Rugged Country Chapter Forty-Three On west of Turkey Creek were Spring Creek, Brush Creek, the Big Sandy, Beaver, Clay and Otter creeks, all flowing northward to the Niobrara. Several little post offices dotted this rugged region: Lavinia, Laura, South Side, Keya Paha, to name a few. Badger, eight or nine miles west and a little north of Chelsea, or maybe the other way around (early maps locate it differently), was between the Big Sandy and the Niobrara.

The family of Charles E. Mitchell lived near Badger, then housed in the home of an unnamed settler. Charles was born in Indiana in 1871. He was quite young when the family moved to Oakland, Nebraska, where his mother died. The father went back to Indiana but Charles and his brother Ed stayed in Nebraska. As a teen-ager he became a jockey in the eastern and northeastern section of the state. Later he worked on farms in that area. In 1901 he married Bertha Willey at Middle Branch. The couple lived near Venus until 1907, then moved to the place near Badger, seven miles south of Butte, up in Boyd County. Charles and Bertha had twelve children, one died in babyhood, another, Hazel, was the child bitten by the rattlesnake, as described in an earlier chapter.

Sunday visiting, or visitors, was the main entertainment while the children were growing up. "I especially remember one Sunday," wrote one of the daughters. "We had invited company and were having fried chicken. Then another family came, unexpectedly, so we simply went out and caught some more chickens. To save time we skinned them (instead of plucking), for those tender young chickens cooked quickly." Another amusing incident happened when the three oldest children were youngsters. A lady near Butte asked them to pick her a half-gallon of wild raspberries from the hills on their home place. That meant "quite a walk up the Niobrara River hill," but they picked the fruit for her, and while picking planned on the things they would buy with the quarter they expected her to give them. The berries were delivered— and the lady "magnanimously handed them a nickel." Charles Mitchell was killed in October, 1957. He was on his horse and had stopped to visit with a neighbor who was driving a truck. When the truck started up it hit the horse, causing it to jump and throw its rider under the vehicle. Death was instant. Mrs. Mitchell then sold the ranch and went to Atkinson to live with a daughter, Lulu Dunn.

Quite a number of the Mitchell sons and daughters married and stayed in the community: Adrian married Eva Syfie; Ronnie, killed in a car accident in 1957, was living near Atkinson. Vera married Ralph Coburn and lived at Phoenix. William married Vivian Bohac, Harry married Pauline Fundus and lived near Atkinson. Blanche married Evan Lewis and lived near Spencer. Wilbur, who married Helen Eilers, also lived near Spencer. Bessie and her husband, William Crawford, made their home at O'Neill. John and his wife, Alice Ulrich, live in Spencer. The little post office of Celia was south and west of Catalpa, toward the head of Brush Creek. The Aldridge, Nelson Ames, Kissinger and Frickel families lived in this area. The Aldridge family came first, in 1883, from Iowa. Seth Aldridge was born at Ottumwa in 1857. His wife, Victoria Cissne, born in Michigan in 1859, lost her mother when she was six and came to Ottumwa to live with an aunt. She and Seth were married at Kirksville in 1882 and came west the next spring.

Ray Aldridge was born on the Celia farm in 1884, May in 1893. Both graduated from the eighth grade at the Celia school, also the home of the community's first Sunday school. A little cemetery was located close by. Supplies, brought from . Atkinson by the mail carrier for settlers who had no transportation of their own, were left at the Aldridges to be picked up by the owners.

Seth served for many years on the Celia school board and township board, and also did the annual assessing, riding horseback to all the homes. He was a good baseball player and handy with the fiddle and the banjo. On his last day on earth he played "Ole Black Joe" on his banjo shortly before he died. His son Ray, also a lover of the violin, took lessons by mail and practiced at every opportunity. He was soon playing for neighborhood dances. May played the piano.

Ray married Isabel McKathnie and raised six children, all still living. Ray died in 1958. May married Charles Keeler, had two children and is still living, although in her eighties. Nelson Ames who, with his brother Lafayette, had taken claims in Boyd County some years earlier, sold out in 1900 and bought 740 acres near Celia and went into farming there. The next year he married Clara West at Phoenix. The couple had four children, Sarah, Elizabeth, Florence and Everett.

The Celia place was nineteen miles from Atkinson and the family made the trip into town each week with butter, cream and eggs. On one of their weekly trips they were narrowly missed by a cyclone, on another "had a thrilling escape from a terrific hailstorm." When blizzards were forecast "Central" always gave four long rings on the line from her office, then warned everyone to get the livestock in.

In their later years on the Celia place the Ames owned a car. The family had much amusement out of the fact that Nelson couldn't remember that he didn't need to say "Get up" and "Whoa" to the machine. In 1919 Nelson sold the farm and moved to Iowa. The children married and moved to other states, Nelson is dead and Clara, now ninety years old, lives with Sarah in California.

Benjamin Franklin Kissinger, another Iowan, worked with his father on a farm until 1898, when he married Ellen Jenkins. They first lived on one of his grandfather Kissinger's farms; then he worked in a store in Pierson, Iowa. In 1909 he bought a farm in the Celia neighborhood and moved his family there, where he was the Celia postmaster until his 428 brother Len also moved out from Iowa and Len's wife, Clara, took over the office duties. The brothers farmed together for several years on the old Fritoff place. When the children were ready for high school the family. moved into Atkinson.

In 1937 Frank and Ellen went out to California to help their son Ralph care for his two boys after the death of their mother. While there Frank worked in a cannery at Palo Alto— a far cry from farming and ranching on Brush Creek in Nebraska. However, they came back to Atkinson a year later, bringing the two boys with them and keeping them until after they graduated from Atkinson High. During this time they lived on a 320 acre farm on Highway 11, southeast of town.

After the boys were gone they sold the farm and moved into town where they lived to celebrate their seventieth wedding anniversary, with all their living children present.

In 1913 or 1914 Conrad Frickel, his wife Katrine and their children came from Lincoln to the Ellis Butler homestead, which he purchased on the advice of B. E. Sturdevant and R. J. McAllister, real estate agents of Atkinson. To Conrad the place was a "Garden of Eden," and he built thereon a small frame building, where he and his brother Dan lived while constructing a sizable basement for a future home. With stringer boards over the basement for a roof, Mr. Frickel brought his family out from Lincoln to occupy it. The family consisted of Mrs. Frickel, ten children of their own and a little cousin of the children, Dora. Dan also lived with them for several years.

Both Conrad and Katrine were born in Russia in 1888. Of German nationality, they spoke that language, as they were a part of a group from Germany that settled in the Volga region in early times.

Conrad Frickel, Jr., tells how the family came on the train from Lincoln to Atkinson, where the father had arranged for the mail carrier, Wallace Fullerton, to meet them and bring them to the new home in his rig. On the way out Mr. Fullerton expressed his sympathy for the family "as the place was a gravel hill and he didn't think they could make a living on it." He didn't know the Frickels. It is true there were hard times, years of drouth, damaging flash floods, stock diseases and financial reverses. But the big family worked hard and, with the close cooperation of all and the help of kindly neighbors, the Frickels prospered.

John Anderson, who lived two miles to the east, walked over every morning to help with the building of the new home on the finished basement. When the Frickel's calves were dying of blackleg neighbor Ole Torske heard about it and came over to show Mr. Frickel how to vaccinate for the disease. On another occasion, when the children were home alone, a mule colt kicked Lillian in the forehead and knocked her down. Her sister Marie thought she had been killed and ran as hard as she could to the nearest farm, that of Earl Terwill-iger, "who wasn't on speaking terms with us. I was so scared I couldn't talk," wrote Marie, "but all differences were forgotten and he followed me home and took Lillian to Atkinson to Dr. McKee." School was three miles away, Marie went on. "Attendance wasn't compulsory but work was, especially milking the cows, as that was the family living." However, the children liked school and went most of the time.

An eleventh child, Dorothy, was born on the Celia farm. Mrs. Hinkle, the mid-wife, and some of the Hinkle children drove over in a brand new black surrey. The Frickel girls got underneath it and Pauline cut off a flap hanging down underneath. The Hinkle children scared the Frickel girls badly by threatening to call Sheriff Duffy.

In 1918 the whole family had the flu. Marie was the first down, Conrad, Jr., the last, but all were in bed at the same time. Before he had to go to bed, Conrad went to the mailbox to get the gunny sack of oranges the mailman had carried, tied to his saddle, and hung on the mailbox for them.

The Frickels owned the first Model T in their neighborhood. That car was hard on all the mailboxes along the road, Pauline said, until Mr. Frickel learned to drive it better. "There were gates to open and it was up to Mother to open them. The last gate on the way home was about a mile from the house. One time she opened that gate and Dad drove through and went on home without her. He didn't miss her until he got out of the car, then he hurried back to meet her." The Frickel home was the-first in the community to have running water, a bathroom and electricity. More rooms were added to the house and it was a place where people liked to gather for visiting and meals. It was also the meeting place for religious services for the German-Russian families in the area: the George Krumms, Nick Schwindts, Gottlieb Brauns, John Hinkles, John Webers and the three Henrys, Heiser, Kahler and Hagel. Baseball was the favorite sport of the four Frickel boys, Alex, Herman, Victor and Conrad, Jr. The Celia diamond was on the Bauer place and the teams played most often were from Phoenix, Rock Falls and Green Valley. The boys were avid coyote hunters, too. If a neighbor called to suggest a hunt as many as could get in the Model A jumped in. Alex drove, Herman did the shooting and the rest hung on.

Molly, the eldest daughter, left home early to work out and earn money to help out at home. Through her help her younger sisters had real dolls to play with and the mother was occasionally provided with some luxury she couldn't afford to buy. Marie was the first to go to high school. She lived in town with the Fred Swingleys all four years, working for her board and clothes while going to school. The four younger girls also worked their way through high school, in addition to becoming excellent cooks under their mother's teaching and helping her cook for the big family and the many visitors. The long table in the Frickel kitchen seated twelve to fourteen people. One day a father and his small daughter ate dinner there— and the child could hardly wait to get home to tell her mother she had eaten at a table like the "Lord's Supper." Wrote Marie, "The outstanding thing we all remember about our home was the smell of the cooking and baking our mother did. We have not yet found anyone who could duplicate the pepper bread she baked. She used burned sugar syrup, raisins, and a handful of pepper mixed with the flour. Her rye bread was super-delicious. She cooled the range oven enough that she could sprinkle raw flour in the bottom, then put a large pan of dough, shaped into one big loaf, in the oven and baked it slowly. When done it had a thick, rich-flavored crust. Her hand-cut noodles were as fine as any cut by a machine." In the Frickel family if a child died, the next born of the same sex was named after the one that passed away. A little girl named Pauline had died in Lincoln in 1910. Eight years later the first girl born in that family was named Pauline. She is now Pauline Beck.

Another pioneer family in the Celia neighborhood was that of Jasper and Mary Corbit, who reared eight children. Mr. Corbit was one of the first postmasters of the Celia office. Their oldest son, Erve, became a minister. His wife was a Lumsden girl from Atkinson. Several in this religious family had fine singing voices. Bess Corbit, who recently died in California three days before her ninety-second birthday, outlived all her brothers and sisters.

429 nie died in 1932. Mr. McKathnie was affectionately known as "Uncle Ben" to his many Atkinson friends.

