← Before Today: A History of Holt County, Nebraska
Inez Valley Chapter Twenty-Nine “Eight Mule Kelley,” mentioned in a previous chapter, came from Omaha with his family to Inez Valley in 1884. He was fifteen years old and Inez was merely a little store and post office in the home of a settler, some seventeen miles south of Atkinson. The family took a homestead and the lad, B. B. Kelley went to high school in Atkinson. He taught school until 1898, when he married Jessie Whitney of Stuart. Jessie’s family had reached their homestead after traveling from Iowa in a covered wagon. The little girl was seven at the time. She, too, was a school teacher until her marriage.
In 1906 the Kelleys moved to a homestead of their own, just inside the Holt County line and thirty miles southwest of Atkinson a quarter of a mile from the Carson post office. They lived in a sod house for awhile and suffered many hardships. Their cattle died of Bang’s disease and their horses of swamp fever. It was this latter circumstance that caused Mr. Kelley to change to mules, animals that seemed resistant to the disease. When he began hauling loads of hay to Burwell with his eight mule teams he earned his long lasting nickname. The Kelleys had six children. Since the parents had both been teachers they kept their home well supplied with books and subscribed to a daily newspaper, even though their mail came only three times a week.
Reading was the evening pastime. Another of the Inez community settlers was John F. Jones, born in Moville, Iowa, in 1876. He traced his ancestors back to the Virginia colonies, but himself arrived in Holt County at nineteen years of age. Two years later, when he attained his majority, he filed on a homestead near Inez. In 1899 he married Pauline Pacha of Green Valley. At one time, according to the family narrative, money was so scarce in the home (probably in the drouthy nineties) that John had to catch and skin a coyote and sell the hide in order to buy a two-cent stamp to mail a letter back to his mother in Iowa.
The Jones became the parents of one daughter, Effie, and then adopted another daughter. They retired from the ranch in 1919 and moved into Atkinson.
Ninety-nine-year-old Julia White in 1973 wrote the following family history: “In 1894 we moved from York, Nebraska, to the Inez community and bought 160 acres of land, with a fairly good house, for $600. In 1918 we built a modern house and lived like town folks. In the spring of 1898 Oscar McGrew came from the Burwell area with his wife and small daughter. He built a small house on the vacant school section next to us, but had no water.
“He bought a (sand) point and about 100 feet of one inch pipe. He and Ernest White drove the pipe with mauls, courage and faith until they got the flowing well that is still watering the herd that feeds on that section.
“The lakes were full of fish of various kinds, and no limit to the catch. The outlet to the Slaymaker lake broke out one time and a lot of six pound pickeral escaped and were stranded on the meadow. So the Whites all went fishing.” Another Inez Valley neighbor was the Stephen Hiatt family. The original family came from England in the late 1700’s. In 1867 Stephen married Elizabeth Berch. Three daughters and one son were born to them. In 1895 Stephen and the son, Arthur, came to the Valley, where they traded some cattle for a Mr. Manchester’s relinquishment. The following spring Arthur came back with a herd of cattle he had taken in to pasture for the summer.
The young man batched in the sod house on the place and herded the cattle, which could range east for six miles without coming against a fence. In 1901 the parents came out to the homestead and built a frame house. For the next four years Arthur hauled butter from the nearby Amelia creamery to O’Neill and freighted supplies back to the Amelia stores. He drove four horses to a wagon and made three trips a week.
The three Hiatt daughters all married in the new community: Nellie married Olin Baker in 1897; Viola married George Traver in 1902 and Jenny married William Mulligan in 1912. Arthur bought his first car, a Dodge, in 1918 and in 1922 married Goldie Leonard, daughter of Fanning Leonard of the Martha community, some twenty miles to the east. Charley N. Smith was the son of a banker in Salem, Wisconsin. He was six years old when his parents, brother and sisters, moved to North Loup, Nebraska in 1885. In the late nineties the family moved up into the Inez Valley and filed on a homestead. In December, 1906 Charley married Nellie Moss, whose father, Charley Moss, had built the first frame house south of Holt Creek in Green Valley. The Smith’s had six children. Law- 268 rence still lives in Atkinson, Merrill in Stuart and Elda (Heiser) in O’Neill. The other three live outside the county.
Charley and his father ranched together in the Valley until 1910, after which the son bought land northeast of Atkinson. About 1920 he bought another place in the Celia community, north and a little east of Atkinson. Charley died in 1937 and his son, Lawrence, now owns the home place. Lewis Berry came to Nebraska in 1878, crossing the Missouri River on a ferry. He lived in two different eastern Nebraska localities before coming to Holt County. He married Claretta Maughimer in 1888 and their son Howard was born at Plainview in 1895.
