← Before Today: A History of Holt County, Nebraska
Ranch Country Chapter Forty-Six In addition to the large ranches already noted, several other sizable cattle and horse spreads were located in Holt County in early times. The Berry ranch, in the far northern section of the county, was doubtless the earliest. In 1873 James Baxter “Back” Berry, his wife Cynthia, his brothers C. A., and Tom and his sister Martha, all settled in what became Paddock and Scott townships. A Robert Wilbert, who arrived two years later, married Martha Berry. A fourth brother, William, lived over in the Dustin country, neighbor to the Dem-ings. The Berrys ranched in the Niobrara Valley and country to the south in the days of free range, but little more is told of the ranch, except that it was the home of young Tom Berry, the fifth child and second son of Back and Cynthia, who reared ten children on their ranch. Here Tom, one day to be the Cowboy Governor of South Dakota, grew up. He cowboyed on his father’s and other ranches until 1912, when Mellette County, South Dakota, was opened to settlement. Tom hurried there to file a claim and start a ranch of his own, where he experimented with the cross breeding of Hereford and Brahman cattle.
After serving several terms in the State legislature, Tom was elected Governor in 1932, the first elected to that office from the West River Country, that portion of the state west of the Missouri River.
Humorous, kindly but hard-headed, Tom brought to the governorship, for two terms, the practical philosophy of the successful cowman. He is best remembered as the man who guided the state through the difficult years of 1933-1936 when the State’s credit was worthless, when humans and livestock were in dire need. Those drouth years taught South Dakotans a lesson that Tom had already learned— the need to conserve water.
Governor Berry insisted that men on federal wages build dams, hundreds of dams in all parts of the state, each of them a monument to the rancher who knew the value of water to the well-being of the land. During his first campaign for governor the opposition made a great to-do about not changing horses in mid-stream. Tom Berry replied, “The Republicans are telling you not to change horses in the middle of the stream. Now let’s think about that for a minute. Let’s say I’m riding a cow pony and I come to a flooded creek. I jump him in and he goes to the bottom like a rock, comes up floundering and goes down again. Now, do you mean to tell me that if a good, strong-swimming horse happens to come along, I shouldn’t quit the pony?” Another prominent Republican, a good friend of Tom’s too, during the campaign was telling the people that Tom couldn’t read. “You know,” Tom replied, “He honestly believes that. Yes, he does, and I’ll tell you why. He asked me to sign a note with him and I told him I couldn’t write.” When the daily papers were casting about to find someone to take Will Rogers place in writing a syndicated column, someone suggested that Governor Tom try his hand. He agreed— for one year. When the time was up he knew he would either have to give up politics or the column. Doing both was too heavy a burden. He gave up the column.
The McClure ranch was quite possibly the largest operation of this kind ever put together in the county. Its holdings were centered in the precinct which bears its name, with headquarters about sixteen miles south of O’Neill. With the backing of some Omaha millionaires, H. W. McClure located in 1879 on Section 2, Township 26, Range 11. By the early ‘eighties he claimed land all up the South Fork of the Elkhorn and its small tributary, Dry Fork. He did this by having his cowboys file homesteads on choice quarters of creek bottom hay lands. For about three years, until the homestead rights ran out due to failure to prove up on them, McClure was monarch of all he surveyed and ranged his cattle on a thousand hills. 463 brought his wife and three small children from Iowa to his parents’ home in 1890, where they lived in a small house until Peter made a home for them on the Boyd County claim. A son Frank was born to them there. After selling out to Charley, Peter moved his family back to Holt County, where his wife died six months later. The grandparents raised the children. Peter’s three sons are now dead. His daughter Dolly spent all her life on the ranch with her grandparents, father and uncles.
Frank Reiser, son of Nicholaus, married Barbara Englehaupt and raised a family of eleven children. The family lived in Boyd County. Joe Reiser married Mary Mlinar in 1892. They and their four children are now all deceased. Adolph married Lena Hoeger. Their daughter, Rena, is now Mrs. Lawrence Englehaupt. Adolph was one of the few men of northern Holt County who witnessed the signing of the treaty by which officials from Washington D. C. took over the Indian lands in Boyd County.
Charley Reiser never married. After selling his land in Boyd County he worked on the Dick Wright place, later the White Horse Ranch. Ben and James Reiser, with their niece, Dolly, remained on the family ranch. Jim later bought the Frank Ellis ranch, eight miles southwest on Brush Creek, moved there and married Lena Bausch. He died in 1931.
Ben spent all his life on the home ranch, enlarging it to almost 3,000 acres. In 1927 he built a new, modern house, replacing the original log and frame building. After his death in 1965 Dolly moved to Butte and sold the ranch.
In the early years a Gan ley family lived south of the Reiser ranch. When one of their sons was killed by lightning while herding cattle the family sold out to the Reisers and left the country. It was on* the Reiser ranch that Captain Dodge was murdered in pioneer times. In 1920 a John Mize, driving through with a team and wagon, was also murdered on the ranch— by a couple who wanted his outfit.
Both Henry Hartland and his wife, Elizabeth Good, were born in England. They were married in their native land, then came to Iowa in 1862. The family came to Chelsea with ox teams in the ‘eighties. Later they moved to Redbird, living on the George Lamoureax place where a son, William, one of nine sons and daughters, was born.
William, born at Chelsea in 1883, in 1906 married Martha Mellor in the Golden Hotel in O’Neill. The couple had seven children, six of them born in the Redbird community. The family came to New York in 1900, then on to Holt County. His stepfather’s brother, a farmer south of O’Neill, had paid his passage to America. In return for this and one hundred dollars, Anton was to work for him for one year. The next year he went to Omaha and worked in a packing plant for a dollar a day. He then returned to O’Neill and settled on a farm south of town. His mother and sister left the old country to join him there in 1901. In 1905 he married Mary Musil. They had two daughters, Frances, who married Joe Soukup; and Mary who married James Havranek.
Anton and Mary Jirak celebrated their fifty-fifth anniversary with an open house at their farm home northwest of O’Neill, then retired and moved into town. Mary died in 1962, Anton in 1972.
