← Before Today: A History of Holt County, Nebraska
In The Beginning Chapter One Holt County, the fourth largest in Nebraska, exceeded in area only by Cherry, Lincoln and Custer, is forty-eight miles wide, east to west, and fifty miles long. It contains 2,412 square miles, or 1,540,000 acres. It is watered by two rivers, the Niobrara, which outlines the county’s entire north boundary, and the long and winding Elkhorn, which waters the great fertile Elkhorn Valley. A low divide or “table” lies between the two rivers. Small permanently flowing streams and numerous springs are common throughout the county.
Except on the Niobrara and a few of its tributaries, real trees were almost nonexistent, although shrubby choke cherries and wild plum thickets were plentiful along most of the streams in the county. Wild life had always been plentiful. Dinosaur tracks were exposed after a heavy rain washed a new channel for one of the head creeks of the Big Sandy, a tributary of the Niobrara, and James Deming, an early settler, found a section of the jaw bone of a Shovel Jaw Mastodon on his place in the same area. From the abundance of buffalo skulls found by the first homesteaders, it was plain that these great animals had once roamed the county. Deer, antelope, coyotes and wolves were common during the years of early settlement, as were prairie chickens, grouse and water fowl. Constant and heavy hunting by homesteaders and commercial hunters soon eliminated all but the coyotes.
Human habitation of this area dates back possibly six thousand to ten thousand years. Probably the first people to tread on Holt County soil were the Paleo Indians or big game hunters, users of spears tipped with chipped stone points such as the Clovis or Folsom. They were followed by the Forager or Plains people, also spear or “atlatl” throwers, who gathered roots, nuts and berries. Supplanted about a century after Christ by the Early Potters or Plains Woodland Indians, first users of pottery, they gave way to a people who had discarded spears for the more efficient bows and arrows, and who cultivated squash and a kind of popcorn.
By 900 A. D. prehistoric farmer Indians, a people who lived in small semi-permanent earth villages, had taken over the country. Their farming had improved to the growing of sunflowers, beans and maize. From 1450 to 1750 A. D. the people of the Proto- historic or Coalescent Tradition occupied the territory. These included the Dismal River Complex, who lived in large circular earth lodges and were the ancestors of the Pawnee of our own times.
The Historic Period which followed brought the use of horses to the plains Indians— the Pawnee, Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho, who ranged over Nebraska— and changed their way of life. Because of this varied Indian culture a great variety of arrow heads, spear points and other artifacts have been gleaned from Holt County soil.
Probably the first white man to set foot in Holt County was a Scotchman, Father James M. Machey, or Mackay, who traveled along the south bank of the Niobrara River in 1795-96. A map published in Paris in 1802 shows the extent of his explorations. A little later other men doubtless camped on the banks of this river which they called the “I. Eau qui Court,” meaning a shallow and swift flowing stream. These were French traders and trappers who attempted to navigate the pretty river in their skin or “bull boats,” transporting peltries to the Missouri River and, eventually, St. Louis.
Then, in the early spring of 1870, came two white men, M. Ford, an elderly gentleman, and Johnny Dev-lin, a traveling Irish tinker, who staked claims and built cabins on the Elkhorn, about two miles north of the site of today’s town of Ewing and only a few miles within the eastern boundary of Holt County.
Shortly thereafter, in May, Tenne- seean James Ewing, his wife Sabrina and their two young daughters, Anna The small but beautiful Elkhorn River near Inman Elfreda and Chloe, halted their covered wagon just below the forks of the Elkhorn and decided to stay. There was an abundance of good water and grazing, also oak, elm and cottonwood timber from which to build a cabin. Ewing hurried to break and plant a twenty acre sod cornfield and a garden, using seed brought from Tennessee. A little later Calvin Gunter arrived. The newcomer made himself a dugout, the first of hundreds of such homes soon to be built in the region. Believing themselves to be the first settlers in that part of the country, what was their surprise to run into Ford and Devlin only a few miles up the riverl That same year the J. M. Davidsons, C. Clemmons and several other families settled along the river, and that fall Ford, the old man, died on his homestead.