Archibald, oldest of the McKathnie children, married Emma Backhaus, daughter of German immigrants. Emma lived to the age of ninety-seven. Margaret McKathnie, the oldest daughter, taught school for a few years, then married William Hitchcock. Isabel, born during the blizzard of '88, married Ray Aldridge. Jacob, who married in California, is now (1973) eighty-nine and the only living member of this large family of brothers and sisters.

Where the Keya Paha River joins the Niobrara the rather sharp bend in the Niobrara is known as "The Point." On the north side of the river are two large hills called "Twin Buttes," one is flat on top, the other round. Although located in Boyd County the Buttes are a sort of landmark in northern Holt County.

When the first settlers arrived in northwestern Holt County everything north of the river was Indian country. The Indians were friendly most of the time, except when the whites stole their wood. They often traded blankets for chickens, pigs and dogs. By 1885 they were pretty well settled on reservations and white settlers were locating north of the river.

The Demings, who settled a few miles south of The Point, near where Belknap post office was later located, had an interesting history. The first Demings to reach these shores were fishermen from France. The fishing fleet had fish-drying camps in Nova Scotia before the settlement of Jamestown. About the middle of the 1600's a widow with three sons came to these camps looking for her husband. She was uncertain whether he had been lost at sea, or had not returned to France because he had married a woman in the camp area. When she did not locate her husband she and her family went to Boston. Deciding that city was a bad influence on her sons, she loaded her belongings on pack horses and moved her family to the new settlement of Connecticut. In the early 1800's a Deming came to Cattaraugus County, New York. He and his wife were the parents of three children, a son, James, a daughter and another son, Solomon. The mother died at the birth of this third child in 1824. Little Solomon was taken by the Roberts family and raised.

Solomon Deming, the eldest of the Demings who came to Holt County, apparently never mentioned the given name of his father, hence he was known as "Connecticut Yankee" Deming to his descendants. Yankee Deming was a friend of Joseph and Both Benjamin McKathnie and his wife, Grace Anderson, were born in England. Neither had much opportunity to go to school. Ben Mckathnie lost his father when a lad of seven, leaving him with the responsibility of supporting his mother, two sisters and a brother. He very early went to work in the coal mines where his father had worked. Grace started to work away from home when only nine. Ben worked hard and saved as much as he could to make the trip to America. Grace and her four brothers also planned to leave England, as their father had already come to America. Ben was twenty-one by the time he had saved enough money for the trip. All of them reached Pennsylvania in 1868. Benjamin and Grace were married in 1870.

The young couple later moved to Kentucky. Grace's father had gone west to Iowa, and when he wrote that he could get Ben a job there, the McKathnies joined him. By this time lowans were coming back from Nebraska to persuade their friends and relatives to go to Holt County where there were acres and acres of fine land and plenty of grass for cattle.

By this time Ben and Grace had five children— and Holt County sounded like a good place to raise a family. Benjamin and his brother-in-law drove a team and wagon to the new territory first, to establish a home for the family. From Niobrara they headed straight for Eagle Creek and the home of a Mr. Galesby, surveyor for that area. Learning they would find good land along Brush Creek, Ben went there, selected his land and had it surveyed. The year was 1879. The surveying was done by the "wagon wheel" method.

The Clifton Grove post office had just been established and these two men were the first to mail a card there— no doubt to the family in Iowa to tell them of their progress. Ben and his brother-in-law built a large one-room frame house and sent for Grace and the children. Four more children were born there.

Having always worked in mines, Mr. McKathnie knew almost nothing about farming. Thus, when he started to plow his first field he plowed in a circle until a neighbor straightened him out. However, with the help of his family, he became a very successful rancher.

About 1912 he bought a home on the north edge of Atkinson and lived there, although still operating the ranch with the help of two of his sons. In 1914 he sold the ranch. Later they built a new home in the town and celebrated their sixty-first wedding anniversary there before Mrs. McKath- Hyrum Smith. He remarried and his eldest son, James, married the daughter of the second wife. Both of these families went with the Smiths to Ohio and Yankee Deming moved to Nauvoo, Illinois with the other Mor- mons. When the Smiths were killed he left Nauvoo with the others, then settled in Iowa.

Solomon Deming married a woman named Carpenter and had a son, Syrenus. His mother died at his birth, July 6, 1851, and the boy was raised in the home of his maternal grandfather by his mother's oldest sister, Cornelia. Solomon then cooked in Michigan lumber camps for three winters, saved $400 and went back to New York to visit his son and other relatives. In 1854 he left New York for Nebraska.

He stopped in Iowa on the way t6 visit his father, Yankee Deming, then caught a ride with a freighter crossing Iowa to the mouth of the Platte River. He hired a man to row him across the river, where he looked about for land on which to locate. A single barrel, muzzle loading rifle, three beaver traps, a good blanket and some provisions were his entire equipment. He hiked up Salt Creek, over land where Lincoln would later be located, then south into Arkansas, trapping through the winter.

In the spring of 1855 he came north again, and finally chose some land about where Waverly, Nebraska, now stands. A lake on the west part of his land was a favorite site for hunters. A hunter who came there often was Ben Birdsall, a Canadian, who lived in Iowa. In 1871 Syrenus Deming came from New York to his father's home in Nebraska. There he met Welthy Ann Birdsall, daughter of Ben, and married her on their twenty-second birthday, July 6, 1873. They had been born about forty miles apart, he in New York, she in Ontario.

Syrenus and Welthy lived on Solomon's place on Salt Creek, which flooded often. Then Syrenus helped some men of the Waverly area haul a huge steam sawmill from the mouth of the Platte to Rapid City in 1878. While freighting across the Middle Branch region he took a fancy to that kind of country and decided to take a second look.

In 1879 he started with a one-horse cart and a bull dog. They had a tarp for shelter. The night he camped at Columbus his horse was stolen. He hired a man to take him and his cart back to Waverly. A week or two later his horse came home. On the second try he went up toward Middle Branch and across the country south of the Niobrara. He crossed the Niobrara at The Point and went as far west as Springview before returning to 430 Lincoln.

In 1880Syrenus, his father Solomon, Del Birdsall and men by the names of Belinger, Reese and Butterfield went to the Sand Creek area which is now the north part of Sand Creek Precinct and the south part of Dustin Precinct. There both Solomon and Syrenus filed homesterads, almost directly south of The Point, a little east of the Big Sandy Creek. They built a one-room log cabin on Solomon's land.

In the fall of 1881 Welthy and the children came by train and all lived in the log house that winter. Then Syrenus bought the relinquishment to the Day homestead, two and a half miles west and a mile south of Solomon's land, on the creek. By then the Belknap store and post office had been located a quarter mile north of the Day land.

Quite a group of homesteaders came to the Deming neighborhood in the summer of 1881. One man took a claim a little above Syrenus' homestead. That winter two of his sons came by rail to Atkinson. Unable to find a ride to their father's place they set out afoot. During the afternoon it began to snow and they got off the trail. They reached the Sandy just as it was getting dark. Afraid to cross the stream in the night and not knowing where they were, they walked around their suitcase all night, trying to keep warm.

When morning came they could see smoke, so hurried as best they could to the house it came from. It was their father's house and they had spent the night less than half a mile from it. Their feet were frozen so badly that one boy lost a foot at the instep and the toes of the other foot. His brother lost all the toes of both feet. In the spring of 1882 Syrenus and the family moved into a new sod house on the Day place, just east of where the old stone barn stands now. After a year in the sod house they built a frame house nearby. A schoolhouse had been built on the bank of the creek between Demings and the Berry's, the next place to the south. Built of logs, it had a dirt floor and a dirt roof, the stove, a long rectangle of cast iron had no legs and sat in the middle of the room. A sod wall, "built on each side of the stove kept the kids from getting too hot." The seats were bridge planks set on blocks. High blocks were used under the planks next to the walls, lower blocks under the inside rows for the littler ones. There were no desks. John Deming, born in 1878, was old enough to go to the third term of school held in this schoolhouse. He was so proud of the fact that he got to sit on the high plank next the wall with the big kids— until he realized that the teacher had seated him in front of the window, where a big fellow would have blocked out the light. About twenty pupils attended the school.

One reason Syrenus liked the new place was that the glaciers had deposited sandstone west of the Sandy. Since he had come from a rocky part of New York, he was an expert at laying rock walls, so built all of his foundations and some of his buildings of the native sandstone. The main crossing of the Sandy was just northwest of the new house and the rock piers that held up the bridge were laid by Syrenus. They can still be seen there, just past the northeast corner of the old yard.

Solomon Deming lived on his homestead for a number of years then, in his old age, moved into a stone house just west of the south side of the bridge. There he made fine fur mittens from furs he trapped and tanned himself.

In the early days some of the country's good hunters killed deer in the winter time, dressed and hung them in a large oak tree just southeast of the Deming house. When any of the neighbors ran out of meat they were welcome to take a supply of venison from the carcasses hanging in the tree.

One of the best hunters was Foss Richardson. It was said of him that his brow was * so low that when he crawled up to look over a ridge for game only his eyebrows showed. One of the Deming boys, James, made himself a pair of skis from two barrel staves, he tried them out by going over the slide bank north of the stone barn. It was forty or fifty feet down to the bank of the creek, but, fortunately, there was a deep snow bank where he came to earth. He decided that was not the way one was meant to ski and gave it up. Syrenus Deming, of sandy complexion and medium build, was a deeply religious man. He spent considerable time distributing New Testaments and religious literature to people in his part of the county. He also held worship services in the local school houses.

One day three Free Methodists called on him to urge him to come to their services. He told them he was involved with other groups and one of the men said, "Mr. Deming, don't you think you are casting pearls before swine?" That was the only time Syrenus ever ordered anyone off his place, and his visitors left in a hurry. An avid gardener, he had gardens in several places. One was southeast of the house, another was about two miles down the creek. Early one spring he went there to dig parsnips— and found that someone had already dug them. On that occasion he used his strongest expression -"Why! That old Pusillanimous." On all the places where he built he set out apple trees, rhubarb and June berries. He had a bed of sweet myrrh near the house he built on the Bail land. Welthy was less than five feet tall. One time when she was fleshy she weighed ninety-three pounds. Her hair was black, her skin dark. She was very agile and perfectly able to climb trees when in her late seventies. She had lived on the frontier since the age of twelve. She had long been familiar with scarcity. A frugal woman wasted nothing.

She had learned to set fish lines when she lived along the Missouri River. During the summer months there were always lines set in the Sandy and she caught many catfish and turtles. Once she brought home a big snapping turtle by getting it to bite a stick, then turning it over and pulling it home on its shell. She loved fresh buttermilk to drink and always kept her yeast in a jug.

Syrenus had cut a mark on the top of the lower sash of the south kitchen window that indicated the shadow line at noon. This was Welthy's time piece during the day. She also spent much" time studying the stars and' could tell the approximate time during the night at the four seasons of the year by the position of the stars. She was most interested in the moon and spent bright evenings speculating about its bright and shadowed areas. She would have been incredulous if anyone had suggested people would walk on the moon in the twentieth century, but she would have been thrilled to see the pictures taken there.

Welthy had a boundless interest in plants, animals, birds and all else about her. Nothing was too small to be noticed, nothing too intimidating to be studied. Both she and Syrenus were great readers, and Syrenus accumulated quite a library over the years.

A show of temper Welthy called being "spunky," and nothing made her spunkier in the early days than taking the children on a jaunt in the cart behind the oxen, Babe and Blue. All went well until they came down the hill toward the ford in the creek. Then it was impossible to slow them down as they rushed into the water to drink. One time, as she was going up the hill toward the west, the oxen got too near a slide bank and dumped Welthy and the children over the edge. The only damage was to her temper.

