← Before Today: A History of Holt County, Nebraska
Phoenix and Turkey Creek Chapter Forty-Two Phoenix, first known as Greeley, was six miles west of the Turner settlement on Eagle Creek, three miles north of Saratoga post office and seven miles south of the Niobrara River. Probably the first settler in that area on Turkey Creek was Hugh O’Neill, son of Ann Carroll and Felim John O’Neill of County Tyrone, Ireland. Born in Canada, he had studied law before he came to Nebraska in 1879 and was admitted to the bar. That same year he filed on the Turkey Creek homestead.
Hugh taught some of the early schools in northern Holt County, and while engaged in that profession met Mamie Hodgkin, also a teacher, whose family had settled on the Redbird in 1879. The pair were married in 1892.
In 1886 Hugh’s mother, Ann Carroll, came from Canada to homestead beside him and make her home with him and his family for the rest of her life. These O’Neills were the builders of one of the first telephone lines in the county, and Hugh was elected from his district to the Nebraska Senate for the term of 1898-1900. The next Turkey Creek settler may have been Peter Greeley, born and raised in Mukwonago, Wisconsin. A veteran of the Civil War, he was wounded at Peachtree Creek, Georgia, lost a limb (probably a leg) and used an artificial limb from then on. After returning to Wisconsin he went to business College in Milwaukee, managed a cheese factory for a time, then owned and ran a general store. He married Ellen Younams in 1869, and ten years later came to Holt County and filed on the homestead that later was to be the site of Greeley-Phoenix. The homestead is now the nucleus of the Rex Coburn ranch.
Peter Greeley returned to Wisconsin, cut lumber for a house and store and shipped it, along with supplies for the store, a cow and a team of horses, to Niobrara in two railroad cars. All of this was ferried across the Missouri, then hauled by ox team to the homestead. The two men who had cut and fitted the lumber, Med Clifton and Sam Dailey, came along to help build the house and store. In the later summer, when the house was completed, Mrs. Greeley and the four children, Mabel, Warren, Emma and Morton, came to their new home. The post office, established in 1880, was first named for him, then changed to Phoenix because of a conflict in names. An ambitious man, Peter built up a herd of cattle, planted fifteen hundred apple trees and a huge garden. Produce from the latter projects were sold in his own store and in Butte.
As the winter of 1881 drew to a close almost everyone in the neighborhood was out of flour. As soon as outfits could get over the roads, Mr. Greeley sent two men with teams and wagons to Oakdale, the end of the railroad, to get supplies. Another storm came up and the haulers were delayed several days in returning. When they finally approached the valley, still some miles from the store, they were met by practically all the settlers in the vicinity. When the Picture taken between 1912-1915. Looking east from Atkinson’s main square. Courtesy Marie Krysl.
crowd cleared out not a single sack of flour was left on the wagons. Mr. Greeley, however, did not lose a cent on the deal, for every man came in as soon as he could and paid for his flour.
The Greeley’s daughter Mabel died in September, 1881, and was buried on the ranch. By 1884 three more children, Bertha, Howard and Edna, had been added to the family, although Edna died in infancy and was also buried on the ranch. Both were later moved to the Atkinson cemetery.
In 1894 Peter built two dams causing ponds to form from springs which arose on the ranch. Although he used some of the impounded water to irrigate his orchard and garden, he also stocked the ponds with fish to make a recreation area, which is still an attraction for the people living there. In the late ‘twenties Peter and Ellen moved into Atkinson. Both are buried there. Howard Greeley, born on the homestead in 1882, in his thirteenth summer was located six miles from home to herd 500 head of cattle belonging to the Ditch Company on 421 children. They went to highschool in Spencer. Another of Bertha’s sisters, Harriet Warner, as well as Evelyn Storjohann and Mary Rohde, taught the home school. Their first post office was Saratoga at the Duffy ranch. Later the office was moved to Phoenix, where they had to ride six miles on horseback to pick up their mail. The first neighborhood wedding remembered by Dena Richardson, the family writer, was that of Mary Storjohann. It was a festive affair that lasted all day and part of the night and the whole country came, partaking of long tables full of food of all kinds. The first funeral she remembers was that of John Spindler, one of her eighth grade classmates. The lad was buried in the Phoenix cemetery. Many of the settlers on quarter- and half-section homesteads surrounding the much larger Hunkydory ranch resented the fences Mr. Richardson had built around his land, thus cutting off their short-cuts across the country. For awhile they often cut his fences, let his cattle out and threatened lawsuits. Richardson told them firmly that he intended to stay there as long as any of them, and he did. In time others fenced, too, and the trouble died down.
During their first year on the ranch a prairie fire nearly wiped out the Richardson’s six-room new frame home. Mrs. Richardson, rising in the night to tend a croupy baby, saw a wall of fire flaming along the whole western horizon and rapidly bearing down on the buildings. Only a miraculous wind that held the fire back against the hill for the few minutes that it took Mr. Richardson to start a back-fire, saved the home. Eagle Creek floods were other hazards. An unusually heavy snowpack closed all roads in the area for weeks in 1914. The children walked to school over drifts that covered tall cottonwood trees and the drifts in sheltered places lasted into June.
Three of the Richardson girls became teachers. Dena taught seven years in Nebraska and South Dakota and, after her marriage to William Reagan, twenty-six years in California. Esther and Hazel taught many years around Atkinson and Spencer and Evelyn is a nurse in the Omaha Children’s Hospital. Robert and John still run the home ranch. Esther married George Collins of Atkinson. Hazel was Mrs. William Boettcher of Spencer.
A few more details have been furnished on the little hamlet of Eagle Creek, later known as Turner because of the post office located there for a time. The village was located about a mile and a half west of where highway #281 crosses Eagle Creek right north of O’Neill. Mr. Noll- kamper had built a large house there by his mill and used the upper story for a hotel. Besides the store, there was a photo gallery, three blacksmith shops, a sawmill and several small homes.
The Pleasant Valley Cemetery, about a half mile west of where the church used to stand, is well kept and still in use by descendants of the early settlers buried there. About two miles to the east a church still stands. Built by the Methodists in early times, it was later put up for sale. The community then raised the money to buy it, renamed it the Paddock Community Church and maintain Sunday school and special services there to this day. A small country cemetery just behind the church is still maintained and used by members of the area.