With the coming of the new families romance bloomed, and the next year Anna Elfreda Ewing, sixteen years old, married Isaac Davidson. The young couple moved into a log cabin of their own and, on January 31, 1872, their son Guy was born. Thus, within the first two years of settlement, occurred the first death, the first wedding and the first birth.
In the spring of 1872 John Ryan and George and Mary Howe homesteaded along the river, followed by Thomas Kiely and F. S. Wentworth in the fall. For all of the Elkhorn settlers Norfolk, some sixty miles to the southeast was the nearest trading post. Wisner, twenty-five miles on east of Norfolk on the Elkhorn Valley railroad, and Columbus, fifty-five miles south of Norfolk on the Union Pacific, were the nearest railroad towns. Frenchtown, a French settlement to the eastward in Antelope County (organized in 1871), 3 was the nearest postoffice. Whenever he had to go to Frenchtown, Mr. Ewing brought the mail for his community home with him and put it in a fiddle case until his neighbors called for it.
In the spring of 1873 several families and a number of single men and women left Sauk County, Wisconsin, headed for the western prairies. The leader of this colony was H. H. McEvony. Others of the party were the J. T. Prouty, E. H. Thompson and Frank Bitney families. Some of the single members were William Bitney, William Dickerson, Jennie Shultz and Manson Tupper.
McEvony and two friends, Bill Inman and his father, had traveled to the area in a covered wagon in 1871 to look the country over. The land along the upper Elkhorn had recently been surveyed and they had no difficulty in locating homestead sites. Bill Inman selected a claim west of the site of today’s Inman. McEvony went some eight miles farther on, to a point about one mile southeast of the present city limits of O’Neill. J. T. Prouty who homesteaded on the upper Elkhorn in 1873. He and his wife were the farthest west of any white settlers in what became Holt County. Picture taken in 1926 when he was a very old man.
One of the men on the spring wagon is William e Bailey of Ewing, who shot thirty-one deer during one winter in Holt County He was thought to have shot as many, or more, than any other hunter in the countv— until there were no more to shoot. Courtesy Mrs. Lloyd Bearinger, Neligh. y Goose Hunting in 1928. Clarence Bergstrom, Fred Lowery and John Kersenbrock. The elder Mr. Inman soon went home to report favorably on the country he had seen. McEvony stayed until fall, then returned to Wisconsin, where he and the others of the projected colony began to dispose of their property and get ready to go west. Bill Inman remained on his homestead to build a cabin.
By the spring of 1873 the McEvony colonists were ready to set out for Nebraska, except for one family, the Eli Sanfords who were not yet ready. McEvony promised to hold a good site for them and the party started, traveling in five covered wagons and trailing some livestock. They had hoped to reach Bill Inman’s cabin by July 4 but missed their target date by one week. On July 13 the twenty-two colonists halted their wagons at their friend’s homestead.
Inman had built his cabin on the bank of the Elkhorn, a beautiful spot in the summer season when one could step across the stream anywhere. However, high water that spring had flooded the valley, forcing him to leave his house and live in a tent on higher ground. At the time of the Wisconsinites’ arrival he had just finished moving his cabin, log by log, to the higher level.
Forwarned, the McEvony colony went on to the site selected by H. H. in 1871 and pitched their tents on land safely above the high water mark. There they staked out adjoining homesteads and built cabins on Section 32, Township 29, Range 11, west of the Sixth Principle Meridian. McEvony, who had the best horses, undertook the task of hauling supplies from Wisner. And while the men of the party were busy building homes, sixteen-year-old Julia McEvony, with a pony team and a breaking plow, broke out a five acre patch of sod on the place selected for her uncle, Eli Sanford. For Mrs. McEvony, Mrs. Thompson and Mrs. Sanford were sisters whose maiden name had been Bitney, making the whole colonization project a family affair.