A few years after moving onto the Day place Syrenus bought the Hugh 431 Bail land just west of it. He built a house in a nice location up the little creek north of the other house, a little over half a mile away. The new house was close to a magnificent garden spot and was irrigated from the little creek. He dug into a clay bank and laid up stone for his first floor, then built a frame second story over it. From then on he spent most of his time there, Welthy continued to live in the first house on the Sandy. Syrenus and Welthy had seven children. Mary, their first child, died as an infant. Benjamin, the fifth child, was stillborn in 1882. Oscar, John and Robert were born on the Waverly farm, James and David on the Sand Creek homestead or the Day place. Syrenus died in 1914, Welthy in 1932. Robert, James and David died near their home on the Sandy, Robert in 1899 at nineteen years of age. Oscar died in Montana at forty years of age. David died in 1923, James in 1967. The date of John's death is not given. Their grandfather, old Solomon, died just before Christmas in 1898. The Berrys, too, came early to America, the first of that family settling in Virginia in 1600. This is the family that had members serving in every war the United States entered, from the Revolutionary to Viet Nam. From Virginia these transplanted Englishmen spread west. William Preston Berry, great grandfather of the pres-entgeneration, was born in Tennessee in 1816. He grew to manhood in Illinois and, in 1850, moved to Iowa with six children. His first wife was Drucilla Wilcox. After her death he married Susan Spicklemire in 1857. Drucilla bore him nine children, Susan eight. In 1873 he and two sons, James and Thomas came to Paddock, where the father died the following year and was buried at Niobrara.

William Samuel Berry, third son of William Preston Berry, was born in Illinois in 1843. He later moved to Iowa with the family, served through the Civil War and married Sarah Spicklemire in 1866. They moved to Hiawatha, Kansas, the next year and ten children were born to their union. In 1879 he followed his brothers to Holt County, stayed a few months at Paddock, then moved on and homesteaded on the Big Sandy, south of the Demings.

Their first winter there was extremely severe and William hunted deer for himself and his neighbors. For this he earned the title of the "Deer Hunter." Their first home, a log house, burned the next year. A part of the frame house he built to replace it is still standing. Remodeled, the Darrell Smith family now lives in it. Converted to the Methodist faith in 1883, William united with the Free Methodists in 1894 and became a minister for the church, holding weekly services at the schoolhouse in District 52 and at Dustin, Paddock and other places.

A landmark for that section of Holt County was the barn William Berry built below the house and beside the creek. He built the basement into the hillside, using rocks quarried on the place. A man named Ballinger laid up the massive walls, finishing his work just before the blizzard of '88. Later a First frame barn in Holt County as it looked in 1974, following restoration after the flood.

The Deming Boys and their horses. Left to right: John on Flora, Oscar with Queen, Bob on Tony. Picture taken in 1894. Courtesy E. M. Jarman.

432 two-story top was added. Built of lumber hauled from Atkinson, a hired carpenter and the family put it up, using wooden pegs and square nails. In addition to being noteworthy for its size, it was said to be the first frame barn built in Holt County.

During their years on the homestead Sarah, William's wife, served as mid-wife throughout the neighborhood. She also delivered many of her own grandchildren. After her husband died in 1913 she sold the farm and moved to Lincoln. She died in California in 1927 and is buried there, two thousand miles from the Cleveland cemetery where William lies. Of William and Sarah's ten children only one, Ernest, is still living. Thomas, the third son, born in Kansas in 1873, grew up on the Sand Creek homestead. In 1895 he married Sarah Ann, or Annie, Smith who had come to the Dustin vicinity with her foster parents, Mr. and Mrs. Jesse Friend, in 1883 when she was five.

The couple lived for awhile in a log cabin on the William Berry place, then Tom homesteaded on a place of his own, two miles south. Of the thirteen children born to them, eleven survive and four still live in Holt County. Tom opened a blacksmith shop on his homestead and had plenty of business— except that it didn't pay too well. For Annie always fixed meals for the customers who were there at noon, and many of the smithing bills went unpaid.

While the William Berry family was growing up Singing Schools and Literary Societies were the main entertainments. All the young people in the neighborhood attended, walking, riding horseback or going in wagons, some from as far as seven or eight miles away. Those farthest away would set out, picking up others as they went. Many marriages in the community resulted from romances started in this manner.

The old Berry barn is still a proud landmark on the Sandy. After the Merrill Smith family bought the place a dam, farther up the creek broke following a ten inch rain, sending a wall of water down the valley that severely damaged the huge structure by washing away a large portion of the old rock walls. The Smiths replaced the stone with cement, re-sided and braced the structure. Today only the stone walls in the northeast corner, saved from the flood by the hill side against which they were built, can still be seen. The rest looks just as it always did— a splendid monument to the pioneering past.

Thirteen generations of another English family, the Morses, have now lived in the United States. Charles L. Morse, with his wife Emma and their year-old son Clayton, settled on or near Beaver Creek, a few miles west of the Sandy and near the hamlet of Dustin. They came from Michigan and the year was 1886.

Three daughters were born on the Morse tree claim. Two are still living, Esther, born in 1898, and Ruth, 1899, who describes family life during her childhood. The Morse children went to the Clay Creek school, or District 86, built near little Clay Creek, a high- bluffed stream a few miles west of the larger Beaver Creek.

A neighbor, George Sutherland, living on the Clay Creek bottom, had planted pumpkins in his corn field on the top of the bluff above. After he cut his corn the bright orange pumpkins on the ridge were visible for quite a distance, causing the strip to be known as "Pumpkin Ridge" ever afterward. At one time a Literary Society which met at the schoolhouse put out a little paper called the Pumpkin Ridge News.

Ruth tells of a mistake her father made, unknowingly, when he first arrived in the area. About two miles north and a bit west of Dustin there was a store and post office on the south side of the Niobrara. Known as Grand Rapids, it was just south of a large island in the river. On the island grew a single hickory tree. Since hickory trees were common in Michigan and were used there to make ox goads, when Mr. Morse found this tree he cut it down and took it home for that purpose— not knowing it was the only such tree in the entire area, and so had been spared by other residents.

Ruth remembers the annual ice break-ups on the Niobrara. During severe winters the ice froze to quite a depth and, though they lived two miles from the river, they could plainly hear the tremendous roar of the shattering ice in the spring. Another oddity of the area was the "loess slides" occurring in the canyons along the streams. Ruth and Esther found such a slide on the side of Beaver Canyon, which they crossed when going to the Cleveland church. The slides, formed when a horizontal section of the bluff slipped downward a short distance, followed in time by another and another, made a series of "stairsteps." The children loved to climb up and down these natural stairways. Sometimes, on their way to church, the parents permitted the girls to get out of the spring wagon and climb down the steps while the rig went down on the road.

The Morse family owned and "set" an incubator each spring, hatching quite a flock of chickens annually. Esther took great interest in this project and enjoyed looking after the young chicks. Once, finding a half-grown chicken with a broken leg, she splinted the leg and the chicken got along fine. Another time she sterilized a needle in a flame and, with a length of silk thread, sewed up a chicken's bursted crop. The chicken survived. Esther later became a Doctor of Medicine.

Ruth Morse married Austin Park-hurst in 1946 in Buckley, Washington. Apparently none of the Morse family stayed on in Holt County.

A good many families settled in the Dustin locality in the 1880's and the U. S. Census of 1890 listed the Township as having a population of 228 people, Cleveland, just west of it, had 330 and Sand Creek, south of it, had 406. Jimmy Ross had built his grist mill on the Beaver and other businesses, catering to the needs of the community, were established. Among the early families was that of Aaron Horn, who came from Pennsylvania in 1880. That same spring Nelson Lofquest, born in Sweden in 1858, who had lived in Platte County, Nebraska since the age of fourteen, came to Dustin. In 1883 Nelson married Emma Krien, Aaron Horn's step-daughter. The Lof- quests had six children: Celia died at the age of five. Myrtle lived to be twenty-seven, Minnie passed away at twenty-two and Sadie at forty- three. Only Annie, the oldest, lived to a ripe old age— eighty-eight. Mr. Lofquest, an elder in the Cleveland Presbyterian church and a faithful attendant there until not long before his death in 1916, was buried in the Celveland cemetery near his home. Two years later Emma married William Elliehousen. The daughter, Myrtle, married Alvie Owens in 1907; Minnie married Henry Fuelberth in 1909 and Annie married Harrison Friend in 1902. Emma and these daughters are all buried in the Cleveland cemetery, as is her second husband.

George and Annie Bates, with their little daughter Jessie, came to a homestead two miles east of Dustin in 1882. Southerners by birth, they came from Valpariso, Nebraska, in a covered wagon with seventy head of cattle and a team of mules. Two sons, Scott and Claude, were born on the Dustin farm. George earned extra money by freighting from Atkinson to Dustin, leaving home at three in the morning on the twenty-four hours long trip over the prairie trails.

Three young men once came to the little Bates house to ask Annie if she would cook their game (prairie chickens) for them. She did so, and served the tasty chicken with southern biscuits, butter and wild jam. The men 433 were courteous and quiet, and after they had gone she found money under their plates. She never knew who they were.

In 1890 the family sold out and went back to eastern Nebraska. Thirty years later the younger son, Claude, returned to Holt County, bought the Florence Garnick farm southeast of Emmet from Clarence Strong and lived there with his family until 1947, when they moved to O'Neill. His son Wayne now lives on the farm.

Jesse Friend, born in Ohio in 1835, married Susan Trine at Sidney, Ohio, in 1842. Their three sons, William, Charley and Harrison, were born in Ohio, their only daughter, who lived only a day, in Indiana. In 1883, with their three sons and their foster daughter, Sarah Ann Smith, they homesteaded a quarter near Dustin. No other information on this family is given except their death dates. Mr. Friend died on his eighty-ninth birthday, November 11, 1924. Mrs. Friend died in Stuart in 1929. Both are buried at Atkinson. Charley and Harrison are buried in the Cleveland cemetery, William with his parents at Atkinson. Sarah Ann, as already noted, married Thomas Berry.

Aaron Samuel Eby, born in Illinois in 1848, and Abna Edith Cleland, born in Pennsylvania in 1854, were married in 1872. Their first six children were born in Iowa. They moved to Dustin very early, where four more children were born on the home place beside the Niobrara. They were active in and faithful to the Dustin Congregational Church. Every Sunday morning the children were washed, dressed and seated on chairs, where they remained while their parents made ready for the three-mile ride to Dustin in the lumber wagon.

Diphtheria struck the family in 1878 when Edward was a baby. Although it didn't seem possible to save him, he got well and four-year-old Bertha was the one who died. The weather was so bad and drifts so deep that it was impossible to get to town, so the little girl was buried in s snowbank for several weeks, until roads were passable again. Mary, at age five, fell out of an upstairs window but didn't break a bone.

Edward married Della Stuart at her farm home near Dustin, became a pioneer car dealer in Atkinson and later a rancher. Their daughter, Helen Gillespie of O'Neill, and Harriett's daughter, Oniece Klein, furnished the history for this family. Harriett married Victor Rohr. Sylvia married Roy Richards of Atkinson. All the other Ebys and their families left Holt County. Alexander Searl, born in New York State in 1845, lived there until he was twenty years old. He took a homestead near the Dustin post office in 1883, where he farmed. He also taught school and served the community as Justice of the Peace. In 1892 he maried Jane Ann Bridges at Atkinson and two years later moved to town and established a law practice.