Another long standing custom in the neighborhood was the annual observance of the “Old Settlers Picnic.” The first one was held in 1882 and was so much enjoyed by all who took part that it was decided to hold it every year. Each day started with a huge picnic, followed by speeches, music by the Meek band and any other entertainment handy. Next came horse and foot racing and a ball game. Supper and a bowery dance wound up the festivities. Hundreds came each year and it was looked forward to as a reunion day for scattered families and old friends. But time brought inevitable changes. The old settlers passed on and the younger generations had different interests. Attendance began to fall off and in 1963 the eighty- first, and last, Old Settlers Picnic was held at the Elmer Devall grove, once known as the Kennedy place, just a Florence Felts, daughter of Minnie and Albert Roseler. Picture taken in 1956 on the J. O. Ranch.
few miles from where the first picnic took place. Sarah Hull attended her last Old Settlers Picnic when she was one hundred and two years old. Many of the family histories of the Eagle Mills Valley have mentioned the many floods that plagued the settlers along the creek. None, according to Mrs. Ted Crawford, were as severe as the one that occurred on the morning of June 17, 1964. Two days of rain raised the creek to the level of its banks. It continued to rain until five inches had fallen. All of this rainfall, draining into Camp Creek and upper Eagle Creek was more than the creek below the junction could handle. Dams and bridges were washed out. Four spans of bridges came down the creek and two of them lodged in a grove of cedars on the Crawford place, “looking as if they had been dropped there from above.” Trees, rubbish and sand gushed down the stream, sweeping away everything that stood in their path. The flood caved off four acres of newly seeded tame grasses on the east side of the creek. Another acre of native grass and timber belonging to the Crawfords next to the Niobrara was washed away down the river. Only two posts of a small pasture and hay yard on the bottom land were left standing. Five or more acres of bottom pasture were ruined, covered by sand, silt and brush piles, cut through by ravines and ditches. A four foot bar of sand was left where the channel originally ran, with water running on both sides, cutting off still more soil. REA poles were washed away and broken up, water covered the corral and came within fifty feet of the house. Trees, trash and soil shot out into the Niobrara until all the water ran in a 420 narrow strip along the north bank, leaving a three-fourths mile long sandbar covered with trash and cutting the bed three feet deeper than it formally was. Where we had driven across with a car, and cabled hay across, we now could not even get across on horseback. We had to make a new trail for our cattle to get across to their pasture.
In April of 1966 another flood came down, this time on the Niobrara— a wall of ice and water— hitting the Spencer Dam, damaging the power house and tearing out one gate. The ice hit the sandbar thrown up by the other flood, and split it, pushing ice up the mouth of Eagle Creek and completely damming it for an hour or more. The rest of the ice took out part of the sandbar and went on down stream, doing more damage as it crashed along.
Much of this damage may never be repaired. A little grass is gradually working up through the sand on the bottomland, but mostly its just sand burrs, weeds and blow sand. We have changed the creek bed so the water will do no more cutting— until another flood comes along.
Phoenix and Turkey Creek Chapter Forty-Two Phoenix, first known as Greeley, was six miles west of the Turner settlement on Eagle Creek, three miles north of Saratoga post office and seven miles south of the Niobrara River. Probably the first settler in that area on Turkey Creek was Hugh O’Neill, son of Ann Carroll and Felim John O’Neill of County Tyrone, Ireland. Born in Canada, he had studied law before he came to Nebraska in 1879 and was admitted to the bar. That same year he filed on the Turkey Creek homestead.
Hugh taught some of the early schools in northern Holt County, and while engaged in that profession met Mamie Hodgkin, also a teacher, whose family had settled on the Redbird in 1879. The pair were married in 1892.
In 1886 Hugh’s mother, Ann Carroll, came from Canada to homestead beside him and make her home with him and his family for the rest of her life. These O’Neills were the builders of one of the first telephone lines in the county, and Hugh was elected from his district to the Nebraska Senate for the term of 1898-1900. The next Turkey Creek settler may have been Peter Greeley, born and raised in Mukwonago, Wisconsin. A veteran of the Civil War, he was wounded at Peachtree Creek, Georgia, lost a limb (probably a leg) and used an artificial limb from then on. After returning to Wisconsin he went to business College in Milwaukee, managed a cheese factory for a time, then owned and ran a general store. He married Ellen Younams in 1869, and ten years later came to Holt County and filed on the homestead that later was to be the site of Greeley-Phoenix. The homestead is now the nucleus of the Rex Coburn ranch.
Peter Greeley returned to Wisconsin, cut lumber for a house and store and shipped it, along with supplies for the store, a cow and a team of horses, to Niobrara in two railroad cars. All of this was ferried across the Missouri, then hauled by ox team to the homestead. The two men who had cut and fitted the lumber, Med Clifton and Sam Dailey, came along to help build the house and store. In the later summer, when the house was completed, Mrs. Greeley and the four children, Mabel, Warren, Emma and Morton, came to their new home. The post office, established in 1880, was first named for him, then changed to Phoenix because of a conflict in names. An ambitious man, Peter built up a herd of cattle, planted fifteen hundred apple trees and a huge garden. Produce from the latter projects were sold in his own store and in Butte.
As the winter of 1881 drew to a close almost everyone in the neighborhood was out of flour. As soon as outfits could get over the roads, Mr. Greeley sent two men with teams and wagons to Oakdale, the end of the railroad, to get supplies. Another storm came up and the haulers were delayed several days in returning. When they finally approached the valley, still some miles from the store, they were met by practically all the settlers in the vicinity. When the Picture taken between 1912-1915. Looking east from Atkinson’s main square. Courtesy Marie Krysl.
crowd cleared out not a single sack of flour was left on the wagons. Mr. Greeley, however, did not lose a cent on the deal, for every man came in as soon as he could and paid for his flour.
The Greeley’s daughter Mabel died in September, 1881, and was buried on the ranch. By 1884 three more children, Bertha, Howard and Edna, had been added to the family, although Edna died in infancy and was also buried on the ranch. Both were later moved to the Atkinson cemetery.
