Chapter 35: Amelia And Inez

← Before Today: A History of Holt County, Nebraska

Amelia and Inez Chapter Thirty-Five family, and that’s what knocks.” That fall Will’s father, David Sam-mons, and his friend, John E. White answered Will’s invitation, came to the valley and filed on homesteads. The next February (1884), Will wrote to his father, who had returned to Illinois for the winter, “I am going to Greely County after seed corn. I will get eight bushels, enough for you and me. I wrote to White that he had better come out next month. We will have time to build and get things in shape so you won’t have anything to do only break prairie.” He then describes a hay burner to his father and adds, “Just turn it upside down and set it going and I think you won’t cut any more wood. Eight times filling will run all day and they can’t be beat.” David Sammons and John White came out in September, 1883. After a wet summer, water was standing everywhere on the meadows. Mr. White said he wanted some farm land and Will told him he’d take him to “a nice valley where he would never be bothered with neighbors.” White filed on a homestead and tree claim a little over two miles north of Swan Lake. David Sammons also filed on a homestead and tree claim.

Del Bowers and Phil and Charlie Robertson were already located nearby, and a few others, among them Bart Bisbee, one of the largest cattle owners in that section. Mr. Bisbee had had trouble getting a good well, and so offered to pay one hundred dollars to any man who could provide him a well that could not be pumped dry. The well was drilled and a pump mounted over it. After pumping for some time the water began to flow the first flowing well in the community— and it went on flowing for many years.

Some of Will Sammons forebearers had fought in the Revolution and a town in New York State, Sammons- ville, was named after one of them, Sampson Sammons. Some of their descendants still live there, where the family has had a private burying ground for many, many years. David and his wife, however, had migrated to Illinois. When his wife died there, David was receptive to the persuasive letters written him by his son Will. In 1884, with his sons O. C. (Ott), Duane and A. E. (Allie), he came to O’Neill with all his possessions, including some trees and bushes, in an emigrant car.

They freighted everything to their claim site, a mile southeast of where the town of Amelia was soon to rise, and built a sod house. Ott Sammons also took a homestead close by. Another very early family in the Amelia vicinity was that of William and Laura Pierce. With four young sons, the oldest, Frank, only five, they came to Inman in 1883, where William’s brother, Carrol, lived. They went on to the homestead, three miles south and west of present Amelia, and spent their first nights on the claim sleeping under their wagons. Four more children, all daughters, were born to William and Laura. After William’s death Laura married John Dickson in 1895 and had three more children, including a pair of twins. Frank attended school a mile and a half northeast of Amelia in the winter months; the rest of the time he had to work to help take care of the family. May Sageser was one of his later teachers and he was a little older than she.

Although Frank and his family endured many hardships, it seemed to the lad that I. D. Bliss had the hardest time of all when he undertook to obtain a post office for the fast growing settlement. He never forgot the sight of the patient man, walking the twenty-six long miles to O’Neill to pick up and deliver the mail.

By about 1886 the post office was officially established and named Amelia, after Mr. Bliss’ wife. I. D. then opened a little store in his home, and thus the town of Amelia was born. Carl Barthel, his wife and three little boys, came soon afterward and Carl set up a blacksmith shop. A Mr. Ike Moss came that same year (1886), and built a sod hotel. He also built 346 and operated a livery stable nearby. In 1887 Sam Eaves started the Amelia Journal in the thriving new town. R. D. Parsons, “Uncle Ralph” as he was called by everybody, later took it over and ran it for several years.

A newspaper echoes the voice and culture, the hopes and the aims of its people. A few items taken from early issues of the Journal illustrate: FOR SALE— the old Howard place. One of the best 160 acres in the flowing-well belt. Terms reasonable. MOWING AAACHINE— to trade for a cart at this office. Will sell a first- class fanning mill right from the factory for $21.00.

(1890)— About 40 people were present at the railroad meeting held here last week. We think the right of way to Atkinson can be secured. (In those days every village was confident it could, one way or another, secure a railroad through its borders.) In reporting a Fourth of July celebration, Uncle Ralph wrote: Phileotis Billings, the man from Sunnyside, did read the Declaration till all the people cried. (Phileotis was known to his neighbors as “Josh” Billings, probably in “honor” of the famous Josh Billings whose witty sayings were inscribed on legions of cylinder Edison Records and were quoted and enjoyed much as those of Will Rogers would be a half a century later).

Uncle Ralph went into great detail over the “affair of the season” in the social line when he described the Grand Literary Banquet held at Fountain Valley (Inez). An excellent program had been prepared for the occasion and Lew Kelly, chairman, called the assembly to order. After singing, Mrs. Nancy White led in prayer, followed by instrumental music by the Salavators. W. W. Peck gave a short address of welcome. Then came the program, “which was well rendered throughout,” and the bountiful basket supper. “The party adjourned about midnight and everybody voted it most enjoyable, and Fountain Valley at the head of the list in ability to entertain.” In 1893 we see the following: NOTICE:— The mail route is now established from Atkinson via inez, Amelia, Swan, Ballagh and Erena and return, a two-day trip through the flowing well belt. The overall distance is 110 miles. Passenger rates reasonable. Trips are made three times weekly. Harry Davis is in charge. Very early in its history volunteer workers built a sod community hall in the village. Political battles were debated furiously within its walls and Chet Ingles, a singing teacher, often walked the long, sandy miles from Willow Lake to lead “singing school.” During the Cleveland administration David Clauson, “the only Democrat in the community,” was appointed postmaster over the post office 1. D. Bliss had obtained by his dogged determination. About the same time Ott Sammons took over the Bliss store. No date is given for the following published notice: “FREE LUNCH . . . can be obtained by buying goods at these prices. Good tea . . . 30c per lb. Rice . . . 20 lbs. $1.00. Evaporated Peaches . . . 2 lbs. 25c. Evaporated Apricots . . . 2 lbs. 25c. Raisins . . . 20 lbs. $1.00. Soap . . . 32 bars $1.00 Good warranted Flour . . . per sack 65c.” The lunch was probably crackers and cheese, with sardines on the side. Plans for a creamery soon got under way. Shares were sold, a building erected under the direction of Ott Sammons, and Jim Frary hired as manager. Two cream routes were established, one driven by a Mr. Carroll, the other by the Negro, Mr. Dixon. Business flourished from the start, giving most surrounding farmers a few extra nickels to carry in the pockets of their worn jeans. Various other men managed the creamery during the profitable years of its existance, including Prentice Fisher, (an early day preacher who presided at many pioneer funerals) ably assisted by his family.

Mrs. Whinnery, a dentist, used to come up from Omaha at stated intervals to look after the needs of the community. She sat up her chair in the Alfred Sammons hardware store. Traveling photographers came too, at least once a year, and established their “studios” in any suitable space down town. Young men borrowed the classiest suit in their “crowd” for their “sittings,” making it appear in their pictures that they had all patronized the same tailor.

Although fuel and shade were The Amelia Creamery and some of the cream wagons that covered the neighborhood, picking up cream. scarce in the Amelia region, water was most abundant. Wells needed to be sunk only a few feet to bring up pure, sweet water. When Mr. Bisbee’s driller sunk his pipe deeper and found the water flowed continuously, with no need for a pump or windmill, then everybody put down a flowing well. Many of those first wells are still flowing today. Amelia itself, the city of flowing wells, had neither a pump nor a windmill within its confines.

Ott Sammons, a bachelor when he came to Amelia, married Senah Cole, daughter of an O’Neill jeweler, in 1892. Mrs. Cole was an accomplished pianist, having studied in Chicago before coming to O’Neill, and played for many social gatherings in her new home town. The family lived in town and Mr. Sammons operated his store and farmed his claim, just outside the village.

Aldora Sammons, David’s daughter, soon followed her family to Amelia, and there met young Del Bower, one of the earliest homesteaders. They were married and farmed for many years southeast of the town.

Ott Sammons’ trade territory was a wide one, and among his customers were a man and wife who always came on horseback from their shack out in the country. The man always wore a gun, which was not unusual, but Mr. Sammons had noticed that he always faced the door and, if a stranger came in, kept his hand near the gun butt. After about three years a pair of U. S. Marshals came to the store one day and showed the storekeeper a picture of a wanted man. Sammons recognized the horseback rider and was told the man was wanted on two counts of murder. After getting directions to the fugitive’s place, the men rode off. The 347 murderer was gone when the lawmen arrived— and the wife told Sammons later that he had kept a horse saddled, day and night, all the while they lived in Holt County, and when he saw the marshals coming there had not been time for her to go with him when he fled. She said she never expected to see him again.