Mr. Searl was made a Master Mason in 1868 and, at the time of his death in 1935, was believed to be the oldest member of that order in the state of Nebraska, having retained his membership for sixty-seven years. Mrs. Searl died in 1930 and both are buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.

James McClurg took a homestead five miles south of Naper in Boyd County in 1883. He farmed and taught school while his sons, William, Edward, Oliver and Frank were growing up. The Leatherman family came from Minnesota to homestead near the McClurgs on what was later a part of the White Horse Ranch. A daughter Jessie, grew up there and became a school teacher.

Edward McClurg, born in 1873 while his family lived in Pennsylvania, married Jessie Leatherman in 1894. The couple lived in a sod house in Boyd County for two years, where their son Glenn was born. They then . moved south of the river, near Dustin, where son Charles was born. They later bought the nearby Will Liebnes farm, built a new home on it and moved into the house in 1902.

While the McClurg boys were going to grade school at Dustin the village had a drugstore, general store, blacksmith shop, church, lodge hall and several homes. The post office was in the store and the Dustin Dispatch carried the community news.

Five more children were born to Edward and Jessie in the new home, where Edward died in 1928. Glenn grew up, went off to World War I, came home, married Laura Mul-ford in 1923 and had three children. Charles married Lucy Cheno- with the same year. Lucy died when their third child was born in 1933 and Charles married Pearl White in 1935 and had three more children.

Bessie McClurg married Harold Miller in 1930 and had three children. Her brother Clarence married Katherine Allen and also had three children. Three seemed the magic family number for the McClurgs, for Warren married Delia Allyn and had three children. Clarence, Warren and Bessie went through high school in Stuart, went on to Wayne State College and taught school for many years.

Charles McClurg, better known by his middle name of Elmer, farmed the home place, was an auctioneer and also sold insurance. His mother still owned the farm at the time of her death in 1948 but Elmer sold out in 1958, moved into Atkinson and is still in the auction and insurance business. William Flowers (spelled Flours in the family Bible) Clark was born in Tennessee in 1837. He grew to manhood there and was teaming for the Government when the War of the Rebellion broke out. He and a brother served in the Confederate Army; three other brothers went over to the Union Army and two gave their lives for the cause. William spent four years at war, then went north and concluded that he was probably on the wrong side of the secession problem.

Before leaving Tennessee, William married Emily Singletary. After many years in Illinois, Mr. Clark went west with all he owned to the Dustin-Belk-nap area. The neighbors gathered to help him build his house from logs cut on the nearby Niobrara, after which Emily Tennesee Singletary Clark and her four children came out on the train. Her people were all Confederates, some had owned slaves. Emily Clark never liked Nebraska. Illinois was always "home," and after William's death in 1909 she went back to Good Hope, the town she loved, and married James C. Buchanan in 1911.

Sarah Clark married Jack Jacques, a contractor who built the Stuart school and probably helped with the O'Neill courthouse. She died when her first child, Ernest, was born. Frances Clark married T. G. Wishart in 1890. One of her two sons became a lawyer, the other a doctor. The son, James Arthur, left Nebraska as a young man and died in Oklahoma in 1914.

Alice May, the youngest, started to school in Illinois but spent the last three years of grade school at Dustin, where Sarah Leatherman was one of her teachers. After two years in the Stuart high school she taught school for three years. She was teaching north of the river in Keya Paha County when she met Frederick Wefso. A constable, he was serving papers in the area. They were married in O'Neill in 1889. In September they moved to a farm east of Dustin. A year later they went into Atkinson and ran a hotel for a year, then returned to the farm.

Charles and Wilhelmina Wefso came from Germany to America in 1850. They were living in Illinois when Frederick was born in 1857. Charles died and Wilhelmina married Herman Schulte in 1862. Frederick came to Stuart in 1883 and helped survey the railroad route from that town to Chadron. A year or two later he came back to Stuart and his 434 mother, her new husband and two daughters came on to Nebraska in 1884 to join him.

Before his marriage Fred Wefso took a pre-emption in Rock County, lived on wild game and stewed pumpkin and was bitten between the thumb and forefinger by a rattlesnake. He saved his own life by cutting deeply into the flesh with his knife and bleeding out the poison. While Holt County constable he also drove for Judge Kinkaid.

After the Wefsos retired to Stuart in 1916 Alice continued to serve her old community by opening her town home to all North Country people who came to town to go to school or be under the doctor's care. The Wefsos had eight children, all except the eldest, Robert, were born near Dustin. All married and most stayed in northwest Holt County. Three, Charles, James and Alice, are buried at Stuart.

Patrick Barrett, born in Ireland in 1844, came to New York when a young man. A few years later, with his sisters, he came to Omaha while it was still a raw village. In 1871 he married Sarah King. In the early eighties he brought his family to a homestead three miles west of Dustin, where he died in 1900. Sarah and four of the children, Peter, Margaret, James and Mary then moved into Atkinson.

Anna, the oldest daughter, married Otto Baumeister of Naper in 1904. They reared their five children in the Clay Creek community, five miles west of Dustin. Albert Baumeister married Ethel Spangler of Stuart, Bessie married William Meusch of Atkinson, Arthur married Kathleen Kramer of Stuart and lives on the old home place. The mother, Anna, died in 1931 at the age of ninety.

James Barrett operated the livery barn east of the Stockmans Hotel. He married Julia Torpy and the couple raised his niece, Mary Jane Barrett, daughter of his brother Peter, whose wife, Mable Pickier of Badger, died in 1914, leaving five children.

Margaret (Maggie) Barrett married Roy Traner in 1908. Roy was a barber, working at his trade for twenty-seven years. He was also Chief of Police of Atkinson for seventeen years. Besides their own two children, Richard and Eileen, they raised another of Peter's daughters, Margaret. Eileen married Edward Ries and Margaret married John Henning. Both still live in Atkinson. Richard died in early manhood. Mary Barrett never married but remained at home, caring for her aged mother, who died in 1931, and helping raise a third daughter of Peter's, Genevieve. This daughter graduated from St. Joseph's school in Atkinson, worked in the First National Bank for several years, then left Nebraska. Mary died in 1972.

Another Irishman of the Dustin community was Joseph Axtell. About 1878 he came from Pennsylvania to the Black Hills, then drifted back to the South Side locale and finally took a homestead and tree claim six miles northeast of Dustin, next to that of his friend, Henderson Day.

The English Butterfield family came from Iowa to the same area in 1881. Alice, one of the daughters of Mr. and Mrs. William Butterfield, afflicted with tuberculosis, was a sickly child and the doctors advised her parents to take her west, else she would not live long. Her cure was complete and she lived to the age of one hundred and five.

Joseph Axtell and Alice Butterfield were married in 1886. Their only child, Pearle, was born two years later. The family lived and farmed in the South Side community, just south of The Point. After Joseph's death in 1911 Pearle and her mother remained on the homestead until 1920, then moved into Stuart. Pearle went to school in District 18, where she finished the eighth grade, and drove the twenty-six miles to Stuart once a week to take her piano lesson. While a post office was maintained at South Side Henry Doty and Joseph Axtell were its early postmasters. In 1879 the settlers had erected a flag pole just south of the river and held their Fourth of July celebration in the shade of the nearby trees along the river, while Old Glory waved above them. The South Side post office and its accompanying store were not far from the sturdy flag pole, which still stands on its original location. The Axtells lived first in a log house, later replaced by a two-story frame home. Pearle Axtell, who wrote her family's history, comments on the little cemetery across the road from the flag pole. One of the graves there is that of her cousin, Jim Little, the cowboy who was shot in the store by the first storekeeper, Blanchard. Another is that of a Taylor child, bitten by a rattlesnake.

About every other year, wrote Pearle, we lost our crops to hail, wind or drouth. During the hard years Mr. Axtell bored wells for the settlers, but got very little money for his labor. Mrs. Axtell and a Mrs. Rohr were the neighborhood mid-wives and nurses. John Fundus, born in Germany in 1859, and his younger brother William, came to the United States about 1880. Although they could not speak English they found work, then became separated and did not find one another for several years. John worked on a dairy farm in New York State, where he met Pauline Weid-man, also an immigrant from Germany. They were married and had a son before they moved to Iowa in 1884, where they worked on the farm of a Cyrus Young.

Mr. Young, who had relatives in Nebraska, advised the couple to go out there and take a homestead. That winter of 1884-'85 they loaded their team and household goods on an immigrant car and went with them to Stuart, arriving in the midst of a blizzard. After spending several days at the Biglow Hotel, they were able to drive north to the home of John and Ella Taylor, Cy Young's relatives and the parents of the little boy who had died of the rattlesnake bite. The Taylors had homesteaded in 1878. John and Pauline were fortunate in being able to rent a farm near The Point and not far from the flag pole. The bachelor who had homesteaded the place had built a log cabin on it and the Fundus family moved in. Their second son, Frank, was born there the following August. In 1886 John homesteaded about four miles southwest of the South Side store and post office and built a log cabin for a home.

The homestead was out on a tim-berless flat and the blizzard of 1888 drifted his hay and pole stable completely under. The livestock inside survived, however. John joined the freighters, hauling supplies from Stuart to Butte, and in 1898 was able to build a frame house on his homestead. In 1907 he added a large barn to his improvements. Three of the Fundus sons, Charles, Frank and Dan, all became carpenters and helped with the building.

The other children born to John and Pauline were William, Charlotte, Harry, John, Jr., Dan and Laura. Charlotte and Harry died at an early age and Pauline died in 1916. Frank had married Emma Gerrier in Lincoln. In 1917 he and his wife rented the home farm and took up residence there. John then spent his time among his children, Charles and Laura of California, William of Wyoming and Frank on the homestead. After Frank's wife died in 1942 the farm was leased to his daughter and her husband, Pauline and Harry Mitchell, who bought it in 1959. Of their three children, Allan is a trucker in O'Neill; Carol is Mrs. Ben Devall of rural O'Neill and Boyd lives in Lincoln. Frank lived on with the Mitchells on the old homestead until his death in 1972.

William and his wife returned from Wyoming and bought a farm northeast of the homestead. Their son Fred, who married Velma Baumeister and 435 has six children, lives there now. Dan and John left the state to work on ranches in Wyoming and Montana. Dan never came back to live. John later returned to help on the homestead and nearby ranches. Never married, he died in 1970. Laura, now the only living member of John and Pauline's family, married and makes her home in California.

The famous Kid Wade Canyon is only a few miles to the southeast of the old Fundus homestead, on land Frank and John Fundus purchased in 1939. It is now owned by Harry and Pauline Mitchell.

Morton Gill was born in Indiana in 1872, where he spent his boyhood on his father's farm. In 1885 he and his brother William came with their father, Enos Gill to a homestead near Dustin. He bought his first car, a Ford, in 1910 and engaged in the auto livery business. Two years later he became a Ford dealer in Stuart. Except for the year of 1913, when he sold Overlands, he has been faithful to the Fords.

In 1922 he organized the Stuart Oil Company, a wholesale adjunct to his car business. In 1927 he bought the Rock County Oil Company at Bassett. He also owns numerous business and residence properties in the area. In 1899 he married Miss Bessie Hunt, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Hunt of Stuart. Of their seven children all but one are living (as of 1937 when the Stuart Advocate published the Gill story).

Mr. Gill, fond of travel, liked nothing better than to fill his car with members of his family and take long vacation trips. His son, Walter, handled the business while he was away. In his later years Morton Gill retired to California— where he died in 1955— and Walter took over the business.

