frontier. Our regiment lost a few scalps and buried a number of Indians. We bivouacked on the plains, wrapped in our blankets, while the skies smiled propitiously over us and we dreamed of home and the girls we left behind us, until reveille called to find the drapery of our couch during the night had been reinforced by winding sheets of drifting snow.

FORT CALHOUN IN THE LATER FIFTIES

BY MRS. E. H. CLARK

E. H. Clark came from Indiana in March, 1855, with Judge James Bradley, and was clerk of the district court in Nebraska under him. He became interested in Fort Calhoun, then the county-seat of Washington county.

The town company employed him to survey it into town lots, plat the same, and advertise it. New settlers landed here that spring and lots were readily sold. In June, 1855, Mr. Clark contracted with the proprietors to put up a building on the townsite for a hotel; said building to be 24x48 feet, two stories high, with a wing of the same dimensions; the structure to be of hewn logs and put up in good style.

For this he was to receive one-ninth interest in the town. Immediately he commenced getting out timber, boarding in the meantime with Major Arnold's family, and laboring under many disadvantages for want of skilled labor and teams, there being but one span of horses and seven yoke of cattle in the entire precinct at this time. What lumber was necessary for the building had to be obtained from Omaha at sixty dollars per thousand and hauled a circuitous route by the old Mormon trail. As an additional incident to his trials, one morning at breakfast Mr. Clark was told by Mrs. Arnold that the last mouthful was on the table. Major Arnold was absent for supplies and delayed, supposedly for lack of conveyance; whereupon Mr. Clark procured two yoke of oxen and started at once for Omaha for provisions and lumber. Never having driven oxen before he met with many mishaps. By traveling all night through rain and mud he reached sight of home next day at sunrise, when the oxen ran away upsetting the lumber and scattering groceries all over the prairies. Little was recovered except some bacon and a barrel of flour.

Finally the hotel was ready for occupancy and Col. George Stevens with his family took up their residence there. It was the best hostelry in the west. Mr. Stevens was appointed postmaster and gave up one room to the office. The Stevens family were very popular everywhere.

Mr. and Mrs. John B. Kuony were married at the Douglas house, Omaha, about 1855 and came to the new hotel as cooks; but soon afterward started a small store which in due time made them a fortune. This couple were also popular in business, as well as socially.

In March, 1856, my husband sent to Indiana for me. I went to St. Louis by train, then by boat to Omaha. I was three weeks on the boat, and had my gold watch and chain stolen from my cabin enroute. I brought a set of china dishes which were a family heirloom, clothes and bedding. The boxes containing these things we afterward used for table and lounge. My husband had a small log cabin ready on my arrival.

I was met at Omaha by Thomas J. Allen with a wagon and ox team. He hauled building material and provisions and I sat on a nail keg all the way out. He drove through prairie gra.s.s as high as the oxen's back. I asked him how he ever learned the road. When a boat would come up the river every one would rush to buy furniture and provisions; I got a rocking chair in 1857, the first one in the town. It was loaned out to sick folks and proved a treasure. In 1858 we bought a clock of John Bauman of Omaha, paying $45.00 for it, and it is still a perfect time piece.

My father, Dr. J. P. Andrews, came in the spring of 1857 and was a practicing physician, also a minister for many years here. He was the first Sunday school superintendent here and held that office continually until 1880 when he moved to Blair.

In 1858 the Vanier brothers started a steam grist mill which was a great convenience for early settlers. In 1861 Elam Clark took it on a mortgage and ran it for many years. Mr. Clark also carried on a large fur trade with the Indians, and they would go east to the bottoms to hunt and camp for two or three weeks.

At one time I had planned a dinner party and invited all my lady friends. I prepared the best meal possible for those days, with my china set all in place and was very proud to see it all spread, and when just ready to invite my guests to the table, a big Indian appeared in the doorway and said, "hungry" in broken accents. I said, "Yes I get you some" and started to the stove but he said, "No," and pointed to the table. I brought a generous helping in a plate but he walked out doors, gave a shrill yell which brought several others of his tribe and they at once sat down, ate everything in sight, while the guests looked on in fear and trembling; having finished they left in great glee.

SOME ITEMS FROM WASHINGTON COUNTY

BY MRS. MAY ALLEN LAZURE

Alfred D. Jones, the first postmaster of Omaha, tells in the _Pioneer Record_ of the first Fourth of July celebration in Nebraska.

"On July 4, 1854, I was employed in the work of surveying the townsite of Omaha. At this time there were only two cabins on the townsite, my postoffice building and the company claim house. The latter was used as our boarding house. Inasmuch as the Fourth would be a holiday, I concluded it would be a novelty to hold a celebration on Nebraska soil.

I therefore announced that we would hold a celebration and invited the people of Council Bluffs, by inserting a notice in the Council Bluffs paper, and requested that those who would partic.i.p.ate should prepare a lunch for the occasion.

"We got forked stakes and poles along the river, borrowed bolts of sheeting from the store of James A. Jackson; and thus equipped we erected an awning to shelter from the sun those who attended. Anvils were procured, powder purchased and placed in charge of cautious gunners, to make a noise for the crowd. The celebration was held on the present high school grounds.

"The picnickers came with their baskets, and the gunner discharged his duty n.o.bly. A stranger, in our midst, was introduced as Mr. Sawyer, an ex-congressman from Ohio."

I had a life-long acquaintance with one of those early picnickers, Mrs.

Rhoda Craig, a daughter of Thomas Allen, who built the first house in Omaha. Mrs. Craig was the first white girl to live on the site of Omaha.

She often told the story of that Fourth of July in Omaha. Their fear of the Indians was so great that as soon as dinner was over, they hurried to their boats and rowed across to Council Bluffs for safety.