Ott’s brother, Duane Sammons, bought a place three miles northwest of Amelia, married Mamie Pierce, William Pierce’s daughter, and raised three children. A grandson, William Sammons, and his family still live on the farm. Alfred (Allie) Sammons married Bertha Moss, daughter of Charles Moss, and had one son. Harry White, son of John White who came to Amelia with David Sammons to file on a homestead, came with his family to the new home at the age of fourteen. The trip out from O’Neill with their wagons loaded with all their personal property was a memorable one for the lad. “Not a tree, not a fence, nothing but a lot of space and a host of meadow larks, all singing at once. It seemed to me they were trying to welcome us. As we came over the hill to our place I little realized how long I would live in that valley— over sixty years.” Will Off and Wilbur Wheaton, both bachelors, came from Illinois about 1895 and took homesteads. A year later Will’s brother, C. A. (or Gus as he was known) came out and took over Will’s place. He married Elta Athon and built up a fine place, being one of the first to set pine trees in the sandhills. His pine grove has been a landmark for many years. According to Harry White, “he did more to improve cattle (Herefords) in southern Holt County than any dozen men.” From then on the country settled up fast. One evening, after going to bed, the Whites heard a knock at the door. Tom Thompson, whose family was moving in, had been left to,bring a wagon load of goods pulled by two yokes of cows. In crossing the creek (South Fork of the Elkhorn) the cows had walked into a hole and could not get out. Mr. White and his sons got up and helped the boy get the cows out, then took Tom home with them and put him to bed. The next morning they got the wagon out and sent the boy on his way.

“Uncle Ralph” Parsons, who lived with the Whites, delighted Harry and his brothers with the names he gave people and places around Amelia. “Jackrabbit Mountain” was a nearby hill where rabbits were plentiful. “Poverty Flats” was the valley just south of us. “Crowbait Valley” was so named because there were so many skinny horses there. He called Inez Valley “Missouri Valley” because it was settled by Missourians. The White’s home valley was, of course, named “Paradise Valley.” One neighbor was “the man with the iron jaw,” and another, who talked continually, “the man with the leather tongue.” One neighbor, Will Long, had only a yoke of oxen for motive power. On the Fourth of July he went with a group of people to Chambers for the celebration, and on the long drive his oxen kept up with the teams of horses all the way. Another family, the Eurich Moormans, broke two yokes of cows to drive. The first thing the cows did was run away and break the tongue out of the wagon. But after they were well broken the family drove them to Sunday school and every where they went.

Another neighbor, Ichabod Brother-ton, walked all the way from Iowa to Amelia, took a claim and made good. Still another was Lafe Dimmick, a noted singer from New York, who homesteaded southwest of Swan Lake and had a smaller lake named after him, Dimmick Lake. Wilkes James and Oliver Cromwell lived a mile east of Swan Lake. They worked three yokes of oxen, Sankey, Moody, Pat, Jim, Bob and Oil. Cromwell had only one leg, so rode a pony while he drove his oxen. James held the breaking plow in place for him.

The Riley brothers, Will and Sam, came to the region in the early ‘eighties and went into the purebred Shorthorn business. Later they owned the largest herd of that breed in the United States. Tommy Baker, who came from England as a boy, married Will Riley’s daughter and carried on the business.

Harry had great admiration for his mother, Mrs. John White. She left a pleasant home in Illinois to go to the Nebraska frontier, he said, and during their first winter on the claim they had no mail for thirteen weeks because of the deep snow and bitter cold, and it was longer than that before she saw another woman’s face. Mrs. White’s chief concern, her son noted, was always for others— and when she was concerned she did something about it. On Sundays she enjoyed getting a good dinner for all the bachelor neighbors who flocked to the White home. She lived to be ninety years old.

In due time Harry grew up and married Audry Moss. Their first home was a three-room sod house with a twelve-foot square frame room connected to it by a run-way. In the summers they used the frame room for a kitchen, in the winters for a “hay house.” A small load of dry hay stored there would last the hay burners for a week— and what luxury not to have to go outside in bad weather to fill the burners. Charles Nathaniel Thompson, born in New York City in 1843, came to Iowa at the age of six. He married Elizabeth Hoskins in 1871 and came to Neligh in 1880 with six small children. It was while moving to their claim near Amelia in 1885 that the son Tom got his yoke of cows stuck in the creek. The Thompsons raised thirteen children and built up a large ranch. They had the distinction of having the first frame house, the first windmill and the first reaper in their locality. The couple lived to celebrate their Golden Wedding Anniversary in 1921. Mrs. Thompson died five years later but Charles lived to be one hundred and two, passing away in 1945. Frank Pierce, who had come from his Iowa home with his parents to the homestead southwest of Amelia in 1883, in 1907 married Hattie Nissen, whose family had settled on a claim north of Amelia in 1886. The Nissens’ lived in a story and a half white house and had a big red barn where many a dance was held. Frank and Hattie were married by candlelight on a windy Christmas night in Hattie’s home, afterward everybody repaired to the barn for the wedding dance. The wind was blowing a gale by the time Frank and Hattie left the dance in one buggy, accompanied by their attendants, Louie Nissen and Lillian Pierce, in another. The at-tendants’ buggy was blown over, throwing the occupants out, and the newlyweds barely escaped a similar fate. The couple lived on two or three farms in the Amelia vicinity before settling on their “home place,” a mile north of town, where they lived for the next fifty-five years. Frank passed away at eighty-nine; Hattie, though she has had both hips broken and is confined to a wheel chair, is still in very good health.

Frank’s sister, Mamie Pierce, remembered how hungry she and her brothers and sisters used to get for sweets, during those early years on the homestead. One summer she and her brother Roy herded cattle for a few days for a neighbor. When he paid them off, three whole pennies, Mamie said “all that money went to our heads and instead of going home we rode our horse to the little store at Swan Lake.” They intended to spend the money for candy, then take it home and share it with the others. But the man who ran the store “on a frayed shoestring,” was out of candy. The youngsters held a hurried consultation, then asked for three cents worth of sugar. This was supplied, and the children started home— but their good intentions evaporated and they had eaten all 348 the sugar before the long ride ended. Of the large Pierce family only three descendants remain in Holt County: Mrs. Hazel Ott of Atkinson and Mrs. Bonnie Watson of Amelia, daughters of Mamie Sammons; and Mrs. Ellen Lydon of Ewing, daughter of Edith Pierce McCaffrey.

Charles Watson Moss, who arrived in Amelia in 1887, had quite a large family: a son and daughter by a first marriage and six children by his second. With his wife, his mother Sarah Solomon, and his eight sons and daughters, he settled on tree claims in the Dry Creek Valley, three miles northwest of Amelia. His mother filed on one of the tree claims. Three more sons were born to Charles and Matilda Moss on the claim. They were scarcely well established on Dry Creek when the drouth of the ‘nineties blighted the country. However Charles drilled his oats very deep in the sandy soil, that dry spring of ’94 and, although no moisture fell for many months, he produced a crop of three thousand bushels.

For many years Mr. Moss was a member of the Holt County Board in the period when it was composed of a “Supervisor” from every precinct and was known as the “Holt County Congress.” In one of the hard years Charles tried to supplement his income by hauling his surplus baled hay the twenty miles to Atkinson where all he got for it was $1.50 a ton. It had cost him seventy-five cents a ton to bale it. Another time he tried selling surplus potatoes in town and left six bushels with the hotel keeper in exchange for a twenty-five cent dinner.

He was one of the leaders in the building of the Amelia Creamery and served as its business manager for many years. A friend of Barrett Scott’s, he was one of the signers of the bail bond, after the defaulting county treasurer was brought back from Mexico to face charges.

In 1902 Mr. Moss sold his original Sunnyside ranch, then comprising 2,000 acres, and bought his son, Theodore’s, ranch west of Sunnyside. A few years later, with his wife and two youngest sons, he moved to Atkinson, but remained active in the ranching business in partnership with Theodore. He died in Atkinson in 1927 at the age of eighty-five.

Theodore Moss, the second son, remembered going to school one fall in a cattle shed with boards laid in for seats. His teacher was his half-brother, Thomas. A schoolhouse was built later and named “Sunnyside.” The Moss family were Baptists and Thomas was a Baptist Sunday School Missionary, so the church the Mosses, the Whites and several others organized in the schoolhouse was, of course, a Baptist church. C. H. Frady, a well-known American Sunday School Missionary included the Sunnyside congregation in his far flung rounds in the sandhills of Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming.

In 1900 Theodore married Anna Elizabeth Guard, niece of Columbus Roark, the Inez postmaster. Theodore and his wife lived north of Inez, where he became the owner of a sheep ranch. After a few years they moved to Atkinson, where Theodore ran a livery barn. About 1906 he accepted a position as foreman of the Lee and Prentice ranch, where he remained for thirty-five years during haying seasons.