Greenberry and Sarah Haynes, married in Illinois in 1866, came to Page in the 1890’s. They had lived on a claim on Eagle Creek for awhile before coming to Page where, in 1900, Mr. Haynes was killed when thrown from a horse. Both Mr. and Mrs. Haynes are buried at Page, beside their youngest son who died there in 1896 at the age of five. William Haynes, oldest of the Haynes children, married Adda Johnson, who died in 1894, leaving him three small children. Five years later he married Miss Melinda Ord at Page. With his first three children and the two by his second marriage, William moved to Wyoming.
Allen Haynes, youngest son of Greenberry and Sarah, in 1899 married Susie Reed at the home of her parents, the Pulaski Reeds. They lived on a nearby farm for more than sixty years, then moved into Page. Allen died in 1963, Susie in 1972. Both are buried at Page, with two of their five children. Of the other three only Laurence lives in Holt County, at O’Neill.
Nicholaus Reiser came from Luxem- borg at the age of eighteen. For five years he worked in the summers and went to school in the winters, then returned to Luxemborg and married Susanna Putz. Returning to America they settled in Iowa. Seven sons and four daughters were born to them there.
In the fall of 1883 Nicholaus came to Holt County and bought a piece of land from Ben Gillespie, south of the Niobrara and about a mile east of where the Parshall bridge is now located. The next spring his family came by train to Atkinson.
In 1891 two sons, Joe and Adolph, took adjoining claims in Boyd County. Peter, another son, took a ‘ claim beside them in 1892, but later sold it to his brother Charley. Peter had lived on various farms in the Redbird and Blackbird communities until William died in 1954. Martha sold out then and went to live with her daughter Alice at Niobrara. None of their children live in Holt County today.
When one of their sons, Lloyd, and his wife and family left Redbird for a home in South Dakota, times were hard. With $5.00 in cash they sat out on the four-day trip, with wagons and livestock, camping out on the way. Lloyd still had a $1.50 in his pocket when they reached the end of the trip.
That year, 1933, was a bad one. Remembering it afterward, the family said they didn’t have a rag to their names at the beginning of the year at its end they had nothing but rags. It gave them kindred feelings to the hard times Henry and Martha Hartland had experienced a generation earlier. Henry had driven oxen at first, living for the day when he could afford a team of horses. The day finally came and he even slept with that team, guarding it from Kid Wade and other horse thieves. When one horse died he had to drive the other with one of his oxen until he could afford another horse. Henry was the man who freighted the first set of millstones to the Mill on Eagle Creek. Harry Simpson came to Holt County in the early 1900’s from Chicago, he married Emma Getter in 1902 and lived on her homestead for a time. He also helped build the Kasper Hoerle house and the S. E. Honeywell barn. The couple left the farm in 1915 and moved into Chambers where they ran a cream station. Later Henry engaged in a short lived banking operation with R. J. Starr, C. H. Stowell, William Lell and D. L Johnson. The bank was known as the South Fork State Bank. Many children, now grown old, probably best remember Harry Simpson because of his many kindnesses to them.
John Pinkerman, son of James and Sarah, was born in 1893. Married in 1916 to Nora Doty of Iowa, the couple lived on various farms in the Meek and Scottville communities until 1931 when they moved back to John’s boyhood home near Scottville. In 1949 they retired to Lynch. John died there in 1954 and Nora in 1959. Both are buried in the old Scottville cemetery. Their children were Zelda, Doris and Virgil. Zelda married Claude Pickering and lived near Dorsey. Victor, one of their eight children, now farms the Pickering place. Doris married Edwin Tuch and had three children. Their farm home is near Niobrara. Virgil married Lucille Cooper of Lynch and lived for a time on the Roy Pinkerman place, now owned by 462 Veldon. In 1946 they moved to the Dollie Simmons place south of O’Neill and ran a dairy.
When John and Nora retired Virgil and Lucille moved back to the home place near Scottville. Rick, one of their five children now operates a dairy on the farm originally owned by his great-grandparents, James and Sarah, making the fifth generation to call this place home. Virgil and Lucille today live on the farm originally owned by Barrett Scott.
William G. Jamison, the son of Robert and Mary Frost Jamison, moved with his parents to Holt County as a small boy. They lived on Gravel Ridge north of Stuart. His mother was the daughter of Luther Frost of Ohio. Luther married Zilpha Duer of Pennsylvania and lived to be ninety-seven. William Jamison married Amanda Robertson and lived in and near Stuart, finally locating in the Clay Creek community.
Luther Frost had a son, Sam, who married Drucilla Ann Harvey and homesteaded near Cedar Creek, north In addition to the large ranches already noted, several other sizable cattle and horse spreads were located in Holt County in early times. The Berry ranch, in the far northern section of the county, was doubtless the earliest. In 1873 James Baxter “Back” Berry, his wife Cynthia, his brothers C. A., and Tom and his sister Martha, all settled in what became Paddock and Scott townships. A Robert Wilbert, who arrived two years later, married Martha Berry. A fourth brother, William, lived over in the Dustin country, neighbor to the Dem-ings. The Berrys ranched in the Niobrara Valley and country to the south in the days of free range, but little more is told of the ranch, except that it was the home of young Tom Berry, the fifth child and second son of Back and Cynthia, who reared ten children on their ranch. Here Tom, one day to be the Cowboy Governor of South Dakota, grew up. He cowboyed on his father’s and other ranches until 1912, when Mellette County, South Dakota, was opened to settlement. Tom hurried there to file a claim and start a ranch of his own, where he experimented with the cross breeding of Hereford and Brahman cattle.
After serving several terms in the State legislature, Tom was elected Governor in 1932, the first elected to that office from the West River of Stuart. Rose and Charlotte Jamison married Michael and Robert Gray, sons of George and Harriett Cearns Gray of Badger Creek, who had six other children. After George died in 1918 Harriett married Mitchell V. Pock and had four more children.
Bill Sharpe, foreman of the Overton Ranch, southwest of Atkinson, for many years was nearly fifty when he married a widow, Cynthia Lane, and moved to a quarter of land he owned near Bassett. Mrs. Lane had two children. After the death of a neighbor, Freed Boettcher, the Sharpes took his little son and raised him as their own. The boy, Don Boettcher, now lives in Washington state near his mother, Mrs. Freed Boettcher.