In 1894 Peter built two dams causing ponds to form from springs which arose on the ranch. Although he used some of the impounded water to irrigate his orchard and garden, he also stocked the ponds with fish to make a recreation area, which is still an attraction for the people living there. In the late ‘twenties Peter and Ellen moved into Atkinson. Both are buried there. Howard Greeley, born on the homestead in 1882, in his thirteenth summer was located six miles from home to herd 500 head of cattle belonging to the Ditch Company on 421 the prairie, along with 100 head belonging to his father. “I was out there from the first of May to the first of October,” he said. I had three saddle horses, and they (the family) would bring my food out and leave it in the tent. I seldom saw them. I was paid seventy-five cents a head by the Ditch Company, which amounted to $325.00. When I got home I gave my father $300.00 to pay his hired man, and I took the $25.00 and went into Atkinson to school. I was a month late getting started.” Morton and Bertha, his brother and sister, had come in earlier and rented a little house, where the three of them lived while going to school and doing their own cooking. Howard’s job was baking the bread. After finishing the tenth grade in Atkinson he passed the County examinations and began teaching. He taught at Dustin, Paddock and other places. Howard, six years old at the time of the ’88 blizzard remembers that twenty-six children from the home school, a quarter-mile away, spent the night of the blizzard in the Greeley home. Mrs. Greeley made beds for them all on the floor and Mr. Greeley stayed up all night keeping the fire going.
Howard later went to Lincoln, married and stayed there. He was the father of two daughters. His brother Warren left Holt County after he was grown and eventually moved to Seattle. Emma taught school for several years, was assistant principal of the O’Neill schools for a time and in 1902 married Arleigh Moore, grandson of the Hibbards just north of Atkinson. They, too, moved to Seattle. Morton Greeley married Kitty Price in 1902. After her death in 1905 he married Lillian Dahms and became the father of twins. Bertha, too, went to Seattle to live.
Another Turkey Creek homesteader was Edward Coburn, born in Vermont in 1833. His wife, Flora Gaylord, born in Ohio, was teaching school in Iowa when she and Edward married and moved to Wisconsin to take care of his mother’s farm. After his mother’s death the couple, with their sons, Lewis, Ray and Ralph, came by covered wagon to the Phoenix homestead and timber claim in 1880. Later they bought the Fleagles quarter joining them on the west.
The first Phoenix post office was in the Coburn home, having been moved there from the Greeley store, after a brief sojourn in the Nickerson home, in 1892.
A daughter, Jessie Louise, was born to the Coburns on the claim in 1883. In 1908 she married Friend Keeler and left the county. Lewis married Olive Berry in 1895. They, too, later moved away. Ralph married Ethel Anderson in 1911. Both Ralph and Ethel owned homesteads. They had five children and all later moved to Washington state.
Ray Coburn married Charlotte Stockwell, daughter of Benjamin, in 1893. They lived on Edward Coburn’s timber claim until 1903, then filed on a Kinkaid on Spring Creek, a few miles west. The family lived there until 1920, then rented, and later bought, the Greeley farm. Ray and Charlotte had three children, Rex, Ruth and Ralph. All rode two and a half miles to the Parshall school. Rex Coburn married Helen Naber in 1927 and lived on his father’s homestead until 1930, when Ray fell ill. Rex then moved his family to his father’s home on the old Greeley farm, where they still live. They have two sons, Harold and Gerry. Harold and his wife, Audrey Henderson, and their four children live on the same place. Gerry, who married Norma Burgess, lives in North Platte where he is an instructor in the Junior High School. Their children are Scott and Sally, Ralph Coburn married Vera Mitchell in 1928 and moved onto his father’s Kinkaid on Spring Creek. They have a son, Ray, and a daughter, Mavis. Ray, with his wife, Frances, and their four children live on his father’s ranch. Ruth Coburn, who supplied this family history, married Benjamin Wayman in 1929. In 1953 they bought the Wayman farm two miles west of O’Neill, where they made their home until Ben’s death in 1971. Ruth now lives in O’Neill.
Lewis and Ray Coburn had taken their father’s cattle down to the creek for water when the blizzard of ’88 overtook them. They left the cattle in the trees and struggled to the nearby home of a neighbor, where they spent the night. The cattle were safe, as the grove drifted completely under, providing a shelter for the stock. Ed and Flora Coburn walked the floor all night, frantic with fear for their sons— and were overjoyed when the boys came hiking over the frozen drifts the next morning.
The terrible dry year of 1894 thinned the population of the community considerably. Only the hardier ones, the Turners, Howes, Dameros, Greeleys, Storjohanns, Lamphiers, Wilkinsons, O’Neills, Nilsons and Hunts stayed. After 1907 Mrs. Ray Coburn assisted the population growth by helping the area doctors deliver babies and, if necessary, delivered them herself. Mrs. Stansberry and Mrs. Damero also helped with the business of “borning” babies.
Frances Jane Acly, born in Wisconsin in 1852, was one of the eleven children of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Acly. In 1871 she married George W. Lamphier at her home. Nine years later the couple, with four children, settled on a homestead three miles northwest of the Phoenix post office, now the George Syfie residence. The fine groves of trees along the roadway to this home were all planted by Mr. Lamphier and his friend, Samuel Perry Miller, who came to Holt County with the Lamphiers and took a claim just across the creek from them. Mr. Miller never married, but made his home with the Lamphiers for thirty years. George Lamphier was noted for his love of trees, gardens and flowers, and for his Christian way of life. Through the years he was active in the work of the Sunday school, serving as superintendent in the schoolhouse services and on many occasions conducting burial services for his neighbors.
Of the four Lamphier children bon in Wisconsin, Mary married Harm Damero in 1897. The couple had two children, Myrtle and Thelma, and made their home two miles southwest of the Phoenix store. All are buried in the Phoenix cemetery. Edia married Frank Damero in 1894 and lived a quarter mile west of the store. They had four children. After Edia’s death Frank sold his home to William Coleman and, with his children, moved to South Dakota. Both he and Edia are buried in Phoenix.
Rose married Harry Cady in 1899 and moved to Bassett, across the river. They had eleven children but never again lived in Holt County, although they are buried at Atkinson. David Lamphier married Mattie Beebe in 1901 and moved to Montana. After his wife’s death in 1931 he returned to Holt County and is buried beside his parents in the Phoenix cemetery. Elnora, born at Phoenix in 1889, married Sam Anderson in 1910. Sam, born in Illinois in 1874, had lost his parents when nine years old. He grew to manhood in the home of Ben and Jane Stockwell and came to Holt County with them in 1885. Sam and Elnora had three children, Chester, Eva and a son who died at birth. Elnora passed away soon afterward, leaving Sam to care for the two children. With the help of loving friends and relatives he kept the children together.
Mrs. “Doc” Sorey baked their bread, Mrs. Harold Kirkland combed and braided Eva’s hair; Mrs. Ben Wayman and May Kazda made her dresses. The Coburns helped Sam render lard at butchering time— and so the family got along.