When the creamery closed down at Amelia he hauled cream from there to O’Neill, making his weekly trips at night to keep the cream cool. During this period he met and became a friend of Congressman Kinkaid, who was so carried away with the water from the flowing wells at Amelia that he paid Theodore to bring him a gallon jug of it on each of his trips. While living in Atkinson Theodore drove back and forth to the ranch he helped his father operate. He and Elizabeth had three daughters and a son. The latter died as an infant. Theodore Moss died in Chambers in 1958 at the age of eighty-two. Both Winslow Z. Watson and his wife, Mary Elizabeth Dominy, were born in New York State. Winslow served in the cavalry in the Civil War and afterward became a lumberjack. He and his wife spent their winters in the woods, where she cooked for the crew and the only time she ever saw a woman’s face was when she looked in the water barrel. Their son, Fred, born in Ellensburg, New York in 1868, came to Doniphan, Nebraska, with his parents in 1887.

In 1892 Fred came on to Holt County, arriving at the home of his uncle, Will Dominy, west of Chambers on Christmas Eve. In the spring his parents came out and homesteaded two miles south of Amelia. Fred bought land just north of the C. N. Thompson place and eventually built up a 2400 acre ranch.

In 1896 he married Frances Elizabeth Thompson. Fred helped start the South Fork Telephone Company, put one of the first phones into his own home and served as treasurer of the company for many years.

Merdie Manchester McGraw tells her own story best. Her parents, Robert and Marinda Manchester, were married in 1880 and were living in Iowa when Merdie was born. Her father was a blacksmith but the work was too hard for him, so they moved to Holt County sometime in the 1890’s. Merdie was eight years old. She takes up the story there.

“We moved to a farm northwest of Amelia, where Paul Hiatt now lives. Neighbors told us there had been a flowing well on the place, near what was left of an old sod house. Father had often waterwitched to find water, so he said he would try to find the pipe. Sand had drifted over it but he found it and dug the sand away. The pipe had a cork in it and when he took the cork out water began to flow. “My sister Mae, my brother Clarence and I went to the Sunnyside school, a mile and a half from our house. They had a six months term at that time. One year there was a three months term northeast of Amelia, and Mae and I went to that school, ‘though it was three and a half miles from our place and we had to walk there, too.

“Father bought fifty head of ewes. We had to walk to herd them but Clarence helped part of the time. I was about twelve years old then. We got so tired of walking and herding that I asked Father if he cared if I broke a colt. We had one that was past two years old. He said he didn’t care, so I broke him and he was my favorite riding horse. After that I did the herding. One year I herded 1,500 sheep, as two farmers wanted me to herd their sheep, too.

“We needed more room for the sheep so we moved eight miles north of Amelia, where Father built a sod house for us and we had miles of room for the sheep. During the drouth of the ‘nineties Father used to say that we almost had to live on hay ashes and jack rabbit tracks. One time we wanted Mother to make us a pie, but she said she had nothing in the house to put in a pie. So Mae and I went along a row of trees and found sheepsorrel and picked enough leaves for Mother to make a pie. It tasted so good.

“Our post office all those years was Amelia. A family of Clausons from Kentucky came to Amelia and built a small room onto the side of their house for the post office. There were no telephones, radios or TV’s then. O’Neill was thirty miles from our sheep ranch but we did most of our trading there and always went in a lumber wagon.

“When I was thirteen a Danish family wanted me to come and herd their cattle, as they had no pasture, just a yard to put them in at night. They paid me a dollar a week and I had to furnish my own horse. I had to help with the haying and anything else that needed to be done, such as feeding calves and chickens, helping in the house and garden and milking from three to seven cows night and 349 morning. When haying time came I did all the sweeping, as there was only the man and his boy to put up the hay. I had to have the cattle where I could watch them then— but all I got was a dollar a week. “After we had been on the sheep ranch a few years we moved to O’Neill, where Emil Sniggs wanted Father to work for him in his blacksmith shop. I went to school there for two terms, then a woman in Inman wanted me to come and work for her at $2.50 a week, which was good wages. I worked there until fall. There I met William (Billie) Liedy and we kept company until he went to work in Omaha.

“Four years later, in 1908, we were married. That fall William Watson came to Omaha and wanted Billie to come to Inman and work for him in the Hay Company office. He offered him $60 a month, the same as he was getting in Omaha, but we could live cheaper in Inman, so we moved back. My folks and two brothers, Clarence and Floyd, had left O’Neill to move to a farm north of Eagle Creek, where they got their mail at the Knollcamper Mills, two and a half miles away. “In 1918 when the flu was so bad Billie Leidy passed away. There were several other deaths around Inman and some were our relatives. We had bought a home and were paying $25 a month on it. We didn’t have any money saved up so I did washings for several people, also dressmaking and any kind of sewing. I took in boarders and sold our car and a couple of cows and saved every penny I could until I had $1,300 to pay off that mortgage. “I was a mid-wife, too. Sometimes the mothers came to my house, sometimes I went to theirs, for the ten days I had to care for the mothers and babies. I have the names of fifty-four confinements I took care of. Sometimes I couldn’t get a doctor, but I got along fine.

“In 1921 Harry McGraw and I were married. His wife had died of the flu, too, and left a baby boy less than a year old. Keith has always seemed like my own child, and my three children got along fine with him. “One year during haying time I worked on the Lee and Prentice ranch for Theodore Moss (Merdie doesn’t give the date, but Theodore Moss moved to the ranch about 1906. Merdie probably worked there before her marriage in 1908.) They had fourteen hired men and I had to bake bread every day but Sunday. I baked fifteen large loaves a day. There were five in the Moss family and I had such big washings to do, as people washed for their hired hands, too, at that time. I used a tub and wash board. I never had a hand washer until several years after I was married.

“I will soon be eighty-nine years old and I’ve seen a lot of changes.” Malancton Lincoln Sageser, the son of James and Mary Sageser, was born in Illinois in 1868, but later moved to Iowa. When the family moved to Chambers in 1887 James, his son “Link” and another son came by wagon. Mary Sageser and the rest of the family came on the train.

In the meantime Lillian Mae Clau- son, who would one day be Link Sageser’s wife, was living in Kentucky. Her parents were David and Nannie Clauson. Her father was a railroad man, but when his wife contracted tuberculosis they had to find a better climate. Sam Clauson had already settled near Amelia, on what was later called the Graves and Moss land, and David and his family followed in 1895. Lillian, seventeen, and her brother, Tom, came with their parents. It was David Clauson who turned out to be Amelia’s only Democrat.

David bought out the store and some of President Cleveland’s supporters, including Ott Sammons, took him to O’Neill and had him sworn in as Amelia’s postmaster. Tom Clauson was the first man in Holt County to pitch a curve. Some of the opposing teams tried to get him ejected from the team on the grounds that his slider was an illegal pitch. Tom later became Chief Dispatcher for the Illinois Central Railroad in Louisville, Kentucky.

Link Sageser and Lillian Mae Clauson were married in 1898. Their eldest son, Vernon, was born in their sod home, seven miles west of Chambers, in 1902. After finishing his elementary education at the Gleed country school, he graduated from Chambers High School. Before his The David Clauson home, store and post office. The little sign above the door of the soddy on the left reads “Post Office.” Courtesy Vern Sageser. marriage in 1924 he had already bought his first purebred Hereford cattle and laid the foundation for the fine Herefords he was to breed and sell for nearly fifty years.

Vern met Blanche Seid of Nemaha, a graduate of Peru Normal, while she was teaching at the Chambers High School. After two years at Chambers, she taught a year at Atkinson before her marriage to Vern. Afterward she taught two years in the Amelia school. With two other teachers she arranged the curriculum so that the state could approve the facility for a three-year high school.

Beginning in 1944, the sale of Sageser-Robertson-Schaffer registered Herefords was held in Atkinson every spring until 1955 when, for three years, it was the Sageser-Robertson sale. From 1952 through 1970 Mr. Sageser consigned cattle to the O’Neill show and sale held by the Holt County Hereford Breeder’s Association. In 1969-1970 he held his dispersion sales and retired.

Bower Sageser, second son of Link and Lillian, grew up on the farm and went to the same schools that his brother did. While working toward his first degree at Wayne State College he taught school in Amelia for two years, then went on to earn his various degrees, including his PhD. from the University of Nebraska in 1934.

His wife, Ruth Fancher of Ains-worth, also has a degree from the University of Nebraska. They were married in 1927 and have one daughter, Sandra Sageser Clark, who is teaching in a New York college. Bower Sageser, a professor at Kansas State University for thirty-five years, is now retired.

Some of Bower’s special boyhood memories include the lively literary 350 society meetings in the old hall in Amelia. His father, Link, Duane Sammons and Harry White were much in demand at these affairs for making speeches and reciting poetry. His father used to give a mock sermon that was highly popular— and Bower heard the same sermon given at a history meeting in Reno, Nevada, in 1972.