The family traveled to the Inez community in a covered wagon with three horses, three cows and a calf, arriving at their new home after dark on April 7, 1903. Lew plowed seventy acres with his three horses and a walking plow, planted thirty acres to oats by hand and forty acres of corn with a planter. He then built a large barn, sixty by one-hundred and twenty feet in size, and some other buildings. The family lived in the sod house already on the place.
The new crops were coming on splendidly when, on July 17, a hail storm and “twister” swept through the area. When it was over the Berry’s had nothing left but the sod house, and lightning had killed their calf. A few days later S. S. Smith and Charley Moss came over to help Lew Berry recover the salvagable lumber from the barn. They picked up boards for more than a quarter of a mile and built a small barn where the big one had stood. In later years Lew built three new barns.
The family lived in the sod house and burned hay for seven years, then built a good new house. The son, Howard, rode horseback two and one-half miles to the Sunny Side school for two years, after which the district was divided and a new district formed and called by the name of Prairie Gem. The new schoolhouse was built that same summer (1905) and school held during the months of November through February. Myrtle Moss was the teacher.
After the Prairie Gem school closed at the end of February Howard went to the Inez school, thus ekeing out a fairly well rounded school year. J. W. Moss kept both the Inez store and post office when the Berrys first came to the Valley. In later years J. O. Hubbell, Charlie McNally, Tom Hig-gens and Mrs. McDonald ran the little neighborhood facilities.
Ethel Norskow and Howard Berry were married in Neligh in 1928. Ethel had taught school in the county for three years before her marriage to Howard. They had a son and two daughters. Church and Sunday school were held regularly at the Inez school house. During the summers most of the church people took basket dinners along, then repaired to one of the nearby lakes for a day of fishing. Howard Berry states that he has seen every winter and summer in Holt County for seventy years, but the worst winter was that of 1948-1949. Edgar and Minerva Stratton came from Iola, Kansas, in 1907 with their family and settled on a”Kinkaid” homestead nine miles southwest of old Inez post office. In 1910 they moved into Atkinson to put their six sons and four daughters in school. Until 1920 Edgar was a star route mail carrier, one of the first to use an automobile on his route. Three of the sons, Otto, Cecil and Ivan spent most of their lives in the hotel business. Otto began his career in the old Commercial Hotel in Atkinson, then in later years built and operated a large motel in California. Edwin finished high school in Atkinson, then went down to Hastings College and returned three years later to serve as the high school principal in his home town. The following year, 1918, he entered the service and, after the war, came back to Atkinson flying a Curtiss Jenny.
Edwin describes his flying experiences as follows: “During World War II I served as a pilot in the Air Service. In June 1919 I received an honorable discharge. Soon thereafter I went to Toronto, Canada, and purchased an airplane of the type used in training U. S. pilots . . . The plane was shipped by rail to Hastings, Nebraska, where I assembled it and immediately began a barnstorming tour of Nebraska— carrying passengers and performing stunts at various Homecoming Celebrations which were held in many towns throughout the state that summer. “I was invited to Atkinson by the committee to perform stunts for the Atkinson Homecoming celebration. This was probably the first time an airplane was flown in Atkinson. Following the celebration I was engaged to fly for another celebration at Butte. It was there that my barnstorming tour ended. “The ‘end’ happened very suddenly. In attempting to take off from a short runway the plane failed to gain altitude and I had to decide in the space of a few seconds whether to go through a fence and a telephone line, or to approach the fence and attempt to zoom over it. I chose the latter course.
“I zoomed over the telephone wires but the maneuver killed my flying speed and the plane crashed after clearing the wires. Both the passenger and myself survived the crash without a scratch. My passenger was so happy that he did not ask for a refund of his $15.00 fare. Immediately after the crash I returned to Atkinson. The following morning I boarded the 3:20 A.M. train on my way back to Hastings College to complete my college course. Personally, I have always considered the crash as one of the most fortunate events of my life- time.” With their younger children Mr. and Mrs. Stratton returned to Iola in 1920. While they lived in Atkinson all of the ten children went to school there and four graduated from Atkinson High. In 1965 nine of the brothers and sisters returned for the High school alumni festivities, gathering from points all the way from Pennsylvania to California. Olin, one of the brothers, had died in 1918. The occasion was the fiftieth anniversary of Carrie’s and Cecil’s graduation from the high school. None of the Strattons now live in Holt County.