On his trips to the railhead for supplies McEvony extolled the virtues of the Elkhorn Valley, with the result that several other families, the Hox- sies, Mitchells, Wisegarvers, Thomp-sons, Simon Deal, James McFarling, Joe Kreiser, a Mr. Guther and the Palmer brothers moved to the Elkhorn later in the year.
Then, in the fall, came General John O’Neill. He stopped at the McEvony home and enjoyed a friendly visit. As a result he was offered the use of any of the McEvony driving or saddle horses he needed for exploring the country while looking for a location for his own colony, which was to come west the next spring. John O’Neill was born in Drum-gallon, Parish of Clontibret, County Monaghan, Ireland, on March 9, 1834, six weeks after the death of his father from the black plague. Shortly after- 4 ward the young widow left the baby with his paternal grandparents and, with her two older children, sailed to America and located in Elizabeth, New Jersey. John grew up in Ireland, where he became imbued with a deep sense of the injustices practiced by England in dealing with the Irish. In 1848, when fourteen years of age, John joined his mother in Virginia. At twenty-one he opened a Catholic bookstore in Richmond. Soon afterward he sold the store and joined a cavalry regiment, the First Dragoons. Sent to Utah in 1855 to help quell the Mormon Rebellion, he found a distinct lack of fighting and excitement, so deserted and made his way to California and joined the First Cavalry at the outbreak of the Civil War.
John O’Neill His valiant services in the Peninsular Campaign of June, 1862, led to his appointment to Second Lieutenant in the Fifth Indiana Cavalry. By April, 1863, he had been promoted to First Lieutenant. Wounded in the Battle of Cumberland Gap in December, he resigned early the next year, then, at his own request, was appointed captain of a company of colored infantry. Troubled by his old wound, he resigned again in November, 1864. That same month he married Miss Mary Crowe of San Francisco and took up residence in Nashville, Tennessee, where he worked as a government pension agent and amassed what was, at that time, considered quite a fortune.
Early in 1866 he became interested in a plan to invade Canada, so resigned his U. S. commission and joined the Fenians, an organization determined to change the Irish into a soldiery capable of resisting the British army. A vast number of Irishmen had become soldiers during the Civil War, fighting on both sides in that conflict. If all these trained men could be gathered to the aid of Ireland, she might win her independence from England, or so the Fenians thought. Consequently, some 35,000 troops were organized under General Thomas Sweeney O’Neill and, in May, 1866, stationed at points along the Canadian frontier from Lake Erie to Lake Champlain. The Buffalo area was under the command of General John O’Neill.
The invasion began on June 1 when O’Neill and his followers landed at the Valley of Waterloo. With four hundred men, General O’Neill met the British forces commanded by Colonel Booker at Ridge-way, Canada. O’Neill won the ensuing sharp battle, then followed the enemy to Limestone Ridge, seven miles away, to win a second battle. However, the main body of O’Neill’s forces never arrived, so he returned to the American side, where he and his men were captured by the U. S. gunboat Michigan. Following the dispersion of the Fenians after these skirmishes, O’Neill was appointed inspector general of the Irish Republican Army and, late in 1867, became president of the Brotherhood. He then prepared for a second attack on Canada. On May 25, 1870, he attempted a raid on Eacles Hill, Vermont, with but a small part of the Fenian organization behind him. When the Canadians opened fire his men fled and he was arrested by a United States marshal. Sentenced to two years in prison, he won a presidential pardon three months later. On October 15, 1871, he made his third and last attempt by seizing the Hudson’s Bay post at Pembina. Immediately arrested by U. S. troops, he was soon released.