Walter Armstrong, a half brother to Robert Davis, came to Holt County from Bear Valley, Minnesota, and was the first teacher in the “little red school house” four miles west of Atkinson. For many years he lived in a little cottage on North Main Street in Atkinson.
John Dahms and his wife Mina, Ranch Country Chapter Forty-Six Country, that portion of the state west of the Missouri River.
Humorous, kindly but hard-headed, Tom brought to the governorship, for two terms, the practical philosophy of the successful cowman. He is best remembered as the man who guided the state through the difficult years of 1933-1936 when the State’s credit was worthless, when humans and livestock were in dire need. Those drouth years taught South Dakotans a lesson that Tom had already learned— the need to conserve water.
Governor Berry insisted that men on federal wages build dams, hundreds of dams in all parts of the state, each of them a monument to the rancher who knew the value of water to the well-being of the land. During his first campaign for governor the opposition made a great to-do about not changing horses in mid-stream. Tom Berry replied, “The Republicans are telling you not to change horses in the middle of the stream. Now let’s think about that for a minute. Let’s say I’m riding a cow pony and I come to a flooded creek. I jump him in and he goes to the bottom like a rock, comes up floundering and goes down again. Now, do you mean to tell me that if a good, strong-swimming horse happens to come along, I shouldn’t quit the pony?” Another prominent Republican, a born in Germany, came to Emmet from Illinois. In the east John worked in a factory which made flour mills. It was hot, hard work and the factories of that period were poorly ventilated, adding to the misery of the men who worked with the molten metal poured into the mill forms.
John had owned a piece of land northwest of Emmet for some time, so in 1903 sent his older son, Gustan, to Emmet to look at the land. Gustan stayed a year or more, and liked it, so the rest of the family decided to build a home on the land and live there. They got off the train at Emmet on May 20, 1905. There was only a caboose for a depot in the village. Mrs. Dahms brought her big oleander in a tub, George brought his tame rabbits, otherwise their furnishings and livestock were much like their neighbors’— except that the Dahms had the only piano in the neighborhood. For this reason the. neighbors often gathered at the Dahms home to sing.
good friend of Tom’s too, during the campaign was telling the people that Tom couldn’t read. “You know,” Tom replied, “He honestly believes that. Yes, he does, and I’ll tell you why. He asked me to sign a note with him and I told him I couldn’t write.” When the daily papers were casting about to find someone to take Will Rogers place in writing a syndicated column, someone suggested that Governor Tom try his hand. He agreed— for one year. When the time was up he knew he would either have to give up politics or the column. Doing both was too heavy a burden. He gave up the column.
The McClure ranch was quite possibly the largest operation of this kind ever put together in the county. Its holdings were centered in the precinct which bears its name, with headquarters about sixteen miles south of O’Neill. With the backing of some Omaha millionaires, H. W. McClure located in 1879 on Section 2, Township 26, Range 11. By the early ‘eighties he claimed land all up the South Fork of the Elkhorn and its small tributary, Dry Fork. He did this by having his cowboys file homesteads on choice quarters of creek bottom hay lands. For about three years, until the homestead rights ran out due to failure to prove up on them, McClure was monarch of all he surveyed and ranged his cattle on a thousand hills. 463 By the early 1880’s settlers fanning out from Chambers were filing pre-emptions on McClure’s western ranges. But until then, and for awhile afterward, McClure controlled some 8,000 acres of land and ran as many as twenty of the little old-type mowing machines in his meadows at one time. By the end of the decade the incoming homesteaders had changed all this and the big ranch was fast falling apart.
Hay McClure, son of the founder, was the last owner-operator of the outfit. By then Hay had married the daughter of one of the homesteaders, S. H. Trussell.
The Bruner ranch was established by two bachelor brothers, Edgar and Hudson Bruner, and their maiden sister, Lillian, about 1889-1890. It was located in Josie precinct, five miles west of present Highway 11 and three miles north of the county line. It was famed in early days for its tree plantings, boxelder, mulberry and cottonwoods, around the building site, but most especially for its famous “Pine Grove,” which was pictured in Condra’s Geography of Nebraska (The University Publishing Co., 1906, page 168). The grove was the first experimental conifer tree planting in the state and included Scotch, Ponde-rosa and Austrian varieties. A forerunner of the great Halsey National Forest, these pines throve in the extreme southwest corner of Holt County.
The Bruners, of Holland Dutch stock, owned a large home at West Point and were well educated and hospitable. “Miss Lilly,” small and demure, rode six miles on her riding mare every mail day to pick up their mail. Real ranchers for all that, they cared well for their stock and hauled big racks full of hay, pulled by their huge, beautiful draft horses, to feed their herds in winter.
The Bruners had a married, but widowed, sister, Phonetta Monroe, who owned a ranch adjoining them on the north. Around the turn of the century the unmarried brothers and sister adopted a son, Harold.
The big “Ditch Ranch” had its beginning in 1893 when the operators formed their company to divert water from the Elkhorn, west of Emmet, to irrigate land south of the river all the way to O’Neill. Although the irrigation project, as already described, was a failure, the owners were successful as soon as they turned their attention to cattle and hay, purposes for which the land was ideally suited. An F. M. Weidner was connected with the ranch at one time, as was a Mr. Cowden. Their cattle brand was registered in 1896. An Atlas of 1904 shows about 7,000 acres of land listed under the company name. Their holdings were increased by the purchase of 4,000 to 5,000 acres of additional grazing land in Rock Falls Township on Eagle Creek, fourteen mi*es to the north. This resulted in the “North Ranch” and the “South Ranch.” The two ranches provided considerable employment for incoming homesteaders, especially in haying time. The North Ranch headquarters were located on the east side of Eagle Creek, a well protected site with a warm spring flowing back of the house. Besides the house and barn there was a bunkhouse for the extra hands needed for the fall roundups and cattle drives. There was also a big cave. The fine big buildings have long been gone. The cement cave, built partially underground, could not be moved and is all that remains of the old ranch.