Richard and Anna Fowler were both born in England. Richard came to America first. A carpenter by trade, he soon found work. When their son William was about a year old Anna joined her husband in the United States and they settled in Clay County. The period was early enough that Indians still visited the settlers’ homes. Eight more children were born to Richard and Anna there.
Albert Fowler was born near Fair- field, Nebraska, in 1874. He grew up there and, in 1898, married Cora Coville at Clay Center. Two daughters were born to them before 1903. Cora’s brother and sister, A. D. and Hettie Coville went to Holt County about this time to buy land about two miles west of Inez. By 1907 the Covilles had persuaded the Fowlers to join them in the Valley.
Mrs. Fowler and the two little girls rode to Atkinson on the train. Their mother had forgotten to pack the washboard with the family belongings that were shipped by freight. Consequently eight-year-old Hazel was entrusted with the responsibility of looking after the washboard all the way to their debarkation point. The Fowler homestead was five miles west of Atkinson and the nearest schoolhouse was four miles away. One day while playing pull- away at school Hazel cut a long gash below her thumb on the barbwire fence. Carrie Stratton and Byrdie Boettcher took her home in a wagon, where her mother attended to her bloody injury. Backhaus, Boettcher, Jones, Jonas and Whipple children 269 attended this school, which was located in Ed Slaymaker’s pasture about two and a half miles from where Ora Whipple lives now. About 1910 the schoolhouse was moved two miles nearer the Fowlers.
The Fowlers got their mail at Inez, five miles away. However there was another post office at Tonawanda, only a little farther away, at the Hookstra place. There was a store there, too, and the Fowler girls, Hazel and Celia, liked best to go there because the Hookstras had a parrot that talked.
When the older sister, Hazel, was in the eighth grade the winter was long and severe. “We had so much snow,” wrote Celia long years later, “that Dad took us to school with a team and a sled. The snow was so deep we could drive right over the fences. Finally it became so bad that the teacher, Merle Hookstra, and her sister Quentin stayed at our place and Hazel and Quentin studied together for the eighth grade examinations. For play we went out and walked on the snow banks that were as high as the house.” However, the Fowlers hadn’t much time for play, for they milked cows for cash money (the cream checks) and as soon as the two girls were old enough they helped. A daily morning and evening chore, milking cows tied a family close to their farm. After the girls were old enough to help, Celia wrote, “it took us about three weeks to put up our hay. And after the hay was up one of us got to go to town with Dad in the wagon. The next year the other one got to go. Dad always tried to be at Holt Creek by sunup, for we had to make the round trip by evening, when it was time to milk the cows again.” In 1915 the Inez school board voted to institute a high school. Celia Fowler went through the ninth grade there, then went into Atkinson to board and room while completing the tenth grade. In 1919 the Fowlers held a sale and moved into town. Hazel married Charles Freouf that same year and went back to the Inez-Green Valley community to live. Her four children were born there.
Following her graduation in 1921, Celia taught school for ten years. She married William F. Backhaus in 1941. Michael M. McCarthy, born in County Cork, Ireland, in 1861, came to “the land of opportunity to start a new life and raise a family” when he was twenty-two years old. His first ten years in the states were spent in various parts of the Middlewest, where he raised and fed cattle. In 1893 he married Mary McGinley, a native of Otoe County, Nebraska. They lived on ranches until 1915 when, with their nine children, they moved to Holt County.
While a snow storm raged they came by train to Atkinson, and then by wagon to their new home in the Inez Valley. Here they found the ideal ranch country they had been looking for, a fine grassland, watered by flowing wells.
The five McCarthy sons and the four daughters attended the Inez grade school, then went to one or the other of the parochial high schools in Atkinson and O’Neill.
Mike McCarthy had bought a car, a handsome Carter, while the family lived near Tecumseh, Nebraska. But their pride in the big car turned to irritation when they found themselves stuck on the sandy Valley roads every time they took it out.
Mike was the leader in organizing a Catholic parish at Inez, and then at Amelia. On Saturdays he made the long trip to Atkinson to bring Father Loecker out to the ranch to spend the night. The next morning the priest would say Mass at the Inez schoolhouse (where the Methodists also held Sunday services), after which Mr. McCarthy would take him back to town.