He remembers that his father and Will Sammons used to trap on the Cedar River in winter, and that Will and Les Sammons bought their first car, a four-door Overland, and got Link to drive it for them. F. A. Bower had bought a 1911 Ford, so Will Sammons, his brother-in-law, had to outdo him with the Overland. E. E. Perrin of Chambers had a high-wheeled International and Dr. Coleman drove a high-wheeled buggy made by Sears Roebuck.

James Sageser, Link’s father, a Civil War veteran, died in Chambers before 1902 but his wife, Grandmother Sageser, lived on in the little town for many years. They were of Scottish Swiss descent and the word “Sagre” meant a scythe maker in Swiss.

The Rodell Root family came from Blair to a farm north of Amelia in 1898. Laura Root was born there the next year, not long before the family moved to a ranch nine miles southwest of town in the Willow Lake area. Off Sammons had the store in Amelia during that time and a Mr. Rouse hauled their cream and eggs to town and brought back their groceries. Mr. Root became a Justice of the Peace and later, with his neighbors, organized the Willow Lake Telephone Company. The Roots bought their first car from Donat Seger of Atkinson in 1914.

In 1898 Chelsey and Rebecca Coolidge and their five children came from Merrick County to a farm two miles southeast of Amelia. Three years later they bought a half section two miles north of town and built a two-story house and a big barn on it. They also rented a half-section of school land nearby. The lease cost them $7.50 per year. Their son Elmer had a homestead a mile and a half on north of his parents’ home. In December, 1913, the Coolidges held a farm sale and, with three of their children, Elmer, Inez and Pearl, moved to Missouri. Elmer married Florence Humphrey there in 1914 and the next year Inez married Florence’s brother, S. S. Humphrey. Later that year Chelsey and Rebecca, with their daughter Pearl and Elmer and his wife, moved to Colorado. Chelsey died there in 1916 and the rest of the family returned to Amelia, settling about two miles south and west of town. Pearl married Edward H. White in 1917 and lived two miles farther south.

Elmer and Florence had three children: Charles, Lillian and Calvin. Charles lives in Chambers. Lillian is the widow of William Ragland, Calvin lives in Norfolk.

Charley and Minnie Remington came to Amelia in a covered wagon, driving their cattle, in 1900. They bought the Turner place, and later some of the Hawkins land, and lived in two sod houses before building their frame home in 1912. They had three children: Velma, Ralph and Donald.

While she was still very small Velma drove a one-horse buggy to take their cream to the Amelia creamery. They got their mail there and also went to church there until Mr. Fisher began preaching in their schoolhouse (the Scafe school). The first funeral Velma (who supplied this history) can remember was that of John White, held in the White home. When Mr. Hale died during a bad snow storm, Mr. Remington and another neighbor, Chris Madsen, went to the home and got the body. They had to keep it in the Remington garage until it was possible, several days later, to take it to Chambers for burial.

The Baker Company covered wagon, or van, used to drive through the neighborhood, selling Baker Products, spices, extracts, patent medicines and the like. Tom Salem, a peddler who migrated from Assyria, used to make his rounds too, with a pack on his back. As he prospered he bought a horse and wagon, and finally opened a store in Amelia. He was well patronized as he was able to extend credit all year, until the settlers marketed their hogs, cattle or crops. Mr. and Mrs. Wilhelm Lierman moved from Cumming County to a farm four miles west of Amelia in 1905. Their place is now the Pospichal ranch. In 1912 they bought the hotel in Amelia and operated the switchboard for the South Fork Telephone Company until the early 1930’s. Their two sons, Charles and Herman also came to Holt County. Charles took a Kinkaid at the head of Inez Valley in 1906 and Herman later ran the home place— until he took up the carpenter trade. Charles’ sons, Claude and Ira, still live in the Swan Lake community and operate cattle ranches. Mr. and Mrs. S. J. Widman, native Nebraskans, settled on a quarter section a mile and a half northwest of Amelia in 1905. Some trees had been planted on the place (previously owned by a Mr. Fiddler) and there was a sturdy sod house, a blacksmith shop and a pole livestock shelter. This site was to be their home for the remainder of their lives. Another son, Clyde, was born in 1907.

Silas Jackson (S. J.) Widman’s father had studied at Heidelburg University before coming to America. Silas’ wife, Effie Maybell Applegate, had taught school for several years before her marriage. The couple was known to their friends as Jack and Belle.

Three years after settling on their farm a prairie fire burned everything except their sod house. They also lost their entire hay crop to the racing flames. The neighbors, however, shared, each giving them a stack or two, and they were able to get their livestock through the winter. Jack made extra money by raising a few Percheron horses for sale and, with many of his neighbors, stretched his cash income a little more by helping put up ice from the surrounding lakes for the Amelia creamery; one more reason why the creamery was so important to the economy of Amelia’s territory.

The following excerpt from Bower Sageser’s Attempted Economic Adjustment in Holt County in The 1890s, published in Nebraska History, June, 1959, helps explain the part the creamery played in the lives of the community: “An example of these projects was the one at Amelia where a modern creamery was erected and operated for nearly thirty years. The plant was powered by a steam engine. Almost one-half the space in the building was designed for the storage of ice, which was taken from local lakes during the winter. Flowing well water was also used to cool the cream and butter, and some ice was used in the freight wagons that hauled the produce to the railway stations at Atkinson, Emmet and O’Neill.

“The creamery had sufficient ice to make ice cream, especially for local community affairs. The community share-holders also enjoyed the use of ice in making ice cream at home. Cream wagons operated in the community to pick up the cream from the farmers. The farmers, who used flowing wells for cooling, sold the creamery a good grade of cream. In 1898 the Amelia Creamery was awarded the first prize for sweet-cream butter at the Omaha Exposition. Roy Thorkelson was manager of the creamery at that time.” About a block and a half from the creamery a small stockyards and dipping vat were built. Steam, piped from the creamery, heated the dipping vat and livestockmen brought in their sheep and cattle for dipping to eradicate lice and control skin diseases.

351 In July, 1896, Robert W. McGinnis of York brought a dairy herd to land owned by his family in the Amelia area. For the next several years the plant was known as the “McGinnis Creamery.” McGinnis also had financial interests in creameries at Atkinson and O’Neill.

Press clippings, most of them put out in months of peak production of milk, indicate the output of the creameries. On May 28, 1896, the Atkinson Graphic reported that the Atkinson creamery had produced fifty-nine tubs of butter in one week and that the Amelia creamery produced sixty-three tubs the same week. A year later the Frontier reported sixty-eight tubs, or 4,080 pounds of butter had been turned out at the Atkinson creamery that week, and that the Amelia creamery was distributing $2000 a month to its patrons.

The Widmans took an active part in community affairs. Jack served on the local schoolboard for many years and was Sunday school superintendent at the Methodist church. Clyde Widman married Alice Fancher in 1941 and, with his family, still lives on the home place.

When the Phillip Fix family came to Amelia in 1914, Carl Louis Smith, engaged to marry their daughter Lillie, came with them. Carl was twenty, and both he and Lillie were born at Clatonia, near Lincoln. Carl and Lillie would have been married before they came to Holt County in March, traditional moving day, but Lillie had ordered a special beaded, sequined satin wedding dress from New York, and refused to be married until it came. They waited five months for it, and when it finally came Howard Berry, a close friend, took them to O’Neill in style in his new Hupmobile. Their wedding day was August 12, 1914.

Lillian’s great-grandmother, Dora Katrina Helms, had a most interesting background. When she was four her widowed mother, with ten other women, brought her from Germany to America. Men were scarce in Germany, as so many had been killed in the wars, and all of these women were seeking husbands. They were all very poor and had been told of the rich opportunities in America, and of men needing wives.

The emigrant women all came to Plattsmouth, Nebraska, by train and all soon found husbands, remained friends and saw their children intermarry in the group. Dora’s second husband also died. The third, whose name was Marsh, was wealthy and they had a beautiful home.

Phillip Fix, born in St. Louis in 1853, came to Kramer, Nebraska, as a young man and met Dora Helms. They were married in Lincoln in 1877 and moved onto a large farm near Clatonia. They had a large family and the older children married and settled near the parents. Due to family differences and the need for more land, Phillip and Dora, with Lillian and their youngest son, Elmer, decided to go farther west.

Near Amelia Phillip found what he was looking for and bought the Sunnyside Ranch from the Cherry Land Company. The ranch was well improved, with a big double ranch house, large barn and other buildings. Carl, who came with Phillip and Elmer and a quantity of livestock, machinery, wagons and a carriage, in the emigrant cars, brought with him his beloved buggy mare, Shady.” She had carried him and Lillian many a mile while they were courting. For five years Carl and Lillian lived near her parents on a quarter, a part of the Sunnyside Ranch, given them by her father. The first year was a good one for all of them and they raised 5,000 bushels of corn. The next year brought heavy rains. The corn drowned out and ducks swam on the hay meadows, but leftover corn and hay carried them through to a better year.