Since the pioneers came from different locations and backgrounds, they had different ideas about how to do things. Alfonzo Ross, who built the ranch house in its snug location, where the Ray post office was housed for a time, often differed with Ab Wilcox, his neighbor across the creek, who built his big house on top of a high hill, commanding a magnificent view of the valley. Their differences went on for years— and finally both landed in the same State Hospital at the same time. When they continued right on with their feud and a neighbor wondered why they should both be in the hospital at the same time, another neighbor allowed that it was probably the “gurgle, gurgle” of the old Eagle that had caused it. The South Ranch headquarters were known as the “Ditch Camp,” or “Center Camp.” Everett Brown was foreman at Center Camp and O. A. “Oat” Kilpatrick foreman at the North Ranch. The family, from Harlan, Iowa, consisted of Oat, Marguerite, daughters Ruth, Esther, Arlene, Nadine, and a son, Gene. Oat, a livestock buyer, was away a good deal and Arlene, better known as “Babe,” spent a lot of time in the saddle, riding the range on her favorite mounts, Maude and Shiner, checking the cattle, fences, grass and water. She could ride and rope as well as any cowboy and was famous for her ready wit and salty language.
Generous and goodhearted by nature, Babe loved to visit the neighbors and often visited the Wallace Johnsons and Charles Biglers down near the big south pasture. She always helped with the fall roundups and the “drives” to the stock yards in O’Neill, where the cattle were loaded for shipment east.
The North Ranch was used mostly as summer range for steers, and one year the Company brought in some thin Texas Longhorns. It was said they made a good gain, but they remained wild and nervous and stampeded several times, usually at night when the “Ghost Lights” were roaming about. In contrast to the UFO’s of today, the light did not seem to fly, but rather to roll or bounce along the ground. At any rate they were too much for the steers, as well as some humans. A few of the latter even wondered if the fiery ball was Barrett Scott’s spirit come back to roam the county that had so mistreated him. When the North Ranch changed ownership, being split up between several new owners, the Kilpatrick family moved into O’Neill, where Babe quickly adjusted to city life and became successful in the abstract business. She was partly responsible for Miss Bobby Arrington’s conclusion, after finishing research for her Master’s thesis on “Nebraska Women from 1875 to 1900,” that “This part of the country would never have been settled without women. The strength and enduring power of those women were incredible.” The Fred Hoyt ranch, about five miles northwest of old Inez post office, surrounded Cottonwood Lake, the source of Holt Creek. The Terrell ranch, starting a mile from Inez post office, covered some 3,000 acres. Here in 1904, twenty-nine head of cattle, bunched in the southeast corner of the pasture fence, were killed by a single bolt of lightning whick melted the barbed wire and shattered the fence posts for more than a hundred yards. The cattle were quickly buried in the nearest blowout in the hills. C. W. Moss later owned the ranch.
The other big ranches in this category, the Dierks ranch and that of the Riley Brothers, also that of Will Graver, have previously been described.
Walter Sire, who lived on one of the Graver ranches when he was growing up, remembers some of the Graver trail herds. “In the spring of 1915 or 1916,” he wrote, “Will Graver shipped a train load of cows and bulls from Wyoming to Inman and trailed them to the ranch south of town, about 1200 head of them, strung out on the road for over a mile. I was in a top buggy and watched the drive pass. The Graver boys and Glenn Utterbach had a big time riding the bulls. They’d ride close to a bull, slide out of the saddle onto him and spur him till they fell off. This was great fun until one of them caught Glenn right below his handkerchief pocket with a hind foot.
“In April of ’21 or ’22 I helped trail 464 850 head of steers to the ranch for Mr. Berigan. After being trailed twenty- two miles to Bassett they had been loaded, without feed or water, into a twenty-eight car train and shipped to Inman. Mr. Berigan came with the cattle and had saddle horses in the last car, next to the caboose. The plans were for him and me to ride the point, but the train crew started unloading at the front end. After emptying half the cars the stockyards were full and they opened the gates so they could unload the rest. “Berigan’s horse was still in the last car and Ray Conard, the foreman, told me (I was on my horse) to head them up the track. This I did, but when they hit the section boss’ wife’s garden I thought she would have a heart attack. About a hundred head of those hungry steers charging through it left nothing behind them. When they hit the main road west of town I managed to turn them south toward the ranch but I couldn’t hold them back.
“When I reached the cemetery corner, two miles south, I could still see cattle coming out of town. I never did see Berigan or any of the other riders but after letting the first steers through the school section gate at the ranch I laid down on the grass and waited two hours for the drag to come through. When they came, the other boys looked at me and said, “Where have you been?” They knew only too well that I’d had the ride of my life, staying ahead of those hungry, thirsty steers.” A very modern ranch, probably the first Guest Ranch in Nebraska, was established seventeen miles north of Stuart in 1952. Herb and Vesta Newman, natives of the area, with their children, run the outfit. They raise and train their own horses and keep more than thirty, of varying sizes, for their guests to ride. Arabian and Quarter Horses have proven best for their operation.
The Newmans hold two annual horse shows in their ranch arena, one on Fathers’ Day and the other on the Sunday before Labor Day. Open to all amateurs, they attract sixty or more participants, many of them 4-H members. They also hold an Annual Pony Express Ride from the ranch to the Stuart post office. On the ride held in the spring of 1974 the riders carried more than 500 letters, weighing over twenty-five pounds.
On some of their fall roundups and cattle drives the Newmans and their guests have spent two or three days in the saddle. The popular ranch has been featured in national magazines and papers, as well it should be, for the Nebraska trails over which the guests (most of them from cities) ride are unsurpassed for beauty of range and sky.
If they wish, the guests may also help with the daily milking, gather eggs, feed calves and pigs, tend rabbits, or even help with the haying and branding.
The Lee and Prentice ranch was really two ranches, owned by two men and separated by a strip of land two miles wide. Together, the operation would have been the largest in the county. The East Ranch, about fourteen miles south of Emmet, was as large as the McClure ranch. It was owned by Andrew Lee, elected governor of South Dakota in 1896. His partner was a Mr. Prentice. Their West Ranch, about 5,000 acres in Fairview Precinct, was sixteen miles south and a little west of Emmet.
Big Charley Peterson bought the West Ranch over fifty years ago, sold about half of it and kept the other half, the nucleus of his big ranch. Bill Starts was foreman on the East Ranch, Theo Moss on the West Ranch.