Sam’s son Chester married Dorothy Lee. They are the parents of thirteen children. One son, Garold, was killed in England while serving his country. 422 Eva married George Barnes of Atkinson. They had four children, then moved to Wisconsin, where they live today.
Many a Fourth of July celebration and Old Settlers picnic were held in the grove on the Lamphier homestead. Music was usually provided by Ralph Coburn and his children, Lydia, Ed, Bud and Paul. The Rev. E. E. Dillon was a frequent visitor in the Lamphier and Anderson homes. He would arrive in the spring and organize the Sunday school for the coming summer. Louise Damero and Elnora Anderson played the organ for the services. Mrs. U. E. Owens was often the speaker at the Sunday services. She also conducted the service for Sam and Elnora’s infant son at the Phoenix cemetery and Fred Gottchal built the tiny casket.
After George and Francis Lamphier’s deaths the homestead was sold to George Kirkland of Atkinson. It is still owned by Harold and Augusta Kirkland. Mr. and Mrs. Lamphier and all of their children except Rose are buried in the Phoenix cemetery. John Frederick Damero was born in Wisconsin in 1879. His parents, John Damero and Fredericka Voss, were born in Germany and married in Wisconsin.
The older John fought through the Civil War and became a citizen of the United States at O’Neill in 1887. the younger John was a little past two when the family came to the homestead a half mile south of the Greeley-Phoenix post office.
John and four of his brothers and sisters were among the thirty pupils who went to school in a log schoolhouse about eighty rods north of the Damero home. John was six that year. His teacher was Mike McCarthy. The summer of 1887 was so dry that the Dameros had to take their cattle to “Gracy Flats,” about fifty miles south of Atkinson, for pasture. Four of the Dameros, John, eight, two others, and his oldest brother, Otto, twenty-eight, spent the winter of 1887-1888 there. They did not hear from home all winter. They lived in a sod house, burned hay for fuel and ate deer meat, mostly. They came safely through the big blizzard, without losing any cattle, and were most happy to go home when spring finally came.
John herded cattle for twelve or thirteen years, afoot during the first years, with only a dog for companionship and protection. His herd usually numbered 200 to 250 head, many of them belonging to other owners. His pay was seventy-five cents per head for the five months he looked after the herd.
The biggest rattlesnake den in Holt County was about seven miles north of the Damero home. On warm October days the snakes would come out to lie in the sunshine and the settlers would kill them by the hundreds. After several years of such warfare the snakes were abolished. One summer while herding John killed an average of one rattlesnake a day.
John went to high school in Butte for one year. The next year he went to Atkinson but, after several days, decided he didn’t like it and walked the twenty-two miles back home. During their early days in the county Kid Wade, Doc Middleton, Jack Richards and Al Heilman were among the passersby who often stopped in to join the family at meal time. It was some time before they learned the identities and reputations of these visitors.
In 1900 John’s parents bought the O’Brien place and moved into Atkinson, leaving the boys to batch. All good hunters, they usually spent Saturday afternoons hunting quail and prairie chickens. Their bag averaged between four and five dozen birds, which they dressed and sold in Atkinson— at $3 a dozen for the chickens and $1.20 a dozen for the quail.
John’s father died in 1904, leaving him the home place. One brother, Frank, lived a half-mile west, another, Harmen, lived a mile south, and a sister, Edith Syfie, lived just across the corner. In 1908 John married Louise Grossman at the home of John’s sister and her husband, Dr. and Mrs. James Stockwell of Butte.
Louise was the daughter of Anna Magdalena Bay who came with her parents to Atkinson in 1884 and walked thirty-five miles to the Turner post office. Anna married Carl Gross-man in 1885 and Louise was born in their sod home in 1888. An only child, she was taught German and did not learn English until she started to school. She also had to help with the fieldwork as well as the housework, but had a happy home. A lover of music, she was given an organ by her parents in 1900 and joined the neighborhood singing school directed by Mr. Fuller.
John Damero was also a member of the singing group, and it was there he met Louise. Their sons, Lyle and Carl, and their daughter Virginia were born on the old Damero homestead, where the couple celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary in 1958. John died the next year, having spent almost all of his life on Turkey Creek. Louise lives in the Good Samaritan Home in Atkinson.
James Stockwell was born in New York state in 1834. The family moved to Ohio, then to Indiana, where James went to school. He attended medical schol in Ann Arbor, Michigan and had a medical practice at South Bend, Indiana for ten years. In 1883 he came to Phoenix. Seven years later he filed on a claim in Boyd County, later moving to Butte, but continuing his practice of medicine all the while. Dr. Stockwell married Sarah Fowler in Indiana in 1856. They had two children, Adelbert and Lillian, and Sarah died in 1884, after coming to Phoenix. Four years later he married Amelia Damero and had three more children, Ver, Lynn and Mabel. Claus Storjohann was born in Germany in 1852 and came to Iowa as a young man. From there he came to Phoenix to stake his claim in the spring of 1884. Mary Steenbock, also born in Germany, came to Iowa with her parents as a young lady. She and Claus were married in Council Bluffs in 1883. All nine of their children had diphtheria on the homestead during the epidemic of 1894. When it was over the doctor told her she had done well to lose only one of them to the disease.
The family home was near the Niobrara and the Storjohanns witnesses the big flood of 1915. The Provacek family was drowned and all their buildings washed away. The Jess Briles family lost all their buildings but were able to climb to safety on a hill.
By the time of his death in 1935 Claus had developed one of the finest farms in that section of the state. Mrs. Storjohann died the next year. Her wake and funeral services were held at her home, with burial in the Phoenix cemetery. William Storjohann still lived at O’Neill, Emma (Butzke) and Rose (Goeke) at Atkinson. The others, Henry and August, Mary (Devall) and Martha (Johring) are dead.
The Stansberry place, said to be “at least one” of the Vigilante meeting places, was homesteaded by Henry Stansberry about 1885. Henry had served three years in the Civil War, then returned to his West Virginia home in 1865.
William Wesley, one of Henry’s eight children, was born in West Virginia in 1856. In 1879 he married Zillah Motz in Ohio. Five years later he was a widower with two small sons, Henry J. and William, Jr. Following the death of his mother, Henry J. was taken by his grandparents, Henry and Lucy Stansberry to their new home in the Phoenix community. The grandparents proved up on the homestead in 1895, sold out in 1905 and moved to Iowa. Henry J., however, lived out his life in Holt County. In 1909 he married Emma 423 Sjoland, daughter of Anders and Kari Sjoland who came to the Celia community in 1883 from San Francisco. Both were born in Norway. Henry J. served as Atkinson’s Water Commissioner and Chief of Police until his death in 1917. Henry and Emma were the parents of four daughters, Velma, Zella, Lucille and Evelyn, and a son, Harold. Velma died in infancy.