“We never had any sort of crime problems in Inez Valley,” wrote a family member, Mrs. Bill Wilkinson. “Seining fish was about as illegal as anyone ever got, for the Valley was too far off the beaten path to be bothered by outlaws or people of that stripe.” Mrs. McCarthy, never very well during her years in Holt County, finally succembed to cancer. For this she went to Omaha for surgery in 1918, the peak year of the great flu epidemic in the United States. When it was time for her to come home her husband went to Omaha to get her. The children had already been released from school to avoid contracting the often fatal influenza. When Mike reached Omaha he rode on the outside of the streetcar to avoid the risk of exposure to the disease. The precautions, or the rest of the family’s general robustness, must have helped for none of them had the flu, although almost everyone else in the neighborhood did. Mary McCarthy died in August, 1920. After which the family carried on without her, keeping the home together, putting up the hay and marketing the cattle.
Haying was a job that lasted for weeks. All the McCarthy men and eight or ten hired men as well, finally rounded off the job. After that the cattle were gathered, sorted and trailed to. the loading pens at Atkinson. The first day’s drive ended in a night camp on Holt Creek. The next took them to the railroad. When the last of his brood had grown and left the ranch, Mike sold it (in 1937) and moved to Arizona to live out his years. He died in 1941. Three of his sons are also deceased. James McCarthy lives in Alliance, Nebraska. The other son in Montana and the three sisters in Idaho. Claude Wicks came to Atkinson about 1899 or 1900. Soon after arriving he wrote to Altheria Frink, probably in New York state where she was born, asking her to be his bride. They were married the day she got off the train in Atkinson, November 21, 1900.
Claude Wicks was born Claude Moore in 1878 in New York state. His mother died a few days after he was born and the next door neighbor took him in, raised him and gave his family name, Wicks. Claude was a full-blooded Irishman.
Altheria was English and Yankee. They lived for a time on the Will Conklin farm, where they made and sold cheese. Later they moved to Atkinson and Claude worked in the lumber yard until his health failed. Mrs. Wicks, one of Atkinson’s midwives, helped all three of the town’s doctors, Douglas, McKee and Sturde-vant, deliver babies. There is a mention in the Green Valley history of a “Midwest Barn,” built “where the Gotschalls now live.” A Jack McAllister and a Dr. Clark from Omaha built the big barn, “which was a landmark for many years.” The 1970 tornado that cut a long swath through the beautiful Valley demolished the structure. Also in Green Valley, in the far southwest corner, stands another landmark, a high sandhill. From its top a vast sweep of country cradling the towns of Stuart, Atkinson and O’Neill can be seen. The hilltop has long been known as “Malloy’s Peak,” but there are two stories as to how it got its name.
One states that Judge Malloy was looking for some horses that had strayed and climbed the hill for a better look for the missing animals. The tale does not say whether or not he found the horses, only that he named the peak for himself. The other story claims the hilltop was named for a young teacher, Richard Malloy (no relation to the Judge). His school was located southwest of Atkinson and he walked to and from his boarding place to the schoolhouse. Caught in a severe storm one day, the teacher did not return to his boarding place that night. On the heels of the waning storm most of the men of the neighborhood set out on horseback to search for him. After several fruitless days they gave up. 270 When spring thaws bared the draws and swales a man who drove a cream route that passed near the high hill saw some bones, some shreds of clothing and a lunch pail in the greening grass. He gathered the bones into a cracker box and took them into town for burial— mute evidence of another prairie tragedy. Another tale, this one in a lighter vein, is also told of Green Valley. In those days, when families were large and houses small, the boys usually slept in the haymow in the summer time. One family, also unnamed, had a large white cat. One night a pair of brothers dressed up and went to a dance. One of the boys came home first and went to bed in the haymow, wearing his white shirt.
His brother came home later, saw the white patch in the bed and thought it was the cat. Seizing the bull whip, he sent it zinging into the white blur. It is hard to tell which was the most surprised when the other brother came yelling out of the hay.
Still another unnamed young fellow was hauling stacked hay out of the Valley for shipment east. The weather was warm and dust and hayseeds sifted through his clothing, scratching and irritating his skin. On the way home with his empty rack he drove by a pasture tank of cool water. The temptation was too strong. Stopping his team by the tank, he undressed, piled his clothing on the rack and jumped into the tank.
His usually gentle team took one look at the strange, naked white object, snorted in fright and took off for home. The young ranchman leaped out of the tank and sprinted after them through the sandburrs and cactus, yelling, begging and scolding with every jump— until the horses finally ran down and stopped.