George Brion, Sr., fought in the Revolution, then settled in Pennsylvania. His son, George, Jr., was the father of David, who fought in the Civil War, then returned to Pennsylvania and married Sarah Baker. Of their five children a daughter married Dr. D. C. Winship and came to Ewing. Clara married Rev. George Cole and also lived near Ewing. Minnie, the youngest, married C. N. Davis of Ewing. George’s son Samuel, however, was the first Brion to come to Nebraska. He and his wife, Lillis, came to Unadilla in 1878 and it was through their persuasion that the others came a little later.
In 1883 both Samuel, Sr., and George moved to homesteads about ten miles northeast of Ewing. Samuel opened a shoeshop in Ewing, then in 1891 both families moved into town and started a general merchandise store, although Samuel continued to repair shoes.
Sam may best be remembered by the old timers as a fiddler. When a boy in Pennsylvania he had gotten hold of an old fiddle and taught himself to play it by ear. When his mother banned him from the house he went on practicing in the woodshed. He had lived in New York for a time, where he organized and led a band. In Unadilla he organized and led another band, and repeated the performance in Ewing. George and Lillis had seven children. Eva married George Davis and lived on a farm south of Ewing until 1915 when they moved into Inman where George managed the Inman State Bank.
Samuel, Jr., the only son, married Maud Burtwistle and spent most of his life in Ewing in the banking business. They had two children,Richard S., and Mary. Richard, or Dick, graduated from the University of Nebraska, married Laverne Walter, daughter of long-time reisdents of Holt County, in 1939 and went to California, where he worked in a bank. Six years later they returned to Nebraska and went into the furniture business in Neligh. In 1958 Dick sold out and bought into the Farmer’s State Bank of Ewing, once his father’s bank. He was happy to be back in the bank where, as a schoolboy, he had worked as janitor in his spare time. Now he was its president.
One of Dick and Laverne’s two sons, Ronald, is cashier in his father’s bank. He and his wife, Patricia (Hobbs) have five sons, the sixth generation of Brions to live in Holt County. Fred Ehlert came from Germany to Nebraska, with his parents, in 1886 The family joined Mrs. Ehlert’s family, the Reimers, at Clearwater in Antelope County. There Fred’s father, Henrick, filed on a claim in the midst of several ranches, the Mabens, the Roberts and the Trussles. Deloit was their post office.
Four of the Ehlert children were born in Germany. Another daughter was born on the homestead in the fall of 1887. The children spent most of the day of the blizzard of ’88 in bed to keep warm, and after it was over Mr. Ehlert found that he had lost a number of cattle and pigs and all of their chickens. The Ehlerts had three more children before the drouth years came on. In 1893 their well went dry and so did the ponds, making it necessary to haul water from the Maben ranch, which had drilled wells.
The Maben ranch had bought 150 milk cows, shipping them in from many localities, in order to furnish milk for the new creamery at Deloit. Wrote Fred, many years later, “As we lived right next to the ranch, Father contracted to milk thirty of those cows every night and morning for one dollar per cow per month. Thirty dollars a month.
“It took Dad and me an hour and a half night and morning to do the milking. We’d start at five in the morning. After milking we took the team and wagon and filled the water barrels, brought them home, had breakfast, then did our own chores. At four in the afternoon we started milking again. I was only eleven, and going to school besides, so it made a long day for me. I milked eleven cows while Dad milked nineteen, and what a time we had getting them broken to milk in the first place. It was very discouraging.” That fall the Ehlerts began looking for a larger and better place. When 465 some of their relatives in Antelope County told them of a place near them that was for rent they made arrangements to move in the spring. In the meantime Fred and his father went on milking the thirty cows. The Ehlerts moved March 1. Shortly afterward the baby was very ill. In April the family was up all night, guarding against sparks from a big prairie fire that burned up against their newly plowed fire guards. The new place had good buildings and wells, but that was the dry spring of ’94 and those wells, too, began to go dry.
“The month of July was a sad one,” wrote Fred. “So hot and dry. Things burnt up.” On July 16 Henry and Mardlana’s ninth child, a boy was born. All went well for a few days, then the mother suddenly sickened. Two doctors came but there was nothing they could do. She died on July 23, 1894. The weather was so hot that the family had to bury her the next day. Even so the shocking news of her death was relayed across the prairie from neighbor to neighbor and a big crowd was on hand for her funeral.
Mardlana’s sister took the baby to her home but he died a little over a month later and was buried in his mother’s grave. The harvest that fall was very scant and Henrick, discouraged and disheartened, sold off what little stock and few possessions he had left, paid his debts and moved his family to Wisconsin, where he went to work in the timber. One of Fred’s uncle’s sons, Henry Reimer of O’Neill, grandson of old Henry Reimer, was appointed District Judge by Governor J. J. Exon in 1974. John and Hannah Prill came from Iowa to Emporia, seven miles north of Ewing, in 1887 and purchased the Dick Ruby quarter. They brought with them two daughters, Emily, ten, and Susan, three. Ralph and Jennie were born in Holt County. Emily married Ed Rector and had three children. Susan married Lewis Alexander and had two children. Ralph married Bertha Carpenter and had four children. Jennie married Albert Finley and had eight children. After thirty years on their Nebraska farm John and Hannah retired to Orchard, across the line in Antelope County.
Alfred and Elizabeth Staples came from London to Chicago in 1874. Their son, John, was twelve years old. The family later moved to Armour, South Dakota, where John met and married Mary Anne Piggot, also from England, in 1887. After their marriage the young couple, with John’s parents, moved to Boyd County in 1890. They lived near the Niobrara at a time when “there was nothing there but rattle snakes.” John and Mary Anne had nine children, two of them born after they moved over into Holt County near the Badger post office. When the post office was moved to the Vandenburg Mill and store site the patrons enjoyed the use of the hall above the store for dances.
The Staples family moved to Missouri for a few years, then back to Holt County in 1902 where they lived near District 10 school. Blanche Staples started to school when she was four, and remembers that that year the schoolhouse caught fire one cold day. Some men came to the schoolhouse and the teacher lifted the children through the window to them, after which the men put the fire out and they went on with school for the rest of the day.