Commenting on his campaign, General O’Neill said, in part, “The wealthy Irish . . . who had proclaimed on many a St. Patrick’s Day festival their willingness to spend their last dollar and shed their last drop of blood in the cause of Ireland’s liberation were found timid when their opportunity to do for their country came, and they withheld aid until the granting of it was too late.” While imprisoned in Burlington, Vermont, for his last attempt to “conquer Canada,” General O’Neill conceived the idea of establishing the Irish of the eastern mining cities on farms in the middle west. Appalled by the dire poverty and misery of the squalid mining centers, he longed to relieve the suffering of his country- men. In a letter written at that time he said, “I have always believed that the next best thing to giving the Irish people their freedom at home is to encourage such of them as came to this country either from choice or from necessity to take up lands and build homes in America.” Determined to carry out his plan as soon as possible, he spent most of the years of 1872 and 1873 traveling through Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Missouri and Nebraska. In the latter state he believed he had found what he was looking for. He then went east on a lecture tour.
In the meantime an attempt had been made to organize a county. By state law a county must have at least two hundred permanent residents, ten of them “freeholders,” or tax paying citizens, before it could be designated a “temporary” county and commissioners and a clerk appointed. In 1873 when Governor Robert Furnas was petitioned by certain parties (nowhere named) for county organization, there were probably not more than fifty people living in the territory. The petition, however, stated that the requirements had been met and the governor proclaimed the establishment of “Elkhorn” County and appointed three commissioners and a clerk.
County and school district bonds amounting to many thousands of dollars at six per cent interest were then issued and sold to eastern investors. (This type of fraud was perpetrated many times in the county organization period of the plains states, working severe hardship on the county residents, who had known nothing about the organization in the first place, but had to pay off the bonds while receiving no benefits from the transaction.) Other than to plunge the county deeply into debt, so far as is known no other business was accomplished and no elections were held.
By the spring of 1874 General O’Neill’s eastern lectures had born fruit and in early April his first colony set out for Nebraska. The general had helped his people prepare for the great homestead venture by distributing pamphlets setting forth the cash and other items needed. The following is his estimate for the first year in the new land: “Temporary house $50 to 75; Team of oxen 80 to 125; Breaking plow 24 to 30; Corn planter 2 to 3; other tools 10 to 15; Stove $24 to 30; Cooking utensils 10 to 20; Cheap furniture 20 to 30; Cash for expenses 50 to 100. Total 270 to 428.” The colony consisted of the following Irishmen: Neil Brennan, Patrick Hughes, Timothy O’Connor, Henry Cury, Thomas Connolly, Michael Mc-Grath, Thomas N. J. Hynes, Michael Dempsey, Thomas Kelly, Robert Als-worth, Ralph Sullivan, Patrick Brennan, Thomas Cain, Henry Carey and 5 On the Fourth of July of that same year everybody in the country gathered at Prouty’s for the first celebration of the nation’s birthday ever to be held in Holt County. Nothing was lacking, not even a flag and pole. The men of the settlement cut and hauled the tall pole to Prouty’s place and the women made the flag of cloth taken from bed quilts, clothing or any other cloth of the right colors, so that the flag of their country might float free and high above the festivities. There were many speeches, with Bruce Miner of Creighton as the Orator of the Day, a big picnic dinner and, of course, a ball game. (From an article written by J. T. Prouty and printed in the Nebraska Farmer in 1903.) Privileged to come walking into town while the big celebration was going on were two new settlers, John Grady and John Mayberry. Young Grady had set out from Galena, Illinois, in May to see for himself the splendid free homestead lands he’d been hearing about. Traveling by boat down the Mississippi to St. Louis, he there met Mayberry, who had the same objective. The two joined forces and took a boat up the Missouri to Sioux City, Iowa. There they boarded a government boat which took them on upriver to Fort Randall, and from there they had walked southwest until they reached the lively settlement on the Elkhorn— just in time to join in the celebration.
After looking the land over, Grady selected a homestead which included the land where O’Neill is now located. The southwest corner of the quarter section Mayberry chose became the central part of the present town of O’Neill, the Golden Hotel later being located on the very corner of the homestead. The two men then walked back across the country to Niobrara City, the nearest land office, to file on their claims, then on to Sioux City where each bought a team of oxen, wagon, breaking plow and a stove. The journey back to Holt City by ox team took eleven days.