Another pioneer woman was Aimee Taggart Kenny, who came to Fontenelle with her parents when a small child. Her father was a Baptist missionary in Nebraska, and his earliest work was with the Quincy colony. I have heard her tell the following experience:

"On several occasions we were warned that the Indians were about to attack us. In great fear, we gathered in the schoolhouse and watched all night, the men all well armed. But we were never molested. Another time mother was alone with us children. Seeing the Indians approaching we locked the doors, went into the attic by means of an outside ladder and looked out through a crack. We saw the red men try the door, peep in at the windows, and then busy themselves chewing up mother's home-made hop-yeast, which had been spread out to dry. They made it into b.a.l.l.s and tossed it all away."

John T. Bell of Newberg, Oregon, contributed the following:

"I have a pleasant recollection of your grandfather Allen. My father's and mother's people were all southerners and there was a kindliness about Mr. and Mrs. Allen that reminded me of our own folks back in Illinois. I often stopped to see them when going to and from the Calhoun mill.

"I was also well acquainted with Mrs. E. H. Clark, and Rev. Mr. Taggart and his family were among the most highly esteemed residents of our little settlement of Fontenelle. Mr. Taggart was a man of fine humor. It was the custom in those early days for the entire community to get together on New Year's day and have a dinner at 'The College.' There would be speech-making, and I remember that on one of these occasions Mr. Taggart said that no doubt the time would come when we would all know each others' real names and why we left the states.

"The experiences of the Bell family in the early Nebraska days were ones of privation. We came to Nebraska in 1856 quite well equipped with stock, four good horses, and four young cows which we had driven behind the wagon from western Illinois. The previous winter had been very mild and none of the settlers were prepared for the dreadful snow storm which came on the last day of November and continued for three days and nights. Our horses and cows were in a stable made by squaring up the head of a small gulch and covering the structure with slough gra.s.s. At the end of the storm when father could get out to look after the stock there was no sign of the stable. The low ground it occupied was levelled off by many feet of snow. He finally located the roof and found the stock alive and that was about all. The animals suffered greatly that winter and when spring came we had left only one horse and no cows. That lone horse was picking the early gra.s.s when he was bitten in the nose by a rattlesnake and died from the effects. One of those horses, 'Old Fox,'

was a n.o.ble character. We had owned him as long as I could remember, and when he died we children all cried. I have since owned a good many horses but not one equalled Old Fox in the qualities that go to make up a perfect creature.

"After the civil war my brother Will and I were the only members of our family left in Nebraska. We served with Grant and Sherman and then went back to Fontenelle, soon afterward beginning the improvement of our farm on Bell creek in the western part of the county. By that time conditions had so improved in Nebraska that hardships were not so common. I was interested in tree planting even as a boy and one of the distinct recollections of our first summer in Nebraska was getting so severely poisoned in the woods on the Elkhorn when digging up young sprouts, that I was entirely blind. A colored man living in Fontenelle told father that white paint would cure me and so I was painted wherever there was a breaking out, with satisfactory results.

"Later the planting of cottonwood, box elder, maple, and other trees became a general industry in Nebraska and I am confident that I planted twenty thousand trees, chiefly cottonwood. To J. Sterling Morton, one of Nebraska's earliest and most useful citizens, Nebraska owes a debt of grat.i.tude. He was persistent in advocating the planting of trees. In his office hung a picture of an oak tree; on his personal cards was a picture of an oak tree with the legend 'Plant Trees'; on his letterheads, on his envelopes was borne the same injunction and the picture of an oak tree. On the marble doorstep of his home was cut a picture of an oak tree and the words 'Plant Trees'; on the ground-gla.s.s of the entrance door was the same emblem. I went to a theater he had built and on the drop curtain was a picture of an oak tree and the words 'Plant Trees.' Today the body of this useful citizen lies buried under the trees he planted in Wyuka cemetery, near Nebraska City."

COUNTY SEAT OF WASHINGTON COUNTY

BY FRANK MCNEELY

In 1855 an act was pa.s.sed by the territorial legislature reorganizing Washington county and designating Fort Calhoun as the county-seat.

De Soto, a small village five miles north of Fort Calhoun, wished the county-seat to be moved there. In the winter of 1858 a crowd of De Soto citizens organized and with arms went to Fort Calhoun to take the county-seat by force. Fort Calhoun citizens barricaded themselves in the log courthouse and held off the De Soto band until the afternoon of the second day, when by compromise, the county-seat was turned over to De Soto. One man was killed in this contest, in which I was a partic.i.p.ant.

The county-seat remained in De Soto until an election in the fall of 1866 when the vote of the people relocated it at Fort Calhoun, where it remained until 1869. An election in the latter year made Blair the county-seat.

A courthouse was built in Blair, the present county-seat of Washington county, in 1889, at a cost of $50,000.

NOTE--In the early days every new town, and they were all new, was ambitious to become the county-seat and many of them hopefully sought the honor of becoming the capital of the territory.

Washington county had its full share of aspiring towns and most of them really got beyond the paper stage. There were De Soto, Fort Calhoun, Rockport, c.u.ming City, and last but not least--Fontenelle, then in Washington county, now a "deserted village" in Dodge county. Of these only Fort Calhoun remains more than a memory. De Soto was founded by Potter C. Sullivan and others in 1854, and in 1857 had about five hundred population. It began to go down in 1859, and when the city of Blair was started its decline was rapid.

Rockport, which was in the vicinity of the fur trading establishments of early days, was a steamboat landing of some importance and had at one time a population of half a hundred or more. Now only the beautiful landscape remains. c.u.ming City, like De Soto, received its death blow when Blair was founded, and now the townsite is given over to agricultural purposes.

THE STORY OF THE TOWN OF FONTENELLE