In 1892, before moving to Missouri, and when the family consisted of only the three oldest children, a terrific hailstorm swept over the farm, its baseball sized stones killing some farm animals. Blanche remembers her mother walking the floor, the baby in her arms and the two little ones clinging to her skirts, as the hail smashed all the windows on the west side of the house.
L. C. or “Posie” McKim, with his father and uncle homesteaded in Holt County in 1905. The father soon relinquished his section to his youngest son, Jack, and moved away. Posie and his uncle Bill proved up in 1910, Jack in 1911, then all sold out and bought land four and a half miles northeast of the Opportunity store. Posie married Lizzie Anderson of Clearwater. The two oldest of their nine children, Verl and Lyle, started to school at the Lone Tree school, three and a half miles from the homestead. Posie served on the Holt County Board of Supervisors from 1920 until the year of his death, 1934, after which his wife moved to Clearwater.
Veral, the family student, graduated from college with several degrees and studied in India on a Fulbright Scholarship. He taught many years at Chadron State College but is now retired. Lyle lived most of his life in and around O’Neill. He and his wife, the former Hazel Goodspeed, had nine children. Lyle Jr., gave his life in Korea in 1953. None of the other children of Posie and Lizzie now live in Holt County.
John Sorensen came to Holt County in 1906 but the locality is not given. He married Ida Taylor at O’Neill and farmed until 1939 when they moved to Idaho, where they still reside. They had five children, John, Jr., Fern Hickey, Ollie Lylte, Betty Jean Johnston and Doris McKay. John, Jr., married Vivian Farley.
Henry and Ludmilla Burival moved from Beatrice to Holt County in 1909, settling on a farm eleven miles northwest of O’Neill. They brought five children with them and had three more on the new farm. Henry, born in Austira in 1877, came to Beatrice at the age of eighteen and there met Ludmilla Pollack.
The children attended country school until the father died in 1923, after which Mrs. Burival moved to O’Neill, where the younger children went to school. The youngest, Edwin, was only fourteen when his mother died. He then went to live with an older brother, Frank, and help him on the farm. In 1933 young Edwin, with Frank and his family, moved to the Judge Dickson farm five miles north of O’Neill.
In 1968 Edwin and his wife, the former Orletha Holz of Chambers, bought the Judge Dickson farm from his three daughters. The following year they rented the home place from Francis Musil. “During my farming years,” writes Edwin, “I managed to buy 1760 acres and now rent an additional 880 acres of farm and pasture land.” He is still actively farming and working his land. His youngest son is still in school but, since he likes to farm and hunt, Edwin will have someone to take over when he is ready to retire.
Douglas Delbert Hunt was born in Hamilton County, Nebraska, in 1874, one of nine children in the family of Lewis Hunt, a native of West Virginia who had served in the Civil War. The family came to Nebraska in 1872. Blenda Wiberg, born in Iowa, was the daughter of Swedish born Jonathan Wiberg. She and Douglas Hunt, married in Omaha in 1902, became the parents of fourteen children. After homesteading in both Nebraska and South Dakota, Douglas became a street maintenance man for the City of O’Neill. At that time none of the streets were paved and all street work, including sprinkling the dust in summer, was done with horses.
Blenda had become a school teacher at the age of fifteen and had taught schools in Holt, Garfield and Lincoln counties before her marriage. Of their fourteen children two died while very young but the other twelve were unusually successful in their varied careers, although most of them left Holt County.
Lloyd Godel, born in Newman Grove, grew up in Fremont. In 1930 he married Alma Springer of O’Neill and the couple have lived all their married years in that city. Their six children graduated from O’Neill High and all married neighborhood young people: Richard to Bonnie Banks of Inman; Don to Phyllis Harmon of 466 O’Neill; Bud to Marlene Waring of Page; Joan to Larry Fernau of Spencer; Larry to Sharon Tennis of O’Neill and Gary to Kathy Palmer of Norfolk.
Lloyd was custodian of the O’Neill school until he was injured in a car accident. Alma worked in the M & M Bakery until her husband recovered. For the past ten years he has been an employee of the Nebraska Public Power District.
Robert E. (Bob) Tomlinson and his twin sister Maude, two of the nine children born to George and Mabel (Henry) Tomlinson on their Mineola Homestead, first saw the light of day on July 10, 1906. In 1925 Robert married Dolly Springer of O’Neill. The couple were the parents of three children, Betty Jean, Doris and Vel- don, all of whom graduated from O’Neill High.
Dolly Springer was one of the two daughters of Andrew Springer who came from Germany to America at the age of twelve. Andrew was caretaker of the O’Neill Cemetery for many years.
The Tomlinsons have always lived within five miles of the homestead where Bob was born. A willing worker in his neighborhood, Bob served on the board of District 96 for twenty years, as assessor of Willow-dale Township for fourteen years and as Supervisor of Road District Two for four years. During this time the first good road in northern Holt County, the oiled stretch between Page and Mineola, was built.
Bob spent thirty-two years in the well business in northeast Holt County and served as the first president of the Holt County Historical Society. At the present time he is a director from the northeast portion of the county. Dolly has been active in club work for many yearsand enjoys bowling. In 1975 the couple will celebrate their Golden Wedding Anniversary at their farm home ten miles north of Page.
Betty Tomlinson married Virgil Stevens of Inman, a veteran of World War II and is now a thirty-year employee of the Bell Telephone Company. Their three children graduated from high school and college in Rapid City, South Dakota.
In 1949 Doris Tomlinson became the bride of Gilbert Fox who had moved with his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Charles Fox, from Miller, Nebraska to Holt County at the age of one year. Gilbert, the fourth child in a family of fifteen, served in the Navy from December 1944 to July 1946. During the blizzard of ’48-’49 he spent many hours on a bulldozer, opening roads in his snowbound county.
Gilbert and Doris lived in the Emmet community until 1963, when they moved to a ranch south of Inman. In his forty years of running hay crews in his meadows Gilbert has seen many changes in haying methods. The couple has three children, Barbara, Peggy and Debra, and are collectors of antique engines and tractors. They enjoy driving the old engines in parades and helped with the organization of Inman Pioneer Day, an annual celebration.