John Mayberry, an experienced carpenter, set out to break a few acres of sod, but the grasshoppers were very bad that year. By the time he had made “a couple of rounds, following the oxen, hanging onto the plow handles and arguing with swarms of grasshoppers,” Mayberry had decided that his few hours of homestead life would satisfy him for a long time. He therefore let his claim go, disposed of his equipment, gathered up some carpenter tools and helped his friend, Grady, build a log house. He later helped build the town’s first Catholic church and numerous other buildings.
John Grady, after building his Patrick Karney. There were also two women and five children.
The party reached Omaha on April 29, transferred to the Omaha and North Western railroad for the ride to Blair, thirty miles north, where they boarded the Sioux City and Pacific railroad for the run to Fremont, then the Elkhorn Valley railroad north to Wisner, the end of track. From there they took the stage to Neligh, sixty miles on west, and “by any means available” from there on to Holt City, as the new town was first named. A civil engineer from Lincoln, Thomas J. Atwood, had already platted the town in the center of Section 30, Township 29, Range 11, where the first of the colonists arrived on May 12, 1874. Their first task was to provide immediate shelter for themselves and this was done by building a sod house thirty-six feet long by eighteen wide. As soon as the walls were up six of the men left for Red Bird Creek, site of the nearest timber, to cut timber for a roof for the big soddy. They took with them a wagon load of willow stakes to drive into the ground as they went, marking the trail so they could find their way back across the virgin prairie. Returning with sufficient poles, they soon had a sod and brush roof atop the walls. On May 19, one week after their arrival, the colony of thirteen men, two women and five children moved indoors, whereupon someone dubbed the structure the “Grand – Central Hotel.” By then J. T. Prouty, a member of the McEvony settlement, had established a sort of hotel at his place, a short distance east of the newly platted Holt City. To supply the needs of travelers and homesteaders, he had put in a stock of groceries and, once a week if he could, made the seventy mile round trip to Frenchtown to get the mail for his settlement. New settlers, arriving by covered wagon, oxcart or on foot, camped nearby; older settlers made frequent visits to see what was going on and to pick up their mail.
When James Ewing, at the forks of the Elkhorn, was granted a post office on January 22, 1874, Prouty’s trip was shortened by thirty miles. The county’s first post office was called Ford, after the first settler, for a short time, then changed to Ewing in honor of its postmaster. Prouty, however, wanted a post office of his own. His petition for same was granted on June 18 and he was appointed postmaster. To take his oath of office he, along with the community’s first Notary Public, had to travel forty miles to the nearest magistrate. The new post office was first named Rockford, but later became O’Neill. cabin, added further improvements to his claim, then went back to Galena in April, 1876, married and returned with his bride to his homestead, where he lived out his life. The Grady-Mayberry experience was typical. About half of the homesteaders stayed on their claims, about half gave them up for some other way of life. This was not surprising, for many, especially of the O’Neill colony, knew nothing of farming, having lived in crowded eastern cities for much of their lives. And even those who had farmed found Nebraska prairie farming very different from anything they had known before. In addition there were the aforementioned grasshoppers, pests that came in sun-dimming clouds, cleaning the land of all vegetation.
And there was so awfully much to be done, that first year or two on a homestead. The tough prairie sod had to be torn up, or “broken out,” before a crop could be planted. Homes had to be built, and shelter for livestock, and fuel gathered— all before the onslaught of the harsh Nebraska winter.
As for the O’Neill colonists, eager to move out of the “Grand Central” as soon as possible, they hurried to carve dugouts out of the ground, usually from the side of a hill or a bank. Four feet deep and probably ten by sixteen feet in size, they were covered over with brush and sod, then plastered with grass and mud. Although these primitive homes served very well for awhile they were, as rapidly as possible, replaced with aboveground sod or log homes. Logs for the first cabins in this community were cut on Eagle Creek by Patrick Hughs, Timothy O’Connor and M. H. McGrath, then hauled some eighteen miles to the town.