Simeon and Elizabeth Ames were married at Winnabego, Wisconsin, in 1854. The parents of ten children, they moved with the five youngest to Phoenix in 1886 and lived on a homestead just across the road from the Stansberry place. As soon as the two boys, Nelson and Lafayette, were old enough they went to Boyd County and staked claims. Simeon and Elizabeth sold their homestead and joined the boys. The two girls, Bertha and Stella, married brothers, Albert and Jesse Purnell. Albert Ames, the third son, married Ella Purnell. Jesse and Stella, Albert and Ella moved out west. Albert and Bertha Purnell moved down into the Atkinson area and Simeon and Elizabeth lived with them. Both Simeon and Elizabeth are buried in the Woodlawn cemetery there.
About 1900 Lafayette sold his Boyd County land and moved to Atkinson to take up carpentry. Many of the older homes there are of his building. In 1911 he married Margaret Clare Rhoades of Norden, Nebraska. They had five children. One son, Charles, also became a carpenter and still carries on the trade in Atkinson, where he is well-known for his fine built-in kitchen cabinets. Lafayette passed away in 1928, after the amputation of a leg. Margaret lived forty years longer and died at the age of eighty.
Otto Nilson came from Sweden to the home of his uncle at Seward, Nebraska in 1878. He was eighteen years old. Some time in the mid-eighties he came on west to a homestead three miles west of the Midway store, north of O’Neill. He was there at the time of the ’88 blizzard. He later bought a farm a mile and a half north and a mile east of Syfie’s store and married Nellie Mae Howe. They had two sons, Roy and Clyde.
Clyde married Blanche Roberts, daughter of Milford and Arlepha Roberts who came from Iowa and lived on the Peter Greeley place. The Roberts had six children, Grace, Blanche, Lloyd, Ray, Fred and Walter. Blanche, who tells the family history, writes, “Peter Greeley lived with us for quite awhile. My mother never got cross with him, even though he always sat in a chair right by the cook-stove.
“Before he passed away he told Albert Purnell to get his pocketbook, for there was some money in it. He instructed him to give it to Mrs. Roberts, as she was a fine woman and had always been good to him.” Blanche Roberts was Clyde Nilson’s second wife. His first was Elsie Spence of Iowa. Elsie had come to Holt County with friends, Chris and Mollie Peterson. When Elsie died two weeks after the birth of her daughter, Marian, Clyde’s parents, Otto and Nellie Mae, took the baby. When the grandmother died in 1918 the child’s mother’s friend, Mollie Peterson, took her into her home.
Later, when Roy Nilson and his wife Emma, took over the store at Phoenix, Otto Nilson and his little granddaughter, Marian, lived with them, and Blanche’s parents, Milford and Arlepha Roberts, moved onto the Nilson farm. This was in 1920 and Clyde and Blanche were married the following year. Clyde’s father and his little daughter then came to live with him and his new wife.
Clyde and Blanche’s son, Faye, was born on the home place, grew up, married Evelyn Bhrens and had four children. Two daughters were also born to Blanche and Clyde. One died shortly after birth, the other, Nellie, was born after her parents moved into Atkinson where Clyde went into the draying business for a number of years. He died in 1968.
Marian, Clyde’s first child, married Fred Roberts, Blanche’s brother, and became the mother of six children. The family spent most of their lives in Atkinson. Richard Roberts married a girl from Germany; Patricia married Floyd Butterfield; Garold married an American girl who was in Spain with her parents when he met her; Marian married Bill King; Ronnie married Virginia Perry and Mona married Larry Thelander. Blanche Roberts still lives in Atkinson.
Roy Nilson, who was working for Henry Wabs, married Emma Bausch in 1916. Their closest neighbors were the Spindlers, Storjohanns, Coburns and Peter Greeley. Later, after the Nilsons began farming for themselves, they went to the big Fourth of July picnic held in Otto Nilson’s grove. On the way home that evening Roy’s horse stepped in a hole, threw him off and broke his shoulder. They hurried on to Atkinson, where Dr. McKee set his shoulder.
It was quite late when they finally reached home— only to find their ten milk cows in the cane field, all dead. Since the calves were “bucket calves,” they had to have milk. The Coburns helped out by lending the family a cow, while the rest of the neighbors took up a collection to buy the Nilsons another cow. Not long afterward they found the new cow dead in the pasture.
That fall the neighbors all came in to help Roy thresh his grain, as his shoulder was not yet healed. The machine was running when Roy climbed on top of it to adjust something, got too close to the beaters, fell through and lost three toes. He was bleeding badly and the neighbors at once started to Spencer with him, had car trouble and finally arrived with the injured man in such bad shape that he spent two or three weeks in the hospital.
The following January the Nilsons moved to Newport, over in Rock County, and started a cafe. In 1959 Roy had to have his right leg amputated, due to diabetes which had affected the foot he injured in the threshing accident. Emma could not manage the cafe alone, so they sold it. Roy died in 1963 and is buried in Phoenix beside his parents. He is survived by his wife and their five children, Viola, Ervin, Beverly, Lester and Lonnie.
Henry and Fred Bausch were also members of the early Phoenix community. Whether or not they were related to Emma Bausch’s family is not stated. The brothers were both crippled. The family had lived near a railroad track where the boys liked to play. Henry had gone to sleep with his arm across the rail and a train came by and cut it off. Fred had had “some sort of illness” and had to have one leg amputated.
They left Phoenix for awhile, operated a garage in Iowa, then returned to their ranch and built a new barn and a small house. While in Iowa Henry’s wife had died, leaving him two small children who were raised by their grandmother. Back in Phoenix Henry married Hulda Bennett and adopted a son, Ray.
Hulda died of pneumonia and Henry then married Jessie Peterson. By this time he was able to build a big new house, where he and Jessie reared six children.
Fred Bausch married Ina Palmer, lived near Phoenix for several years, then moved to Idaho. Their children, Lloyd, Leo and Ethel (Mrs. Francis Johnson) still reside in Holt County. Frances Coburn Turner and her husband, Dr. Fred Turner, came to Turkey Creek with their friend, Peter Greeley. Mrs. Turner was the daughter of Wisconsin dairy farmers, Dr. Turner was a graduate of Rush Medical School of Chicago. They had three sons and one daughter. Dr. Turner died in 1883 or ’84 and Mrs. Turner married a widower, Carlos Howe who also had three sons and one daughter. 424 Three more daughters were born to them.