Elmer Fix soon went back to Clatonia to court a girl he had known there. When he came back with his bride, Blanche, he too settled on a part of the Sunnyside ranch. Phillip, who always went barefooted, even in the stubbly hay fields, lived twelve years on his beautiful ranch, then died in 1926.

Grandma Fix, with the help of a hired man and some of her grandchildren, managed the ranch for another eleven years. She kept several beloved dogs for protection and loved to trade horses. She would trade with anyone, neighbors or strangers, and always believed the stories they told her about the animals they brought to trade for her sound horses. She also loved to go fishing, and her grandchildren liked nothing better than to go with her, riding in a two-wheeled cart to Swan Lake, or others that she found good for fishing. She died at the home of her daughter Lillie in 1937 and is buried in the Chambers cemetery beside her husband. In 1919 Carl and Lillie had bought a new Ford, and the next year had moved to a ranch near Holt Creek, some miles to the northwest. This ranch had good sandhill pastureland and some low meadows. They tried farming, then turned to hay and livestock cattle, horses, sheep and goats. Carl, too, became a hay hauler, making the all day trips to Emmet, where Guy Cole owned the Emmet Hay Company.

It was usually after dark by the time he came home from these trips and his children, waiting by the open door, could hear the wagon wheels crunching through the frozen snow and the harness jingling, but best of all, their father whistling or singing as he neared his home. “Dad knew all the old, and learned all the new, tunes,” his daughter Evelyn wrote. “And we were the first to own the newly invented radio. Then we learned all the new songs. Later, when we could afford a truck to haul the hay, we (the children) rode along, and what fun it was to sing as we drove the beautiful sandhill trails.” “Dad loved to cook and was very good at it. Apple dumplings were his specialty on wash day, when Mom was busy with all that wash for eight children. Many evenings we came home from school to the delicious smell of his honey covered popcorn balls. During the Depression years Dad raised bees and processed honey. He was known as “The Honey Man’ all over the country. Wherever he went he had pints, quarts, gallons, or pounds of honey in the comb. At fairs he spread out his containers and was always surrounded by buyers.” The honey business was a family operation. The children painted “Carl’s Pure honey” on the container labels. At first the honey was heated on the stove and the wax drained off. Then came the happy day when Mr. Smith bought a honey extractor. Honey was traded for shoes, yard goods, overalls and groceries. It even furnished the money for high school expenses and for “treats.” The Smiths ate it on everything, and put it in cakes, cookies, baked beans, and anything else that needed sweetening. When the bees swarmed Mrs.

Smith gave her children cans, tubs, anything to pound on and make a noise to get the bees to settle on a nearby tree. If an adventurous queen led a swarm off, Mrs. Smith or someone else took Buster, the saddle horse, and followed the swarm. The loss of even one was a calamity. In the ‘thirties another plague was crows. A flock would land on a corn field, where the crop was scanty enough anyway, and strip it in a little while. To help the hard pressed farmers, the government offered a five cent bounty for each crow egg and fifteen cents for a crow’s head. The younger Smith children climbed trees, robbed crows’ nests and blew the contents from the eggs, then sold the shells at the government office in O Neill. One day, on the way to town, about $6.00 worth of egg shells fell off the back of the truck. There was 352 nothing left but shattered shells.” Three of the Smith children, Evelyn, Albert and Clarence, were born near Amelia. Clarence died in infancy. Carl, Jr., Betty, Genevieve, Lester and Holly were born on the ranch. When Betty and Sylvia were small their task was the gathering of sticks and wood to burn in the cook stove. One day they took a sharp new axe along. Betty held the sticks and Sylvia attempted to cut them in two. Of course she chopped off one of Betty’s fingers, except for a slender piece of skin. The mother wrapped a clean dish towel around the mutilated little hand and took the child to Dr. Douglas, who sewed the finger back on. It soon healed, a bit crooked but useful and strong.

In 1941 Lester Smith, eleven years old, and a friend. Dale Jarvis, were digging in the side of a sandhill. The sand caved in on them and Lester was smothered. Evelyn, the oldest daughter, had already married Lawrence Pacha and gone to live in Green Valley. Albert and Carl, Jr., served in the armed forces, Albert in the Aleutian Islands and Carl in Japan. While they were gone the girls helped with the haying and other ranch work.

Albert married Quentin Mlinar and settled on the home ranch. Carl, Jr. married Edith Slaymaker and lives in Lexington. Sylvia married William Morgan. Betty married Robert LeMun- yan and moved to Green Valley. Genevieve married Alvin Forbes, lived near Amelia for a few years then went to Colorado. Holly married Charles Shane and lives north of Atkinson. Between the seven of them they gave Carl and Lillian Smith thirty- nine grandchildren.

After the Smiths retired to Atkinson in 1941, Carl worked as a carpenter for a few years, being foreman on the work force that built the Atkinson Memorial Hospital in 1947, one of his favorite projects. In 1960 he spent many hours helping and advising the members who did the finish work on the new Methodist church. With his turning lathe he fashioned the beautiful candle holders for the altar. Carl and Lillian celebrated their Golden Anniversary in 1964 and Carl died of a heart attack in 1973. Grover Charlie Sigman was born in Pennsylvania and moved with his parents to Edgar, Nebraska in the late ‘eighties. One of eleven children, he went to school very little. He married Maude Smith, originally of Missouri, at Clay Center, Nebraka, in 1908 and brought his family to Emmet on the train in 1914.

From there he freighted his possessions to the Chelsey Coolidge farm, two and a half miles northeast of Amelia. Although he owned and farmed the place, Charlie freighted groceries for the Amelia stores out from Emmet in order to earn extra income. The twenty mile round trip took twelve to fifteen hours. His son and four daughters earned extra money by working in the hay fields. Charlie loved horses and learned to doctor and care for them. Eventually he covered a wide territory in this work, looking after sick animals all over the country, and breaking and training horses as well. For many years he served as a Deputy Sheriff in Holt County. He and his wife moved into Amelia in 1938, where Mrs. Sigman passed away that same year. Charlie lived on until 1969. None of his children live in Holt County. Erwin Russel Carpenter, born in Buffalo County in 1893, moved with his parents to a ranch near Bartlett in 1910. He graduated from the University of Nebraska School of Agriculture in Lincoln in 1916, and the next year entered the service in World War I. An ancestor, Jesse Carpenter, had been an officer in the Revolution and his grandfather, Eleazer Carpenter, was a veteran of the Civil War.

Erwin saw action overseas in the battles of St. Micheil and the Argonne Forest in 1918, was discharged in 1919 and returned home. In April, 1918, shortly before he was sent overseas, he had married Mildred Idella Carpenter (no relation) in Lincoln. In 1921, with their small daughter, they moved to the Riley Brothers’ ranch west of Amelia, where he became a partner of Will Riley and Tom Baker in their Shorthorn cattle business. After four years Mr. Carpenter moved his family and his herd of Shorthorns to a farm four miles northwest of Chambers, where the family made its home for the next forty-seven years. The Carpenters sold the ranch to Glen Grimes in 1972 and moved into Chambers. Erwin and Mildred were the parents of three daughters.

Mr. Carpenter was an active member of the American Legion Post 320 for over forty-five years and was a faithful coach of the Chambers boys’ basket ball team for quite a long time. He died suddenly in October, 1972.

The F. Roseler history of Holt County records that Mrs. Floyd Adams of Amelia began carrying mail on a rural route out of the little town in 1934. The post office history of the county names a Florence Lindsey who carried the mail from Amelia to Ballagh in Garfield County from 1938 to 1942. Mrs. Adams’ route no doubt took a different direction. At any rate hers was a forty-two mile daily “jaunt through the sandhills.” In the beginning she carried the mail to assist her husband, who had contracted the route. The first years were rugged. In the winter she battled snow, in the spring, mud, in the summer, sand, and in the fall it was back to mud again. Windstorms, thunder storms and blizzards sometimes caught her far from home. The car broke down at odd and unexpected times. In 1942 Mrs. Adams signed the contract in her own name. Mr. Roseler does not state how many years she carried the mail. But a little figuring shows she would total 13,104 miles a year— time enough and miles enough for her to grow into an excellent mechanic, weather prophet, trail blazer and authority on getting things done for herself.

Mrs. Adams was a daughter of C. A. Ott. Her husband, Floyd, and his parents had moved to the community some years after the Otts. Floyd’s father, Rody Adams, was known far and wide for his accordion music, and it was said of him that he did more to lift the hearts— and feet— of the sometimes discouraged settlers than anyone else in the region.