Walter Gill married Davene Gardner and fathered three children, Morton, Gardner and Edith. Walter retired in 1961 and the Gill Motor Company is now owned and operated by Morton Gill, grandson of the founder.

Anthony and Barbara Mathis were born in Switzerland. Their son John was born in Illinois in 1871. With his parents, his sister Elizabeth and brother, Henry, he came to Dustin in the 'eighties. Anthony Mathis froze to death on the homestead in the blizzard of '88.

John Mathis and Nellie Farley were married on August 21, 1913— the bride's eighteenth birthday. John and Nellie had five sons: William, John, Jr., Robert, George and Duane. Robert, the family historian, went to school for two years in Colorado. "Then we moved back to Nebraska in the summer of 1928, and from then on I attended schools all over Holt County until I graduated from the Eagle Creek school north of Atkinson." Robert married Margaret Murphy, daughter of William Murphy of O'Neill, in 1946. Their children were Shirley, LaVern and James. Of himself, Robert writes. "There is not much I can say of my personal life, except that I was mostly busy making a living and being a good neighbor to all who would accept. I was always, and still am, willing to go without myself to help those who are worse off than I." Jim Hotaling came from Michigan in 1889 to settle on his small ranch on the Big Sandy. His first wife was a Miss Grey. Their children were George, Charley and Herbert. His second wife was a Miss Griffiss from Iowa. Their children were William, John, Edward, Abner and Margaret. Their store and post office was at Dustin, their school, which is still standing, was located on the Tom O'Connell ranch. "Our home life," wrote Abner Hotaling, "was just about as common as it could get, and so was our furniture. Everything plain— wood stoves and kerosene lamps. We did have a talking machine though, that my father won in a drawing at Butte." Mr. Hotaling, the last of the old stage drivers in Holt County, drove the route between Stuart and Butte. The main stop-over was at Grand Rapids, on the Holt County side.

"The only lawman that I knew very well was Pete Duffy," Abner continues, "but I recall when Cliff Rohr went from Holt County over to Naper to rob the bank. He was shot and killed by the town marshal, Jake The school house, "like a ragged beggar sunning," where Abner Hotaling went to school more than sixty years ago. Picture taken in 1971 north of Kid Wade canyon. Courtesy Abner Hotaling of Washington State. Zimmerman. My brother Edward died of the flu during the epidemic of 1919. He was sixteen years old. My father owned the place where Kid Wade Canyon is. It was probably the most isolated place in Holt County. Even today there are no roads leading to it, only a trail. There was no mail, no phone, and it was twenty miles in any direction to a town. The buildings are just the same as when I left there in 1911— sixty years ago." David Merrill Stuart and his wife, Nancy Jane, were of Scottish descent. He was born in Vermont in 1854, she in Illinois in 1857. They were married at the home of her parents, Dr. and Mrs. Boardman in Osceola, Illinois, in 1879. They came on the train to Bassett in 1883 and settled on a claim in Keya Paha County, near Spring-view. Their home was a dugout so small that the chairs were hung on wall pegs at night to make room for the children's trundle beds.

In 1894 the family moved to Butte, where their oldest daughter, Ollie, died. Two years later they moved to a farm in the Dustin community. In 1910 D. M. and Nancy Jane moved into Stuart where they operated a general store and Mr. Stuart served on the school board and as a county commissioner. Their nine-room house in town had a front parlor, a bath off the kitchen and an enclosed back porch. Several of its rooms were fully carpeted— a far cry from the dirt-floored dugout in Keya Paha County. Its big yard had a grape arbor south of the house and bee hives on the north, near a lilac hedge.

Ollie, who died in 1894, had been a young school teacher. Della Stuart, who married Edward Eby, was noted 436 as a fine singer and public speaker, and later as the "Poem Lady" of radio station KBRX of O'Neill. Merrill, a carpenter and merchant, married Ethel Cowles of Stuart. Orlo, farmer, merchant and butcher, married Olga Schwinck and moved to Cozad, where Olga, now a widow, still lives. Dale Stuart, a dentist, practiced in Stuart until his death. He served in the Army in World War I, married Frances Wefso and became the father of three children.

Charles and Florence (Cook) Adams were both born in Iowa. They were married in 1890 at Monmouth in that state, moved to Homer, Nebraska, and then to Boyd County where they took a homestead. One year Charles taught the Brodie school in Holt County, driving home on week ends. During the time they lived on the homestead they had to haul water, an irksome task. And they had listened to much talk of the coming of the railroad into their community, thus eliminating the long hauls from O'Neill or Stuart. By 1901 they were tired of hauling water and a land speculator, who wanted to buy the homestead, cast serious doubts on the possibility of the railroad ever reaching their part of the country. Shortly after he sold out Charles learned that the railroad was really coming. In 1902 the Adams bought a farm two miles south of The Point, about five miles northeast of Dustin at South Side. Joe Axtell and Henderson Day had been the first settlers there, quite a few years earlier, and Mr. Adams had Joe put down a well for him before he even moved to the new place. He hired a Boyd County neighbor and his wife to help with the moving, and a boy to help drive the cattle. His own oldest son and daughter, David and Kate, helped with the cattle, too.

Mrs. Adams, with Vesta, Charles and Mary Frances, rode in the buggy. When they reached the river the cattle took to the brush and Mrs. Adams gave the reins to Vesta and told her to "drive across the bridge," while she got out and helped get the cattle across. Of that drive across the bridge, Vesta said, years later, "I was the proudest four-year-old that ever was." Mr. Adams had put up a temporary shelter, (which he planned to use for a workshop after he built a house) and the family reached this rude home well after dark. The next morning the father hung a rope swing in a big tree near the house— the first swing his children had ever had.

That summer Charles'Adams bought a large herd of sheep, expecting to cut enough hay and build a barn for them before winter. The haying did not go as well as he had hoped and an early snow storm came upon him just as he started the barn. There were more than fifty dead sheep the morning after the storm.

The weather got worse and more sheep died. The bank from which he had borrowed the money to buy the sheep found a buyer for the remainder of the flock— and that was the end of a costly venture. Before the end of their first summer on the new farm their well went dry. Mr. Axtell, who was also a house mover, fixed that problem by moving their house over to a bigger and better well. The Adams had another baby, Uniola Victoria, on August 7, 1906. The event happened on the week of Vesta's ninth birthday and she realized that she "Was not going to have a birthday cake, nor even a birthday spanking." Then her mother called her to her bedside and told her she could go to Dustin and pick out material for a new dress at the store. The Farners were running it then and Mrs. Farner carefully helped her select the right cloth.

"About all that is left of Dustin now are memories and a hole in the ground where the store basement used to be," wrote Vesta.

"In the summer of 1903 we were living in a shanty never meant to be a home. It was set on 8' by 8' beams laid on a flat rock, with a lean-to summer kitchen on the east side. While we lived there (in the old shop) the wind blew under it, around it and through it. A violent windstorm came up one Sunday evening when Father was getting in the cows. The wind ripped the lean-to off and sent it rolling across the yard, strewing pots and pans after it.

"Then the shanty began to lift off its supports on the west side. Mother was terrified, but Father got back just then and had us shove all the furniture to that side, then stand in the corners 'to hold the house down.' The shanty didn't go but it was wrenched enough that the only door could not be closed by about three inches.

"In the fall of 1918 we started to build our big eight-room house. Father thought he could hire a carpenter but there wasn't one to be hired. (It was war time.) So he went ahead with it. He had us girls help with the lathing and we got the shell up so that we could work most of the winter in it".

"We had to drive our hogs to Stuart to sell them, a two-day trip on foot. The first time they took hogs to town David and Charles made a beeline from the livery barn to the railroad station to watch the train. It was the first one they had ever seen.

"In 1918 came the flu epidemic. We had a beautiful, warm fall, and then the sickness. Jess Rumsey was buried on a beautiful Sunday in early October. There was no public gathering for his funeral— just a few men met and dug his grave in the Sexton Cemetery, then they brought his body in a Model T Ford truck. Only two members of his family were able to come and his brother, Oscar, asked Father to say a prayer, and then the grave was closed. Another brother, Ross, was buried about a week later. The third man who died of flu was taken to Stuart for burial.

"We Adams escaped the disease but we baked bread and went for groceries for the sick families, and even did the baby washing for one family. The parents were sick but the baby wasn't and the doctor said if the clothes were treated with formaldehyde there would be no risk. When we went for groceries we stayed outside in the fresh air while we waited our turn at the counter. "One night in 1934 the barn on the Len Axtell place was set afire by lightning. Several of the neighbors went to their aid but their water supply was inadequate. They got all the harness out of the building, then the wind changed and, before anyone knew it, the harness was burning too. In spite of all they could do the barn burned to the ground. Then Mrs. Axtell invited the men in for coffee. 'Hell no!' one kindhearted fellow replied. 'You've had enough loss without us eating up your food too.' "There was a fire in the house on the Barns place when the Bill Hinkle family was living there. Mrs. Hinkle had gone to her siser's home that evening and left Bill at home with their two small children. He was trying to fix a gasoline pressure lamp and the children were watching. He tried to solder a leak in the gas chamber while the lamp was lighted and it exploded. The children were so badly burned that one died, and the house was considerably damaged. "During the winter of 1948-1949 we were snowbound for about six weeks and couldn't get feed for our cattle. In desperation we turned them into the unpicked corn, where they ate too much and several died. Late in January the stores in Stuart put out a general call, saying 'If you need supplies call your orders in. We are sending out a caravan of trucks, with bulldozers to get them through.' They left our supplies at the next farm north of us.

"Yulan got a team and wagon to the corner and got the groceries but when he tried to come up the road he hit a drift the horses couldn't get through. So Mabel and I carried the supplies on to the house. We had to 437 has six children, lives there now. Dan and John left the state to work on ranches in Wyoming and Montana. Dan never came back to live. John later returned to help on the homestead and nearby ranches. Never married, he died in 1970. Laura, now the only living member of John and Pauline's family, married and makes her home in California.

The famous Kid Wade Canyon is only a few miles to the southeast of the old Fundus homestead, on land Frank and John Fundus purchased in 1939. It is now owned by Harry and Pauline Mitchell.

Morton Gill was born in Indiana in 1872, where he spent his boyhood on his father's farm. In 1885 he and his brother William came with their father, Enos Gill to a homestead near Dustin. He bought his first car, a Ford, in 1910 and engaged in the auto livery business. Two years later he became a Ford dealer in Stuart. Except for the year of 1913, when he sold Overlands, he has been faithful to the Fords.

In 1922 he organized the Stuart Oil Company, a wholesale adjunct to his car business. In 1927 he bought the Rock County Oil Company at Bassett. He also owns numerous business and residence properties in the area. In 1899 he married Miss Bessie Hunt, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Hunt of Stuart. Of their seven children all but one are living (as of 1937 when the Stuart Advocate published the Gill story).

Mr. Gill, fond of travel, liked nothing better than to fill his car with members of his family and take long vacation trips. His son, Walter, handled the business while he was away. In his later years Morton Gill retired to California— where he died in 1955— and Walter took over the business.

Walter Gill married Davene Gardner and fathered three children, Morton, Gardner and Edith. Walter retired in 1961 and the Gill Motor Company is now owned and operated by Morton Gill, grandson of the founder.

Anthony and Barbara Mathis were born in Switzerland. Their son John was born in Illinois in 1871. With his parents, his sister Elizabeth and brother, Henry, he came to Dustin in the 'eighties. Anthony Mathis froze to death on the homestead in the blizzard of '88.