Mr. Howe had come from Illinois to Phoenix, where he became a farmer. His original farm is now the George Syfie home. Josie Howe, daughter of Frances and Carlos, born in 1887, went to school in the little schoolhouse by the Greeley store until her family moved to O’Neill in 1895, from where her father carried the mail to Chelsea, up on the Niobrara. She graduated from high school there in 1906. Her sister Edna was also one of that graduating class of six young women.
Josie took a business course, then worked for several years in the O’Neill office of County Judge C. J. Malone. In 1911 she and Allen Nesbitt were married. Alien’s father was a trainer of fancy bird dogs. Allen and Josie had three children, Frances, Allen, Jr., and George. Allen served thirty years in the Army Corps of Engineers, attained the rank of Colonel and lived in many parts of the world. Frances and George also left Holt County and Josie now lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Joachim and Catherine Wabs were born and married in Germany. Catherine’s brothers, Hans, Claus and Fred Storjohann had already gone to America, so the Wabs, with their little son Henry, followed them, reuniting in Iowa.
Joachim and Catherine soon came on to Phoenix and homesteaded near the Niobrara, where five more children were born to them. Two died in infancy but their sons, August, William and Henry all farmed and raised large families in Holt County. Jovial, happy people, they loved to gather their friends at their home for catfish dinners, dances and other good times. Joachim died in 1923, Catherine in 1927. Both are buried in the little cemetery at Phoenix, “a simple, quiet resting place for the humble, hard-working couple who helped build Holt County.” George Syfie, Sr., was an interesting person. He came to America from Syria in 1894 when only a young man. Working his way across the country from Massachusetts to South Dakota, he took a homestead there, then sent back to Lebanon for his mother and sister. He came to Holt County in 1905 as a peddler of drygoods and notions which he carried in a pack on his back. Many a night he slept under a tree to save twenty-five cents, the price of a night’s lodging.
George liked the country and, with a partner, Sam Abdnor, rented land from John Damero and with the help of Hans Storjohann built a large two-story frame building for $90. In 1910 Mr. Syfie bought land across the road east from Howe’s and moved the store there. This building, which became the Phoenix post office, still stands, a landmark since the early days.
After getting a daily mail route to his store, the place became the community center. The mail came by horseback, by team and buggy, and later by car. The post office was active until 1936.
George Syfie married Edith Damero in 1907 and lived in the rooms above the store until 1910, when they bought a home. Thirteen years later they built a fine new modern house. Their five children were Eva, Violet, Alma, George, Jr. and Neoma. Eva, now Mrs. Adrian Mitchell, lives in Atkinson, George, Jr., lives on the home place.
Mr. Syfie became a farmer and rancher, accumulating several hundred acres of land and a fine herd of cattle. For awhile he rented the store to Roy Nilson, then Richard Davis, the Rex Coburns and W. B. Hagler. In 1928 the Syfie family again took over the store, adding a produce and gas station to the enterprise. With the help of their father, Alma and Neoma ran the store until 1947, when the building was remodeled into the home where George, Jr., and his family now live.
The younger George took his turn in his country’s service, came home and took over the ranch. At this time old George retired. He died in 1955 at the age of eighty. Edith, born to John and Frederika Damero in 1883, is now living with her daughter Alma in Spencer.
Marie Habernicht came from Germany to Iowa with her family in 1891. She was eleven at the time. There she met Christian Henkel, who was born in Iowa in 1873. They were married in Iowa and had three children, Franz, six; Augusta, five; and Alvina, four, when they came to Phoenix in 1905. Their youngest son, three at- the time, died of the flu in 1918.
The first four years on the homestead were tragic ones for the Henkels. Three little girls, Anna, Sophia and Marie, all born during this time, all died as babies. Chris, Jr., born in 1912 and Elsie, born in 1916, lived. However it was only two years later that they lost their sixteen-year- old son to the flu epidemic. All the children walked two miles to the Phoenix school.
John D. Naber was born in Germany in 1874. Before reaching draft age he came to America and worked on farms in eastern Nebraska until he obtained his citizenship papers. In 1900 he went back to Germany to visit his parents, returning the next year accompanied by Miss Meta Witte, his future bride, and a friend.
Miss Witte, born in 1880, wanted to learn the customs of America before her marriage, so worked in a friend’s home until the following spring, when she and John were married. They lived on a farm near Wisner until 1911, when they bought the Robert Alsworth quarter west of Atkinson. With a friend, Al Root, a carpenter, John repaired and built new buildings on the place before bringing his wife and five children to the new home. In 1920 John sold the farm to Robert Carr and moved to the Charles Fink place near Phoenix. By then there were nine children in the family. One more was born at Phoenix. A few years later they moved to the John Alf’s place, where Meta died. They then moved back to the Fink place, where John died suddenly in 1941. Helen Naber, who later married Rex Coburn, remembers the many happy hours she and her brothers and sisters spent playing in the haymow on the home place. “We had plenty of pets and we all learned to milk early, this was our livelihood. On Sundays we went to church, traveling in a surrey with two seats or the wagon. We got our first car in 1920, a Dodge with the seven diamond-like windows in the back. How proud we were of that car.
“In 1918 the flu put us all to bed and we were a very sick family. Our good neighbors, the Ed Babcocks, milked the cows, did the chores and helped in the house. They and Dr. Sturdevant pulled us all through.” Dave Armstrong came from Chicago about 1912. The family first lived on the south branch of Eagle Creek in the Alfs’ home. Later he bought the place from Henry Alfs and built up a sheep ranch on the hill. In the summers his wife stayed in a herder’s wagon in a pasture several miles west and looked after the sheep. There were several hundred head in the flock and they built barns for them, and good fences, and dug a deep well.
In 1922 their house caught fire while Mrs. Armstrong was outside doing the chores. There was a baby lamb in the house at the time and they supposed it knocked over the incubator lamp, which was going at the time. When they first saw the flames they rushed to the house to get twenty sacks of flour out of the attic. Mr. Armstrong and a neighbor, Mr. Zupkie, got out with the last sacks just as the roof fell in.