Some of the best lands in Holt County were the last to be homesteaded. This was due partly to the long distance from town and partly to a preference by early day settlers for land adjacent to timbered streams. Therefore the lush grasslands of the southwest became the heritage of the men and women of the later migration. Among these were the Rowse, Dawe, DeGroff, Gumb, Crandall, Wid- man and Dailey families.

The Rowses came from England to Canada in 1872, then to West Point, Nebraska, in 1879. Five years later William and Ann Rowse took a homestead south of Willow Lake, very near the southern border of Holt County. Their oldest son, Nicholas, who had married in Canada, brought his wife and three children to another homestead close to that of his father. William’s second son, James, also took a homestead. His was just south of the line in Garfield County. They all built sod houses and dug wells. Their first school was held in the sod home of a bachelor neighbor, Johnie Noonan. Nicholas did the freighting for the families, making two or three trips a year to Neligh for flour, sugar, crackers, dried fruit, coffee and other staples. During the blizzard of ’88 the Rowses lost eighty head of cattle.

William later bought the Carter Cole place (now the Dale Mitchell ranch) where there was a set of frame buildings and a windmill. When William passed away Nicholas and his family moved to this place, 353 then later to his Kinkaid land across the line in Garfield County, where he built a house for his mother, Ann Rowse, close by. Both Nicholas and his wife preceded her in death, after which she moved to Burwell and lived to be ninety-nine years old.

Nicholas and Lizzie raised nine children. Their first child, Will, was born in a covered wagon on the way from Canada to West Point. Four of the nine are still alive, Mable, Cora, George and Kathleen, although George, who married Ulalia Gumb, is the only one living in Holt County. In 1973 there were 202 descendants of William and Ann Rowse living in Nebraska, and nearly a hundred more elsewhere.

Albert Dawe, a nephew of William Rowse, left England for Canada in 1882. He followed his uncle to West Point, and then to Willow Lake. A young man of twenty-three at the time, he lived alone on his claim until 1902, when he sent to England for his sister Isabell.

When Albert first moved onto his land, and while he was building his sod house, two brothers, Paul and John Lewis, came walking through the country looking for work. Able- bodied young men, they stopped with Albert and helped him finish his house. The pair then filed on homesteads by the lake, stayed until they proved up, sold the land to Albert and left. No one there ever knew where they came from nor where they went. On a trip to Ericson, a little town thirty-eight miles from his claim, to get supplies, Albert was caught in a blizzard. His team soon played out and pulled into the shelter of a stack of hay. Albert managed to find his way to a hog house nearby, where he crawled in with the hogs and kept fairly warm the rest of the night. As they became elderly, Albert and Isabell moved into Chambers, where Albert died in 1943 at the age of eighty-three. His sister then went to live with a nephew in Burwell until her death.

William Gumb and his wife Ulalia, born and raised in Cornwall, England, followed some friends from Pennsylvania to their homestead south of Willow Lake. With the help of neighbors they built a small sod house. Two cows, broken to work in ox yokes, pulled the plow that broke the sod for their home and their first fields. Mrs. Gumb guided the plow while William drove the cows. They found one tree on their homestead, a cottonwood only four feet tall when they first came.

They brought two children from England with them, Emily and Ellen, lost Ellen in Pennsylvania and had another daughter, Hettie, shortly before coming to Willow Lake in 1890. Lizzie, Ula and Clarence were born on the claim. Mr. Gumb earned extra cash by walking five miles a day to work for a neighbor. In haying seasons he made top wages of $18 per month.

Constantly seeking to improve his own place. William was the first in his vicinity to raise alfalfa. He was always planting trees and flowers. The nearest store and post office was at Ballagh, over the line in Garfield County.

Neighbors to the Gumbs were Albert and Isabell Dawe and the Chet Ingles family. Mr. Ingles was much apreciated by the whole community as he was the man who conducted singing schools in various communities. Mrs. Gumb had no buggy but that did not keep her at home when she felt like visiting. She simply hitched a horse to their little hay rake, took two of the children with her and went calling.

John (Jack) Gumb, brother of William, followed his brother to America in 1885 and, eventually, to Holt County where he also homesteaded near Willow Lake. Jack, a bachelor, raised cattle, hogs and turkeys. In 1897 another bachelor, Oscar Brown, moved in with him, became a partner in the ranch, and took over the cooking.

A horse fell with Jack, crippling him somewhat and making it difficult for him to walk. The partners built a nice sod home and any body passing by was welcome to stop with them. Then a young man, Jimmy Shelton, who was also somewhat crippled— and had no other home— moved in and lived with them. The neighbors referred to them as the “three bachelors, Gumb, Brown and Shelton.” Jack died at the age of seventy-seven years at his sister’s home in Missouri. He was brought back to North Loup and buried in the family plot there.

Willow Lake, a fairly large body of water was, and is, located in the southwest corner of Wyoming Town- ship, about four miles west and eight miles south of Amelia. Larger Swan Lake is nearer Amelia, in the northeast corner of Swan Township, some four or five miles northwest of Willow Lake. The land around Swan Lake was settled about the same time as the Willow Lake country.

Mr. and Mrs. Michael Kennedy and their eight children came from Ireland in 1873. Their youngest son, Patrick, was only three months old at the time of their crossing. The family gradually moved west, finally settling in Iowa, where Patrick finished school. His older brother James came to Holt County in the early ‘eighties; Pat followed him in 1894. Patrick and Lucy Curran were married in the Catholic church in Atkinson in 1900.

Lucy’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Curran, also came from Ireland in the 1870’s and later made their home in Holt County, where Pat and Lucy met. Kola, four or five miles northwest of Swan Lake, was their post office. Mrs. Jacob Pfund looked after it in her home. In the early years the carriers were the neighbors— anyone who happened to be going from Amelia to Kola, or the other way. Later a regular carrier delivered the mail on stated days.

When a small telephone company was organized and a line constructed, the Kennedys had the switchboard in their home. The inside of the Kennedy sod house was neatly plastered, with wooden door and window casings, so that no part of the sod walls showed. A teacher from Ohio had contracted to teach the Kennedy school, so came looking for a boarding place. It was after dark when she came to the home and she could not see the outside walls. She told Mrs. Kennedy she needed a place to stay but didn’t want to live in a sod house. When told that she was at that moment in a sod house she changed her mind and was glad to stay. She later took a homestead nearby and became a good citizen of the community. Pat Kennedy, as Justice of the Peace, performed marriages and looked after other legal matters. In this capacity he performed the marriage ceremony for his friend and neighbor, Noel Benjamin, who married Ada Frew in the Benjamin sod house, with a large crowd of neighbors on hand to celebrate the nuptials. Pat Kennedy’s homestead is now owned and operated by his youngest daughter, Luella, and her husband, Art Doolittle.

John Brayton Worden, born in New York State in 1867, came to Nebraska with his parents in 1876. Arminda Hoffman, born in Ohio, likewise came to Nebraska as a small child with her parents. They were married in 1887. They had four children, Roy, Clara, Chris and Ardilla.

The Worden’s operated the Swan post office and store in their sod house. Roy Worden married Ethel Scafe in 1909, homesteaded two and a half miles south of Swan Lake and spent all his married life there. Ethel’s parents were born in northern Michigan and came to Holt County by ox team in 1889 when Ethel was two years old. Both Ethel and Roy are deceased and their son Lyle owns the old homestead.

Andrew Jay DeGroff of Rome, New York, came to Iowa and met and married Hannah Mann. The couple 354 came on to Grand Island in 1866, just after the Union Pacific reached that point. A blacksmith and a veternarian by profession, Andrew always found plenty to do. As a blacksmith he helped build the Union Pacific branch-line from Grand Island to Burwell. With their four sons, William, Harry, Andrew and Herman, and their daughters, Margaret and baby Alda, the DeGroffs moved to a homestead two and one-half miles northeast of Swan Lake in 1890. The children grew up on the homestead and the girls became school teachers. The last school Aldo taught was the Fountain Valley, or Inez school, not far from her old home.

Herman, who was born to the DeGroffs in North Loup in 1887, later worked on the railroad that built west out of Sioux City, and still later ran a Ford garage and blacksmith shop in Amelia. In 1914 he married Maude May Dailey in Burwell. The couple had ten children. Their youngest son lives on the Fountain Valley ranch south of Atkinson.

Henry Backhaus and his wife, Dora, were both born in Germany. Henry came to America when he was sixteen, Dora Buchendahl came over with her parents at the age of three. Henry had three children by a former marriage when he married Dora. With Henry’s children the couple came to a homestead north of Swan Lake in 1887. Seven more children were born to them there. The older children went to school in the homes part of each year.

Later they attended the Inez school, near the Inez store and post office John Hubbell maintained in his home. The family went to the Methodist church at Holt Creek when they could, and took part in many camp meetings in the neighborhood. Some of their neighbors were the Dan Dierks and John Erb families.