John Mathis and Nellie Farley were married on August 21, 1913— the bride's eighteenth birthday. John and Nellie had five sons: William, John, Jr., Robert, George and Duane. Robert, the family historian, went to school for two years in Colorado. "Then we moved back to Nebraska in the summer of 1928, and from then on I attended schools all over Holt County until I graduated from the Eagle Creek school north of Atkinson." Robert married Margaret Murphy, daughter of William Murphy of O'Neill, in 1946. Their children were Shirley, LaVern and James. Of himself, Robert writes. "There is not much I can say of my personal life, except that I was mostly busy making a living and being a good neighbor to all who would accept. I was always, and still am, willing to go without myself to help those who are worse off than I." Jim Hotaling came from Michigan in 1889 to settle on his small ranch on the Big Sandy. His first wife was a Miss Grey. Their children were George, Charley and Herbert. His second wife was a Miss Griffiss from Iowa. Their children were William, John, Edward, Abner and Margaret. Their store and post office was at Dustin, their school, which is still standing, was located on the Tom O'Connell ranch. "Our home life," wrote Abner Hotaling, "was just about as common as it could get, and so was our furniture. Everything plain— wood stoves and kerosene lamps. We did have a talking machine though, that my father won in a drawing at Butte." Mr. Hotaling, the last of the old stage drivers in Holt County, drove the route between Stuart and Butte. The main stop-over was at Grand Rapids, on the Holt County side.

"The only lawman that I knew very well was Pete Duffy," Abner continues, "but I recall when Cliff Rohr went from Holt County over to Naper to rob the bank. He was shot and killed by the town marshal, Jake The school house, "like a ragged beggar sunning," where Abner Hotaling went to school more than sixty years ago. Picture taken in 1971 north of Kid Wade canyon. Courtesy Abner Hotaling of Washington State. Zimmerman. My brother Edward died of the flu during the epidemic of 1919. He was sixteen years old. My father owned the place where Kid Wade Canyon is. It was probably the most isolated place in Holt County. Even today there are no roads leading to it, only a trail. There was no mail, no phone, and it was twenty miles in any direction to a town. The buildings are just the same as when I left there in 1911— sixty years ago." David Merrill Stuart and his wife, Nancy Jane, were of Scottish descent. He was born in Vermont in 1854, she in Illinois in 1857. They were married at the home of her parents, Dr. and Mrs. Boardman in Osceola, Illinois, in 1879. They came on the train to Bassett in 1883 and settled on a claim in Keya Paha County, near Spring-view. Their home was a dugout so small that the chairs were hung on wall pegs at night to make room for the children's trundle beds.

In 1894 the family moved to Butte, where their oldest daughter, Ollie, died. Two years later they moved to a farm in the Dustin community. In 1910 D. M. and Nancy Jane moved into Stuart where they operated a general store and Mr. Stuart served on the school board and as a county commissioner. Their nine-room house in town had a front parlor, a bath off the kitchen and an enclosed back porch. Several of its rooms were fully carpeted— a far cry from the dirt-floored dugout in Keya Paha County. Its big yard had a grape arbor south of the house and bee hives on the north, near a lilac hedge.

Ollie, who died in 1894, had been a young school teacher. Della Stuart, who married Edward Eby, was noted 436 as a fine singer and public speaker, and later as the "Poem Lady" of radio station KBRX of O'Neill. Merrill, a carpenter and merchant, married Ethel Cowles of Stuart. Orlo, farmer, merchant and butcher, married Olga Schwinck and moved to Cozad, where Olga, now a widow, still lives. Dale Stuart, a dentist, practiced in Stuart until his death. He served in the Army in World War I, married Frances Wefso and became the father of three children.

Charles and Florence (Cook) Adams were both born in Iowa. They were married in 1890 at Monmouth in that state, moved to Homer, Nebraska, and then to Boyd County where they took a homestead. One year Charles taught the Brodie school in Holt County, driving home on week ends. During the time they lived on the homestead they had to haul water, an irksome task. And they had listened to much talk of the coming of the railroad into their community, thus eliminating the long hauls from O'Neill or Stuart. By 1901 they were tired of hauling water and a land speculator, who wanted to buy the homestead, cast serious doubts on the possibility of the railroad ever reaching their part of the country. Shortly after he sold out Charles learned that the railroad was really coming. In 1902 the Adams bought a farm two miles south of The Point, about five miles northeast of Dustin at South Side. Joe Axtell and Henderson Day had been the first settlers there, quite a few years earlier, and Mr. Adams had Joe put down a well for him before he even moved to the new place. He hired a Boyd County neighbor and his wife to help with the moving, and a boy to help drive the cattle. His own oldest son and daughter, David and Kate, helped with the cattle, too.

Mrs. Adams, with Vesta, Charles and Mary Frances, rode in the buggy. When they reached the river the cattle took to the brush and Mrs. Adams gave the reins to Vesta and told her to "drive across the bridge," while she got out and helped get the cattle across. Of that drive across the bridge, Vesta said, years later, "I was the proudest four-year-old that ever was." Mr. Adams had put up a temporary shelter, (which he planned to use for a workshop after he built a house) and the family reached this rude home well after dark. The next morning the father hung a rope swing in a big tree near the house— the first swing his children had ever had.

That summer Charles'Adams bought a large herd of sheep, expecting to cut enough hay and build a barn for them before winter. The haying did not go as well as he had hoped and an early snow storm came upon him just as he started the barn. There were more than fifty dead sheep the morning after the storm.

The weather got worse and more sheep died. The bank from which he had borrowed the money to buy the sheep found a buyer for the remainder of the flock— and that was the end of a costly venture. Before the end of their first summer on the new farm their well went dry. Mr. Axtell, who was also a house mover, fixed that problem by moving their house over to a bigger and better well. The Adams had another baby, Uniola Victoria, on August 7, 1906. The event happened on the week of Vesta's ninth birthday and she realized that she "Was not going to have a birthday cake, nor even a birthday spanking." Then her mother called her to her bedside and told her she could go to Dustin and pick out material for a new dress at the store. The Farners were running it then and Mrs. Farner carefully helped her select the right cloth.

"About all that is left of Dustin now are memories and a hole in the ground where the store basement used to be," wrote Vesta.

"In the summer of 1903 we were living in a shanty never meant to be a home. It was set on 8' by 8' beams laid on a flat rock, with a lean-to summer kitchen on the east side. While we lived there (in the old shop) the wind blew under it, around it and through it. A violent windstorm came up one Sunday evening when Father was getting in the cows. The wind ripped the lean-to off and sent it rolling across the yard, strewing pots and pans after it.

"Then the shanty began to lift off its supports on the west side. Mother was terrified, but Father got back just then and had us shove all the furniture to that side, then stand in the corners 'to hold the house down.' The shanty didn't go but it was wrenched enough that the only door could not be closed by about three inches.

"In the fall of 1918 we started to build our big eight-room house. Father thought he could hire a carpenter but there wasn't one to be hired. (It was war time.) So he went ahead with it. He had us girls help with the lathing and we got the shell up so that we could work most of the winter in it." "We had to drive our hogs to Stuart to sell them, a two-day trip on foot. The first time they took hogs to town David and Charles made a beeline from the livery barn to the railroad station to watch the train. It was the first one they had ever seen.

"In 1918 came the flu epidemic. We had a beautiful, warm fall, and then the sickness. Jess Rumsey was buried on a beautiful Sunday in early October. There was no public gathering for his funeral— just a few men met and dug his grave in the Sexton Cemetery, then they brought his body in a Model T Ford truck. Only two members of his family were able to come and his brother, Oscar, asked Father to say a prayer, and then the grave was closed. Another brother, Ross, was buried about a week later. The third man who died of flu was taken to Stuart for burial.

"We Adams escaped the disease but we baked bread and went for groceries for the sick families, and even did the baby washing for one family. The parents were sick but the baby wasn't and the doctor said if the clothes were treated with formaldehyde there would be no risk. When we went for groceries we stayed outside in the fresh air while we waited our turn at the counter. "One night in 1934 the barn on the Len Axtell place was set afire by lightning. Several of the neighbors went to their aid but their water supply was inadequate. They got all the harness out of the building, then the wind changed and, before anyone knew it, the harness was burning too. In spite of all they could do the barn burned to the ground. Then Mrs. Axtell invited the men in for coffee. 'Hell no!' one kindhearted fellow replied. 'You've had enough loss without us eating up your food too.' "There was a fire in the house on the Barns place when the Bill Hinkle family was living there. Mrs. Hinkle had gone to her siser's home that evening and left Bill at home with their two small children. He was trying to fix a gasoline pressure lamp and the children were watching. He tried to solder a leak in the gas chamber while the lamp was lighted and it exploded. The children were so badly burned that one died, and the house was considerably damaged. "During the winter of 1948-1949 we were snowbound for about six weeks and couldn't get feed for our cattle. In desperation we turned them into the unpicked corn, where they ate too much and several died. Late in January the stores in Stuart put out a general call, saying 'If you need supplies call your orders in. We are sending out a caravan of trucks, with bulldozers to get them through.' They left our supplies at the next farm north of us.

"Yulan got a team and wagon to the corner and got the groceries but when he tried to come up the road he hit a drift the horses couldn't get through. So Mabel and I carried the supplies on to the house. We had to 437 make two or three trips. The drifts were so solid that we walked on them all the way. About February 2 the Army came in to open the roads. They worked day and night on different shifts and stopped at our house about ten o'clock one night for supper." In addition to the children already mentioned, Charles and Florence had a daughter Mabel, born in 1904, and a son, Yulan Cook Adams, born in 1909. David the oldest son, married Helen Murry in Atkinson in 1938. He farmed and raised cattle near South Side until his death in 1970. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.

Charles married and moved to Iowa. Vesta, Mabel and Yulan stayed on the home place. Mabel died in 1972 and is buried near her parents in the Sexton Cemetery.

Uniola was a missionary-nurse in China and Africa for many years. Since her retirement she has lived on the home place with Vesta and Yulan. Mary Frances married William Thomas and lives in South Dakota. Kate lives in Texas.

Mrs. Chester Anderson, who does not give her given name, best relates the story of the coming of her parents, Arthur and Dora Lee, to Dustin, and their life there in the years to come. "The real estate man who persuaded my father to move to Nebraska really made a good story of it being the land of 'milk and honey.' He even led Dad to believe that Dustin had a school of high school level. Dad was a trustful man." The year was 1912 and the Lees came from Corning, Iowa. "Edna and Hazel were the oldest girls. Edna had finished eighth grade before coming to Nebraska and was supposed to attend high school at Dustin. When Mother found this was not possible she insisted Edna go to Wayne State Normal to obtain her education and teachers' certification. She later taught in the Holt County rural schools, her first school being District 10, where I believe she had only one pupil.

"James, the oldest son, soon went back to Iowa to make his home. Elmer, the second son, married Nina Jewell of Iowa in 1914 and lived in the Dustin community. They had three children, Clarence, Cleo and Zola. Frank, another son, joined the Navy and served in the first World War. One of my earliest memories is of the joy in our family for his safe return home. (The writer of this history was only a year old when the Lees came to Dustin.) "The other children, Gene, Hazel, Bess, Wilbur and Dorothy attended the rural schools. I went four years at Dustin District 22 and four years at District 68. In 1918 Dad bought the Dustin store from S. S. Wymore. (The Lee farm had been about two miles from Dustin.) This was a general store— and believe me it was just that. He sold EVERYTHING. Cream was tested for butterfat and the testing machine was turned by hand. We used gas lamps for lighting and the post ofice was in one corner of the store. Mail came every day from Stuart. There was a gasoline pump in front of the store, and also a still used hitching post.