Joseph McKinley (Max) Grenier, born in 1900 at Lyons, Nebraska, was of French Canadian parentage. When Max was eleven the family moved to a farm northeast of O’Neill. In 1933 he married Dorothy Tomlinson, daughter of George, at Harrison. Dorothy had graduated from the eighth grade in Mineola, finished high school in Omaha, then taught school for sixteen years in Holt County’s District 96, the same district where her mother, Mabel Henry, had started to school.
Max and Dorothy lived on the Alm place, five miles east of Opportunity, where he farmed and she taught school, until World War II broke out. They then moved to California where he registered for the draft, then went into defense work. Never called up for service, Max and his wife returned to O’Neill late in 1943. He immediately went to work for Raymon Bright, carrying mail from O’Neill to Star, then carried the Redbird route for Lawrence Jonas. Before the year was out he had his own contract to carry the mail to Redbird, and then on to Anncar. He has now carried the mail for more than thirty years and is still on the job. The couple live in O’Neill. It seems fitting to end this long collection of family histories with that of Charley W. Peterson, a second generation pioneer who typifies, in a larger-than-life manner, the kind of men and women who came to a raw and rugged land, battled its vagaries and its elements, and stayed to make of it the rich, productive, beautiful land that is Holt County of the latter twentieth century.
Charley’s grandparents were born in Sweden. With their two small children they came to Illinois in 1846, with the father working on the ship to pay their passage across the Atlantic. After settling at Rio, near Chicago, other children were born to them, one of the youngest being Oscar, Charley’s father. Charley’s mother, Alice Bloomfield, was also born near Rio. As a young lady she came to Oscar’s neighborhood to teach school. Eventually the six-foot, six-inch Oscar and the five- foot, one-inch school teacher were married. Soon afterward the young couple and Charley’s brother came to Richland, Nebraska, where the brothers filed on homesteads. Four of Oscar and Alice’s children were born there.
The family next moved to “The New York Ranch,” owned by Marshall Fields of Chicago, at Leigh, Nebraska. Here Charley was born on June 20, 1893. Feeling the urge to go farther west, in 1901 Oscar moved his family to a ranch south of Newport in Rock County, near Pony Lake. Mr. Peterson bought and rented land all around him and the whole family worked, raising cattle and putting up hay. Once, when Charley and a brother were only lads, their father sent them to build a pasture fence. Upon inspection, the father found two miles of the fence unacceptable, so made the boys take it out and rebuild it. Under this kind of tutelage Charley became a very good fence builder. The boys also helped their father drive cattle to town, for shipment to Omaha and Chicago markets. The boys, still quite young, were then given a little money for candy to eat on the way home.
One time they decided to do something different, so bought a big cigar. Before reaching home they got off their horses, settled down in the shelter of a haystack and took turns smoking their cigar. Before long they weren’t feeling very well— and the haystack was on fire. This was Charley’s first and only smoking experience.
When Charley was a seventh grader there were only four boys in the little country school. The other three were eighth graders. Come spring and time to take the county eighth grade examinations, Charley decided to take them, too. He passed and the eighth graders failed. That was the end of his country schooling. In those days the Wayne State Normal held a six weeks long winter course for country students.
Charley attended two of the winter sessions. One of his teachers had some strange ideas. One was that “no one should own any land, the State should own it all.” This kind of talk did not set well with the boys who were proud Americans, so her classes were one long, continuous argument. Charley was about fifteen when he finished at Wayne.
During this time the young man had been acquiring some cattle of his own. He bought his first cow with money he earned trapping muskrats, and added others as fast as he could. His father allowed each of his children to own and run ten head without paying pasturage on them. For all above that number they had to pay.
Although living on the ranch in Rock County, Oscar Peterson had 467 bought a 1600 acre spread sixteen miles south of Atkinson and hired a family to run it for him. When Charley was nineteen he offered to operate the Holt County ranch for his father. Over the next few years he stocked the place and this was the beginning of the Charley Peterson home ranch, the big Lazy F. At the peak of his operations he had as many as 10,000 cows under this brand and controlled some 90,000 acres of land in Nebraska and South Dakota.
He married Della Palmer and fathered four children. Even during the depression Charlie kept right on building up his ranch; for there was never a time that he couldn’t borrow money to buy land and cattle, both very cheap commodities during the ‘thirties. By then he had given up raising cows and calves. Instead he went to Texas, bought young steers, held them two or three years and sold them as big, grass-fat three- and four- year-olds, a choice type of beef that brought premium prices in those days. Later, when he went back into a cow-calf operation, he attended leading bull sales all over the country, buying choice individuals to improve his herds. At the big sales in Denver he often bought as many as fifty bulls at a time. He also enjoyed taking a friend or two along and visiting ranches and horse and cattle sales in Texas, Oklahoma and other states. Another of his favorite enterprises was hunting for areas of blue grass. Sometimes he did this with Earl Coxbill, flying over the country in Earl’s plane. Charley once got very airsick and Earl had to land at a pasture windmill to give Charley a breather. Then one day in 1964 Charley picked Earl up in his little yellow Karmann Ghia and set out on another quest for blue grass.
As was his habit, the big old ranchman drove up and down every hill and gully. Before long Earl began to feel the way Charley had in the plane. Then Charley drove down to show Earl his alfalfa field on the river bottom, northwest of the Horne place. He had built a good sized dam above the field, and a narrow road across the top of the dam to get down to the alfalfa field.
At the north end of the dam, as they turned to go through a gate to get off the dam, the car stuck fast. When an hour’s work failed to budge the Karmann, Earl walked down the canyon to the ranch for help. Two young men brought him back in a pickup and they soon had the car on solid ground.
Behind the wheel again, Charley gunned the engine to get up the steep bank. He had underestimated his speed and couldn’t make the turn at the top, so hurtled off into the lake, turning end over end before they struck the water. The boys who had helped them get the car unstuck saw the flash of yellow as the car went into the lake, so ran up on the dam in time to see the car going under. Good swimmers, both dived in and grabbed a pair of feet, which turned out to be Charley’s.
Earl, still in the car and not realizing it was upside down, took a good breath of the air left in the car, then hunted for a door handle. When he found it it seemed to work backwards, but he got it open, got out and began to swim upward, or so he thought. When he touched bottom he turned and went the other way, came out on the surface and swam to shore, where the others pulled him out. The pair then borrowed a car and went home— with Earl driving.