William Crandall in 1899 came from Iowa to homestead near the Pfund post office. The next year he married Martha Jane Benjamin. Mr. Crandall built three sod houses before he settled on a permanent location. The first was on little Grass Lake, west of Swan Lake. When the water level began to rise and the lake came to their very door, he built a second soddy on the south part of his homestead. Several years later he had to build the third one on the north side, on still higher ground.

Will Crandall’s watermelons were his pride and joy. He raised them by the wagon loads. He also made sorghum, and always gave visitors a supply of melons and sorghum. The Crandall’s five children attended the Kola school, although the first school, to which the older ones went, was in the home of George Holcomb, who was the teacher. The family went to church in the Kellog school house. Many of the graves in the cemetery (near Hudson Bruner’s place) were never marked. Mrs. Crandall was both nurse and mid-wife to her community. Mr. Widman, born in Germany in 1832, served a year in the Civil War, following his marriage to a fifteen-year-old “Scotch-Irish lady in 1860.” The couple came to Merrick County in 1870, where their son Tom was married in 1893. With his wife Leza and four children Tom came to the Swan Lake country in 1901 and moved in for a little while with two bachelors, Bill Richmond and Frank Wilber, who kept the Swan post office.

As rapidly as he could, Tom moved a twelve by twenty-four foot frame house from the Beaver, about fifty miles distant. The family of six lived in the little house that first winter, with hay and cowchips (often wet) for fuel. 1901 was the first of seven wet years. Since swamp fever became epidemic in such seasons the Wid- mans lost fifteen horses and had to change to mules.

The first deaths in the immediate neighborhood were those of Tom and Leza’s baby girl and a Frew baby. Both were buried near their homes. The little cedar Tom set to mark his baby’s grave is now a large tree. The “Widman School” was a sixteen foot square building where both school and Sunday school were held. As many as eighteen children went to school at one time there; some of them attended a lot of years but not many days. One year John Widman went to school only twenty- nine days.

An elderly neighbor set a fire near his house one spring to burn off his potato patch. The fire got away from him and, racing before a high wind, came within a half mile of the Widman’s before the wind changed and sent it across the Erina and Ballagh flats to the south, burning hay and buildings and the Ballagh schoolhouse. When their son Paul was born the Widmans were unable to get a doctor and a Mrs. Wood assisted. Everything went fine except that “they got the hay burner too hot and blistered the poor little guy’s face.” Timothy Dailey, born in Ireland, was the first of eight generations of Daileys to live in America. He settled in New York. His son John came on to Iowa. John’s son Matthew, born in Iowa, married Elizabeth Albright in 1871. Eleven children were born to their union.

In 1904 Matthew read of the Kinkaid Act that enabled a settler to take a full section of land in certain parts of Nebraska. With his son Charlie, he came out to look for a homestead. In O’Neill they rented a team and buckboard and drove southwest. In the Swan Lake area they came upon Andrew DeGroff and one of his sons. But when Mr. Dailey asked Mr. DeGroff about land for homesteading he was given a short answer and sent on his way.

Because Matthew and Charlie were “dressed up,” the DeGroffs suspicion- ed they were game wardens (a fairly new and quite unpopular breed of men among these settlers who had long been accustomed to unlimited daily bags). Years later, after they had long been neighbors and a DeGroff son had married a Dailey daughter, they had many a laugh over their first meeting.

Mr. Dailey, however, found some unclaimed land southwest of Swan Lake, made his filing and later that same year (1904) brought his family and all their possessions to their new sod home. The Dailey’s second daughter, Catherine, died in 1907 and was the second person buried in the Pine Valley cemetery southwest of Swan Lake. Land for the burial ground was donated by the Bruner brothers, and was only a little way south of a grove of pines planted in a blowout by the Bruners to see if they would grow. They did, and became a landmark, as well as the reason for naming the cemetery “Pine Valley.” Mrs. Elmer Selix, who died in childbirth, was the first to occupy a grave in the little country graveyard.

Charles Dailey homesteaded land across the road south of his parents and married Caroline Rothlenter, daughter of a Ewing miller. Claude Ray Dailey married Caroline’s sister, Marie. May Dailey graduated from the eighth grade in the home school the year her brother Charles was the teacher (1908) and married Herman DeGroff in 1914. They became the parents of ten children.

Charles went on teaching and later became principal of the Burwell schools, where he taught for a number of years. His father, Matthew, served on school and election boards and was active in the Methodist church. His wife helped her friends when their children were born and accumulated a large collection of pictures of the babies she had delivered.

Their home school was three miles away and some of the early teachers were but sixteen years old and graduates of only the eighth grade themselves. By this time Bert Crandall was postmaster at Swan and the mail came three times a week. The carrier picked it up at Atkinson, came 355 through Inez, then across to Amelia and on to Swan and Erina, where he lived. The next day he reversed his route on the way back to Atkinson. Mr. Dailey started a Sunday school in his home but, as attendance grew, had to move to the Swan schoolhouse, southwest of the Worden ranch. A Rev. P. E. Fisher from near Amelia often preached for the congregation. In their later years the Daileys sold their land and retired to Chambers. Matthew never had any desire to own a car and, at the age of seventy, took a jaunt on foot from Chambers to Burwell— forth-five miles by road, a little less as the crow flies— to visit some friends. When he died at eighty-seven, his old friend, Rev. P. E. Fisher, preached his funeral sermon, and later that of his wife.

The Daileys’ youngest child, Ida, also went to school to her brother Charles at Swan, went on to high school at Burwell and then to Fremont College. She was teaching in the Martha community school when she met Carl Lambert. They were married in 1913 and lived on Carl’s farm, the one his father had homesteaded in 1883. They had six children. A son, Stanley now farms the old home place. A daughter, Luceil LaRue, has been teaching for more than twenty years. All of their children had good educations and are eminently successful in their fields. Stanley has won several awards for outstanding farming activities carried on in the family farm.

Gustave (Gus) Bilstein and his wife, Manetta Jane, were married in 1894. With their eight children they lived in southern Boone County where, in the early years both Gus and Nettie hunted prairie chickens for the market. In 1920 the family moved to Swan Lake.

A great lover of trees and flowers, the next year Gus bought 133,000 Jack pines and other shade tcees and planted them on the north side of Swan Lake. Many of his neighbors laughed at him at the time, but the trees grew into a vast grove that can be seen for a long way in either direction as the traveler approaches the long lake. The great pine grove is, indeed, a fitting but unusual memorial to a prairie settler. Gus died in 1926, long before the trees he had so patiently planted had grown into the magnificent backdrop for Swan Lake they make today.

Old Inez post office was located approximately nine miles north and a little east of Swan Lake. To this locality came Frank and Margaret Withers in 1898. Margaret was a Delancey and two of her brothers had moved from Iowa to northeast Nebraska some years earlier. Frank and Margaret, too, came from Iowa. Included in the carload of family belongings they shipped to Atkinson were innumerable tools, for Frank was a blacksmith and could make or fix almost anything. He also brought half a carload of hardwood posts to fence his pasture. The posts were still solid and in place when his sons sold the farm forty years later.

Frank had had no intention of moving west until he came out to Holt County to visit his brother-in-law, James Blenkiron, who had a ranch there. He quickly recognized the opportunities offered in this undeveloped land, but the abundance of wild game was the lure that really drew him to the Inez Valley.

A few years earlier Frank’s oldest son, Charles, then in his early twenties, had visited his Delancey uncles at Hartington. After working two years in a lumberyard there he had gone on to Grant County, in the Sandhills ranch country, where he worked awhile on the Diamond Bar Ranch. While there he met Syrena Thurston, and married her in 1899. Charles and Syrena moved to the Inez Valley the next year, where Frank had built two sod houses, one for himself, his wife and their youngest son, George; the other for Charles and Syrena and their baby daughter. Charles’ children all began school at Inez Valley, where a schoolhouse had been moved in in 1906. Some of their schoolmates were the Moss and Backhaus children and Ray White. When the Withers first came to the valley the post office was in the Roark home. After Maggie Roark married John Moss they moved it to its final location, Inez, where it was a part of their general store. Old Charlie Preston was the nearby blacksmith. John Moss sold his ranch and the store to John Hubbell in 1906. John also took charge of the post office and managed it until 1917.

Hildred Withers Higgins, oldest of Charlie Withers family, notes in the family history that “We were a peaceful community. We had no vigilantes, or law officers until game wardens became necessary.” The McPharlins came to Inez in 1900. James Henry was born in Michigan in 1868, his wife, Augusta Anderson, in Sweden the same year. They were married in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1893. Mr. McPharlin, a barber in that city, was advised by his doctor to move into the country. Accordingly, in 1900 he and his son Roy drove a team and wagon to O’Neill while Augusta and the two little girls came by train.