While his first colony was preparing for winter, General O’Neill went east again to recruit a second colony. He soon found that word of the many problems and difficulties facing his first settlers had already reached the mining cities and people there did not respond as they had the year before. To overcome this obstacle the general, in his addresses to groups of prospective settlers, quoted from a letter written him by Patrick Fahy on January 1, 1875. Fahy was a land agent who had pointed out the advantages of the Holt City townsite in 1873. For bringing settlers to the town O’Neill was to receive $600 and some lots in the village. The letter read: “The country for several miles around the town is now thickly settled, and my brother, James, who has just returned from there informs me that settlers are coming in rapidly, even at this season of the 6 year, and undoubtedly by next summer there will not be a claim untaken within eight miles of the town. When you return in the spring we will have the county organized, with O’Neill City as the County Seat, and there will be a large hotel and a number of business houses and other buildings put up in the town in the spring and summer. Lots will become valuable and command a ready sale.” The letter turned the trick and by April, 1875, the second colony was ready to move west. With his new settlers O’Neill reached Omaha, where Fahy met him and produced a copy of the official proclamation of 1873, organizing Antelope County. The new settlers soon discovered that fraud had figured in the organization of the county, and that bankers in the east were even then offering O’Neill City and Antelope County bonds for sale. The fact that the-General often wondered aloud how such a thing could have happened to Pat Fahy, titleholder to most of the city, without his (Fahy’s) knowledge, may be a clue as to who promoted the original organization and reaped the profits. But worse was to come! When the colonists reached O’Neill City they found no new buildings, no businesses and no thickly settled country- side. The only hotel was still the bleak sod “Grand Central.” A bitter disappointment to Easterners who had heard that O’Neill City had a Grand Central Hotel and arrived in the town expecting to be accommodated in a two- or three.storied building surrounded by a wide, shady porch furnished with rocking chairs. Of course John O’Neill soon began to be blamed for this sad state of affairs. Some thought he was a party to the fraud, or that he was working for the railroads, rather than for the settlers he was coaxing to the frontier. To protect himself, the General wrote to Fahy: “being satisfied that I could no longer depend on you for doing anything, and feeling heartily ashamed of not having a single house in O’Neill City, notwithstanding that there was a good settlement around it which was constantly increasing, and feeling that in justice to myself and my family, I no longer had any right to continue working and spending money in enhancing the value of your property, I joined Mr. Patrick Hagarty last July in locating a soldiers additional eighty (acres) as an addition to O’Neill City, which we intend building up as the principle part of the town.
“This of course was a bank movement which you did not expect, for you seemed to have acted all along as if I was at your mercy, and that I must continue to work and build up O’Neill City because my name happened to be connected with it. Well, I shall continue to work and do everything that I possibly can to build up O’Neill and Hagerty’s addition to O’Neill City, and I shall give every man who bought of me in O’Neill City a deed of an equal number of lots in this addition.” This letter, published in the Irish World, gave people renewed confidence in the General and his motives for settlement. At a meeting held in O’Neill on August 22, 1875, resolutions were approved, urging other Irish Americans to come to O’Neill where they would find “a splendid land, pure water and a healthy climate; where a welcome and a helping hand would be extended to all.” The resolution also extended to General O’Neill the colonists’ warmest thanks for his untiring zeal and self sacrifice on their behalf. A new problem soon arose. The McEvony settlement had been planning to organize into a village and entice a railroad to its doors. As the first settlement in the area, McEvony and his neighbors had first right to a town site, and any other group with a like ambition would be obligated to move several miles away to establish a town. But, since the General and his people had already platted a town and owned lots therein, they did not want to move. The dispute went on for some time, until, eventually, the O’Neill promoters were able to persuade the McEvony group that the General, by virtue of the numerous other colonies he planned to establish farther up the river, had a far better chance of bringing in a railroad than did McEvony’s small, struggling settlement. Well aware of the importance of a railroad (and the sooner the better), the matter was thus settled in a friendly manner and the town of O’Neill became a reality.