Because of many similar incidents— with horses and cattle as well as cars— Charley’s family were convinced he had been born with nine lives.
Col. Ernie Weller probably sold more cattle for Charley Peterson than any other individual. For ten or fifteen years Peterson held his own auction sale in his South Dakota pavillion, all conducted by Weller. In more recent years he held an annual Peterson Production Sale at the Atkinson market, where the family sold 3,000 to 3,500 calves. On one occasion he lost a $515,000 check, the receipts of one of his sales held at the Atkinson market. The check had to be reissued. Because he sort of kept his ranch records in his pockets he liked to have plenty of pockets, in his shirt, his trousers, and especially in the baggy overals he usually wore.
Charley Warren Peterson and Della (formerly of Independence, Missouri) celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary in 1971. Charley died of concer in an Omaha hospital in November, 1972. He was seventy- nine years old.
His funerol was held in the Atkinson grade school ouditorium with about 550 friends and neighbors attending. Elder Roy Ries, an old friend, flew from Arizona to preach the funeral sermon, assisted by Elder Ralph Schrunk and the Latter Day Saints church pastor, Richard Ratliff. His pallbearers were his grandsons, Frederick Horne III, Peter Horne, Charles Horne, William McIntosh, Timothy Peterson, Charles R. Peterson, Jr., and Clifton Peterson. Fifty-five honorary pallbearers followed his casket to Woodlawn Cemetery. They came from O’Neill, Chambers, South Dakota, Valentine, Wisner, Columbus, Burwell, Stuart, Amelia and Bassett, as well as the entire Atkinson area. Among them were Robert Clifford, Frank Dvorak, Fred Dobrovol ny, Frank Stanek, Earl Coxbill, A. G. Miller, William Froelich, J. D. Cronin, Ira Moss, Vern Sagesser and George Schindler.
His four children, Helen Horne II, Vera McIntosh, Willis and Charles, survive him. His wife, Della, is retired and their son, Charles, and his family still live in the old ranch house and operate the big outfit.
After his death State Senator John DeCamp, representing District 40, paid him the following tribute, printed in various newspapers: “Old Charley was the raw material America was made of, and when he died a big chunk of Nebraska history was buried with him. I saw him once, at an auction in Atkinson three years ago. He was just an old man in baggy overalls, standing there bidding. The way he looked, you wondered if he even had two dollars to his name to rub together.
“I asked my friend Dean Fleming, the auctioneer, ‘Who is that old man?’ Dean smiled and said, ‘That’s Old Charley, Old Charley Peterson. And he’s not quite as poor as he looks. He’s probably worth ten times more than everybody else in this auction, added together, is, and if you want to learn the history of this part of the country just learn about that man. Old Charley IS the history.’ “For the next two years I took every opportunity to learn more about him and his achievements. He was praised by some and damned by others, but all agreed Old Charley Peterson was a true pioneer— one of the men who helped forge American History and who made northwest Nebraska. I was fascinated with the stories about him— how he built one of the biggest range herds anywhere, and his herd of Appaloosa horses, the biggest in the world.
“There were a thousand stories of his battles throughout his long life, and after hearing dozens of them I began to discover something about Old Charley that held a very important lesson for me— and I think for all of us. Every story seemed to show one thing. Old Charley— from his youngest days— had not been afraid to meet a challenge, and when he thought he was right he had not backed down for anyone, including the Government.
“On repeated occasions some government agent or agency had decided to tell Old Charley how he ‘Had’ to do this or that. And on repeated occasions the Government learned that nobody told Old Charley how he had to do anything.
“It took guts to stand up to these new government agencies and agents 468 that constantly flooded him with their new rules. Old Charley knew that he didn’t have half the education of the agents who tried to harass him, but that did not scare him. And there were many such agents who left Old Charley’s place thankful they still had their heads, arms and legs.
“Old Charley is dead now, but the multitudes of government agencies he battled live on and, unfortunately, their powers seem to be growing faster and bigger all the time. And the sad thing is that most of us seem to be willing to let them KEEP on growing, taking over more power and telling us more and more how we are supposed to live; and when, where, how and why we are to be allowed to do things.
“In my short three years as Senator (he is still (1976) Senator from his district) I have seen every single agency of state government keep increasing its power and authority over the lives of Nebraskans. If it is not the Health Department, then it is the Agriculture Department, or some other State Agency telling us what we can or cannot do.
“Next year in the Legislature I will begin a campaign to cut down the size and power of government. Only by beginning to eliminate some of the powers of government— especially State Agencies that operate like independent governments themselves— will the citizens be able to operate their businesses and conduct themselves like free people. I know I shall make some enemies doing it, but if we do not start doing it the situation will get worse and worse.
“So Goodbye Old Charley, and Thanks! No matter where you are or what you are doing, you taught us all a dickens of a good lesson.” The A L brand of Austin Hynes, Turner, recorded in June, 1881, is the oldest brand still in use in Holt County by the original owner’s fam- ily.
John Carberry recorded the J C brand in August, 1880.
J. T. Prouty, Paddock, recorded the T P brand in September, 1880.
W. O’Donnell’s W boot brand was recorded in October, 1880.
H. H. McEvony recorded his Double H brand in March, 1881.
John Cronin, O’Neill, recorded the O C brand in March, 1881.
James Mullen, Agee, father of Arthur, recorded this brand in April, 1885.
oc M4 William Hale Thompson, Cache Creek, recorded his T Bar in May, 1886.
David Cronin recorded the Seventy Six brand in April, 1887.
L. Flanigan recorded this brand in April, 1887.
T. F. Herrington, Stuart, used the Goats brand, filed in June, 1896, on his cattle.
S. H. Trussell, Little, recorded his H T brand in January, 1896.
John Robertson, Dustin, filed the J R brand in April, 1896.
John Carr, Stafford, recorded his Half Circle Bar in January, 1896.
R. F. Cross, Atkinson, filed his Hog Eye brand in April, 1898.
Patrick Brennan, O’Neill, used the Dollar brand. No recording date given. The above are some of the many prominent or unusual brands recorded in Holt County before the turn of the century.
Courtesy E. M. Jarman
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