Another offering from the James Deming fund of stories tells how young John Deming once had the tables turned on him when he attempted to “josh” a neighbor, Jim Beck. A new family with an attractive daughter had moved into the neighborhood and Jim had taken to calling on the girl on Sunday evenings. He always tied his horse to a tree in the timber on the creek bank, and one evening John moved the horse to the far side of the stream, then hid to see the fun. Sure enough, when Jim came down to the creek to get his horse he kept on walking, expecting to bump into the horse at every step— and fell into the creek.
This was so much fun that John thought up a new stunt. Fastening some sleigh bells to the rim of his hat, he wrapped a sheet around himself and waited for Jim. As the young swain mounted his horse the ghost came floating and tinkling out of the timber. Jim plumped himself down in his saddle, pulled his gun and began plunking bullets at the ghost’s feet. The ghost naturally began a rapid retreat toward home, with the wrathful Jim right behind him. A final anecdote from the great hay valley of Holt County has to do with unique contests, for which prizes were awarded. Rather than seeing how many people could cram themselves into telephone booths or small cars, the young men of those long gone days strove to see which one could get the most girls onto his rayrack. Stuart— Then And Now Chapter Thirty Stuart, a village on the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, is located on Section 1, Township 30, Range 16 in the northwest part of Holt County. Ten or fifteen miles to the north are the beautiful fertile valleys of the Big Sandy, the Beaver, Clay, Otter, Ash, Deer and Willow creeks, all flowing northward into the swift running Niobrara. To the south lies many miles of one of the finest hay meadow sections of the west. A few miles farther to the northwest the Elkhorn rises, its forks coming together just west of the town. The whole area is unsurpassed as cattle and hay country.
John Carberry, one of the first settlers at the site of Atkinson, ten miles to the southeast, in March, 1878, moved up the river to a timber claim just west of the present site of Stuart. The Elkhorn ran through the southwest corner of his land. Quickly carving himself a dugout home in a convenient hillside, he spent the next few weeks hauling logs from Long Pine, forty miles north.
Being skillful with a broadaxe, John soon trimmed and fashioned his logs into a neat building with a room upstairs, an attic and a “stairway leading out to the south end of his building.” He also built sheds for livestock and, by the following year, was able to offer board and lodging to some of the many settlers flooding into the region looking for homes. Five other “first settlers” in the new settlement were Orange Hallock, Jack McGrew’s father, Dick Johnson’s mother, Orin Dorf and a Mr. O’Connor. And, of course, Peter Stuart. F. Roseler’s history of Stuart states that Peter, a Scottish sea captain, was one of the area’s outstanding pioneers. Soon after arriving “he had title to fourteen quarters of land, a large herd of high grade cattle, some sheep and seventeen pedigreed stallions. (He) also owned an opera house, store and flourmill.” Carberry is given the distinction of having founded the town, probably because he opened its first store, but several sources say he named it for his father-in-law, Peter Stuart, its first postmaster. For, in addition to all his other superior possessions, Mr. Stuart had a beautiful daughter, Mary. A romance blossomed between Mary and John, who married her and took her to live in his big log house, Stuart’s first building.
In 1881 John O. D. Nightengale surveyed and platted the town site. Its incorporation took place in January, 1884. The price of liquor licenses was set at $500 per applicant, the money to go into the school fund; there was to be no litter in the streets and alleys in the business district, nor pigs running loose down town. In 1885 wooden sidewalks were laid on Main Street and trees planted. Two years later the city fathers erected a windmill at the center of the square, where Second Street crossed Main, and purchased four hundred feet of fire hose, four years after the town’s first fire, which started in a meeting house in the southwest part of town and took the rest of the block (where the present bank stands) with it. According to the Stuart Advocate the town was mostly Republican for its first twenty years. By 1899 the Democrats were the important party, “but did not accomplish anything remarkable.” The two parties then got together and formed a new party, The Farmer’s Alliance. Anyone interested in the improvement of the settlement could belong and meetings were held in the old depot.
The first train ran through Stuart early in 1882. The First National Bank was opened the following year; the “Stuart House” was the first frame building in the town. Of the village officials one mayor, Norris Coats, served in that office for eight years; T. E. McGuire was village clerk for nineteen years and treasurer for forty- two years; L. L. Cosner was Police 271 attended this school, which was located In Ed Slaymaker’s pasture about two and a half miles from where Ora Whipple lives now. About 1910 the schoolhouse was moved two miles nearer the Fowlers.
The Fowlers got their mail at Inez, five miles away. However there was another post office at Tonawanda, only a little farther away, at the Hookstra place. There was a store there, too, and the Fowler girls, Hazel and Celia, liked best to go there
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