"At the time we lived at Dustin there was only the store, the school and the church, which was the center of activity. Revival meetings were often held for a week or two at a time. As I remember it the visiting minister always stayed at our house. Many socials were also held at the church.

"My most vivid memory is of a Christmas program put on by two or three teachers, one of them my sister Edna. A large cedar tree, cut on the Niobrara, was in one corner of the church. Such a beautiful tree, decorated with strung popcorn, paper chains and many, many candles. Why we didn't burn the church down I'll never know. There was a gift and a sack of candy for everyone.

"One of our home sources of entertainment was the piano. Many a long winter evening was spent around that piano, singing. Both my older sisters played it and the young people of the community gathered at our house for song fests.

"And I well remember my parents' willingness to lend a helping hand to anyone in need. Often they were called to sit up with sick people, or to help families where death had befallen. Many times Dad was called out in the night to go for the doctor, or to take someone to the doctor in Stuart. Dad was always on the school board, both at District 22 and District 68. He also served many terms as township assessor.

"About 1922 he left the Dustin store and moved to a farm a few miles east. There we lived until ill health forced him to retire from active work. The other members of the family have married and gone to other places to live. I am the youngest and have lived all but the first year of my life in Holt County. In 1931 I married Chester Anderson of the Phoenix community and we have spent our married life in and around Atkinson. We are the parents of thirteen children." The first settlers in the Cleveland community were Charles Hudson and the Cleveland brothers, Aaron and Gilbert, from whom the little settlement took its name. Cleveland was located about twelve miles south of Stuart and a little over two miles west of Dustin.

Arriving soon after those named above was young Sven Lofquest, a blacksmith. Born in Sweden in 1854, Sven left his homeland at the age of seventeen. In Nebraska he first worked for John Markey of Fremont. During several years with this employer he saved his money so that he could buy smithing tools and equipment of his own. Moving to Platte County he set up his own shop, then headed for the frontier two years later with his tools and all he owned in a covered wagon, pulled by his own team. He homesteaded near Cleveland. He married Emma Sushanna Horn in 1880. Her father was Aaron Horn, a flatland homesteader five miles east and four miles south of Sven's place. The Pennsylvania Horns had also arrived in the late 'seventies. Emma had come west with her father, a widower, in a wagon train. Aaron married again in Holt County and had another daughter, also named Emma. This second Emma later became the wife of Sven's younger brother, Nels, who came from Sweden a few years later. For Sven sent for his parents, his brother and his sisters as fast as he could raise the passage money to bring them over.

Nels took a homestead on the quarter east of Sven's. With the two families living side by side the two Emma Lofquests soon came to be known as big Em and little Em, as Nels' wife was taller and broader than Sven's Emma Sushanna.

Sven and his Emma lived in a log house at first, but after all his family arrived from Sweden he began building a new house, the first of frame construction in the neighborhood, freighting all the lumber from Niobrara. His parents and sisters then lived in the log house, about a half- mile from the new house. Sven's sister Ellen married John Cherry and went to live in Nance County. His sister Sadie married John Kirby and left for Oklahoma. Hannah went to work in the Northwestern Hotel in Stuart, waiting tables in the dining room, injured her hand and died of blood poisoning.

Sven and his Emma had six children. Their daughter Mabel married Calvin Allyn; Della married James Deming and Violet, the youngest, died in 1920, unmarried. Their son Charles married Lottie Munson, daughter of Charles Munson of Illinois. The Munsons came to Cleveland in 1910 and Lottie and Charles were married two years later. They had three children and lived on the "Aaron Horn farm" three miles south of the Dustin store.

Sven's second son, Lawrence, married Sarah Greene of Kansas; Irwin 438 married Edna Miller of Cleveland. Nels Lofquest and his Emma had six daughters. Annie became Mrs. Harrison Friend, Myrtle married Alvin Owens and Minnie married Henry Fuelberth. Celia died as a child and Sadie never married.

Sven's father, Lars Lofquest, died in 1894 and was buried in the Cleveland cemetery where the soil, a white clay, was so hard that it took several men, working in relays, at least half a day to dig a grave, using picks, crowbars and shovels. After her husband's death Anna, or "Grandma" as everyone called her, became so lonely that her sons moved the log cabin up into Sven's yard, across the ravine from his house. When his mother died in 1907 Sven used the cabin for a blacksmith shop.

Sven kept a journal of his early accounts from 1881 to 1895. Some bills went unpaid for several months and he often had to take produce, flour (ground at the nearby mill), pork or beef in payment. The following are a sample of many of his entries: Paid on account Henry Tieken - Flour 38 lbs. and 80 lbs. Ham - 45 lbs. Side - 27 lbs.

Chas. Tieken - Flour 48 lbs. 45 lbs. pork. Flour 109 lbs.

Potatoes - 22, 33%, 82, 81, 60, 71%.

Then came the hard 'ninties. In 1895, when no one had cash to pay for smithing and repairs, Sven went across the river to work for a rancher, Charles Tieken. At first he crossed the river each morning, and again to come home in the evening. But the next spring, when the river was high, he moved his family into a dugout home on the Tieken place. They lived there for two years.

The winter of '96 was severe and the dugout was cold, as the front had been built out away from the hillside to make room for a kitchen and the Lofquests were the family who banked up the frame lean-to front with horse manure to keep the wind from whistling through— then had to live with the awful odor on sunny days. The family was not happy in the dugout, after the several years spent in their handsome and comfortable Woodlawn farm home at Cleveland. By 1898 times were better and the Lofquests were able to go home again. The following nine years were good ones for Sven and his family. Theirs was a musical household. The boys played violins, Charles also played the mandolin. Violet and Della took piano lessons from a German settler who came into the community at just the right time. The family had fine singing voices and spent many happy hours making music together. They were, of course, much in demand at the District 86 Literary programs and for other community entertainment.

After the Cleveland store and post office went out of business about 1900 the Lofquests and their neighbors got their mail at Dustin. During the blizzards of 1935-1936 the men of the West Cleveland community took turns riding horseback the five or six miles to Dustin after the mail for a dozen or so families. For storms came early that winter and cars could not negotiate the roads for weeks.

In 1907 Sven, little Em and their children moved to Stuart to operate the Northwestern Hotel that Sven had bought. A year and a half later they were glad to move back to the farm again.

All the Lofquest children graduated from the eighth grade and Mabel taught a rural school for two years before she married Calvin Allyn and went to live on the Cleveland farm Cal had bought in 1900. Charlie and Lottie (Munson) Lofquest lived on his Grandfather Aaron Horn's homestead. Irvin was drafted into the Army but the war was over before he could be sent overseas. He came home, married a neighbor girl, Edna Miller, in 1918 and lived on her father's farm north of the Cleveland church. Della Lofquest began teaching the Deming school about 1911. The school was seven miles from her home and she made the daily trip on horseback. As the autumn days began to grow cold young Jim Deming began walking up the hill from his home to start the schoolhouse fire for her. During the coldest winter weather she moved over to the Deming home to board and room. She and Jim were married in June, 1913 and moved into a new home across the Sandy from the Deming house, where they lived for more than fifty years. Their three children were Violet, Alta and Robert. The weather was favorable during the first two decades of the twentieth century and farm prices were good, especially after the beginning of the war in Europe. The Lofquest families and their neighbors prospered, buying farms and beginning to pay out on them. Sven and Emma were busy and content, with their children marrying and settling near them. There was much coming and going between them all, as they were a close-knit family.

During the winters the men put up ice and in the summers the families got together often to enjoy homemade ice cream. They bought their first new cars and learned to drive them— and to fix the oft-occurring breakdowns. The "Lofquest families" included, of course, the Demings and the Allyns. In 1916 all these families joined the Cleveland church. Their conversion resulted in the second generation's turning away from the rough, rowdy entertainment of former years to a quieter social way of life. When Sven's health began to fail in 1919 he and Emma bought a large home in Stuart. There Emma supplemented their income by taking in boarders. Lawrence Lofquest remained on the farm, but began making frequent trips to town after his mother took Sarah Greene, a stenographer from Kansas who worked for William Krotter, to board in her new home. They were married in March, 1922. After living on the Lofquest farm for several years, Lawrence (Rennie) and Sarah bought a farm from Dave Deming, where they lived until 1970, then retired and moved into Stuart. They had one son, Samuel.

Sven remained a busy man in Stuart, gardening, repairing things for his neighbors, cleaning up unsightly spots in town, weeding and mowing the cemetery and trimming the trees. He died in March, 1932. Perhaps he was the fortunate one, for he did not live to see the struggle for survival his children endured through the hard years of the 'thirties. Emma lived on, an invalid the last few years of her life, until 1939. She and Sven rest side by side in the Cleveland cemetery. The Allyn families who were to be so closely associated with the Lof-quests came to Cleveland about 1885. Augustus Allyn, born in Ohio in 1846, enlisted with the Iowa Volunteers in 1863. He was seventeen years old, over six feet tall, with drak grey eyes and dark hair. Wounded in the battle of Shiloh, he was given a medical discharge in Louisiana in 1864. He re-enlisted a year later and was discharged again, at the war's end, in Missouri. In 1869 he married Cornelia Fortney of Pennsylvania.

When they started for Holt County Gus and Cornelia had two daughters, Mertie and Betsy, a five-year-old son, Calvin, and forty head of cows, the latter owned jointly by Gus and his brother Elmer. The brothers bought their land near Cleveland from an Iowa land agent, who told them winters in Nebraska were so mild that cattle could graze the year around. That first winter was an unusually bad one, cold and with deep snows. Many of the cattle died because the Allyns had no feed. But Gus was not discouraged. He knew by spring what he must do before another winter. The real calamity was the loss, that summer, of his wife, who died when their fourth child, a little girl, was born. Then Elmer decided to go back to Iowa.

Elmer and his wife offered to take 439 the baby with them and raise her, and Gus, having no way to care for the tiny one, had to agree. It was a sad time for his other children; for they lost their mother, their baby sister and their cousins all at the same time. The next winter was quite mild until January, 1888. Gus set out for Stuart the morning of the twelfth, leaving the three children at home. They did not have much wood in the house when the storm struck and they dared not go outside after more. Neither was there any food, which was why the father had gone to town that day. Cal, barely eight years old at the time, was hungry and wanted to go outside and try to catch a rabbit in the plum brush that grew almost at the side of the house. His sisters held him back, forcibly, and when all their fuel was gone and the house growing cold, decided they must all go to bed to keep from freezing.

Cal went to his room, but as soon as he had shut the door he pushed his bed against it to keep his sisters out, got into his coat and cap and crawled out through the window into the plum thicket. Standing very still, he was able to spy a rabbit a few feet away, almost drifted under the snow, which would have made a warm burrow for it until the storm was over. He threw himself upon the bunny and got it by the neck. A few minutes later he was back in the kitchen with his catch. They broke up a chair for fuel to cook it with. Gus was unable to get home until three days later. He found his resourceful children alive and well, but hungry again.

Cal finished the eighth grade at District 86, then went to Stuart for his freshman year in high school. He was fifteen by then— and tired of being so poor. He got a job on a farm in Dixon County. The work was hard and the hours long. He spent as little as possible of his $15 monthly salary for clothes and the bare necessities and saved the rest. When he went back to Cleveland in 1899 he had enough money to make a down payment on a farm, the homestead of a Miss S. H. Wright, making him the owner of a quarter section of land with a house on it.