Finally, that October, John May-berry, under contract to Pat Fahy, built the town’s first frame building, a general merchandise store which Pat Mr. and Mrs. Elijah Thompson Hagerty immediately rented, and where, from the first, he did a thriving business. For by then, in addition to the flow of settlers in and through the valley, the gold rush to the Black Hills was beginning. And O’Neill, being the last place on the trail north where gold seekers could buy provisions, resulted in such a volume of business that Hagerty employed from ten to twenty clerks and his profits were said to amount to a thousand dollars a day.
By spring, with everybody telling how easy it was to get rich in the gold mines, many O’Neillites were thinking seriously of heading for the mines themselves. To counteract this trend, General O’Neill earnestly advised his colonists to first put in a crop— which could be done in three weeks time and then, if they must, leave for the gold fields. By fall, he said, if they had not had a good season in the mines they would have their claims and crops to fall back on. “I believe,” the General urged, “that the men who will raise produce to sell to the miners, and get the highest prices for it, will make more gold in the end than those who dig for it in the Hills; and the land which can be had for nothing today will be very valuable in a few years.” As it turned out, many were destined to be disappointed on both counts, that summer of 1876. The mines left thousands poorer than when they arrived, and the hoped for produce in the fields along the Elk-horn did not materialize. For the grasshoppers came again— and left devastation in their path. The flights were so heavy that they sounded like thunder in the air, and when they alighted they were inches deep on the ground.
John J. McCafferty told of visiting Mrs. Pat Murray on the edge of O’Neill one day. Mrs. Murray baked bread and did washing for the colony’s bachelors, of whom McCaf-ferty was one. As he came to her home he noticed a field of corn on 7 “second breaking (second year) of the most luxurient growth” he had ever seen. A few minutes after he went inside everything became dark. They rushed outside and found themselves ankle-deep in a crawling mess of insects. Across the road the “beautiful and healthy field of corn” had disappeared. Not a vestage of it left. That one flight was nearly two miles wide and lasted for two days. Crop losses amounted to over fifty percent.
The old cabin was still standing when, many years later, a storm felled a tree across it, leaving the wreck above.
The problem of county organization arose again that year, and on June 29 Governor Silas Garber issued a proclamation organizing Holt County— named in honor of Joseph Holt of Kentucky, a former Postmaster General and Secretary of War— and appointing Elijah Thompson, J. B. Berry and James Ewing special county commissioners and W. . H: Inman special county clerk. Twin “Lasser” Lakes in T 28 N, R 11 W, at the home of H. W. Haines was designated the temporary county seat. Holt County at this time extended all the way north to the state line and west to Wyoming.
First courthouse in Holt County. An attempt was made to effect a permanent organization and hold an election on August 26. The election did take place but the special commissioners, “on account of numerous difficulties connected with the canvassing of the vote, declined to admit the validity of the election.” (History of Nebraska, Holt County, p. 984) At a meeting of the county board on October 28, 1876, in the absence of W. H. Inman, J. T. Prouty of Ford was appointed special clerk. The business of the day was the preparation of a notice of election, to be held to vote on county and precinct officers and the location of the county seat. This election took place on December 27. According to John Prouty (Nebraska Farmer, 1923) it resulted in a general mix-up of affairs, insomuch as there were four county clerks, each claiming to be the legal official. After some delay Judge Valentine came from West Point, southeastward in Cuming County, to examine the records. He declared one set legal and the others invalid, thus settling the affair without litigation. (Another account declares the election was illegal because the “clerk skipped out with the election returns.”) The sheriff and his deputies were then dispatched to collect the taxes, ending up in a general fracas in which several bullets struck the wagon (of the tax collectors) but there were no injuries. Such incidents, explained Mr. Prouty, were common to the entire western sections of Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas during their settlement period. In all new counties, especially the large ones, the location of the county seat was of primary importance and all the people took great interest. At the special election in December Paddock won the coveted distinction by the required three-fifths majority. This outcome is hard to understand; for Paddock was a small new settlement on the south bank of the Niobrara on the far north edge of the county. To reach it, O’Neill settlers had to travel thirty miles, and the Ewing people fifty. Of a certainty it set the stage for a controversy that raged in the county for many years.