The Armstrongs lived in the barn that summer, but by winter had a basement built and roofed to live in. Later they built a fine home on the basement. Mrs. Armstrong did not live 425 Mrs. O’Neill’s friends wondered how she managed to be always prepared for so many unexpected guests. “Actually,” wrote Juliette, “they were not unexpected. This was our way of life.” The schoolhouse, a one-room building, was surrounded by tall cottonwood trees and was very near the O’Neill home. Other families also lived in the little settlement and all the children except those from one family went home for lunch. “And these children,” wrote Juliette, “were often our guests and shared our hot noon meal.” A flash flood swept down Turkey Creek in 191-4 when a dam on the upper creek, near Phoenix, gave way during a heavy rain. The wall of water swept away the O’Neill barn, some horses, mules, hogs, chicken coops, chickens, harness, saddles and the bridge over the creek near the house. It was a heavy loss.
The little Catalpa post office was located a few miles south and west of Phoenix. Since it was moved several times to different farms it is difficult to give it a very accurate location. At any rate to the valley of Brush Creek, where Catalpa would later come into being, came Jacob Hunt in 1878. Jacob, born in New York state in 1828, lost his mother when very young. With his father, a younger brother and his grandparents, he lived in Indiana and went to school there. In 1848 he married Esther Miller, daughter of a Michigan City, Indiana, store keeper. The Hunts moved to Iowa in 1857, where Jacob enlisted in the Union Army in 1862, serving until the end of the war. While he was with Sherman on his march to Atlanta, a daughter, born after he left home, died at the age of one and a half years.
By the time he came to Holt County his older daughter, Emma, had married Frank Ellis. Frank and a brother had come on ahead to prepare a home for his own and Jacob’s families and Jacob, accompanied by Emma and her son Edward, drove a team and wagon from Iowa to the new home. Mr. Hunt built a log house on his land and the following year his wife and the other eight children came west to be with him.
The Hunts raised sheep and cattle and operated a sorghum press.
Minnie Hunt, a young girl at the time, got her hand caught in the press while feeding cane into it. The remains of her hand had to be amputated at the wrist. Even so she married Fred Turner, raised a family, milked cows, chopped wood and was an outstanding cook, all with one hand. Peter Greeley, Justice of the Peace, officiated at her wedding in to enjoy the house for long, as she soon got an infection in her foot. The limb finally had to be amputated and she died. Soon afterward her husband lost the place.
Among the hired men who worked for the Armstrongs was an Alfred Parsons, a brother of Mrs. Armstrong’s. With his wife and son he came from England. After his sister’s death they lived in various places. Another bad fire occurred in 1921 on the place where Albrechts now live. A family named Coulter was living there and the children were playing with matches. When the fire started one of the children ran to the field to get his father, as a smaller child was trapped in the house. The father rushed in to get the child out, but was too late. He, too, was so badly burned that he died.
Ben Miller, born in 1889 in Knox County, in 1921 moved to Tripp County, South Dakota, where he batched for seven years before his marriage to Clara Hauf whose father had come from Russia. “After our marriage,” wrote Clara Miller, “we ranched, raised flax and milked twenty-four cows by hand. Two daughters, Mildred and Marian, were born, and a son who died at one month of age.
“The girls had to go seven miles to school, our cows got anthrax, our hogs died, it was hot and dry and the grasshoppers moved in and ate the small grain. Then Ben got anthrax (an infectious, fatal disease of cattle and sheep which can be transmitted to man) and was in the hospital for ten days. Times were getting bad. So we moved down into Holt County, trailing the rest of our cattle (seventy head) on horseback and with six horses hitched to the hayrack. It was a fourteen-day trip, sometimes in dust storms so bad we could hardly see. On the new place Leonard Juracek herded our cattle for fifty cents a day— and we had an awful time paying that.” The Hugh O’Neill farm had been about mid-way between Chelsea post office, farther northeast, and Phoenix. When Chelsea was discontinued about 1900Mr. O’Neill applied for the office, had it established in his home and named it Anncar, for his mother, Ann Carroll, who still lived with him. His wife, Mamie, was named post mistress, a position she held until the office was discontinued in 1931. The mail came three times a week.
Anncar was the end of the forty mile route and the carrier stayed overnight, usually with the O’Neills. Juliette O’Neill Walker, who wrote the family history, remembered that the family very often had company, overnight and/or for meals. Some of the log home her father had built. Jacob and Esther Hunt celebrated their Golden Wedding in the same log house, with most of their large family present. Esther died in February, 1910 and Jacob died twelve days later, after sixty-one years together. Frank Ellis, Emma’s husband, was born in Michigan in 1853 and he and Emma were married in 1876. They lived two miles west of the Hunts for awhile. Later they ranched north of the river, where Bristow stands today, then moved back to a place on Brush Creek and had the Catalpa post office in their home for a few years. Another daughter of the Hunts’, Olive, married Joe Nachtman in 1884 in the log home. Another Justice of the Peace, a Mr. Doty, performed the ceremony. Joe carried the mail from Niobrara to Long Pine on horseback. Later he drove a team of mules, using the river ice for a road in the winters. Two sons, John and Harvey, were born before they moved to Iowa, where Charlie, Mary, Carrie and Paul were born and Paul and Charlie died. In 1897 they moved back to Holt County.
Later Joe injured his knee with an axe handle, finally resulting in the amputation of the limb. The Nacht- mans lived near the Hunts for awhile, then moved to Amelia in the flowing well country and became prosperous. Their daughter, Mary Nachtman, married Ernest Price of Michigan City, Indiana. A school teacher, he came to Holt County in 1903, taught school for eleven years and worked for Jacob Hunt from 1904 to 1906. He and Mary were married at Atkinson in 1912 and lived on Brush Creek for thirteen years before moving to Chambers in 1928. Of their eight sons, three became priests.
John Andrus, born in Pennsylvania in 1847, was five years old when his mother died and he went to live with a sister. He grew up in Pennsylvania, worked for his board and the opportunity to go to school, then The Hunt cabin, one of the oldest in the neighborhood, was covered with tin years ago, which has helped to preserve the logs for the near century the cabin has stood in its pretty meadow. One of Minnie Hunt Turner’s sons, John Turner, is the present owner and operator of the O’Neill Transfer Trucking Company. Clay Johnson Collection.
426 came west to Iowa in 1869. The next fall he came to Cass County and took a homestead. Three years later he returned to Iowa, married Exona Harbour and brought her back to his homestead. Their first son, Charles, born in 1875, died of diphtheria. A daughter, Nora, and two more sons were born to them before John traded his eighty acres in Cass County for land in the Catalpa area in Saratoga Township, Holt County.