The house, two and a half miles northwest of Cleveland Church, was his home for the next forty years and is still the home of his son, James, and his family.

Cal's sister Mertie had married Claude Parrish a few years earlier and Cal took his brother-in-law into partnership with him from 1900 until 1904. Then the Parrishs decided to go to Montana, where the other sister, Betsy, and her husband, Robert Staley, were already living. By then Cal and Mabel Lofquest had marriage plans, so the loss of his sisters was not so hard on the only brother.

Cal had known Mabel ever since he had moved to Cleveland and, since she had been teaching school for two years and saving her money, the couple had a good start when they drove a team and buggy to Butte and were married in December, 1904. One of Cal's exciting boyhood memories concerned a gun. His best friend was Elmer Senteney, a boy his own age. The boys had heard their fathers, Gus and Julius, talking about a bachelor neighbor who had lost his farm through a bank mortgage foreclosure two years earlier. The bachelor had made the statement that the bank was not going to get his new shotgun when they sold him out, so had hidden it under some hay in the horse manger before the sale.

The boys wondered if the gun might still be there. They were about twelve on the hot summer day that they went to the deserted barn and dug into the rotted, smelly hay. Sure enough, the gun was still there. "Now," said Cal, "I'll never have to be hungry again. I can shoot rabbits and prairie chickens." But when they took the gun to Elmer's father he showed them how the stock was rotting away from the barrel, and explained that the gun was too rusty to be safe to use. Although Cal was bitterly disappointed he soon forgot about the gun. The Senteney family had always been kind to the lonely, motherless boy. Mrs. Senteney plied him with thick slices of her homemade bread and plum jam, and that winter Mr. Senteney soaked the rusted gun barrel in kerosene until he had it clean and shiny. Then he searched in the timber along the river until he found the right piece of cured ash. This he fashioned into a handsome gunstock for the gun, and that Christmas he gave it to Cal, along with a box of shells. It was a gift Cal was always to cherish.

The Niobrara flooded badly in the spring of 1910, causing considerable excitement for the Allyns and some of the Lofquests. Minnie Lofquest had married Henry Fuelberth in 1909 and was living on his ranch about three miles upriver from the Lofquests. Her sister Myrtle and her husband, Alvin Owens, worked for Henry and lived in a small house located in the lowland along the Niobrara river.

At breakfast, one warm spring morning, Henry and Minnie remarked that the ice might break up in the river anytime, then headed for Dustin with their team and buggy immediately afterward. Alvin had gone to an upland pasture to work that day and Myrtle was home alone.

When she heard some strange thumping and bumping against the house she looked out the window and saw that she was surrounded by water and huge chunks of ice. The community had installed its own telephone line only the year before, and now Myrtle called Cal Allyn, their nearest neighbor, and told him of her danger.

Cal, on horseback, dashed the five miles to her rescue, and swam his horse across the river among the cakes of bobbing ice. By then the water was deep around the house, which had been bumped off its foundation by the jagged ice chunks. Taking Myrtle from her high perch inside the house, Cal swam the horse back across the stream to the dry south bank. The poor animal scrambled up the bank to the meadow beyond, and there dropped dead under his double load.

Cal, Mabel and their children, like all the other Lofquests, worked hard and slowly forged ahead. He owned several teams by the time his children were old enought to drive them, then bought another four hundred acres of land to farm and pasture. The family owned a 1912 Model T, second-hand, by 1916, and a new car by 1920. Cal and Henry Fuelberth bought a Titon tractor in 1923. Two years later the two men, with Tom Berry, bought a threshing machine and powered it with the Titon.

Cal and his sons built a big barn one year, a tall silo another. They added rooms onto the house and put up numerous other farm buildings. Then came the grey 'thirties. The winds blew for days on end and the fences disappeared under the drifting, powdery dust. Some of the neighbors gave up and moved away, but all of Sven Lofquest's families stayed, and the Allyns and the Demings, too. When prices dropped so low that a carload of pigs wouldn't bring enough to pay the freight, Cal and Mabel butchered their pigs and sold the cured hams, bacon and lard. It was hard work and the family hated it but the proceeds kept the children in high school and food on the table. And so the 'thirties passed and the 'forties were better. Then Cal bought a ranch house from the sandhills seven miles to the south, had it moved to his farm and remodeled. He had piped water into the old house years before, and bought a gas- engine generated light plant, but this new home was to be far more modern and convenient than anything they had yet owned.

Cal and Mabel were the parents of nine children. Three died at birth. Of the other six Cora Allen married a neighbor lad, Herbert Sweet. The 440 couple rented the Fundus farm and set up housekeeping. The second daughter, Delia, married another neighbor, Warren McClurg. Both earned college degrees at Wayne State and taught school for many years, several of them in Inman.

James Allyn married Sarah Zink and bought a farm from Judge Mounts, which they later sold to Cora and Herbert Sweet. In 1942 James and Sarah moved to the home place and went into partnership with Cal, for by then World War II had begun and Ralph, the youngest son, was in the service. Elmer Allyn had already married Alma Lofquest and was farming her grandfather's place, the Munson farm.

After his return from the Naval Air Force, Ralph married Dorie Dawson. He taught his brothers, Jim and Elmer, to fly and the three of them bought a plane, an Aeronica, thinking it would be of help to them in checking pastures. Although its economic value was questionable, the boys kept the plane for eight or ten years, then sold it. Ralph and Dorie moved out to Oregon to live.

Laura, Cal and Mabel's youngest child, married Arlin Caster of Inman. Both were in San Diego at the time of their marriage, as Arlin was about to be shipped out. Then the war ended and they came home and bought the Sweet place, a mile west of Laura's parents' home.

Cal and Mabel celebrated their sixtieth wedding anniversary in the Good Samaritan Home in Atkinson in 1964, where Mabel died in 1967. Cal died in 1972 and both are buried in the Cleveland cemetery.

Andrew Robertson, born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and his five older brothers came to the United States in 1837, settling in Racine, Wisconsin. In 1852 Andrew married Sarah Whit-worth of Haverhill, Massachusetts and took her to Rose Creek, Minnesota. Eight children were born to them there.

In the early summer of 1880 Andrew and his oldest son, John, came to the Cleveland area and built a dugout on Beaver Creek. That fall some of the other children and a young man of their home neighborhood drove through with two covered wagons and forty head of cattle. Allowing about a month for the wagons and cattle to arrive on the north side of the Missouri, across from Niobrara, Mrs. Robertson boarded the train in Rose Creek and met them there.

Andrew and John had gone to Niobrara to meet the rest of the family, and had been waiting there for the river to freeze over so they could cross on the ice. Mrs. Robertson brought with her a Thanksgiving cake, made by John's girl friend, Laura Raldon, of Rose Creek. (No more is heard of Laura.) The cattle and wagons were taken across the river, then the family walked across. Andrew was on one bank, John on the other, when Mrs. Robertson started across, for she was expecting her ninth child and they were especially concerned about her safety. Albert Robertson was born in the dugout in March, 1881.

In 1882 the family moved to a tree claim, later known as the Brodie place. Sarah's father, Mr. Whitworth, furnished the money for the fairly large frame house the Robertsons built in 1884. George Bastedo of the neighborhood was the carpenter and the home cost $2500. The post office, later known as Brodie, was established there. Jake Jaques, a brother-in-law of George Bastedo, had settled on the land where the schoolhouse stood, east of the road and north of the Robertson home. Mrs. Bastedo was the teacher. When the blizzard of '88 roared across the Niobrara, Mr. Brodie hurried to the schoolhouse and said he believed the children could make it home safely. Mrs. Bastedo, who lived even nearer to the schoolhouse, took little Albert home with her. Lydia, Effie, Harriet (Hattie) and Will Robertson went home, taking the Jose children with them.

The well-known book about the blizzard, "In all Its Fury," written by W. H. O'Hara for "The Blizzard Club" was dedicated to Harriet Robertson Cottam.

Sarah Robertson died about 1890. Andrew's second wife was Elizabeth Julia Brodie. They had one son, Louis, born in 1893. Andrew died in Stuart in 1917.

John Robertson married Florence Hudson in 1883. Her mother was a Bastedo. John and Florence were the parents of nine children. After Florence's death in 1903 John married her sister, Eva Hudson, who died at the birth of their daughter, Florence, in 1905. In 1913 John took a third wife, Mary Ellen Boyce. She died in 1944, John in 1946.

John, a vigourous and active man, owned several farms in the county and even operated a meat market in Stuart shortly after the turn of the century. As his father before him had done, he took pride in everything he owned and his farms were the best maintained of any around him. As was characteristic of so many of those fine old pioneers, John, too, would gladly go without to help anyone in need.

Of John's large family George is the best known, and the only son to remain in the home neighborhood. Several of George's sons and daughters still live in Holt County or north of the river. Lydia, one of John's daughters, married Edward Pettijohn and had eight children. Some of this family were well-known hay dealers in Stuart for several years. Richard remained there, the others scattered across the nation.

Albert, Andrew's youngest son, was foreman of the big Paine Sargisson Ranch No. 2 for several years. In 1902 he married Dora Gosline at O'Neill. In 1912 he went to Atkinson and ran a livery barn for a year or two, then moved back to Cleveland and lived three miles east of the church for many years. His children attended the District 52 school.

Al loved a joke, whether it was on himself or someone else. He used to enjoy telling about the time he was picking corn in a big field when he heard some hounds chasing something. Very shortly he figured they were after a jackrabbit— and then saw the rabbit coming down the two rows of corn next to the ones he was picking.

Planning to surprise the rabbit, he waited until it was almost to him, then stepped suddenly over into the other row in front of it. Instantly the rabbit made a great side leap into the next row. But the hounds, in full chase, could not change course so quickly and plowed into Al with terrific force. He sprawled full length, with the hounds on top of him, all in a tangle. By the time he had regained his feet and his breath, the bunny was long gone.

Albert and Dora had seven children. Dora died in 1928, Albert in 1964. Of their two sons, Floyd worked and farmed in the Dustin area until he entered World War II. After his discharge he went to Washington State, where he now lives. The other son, Fred, operated the first long distance trucking service, the Central West Transportation Company, in that section of Holt County until the Great Depression put him out of business. He moved to Oregon in 1934 and is retired there now. One of the five Robertson daughters died in 1934, the other four live on the west coast. The recent sale of the "Tommy O'Connell Ranch" revived memories of the early development of northern Holt County for many of its residents. At the time of the sale the property had been in the same family for nearly ninety years. It all began when Maggie J. Cruise came from Gage County in 1884 to file on a 160 acre homestead.

Her original claim was the site of the old Lavinia post office. Tommy O'Connell was eleven years old at the 441 time. With the passage of the Kinkaid Act Mrs. Cruise filed on an additional 480 acres of land. After his mother's death Tommy built the ranch up to its present size of 5,000 acres. When he died in 1969, at the age of ninety- five, the ranch became the property of his sister, Mrs. Gladys Boucher, who was born on what later became a part of the ranch holdings.

Jim Allyn of Stuart, the purchaser of the old ranch, worked as a ranch hand for Tommy O'Connell in the late 'thirties— a fact that pleased Mrs. Boucher. In a way, she said, it extends the long train of continuous operation by the same people. Bill Bowker of the LeDioyt Land Company of Omaha handled the sale for Mrs. Boucher.