Although the homestead was near the Inez post office, Mrs. McPharlin and the children lived in O’Neill most of the time so the children could go to St. Mary’s Academy. After farming for a few years, Jim moved into O’Neill too, and bought a barber shop on South Fourth Street in 1912. When the shop burned down in 1918 he bought another in the pool hall next to the Golden Hotel. Four more children were born to the McPharlins after they came to Holt County.

Two of the boys, James and Owen, became barbers and worked with their father. James later became a doctor and Owen and another brother, Eldon, studied law and were admitted to the bar: all now live in California.

Jim McPharlin, a lover of the outdoors, in his early years in the county spent the summer months training hunting dogs for eastern owners and was one of the organizers and promoters of the Nebraska Field Trial Association. The organization’s field trials were held in Holt County for several years, attracting dog lovers from many eastern cities.

One of the McPharlin girls, Pauline, recalls that Lawrence Welk and his four piece band used to play in O’Neill and that, when “the Charleston hit town about 1926,” a dance instructor came out from Omaha to give them lessons.

William T. Dexter, born in Merrick County, quit school when in the eleventh grade to work at carpentering with his father. In 1907 he took a homestead in Wyoming Township and began raising Hereford cattle. He married a Holt County girl, Emma Burrell, in 1918. Of their seven children four were school teachers. A daughter, Beulah Moses now lives in what used to be the Josie post office in the far southwest corner of the county. A son, Raymond, lives on the old Chet Ingles place; another son, Leonard, lives on the old Gumb place, both near Willow Lake. Donald Dexter and his mother are still on the homestead. William died in 1958. Shortly Benze, born Henry Frederick in Germany in 1889, came to New York in 1909. In Philadelphia he found work in a bakery, starting as a scrub boy and working up to be one of the top cake decorators. (Later in life he decorated cakes for his friends.) Tiring of the bakery and yearning to see the West, Shorty (he was only five feet, four inches tall) worked in the oil fields in Illinois and on a ranch in Arkansas. Evenutally he landed in Texas and found odd jobs on ranches. Sometime before the first world war he drifted to Inez and went to work on the Lee and Prentice ranch. At last he had found the country and the people he had been looking for. Here he took out his naturalization papers. 356 When the war broke out he enlisted in the infantry and went overseas to fight against his kin. When the war was over he came back to Lee and Prentice, broke horses and helped with the cattle. He also found a piece of unclaimed land and filed on it, signing his final papers in 1923. He loved neighborhood rodeos and excelled as a bareback bronc rider. In 1940 Shorty married Pauline Dusatko. The couple had four children. Shorty died on his horse, Buck, in 1959. His only son, Patrick, who loved ranch life as much as his father did, was killed in action in Vietnam at the age of twenty-one.

Martin Miksch and Maria Walenta grew up in a German village in Czechoslovakia. Martin was orphaned at eight years of age. According to the law of his region a sum of about $60 was set aside for him, to draw interest until he came of age. The law also required that he be sent to the original home village of one of his parents. Martin was passed from family to family, herding geese as a child, cattle as he grew older. He was sent to school for two winters, where he learned to read and write well in German. Before his mother’s death he had spent some time in Hungary with one of her brothers. There he had learned to speak Hungarian. One of the families he worked for after he became an orphan was Bohemian, so he learned that language, too. He read everything he could get his hands on, sang well and memorized easily. Maria Walenta’s father was a tapestry weaver and had charge of forty weavers in the village. Martin and Maria were married in 1884 and had a daughter by 1885, when a letter from a relative in Holt County created quite a stir in the village. The letter told of the free land to be had there, and Martin, whose wages in the village amounted to about one hundred dollars a year, decided at once to go to Holt County. He still had the orphan’s allotment, which would pay his way to America.

With some friends, John Stein- hauser, Sr., Tom Steinhauser and Miss Theresa Weichman (who later married Conrad Kramer) Martin took ship for the new world. He worked for a John Maurer of Madison for three years, saving his money to stock his homestead. Maria came with another group of emigrants in 1888. The following year they moved into their own sod shanty on a claim ten miles south and three miles west of Stuart, between Green Valley and Norwood post offices.

Three children were born to Martin and Maria in the soddy. Martin, a good barber, often went to the homes of sick friends to cut their hair and shave them, thereby making them more comfortable, and now and then performing the same duties in helping to lay out the dead. The Miksch’s daughter, Cecelia, has an old notebook of her father’s. For a number of years he had kept track of his income and outgo: listing prices he paid for seed, clothing, horses and machinery; and the prices received for grain and other produce sold. The figures show the good years and the bad, times when he had to borrow money, times when he could afford some luxury for his family.

The notebook showed the acres of ground broken and the yields in bushels. In May, 1894, he had sown seventy bushels of oats and twenty bushels of wheat. In May there was a heavy frost but no rain. In June a frightful hail storm, leaving four to six inches of stones covering the land, beat the grain into the ground. Then hot winds blew until the middle of August. The butter and eggs brought in $102 that year, which was one of the times he had to borrow money. That fall, when a carload of clothing was sent in from the east to help the destitute people, Martin brought home a huge, bustle-type black dress. Maria ripped it up and made several dresses for her girls. As times got better Martin built a frame house and bought more land, planted trees and built fences. Five more children were born in the frame house.

Three miles west of the Miksch home was a region of true sandhills, clean, blowing sand that changed contours daily under the prodding of the almost constant winds. At the foot of these hills grew great quantities of sand cherries, a fruit the settlers picked every summer for pies, sauce and jelly. Three miles south was Dora Lake, a favorite fishing spot for the Mikschs and their neighbors.

After awhile some fishermen built a little clubhouse at the lake and used it frequently. In May, 1922, a group of men from Stuart went out on the lake to fish for bass. It was a Sunday morning and nearly all the people living near the lake had gone to church. When the Miksch family came out of their church in Stuart they were told that four men in a boat were in danger of drowning in the lake. With other neighbors they hurried to the scene of the accident.

They were too late. The fishermens’ boat had overturned and Johnny Kaup, Forrest Shearer and a Miller boy had drowned. Crews were already dragging the lake for the bodies. Only Dr. Dale Stuart had managed to hang onto the boat until help came.

This community, like all the others, had many good times when its people got together. On one occasion the Hamiks had planned to go over to the Mikschs to celebrate the old country festival of “Fashung.” By the time they were ready to start it was snowing quite hard. The parents overcame the difficulty by putting a table in the wagon and spreading quilts over it. Under their warm tent the children had the gayest ride of their lives that stormy night. Martin Miksch loved his horses and appreciated their faithful service. His first team was named Dick and Rock, and when old Dick died at the age of twenty-four Mr. Miksch wept. When he died in 1955 he left one hundred direct descendants. His daughter Margaret had married Frank Gregor, Mary married Stencil Hytrek and Therese married John Hytrek. Rose married William Hoffman of Stuart, Henry married Beulah Custer and lives in Atkinson. Joseph and Andrew are dead and Cecilia, who furnished the family history, lives in Tekamah. The Tonawanda post office was about five miles south of Green Valley post office. (These locations cannot be exact as the post offices were now and then moved a mile or two in various directions.) Tonawanda became the mailing address of the Daniel Dierks family in 1894. Daniel had come from Germany a few years earlier and his wife, a daughter of John and Margaret Erb, from Wisconsin. The Dierks brought ten children with them to the homestead.

After the Dierks settled near Tona-wanda, Mrs. Dierks’ parents homesteaded next to them. The children went to school in District 209, where Katie McShane, E. O. Slaymaker and Anna Coufal were some of their teachers.

Henry, one of the younger Dierks sons, began working out when he was ten years old, riding fences for neighboring ranchers for fifty cents a day. By the time he was a teenager he was getting a dollar a day for ten hours work. So he moved on to Wyoming. Evidently conditions were no better there, for he was soon back in Holt County, a “hashslinger” for John Olson in his Atkinson restaurant. in 1920 Henry married Mary De-sieve at Bassett. After living on various ranches south of Atkinson and Stuart they moved into Atkinson in 1930 and operated a filling station. They were the parents of eight children.

Another family of the Tonawanda neighborhood was that of Tom Davis. With four children he moved from Nebraska City to the Fred Kodyetek farm in 1904. Two more children were born there. All the Davis children 357 attended the District 210 school nearby, and all later graduated from Atkinson High School.

In 1913 Mr. Davis sold the farm to E. A. Waters and bought the Earnest Fullerton farm a mile and a half north of Atkinson, where they lived until they retired in 1944. They lived in Atkinson for nearly twenty more years, their deaths occurring in 1962 and 1963.

← Chapter 34: Page And Pleasant Valley | Table of Contents | Chapter 36: A Well Watered Land →