With John and Exona when they moved were John’s brother, Orsamus Andrus and his family and his sister, Lucretia and her husband, Samuel Wilhelm. The Wilhelms settled near John and Exona; Orsamus settled south of them in Belle Township. Their place was near Sunnyview church, a wooden building sodded up on the outside. When the rattlesnakes moved into the sod walls the church was abandoned.
About 1895 John and Exona moved to a place in Sheridan Township, south of Atkinson. In 1910 they sold that place to William Overton and moved into Atkinson. Three years later they sold their home there to John Zeulner and bought his place in Green Valley, where they lived until 1920, sold out to Adolph Pacha, and returned to Atkinson to live with their children there. Exona died that same year, John lived until 1931.
In 1883 John and Exona had adopted a two-months-old boy from the Home of the Friendless in Lincoln. They named the child Charles and took him with them to Holt County, where he lived all his life around Emmet and Atkinson. In 1904 he married Mae Enbody, whose mother was the former Minnie Tenborg. Charles and Mae had six children. Arthur Andrus, born to John and Exona in Cass County, came to Holt County with his parents when only a year old. About 1907 he went to work with a cement crew, George Spence, Charley Davis, Frank and Bill Hoyt, running sidewalks in Newport, Stuart and Atkinson. They also poured the cement in the metal tubes for the railroad trestle at Long Pine. In 1910 he bought a place from Mr. and Mrs. Damero in Atkinson and went to work for Gene Galligan in the livery barn there. Once in awhile he drove the hearse for the undertaker, Ed Kilmurry. On the trip north of the Niobrara to bring back the body of Hez Chamber’s mother, Jack Hayes went along, as it was twenty degrees below zero and the men had to take turns driving and walking to keep their feet from freezing. Art drove one of the first cars in Atkinson— a Maxwell owned by his employer, Mr. Gilligan.
Arthur sold his town place in 1913 and on the next New Year’s Day married Ruth Overton. The couple spent all their married life on the old Andrus place in Sheridan Township the farm Arthur’s parents homesteaded, then sold to Ruth’s parents in 1910. They had one child, Milton Arthur. Arthur still lives on the old home place. Ruth died in 1970. Benjamin Stockwell, a brother of Dr. James Stockwell, with his wife, the former Jane Rowland, and three daughters came from Indiana to Cass …….” …Sbe… 1^02 Excelsior Coral Society of School Dist. No. 84 will give a CONCERT at the Phoenix Store Saturday Evening, May 19 Commencing at 8 o’clock.
% PROGRAM Ya Solo’Those Good Old Days’E. S. Rice’Mr. John Damero and chorus Recitation’A Husband’s First Experience in Cooking, Karl Storjohan The Farmer’s Boy Is a Jovial Lad’F. A. Fillmore………………..Chorus Solo’Kiss Me, Darling, Ere You Go’A. R. Churchill’Minnie Storjohann and chorus Over the River’Ira Long…………………………………………………………Chorus Recitation’Pledge With Wine……………………………. Margaret Snider Solo’Hear Dem Bella— D. S. McCosh’Mary Storjohann and chorus Medley quartette’My Far Away Home’E. F. Hilderbrand’Myrtle Manchester, Louisa Grossman, Will Snider, John Damero Recitation’A Woman’s Question……………………… Myrtle Manchester Beautiful Home Far Above’A. S. Keiffer……………………………. Choi us Fast to Thine Arm’G. W. Lyon……………………………………………. Chorus Music…………………………………………………………………………… … Orchestra Solo’By and By’S. Ober………………………Edith Storjohann and chorus Recitation’John Janker’s Sermon………………………………….. Joe Rhode Male quartette’Drifting With the Stream’G. B. Holsinger’Messrs. Will Snider, Joe Stein, John Damero. Karl Storjohann Grandpa’s Advice to the Boys’Chas. H. Gabriel………………….. Chorus Recitation’The Low Backed Car………………………………….. Mary Rhode Solo’The Lily or the Rose………………………………………Margaret Snider Drifting Toward the Golden Shore’C. E. Leslie………………….. Chorus Tableau’Held By a Thread…. Lou Isa Grossman and Karl Storjohann A Home On the Prairie’P. W. Hill……………………………………… Chorus Dialogue’A Matrimonial Advertisement’Mary, Minnie, Herman and Karl Storjohann, and Margaret Snider Duet’Who Was It? C. E. Leslie— Myrtle Manchester Minnie Storjohann and chorus A Sermon’B. C. U…………………………………………………………………… Chorus Solo’Allie E. Burwell………………………………………… Herman Storjohann Recitation’Maud Muller and the Rooster……………. Edith Storjohann Cling to the Mighty One ………………………………………………………. Chorus Solo’Blame Yourself If You’r Sold’R. H. Randal’Karl Storjohann and chorus Recitation’Rock of Ages………………………………….. Minnie Storjohann Tableau, in three acts……………. Myrtle Manchester and John Damero Softly the Daylight Faded’C. E. Leslie…………………………………..Chorus Recitation’When Mother Strikes……………………… Martha Storjohann Music ………………………………………………………………………………….. Orchesera Recitation’How Sockery Sot a Hen……………………………. Roman Rhode Dialogue’Fresh Timothy Hay’Myrtle Manchester, John Damero and Ted Anderson The Lord’s Prayer’P. R. Palmer……………………. …………………….. Chorus Goodbye’C. V. Strickland…………………………………………………….. Chorus Admission’Adults, 20c; Children, 15c, Minnie Storjohann, Organist L. B. Fuller, Teacher County in the early ‘seventies. A fourth daughter was born in Cass County. In 1885 the family came by covered wagon to Holt County and purchased land from Mr. Dutcher. The Catalpa post office was located in their home for many years, although the dates are not given. Peter Duffy was the mail carrier at one time in its history. In 1901 the Stockwells retired from the farm and moved to Butte. Kate, one of the Stockwell daughters, married George Kirkland and 427 lived on his form until he bought Kate’s father’s place and they moved there. They had two sons, Wilbur and Harold. Lydia, the oldest daughter, married Stuart Anderson in Kansas and lived there until 1890, then joined the Stockwells in the Catalpa neighborhood. Later they went on to South Dakota. They had ten children. Emma Stockwell married Wilford Standiford and had two children. In later years they, too, moved to South Dakota. Charlotte, the youngest daughter, taught the Kite and Storjohann schools before her marriage to Ray Coburn. Ben and Jane also raised an orphan boy, Sam Anderson, who married Lenore Lamphier. They had two children. Ben died in 1920 and Jane in 1932.
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