On January 2, 1877, the commissioners met with a canvassing board and “made a complete abstract of the returns of the election.” The result confirmed the location of the county seat at Paddock and the election of the following officers: For commissioner of Ford Precinct, James Ewing; of Paddock Precinct, Harry Spindler; of Center (O’Neill) Precinct, H. W. Haynes; Judge, John Cronin; Clerk, J. T. Prouty; Treasurer, J. L. Smith; Sheriff, Thomas Berry. On January 9 the above election was certified. Holt County government was finally off and working.
The first meeting of the new officers was held in Paddock on February 6. This meant a long trip for the officials from Ford and Center, and one that was especially hazardous in the winter time. Among other business transacted was that of setting the price of a license to sell intoxicating liquor in the county at $35.00 a year, and that of a license for ferrage across any stream in the county at $25.00 for five years.
At the April 17 meeting the commissioners approved a motion to add fifty per cent to all “assessments to which the parties refuse to list money or property” on hand. On July 2 the board set the county revenue tax at six mills on the dollar and granted a license to John B. Drew to ferry the Niobrara between the east line of Range 14 to the west line of Range 15, with the fee for a single team of horses or oxen and a wagon set at two dollars. Each extra animal would cost twenty-five cents, a saddle horse and rider, fifty cents; each person other than the driver, ten cents. On September 8 the clerk was authorized to write a letter to Hon. E. K. Valentine, District Judge, requesting him to hold a term of district court at Paddock. October 2 the commissioners attended to the formation of a new precinct, Keyapaha, west of Range 12 and north of Township 29, the place of election to be Keyapaha, a new settlement on the Turtle Hill Creek, a tributary to the Niobrara coming in from the north.* On October 17 the minutes show the formation of another new precinct, that of Steel Creek, with elections to be held at the house of John Clark on Louse Creek, in the northeast corner of the county.
From the above it will be seen that the business of the new county kept its officers on the road a great deal. All other residents of the county, too, J. T. Prouty house at Paddock. The Holt County records were kept In some part of this building from 1876 to 1879. This 1964 picture by courtesy of Clay Johnson.
The Indion word, Keyapaha, means turtle hill. 8 had to make the long trip to pay their taxes at least once a year.
While all this was going on, General O’Neill was again in the east, gathering new settlers for his western Eldorado. In the spring of 1877 he had returned to Nebraska with his fourth and last colony, a group of seventy-one men, “a few of them having families.”* This colony was established at Atkinson, on land owned by Frank Bitney who had recently moved from O’Neill to the new location, twenty miles to the northwest. There he opened a general mercantile store, established a post office and, the following year, platted a town site.
The General settled his colony on a site of his own choosing, about a mile from the Bitney store. When the Sioux City and Pacific railroad came through in 1881, missing his town by that distance, his people moved their buildings over to Bitney’s town. Andres History of Nebraska, p. 987, states that the post office was established (by Bitney) in 1876, with John Carberry as postmaster, but nowhere is the name of that early post office mentioned. That it was not “Atkinson” at the time, the following account shows: By 1880 O’Neill’s fourth colony had become a thriving city, as attested by an enthusiastic feature written and published by the editor of the O’Neill Frontier, W. D. Mathews, who had established his paper in that city less than two months earlier. In company with “Doc” Daggett and Gus Hagen- stein, Mathews made the twenty-mile trip on a pleasant September day. On the way they visited Webster and Lovell’s new ranch on Holt Creek in the sandhills, “one of the grandest sections of country for stock raising in this country of countries.” From the ranch they drove on to Lost Lake, “a pretty body of water, alive with geese, ducks, cranes and several beautiful swans.” By supper time the party had arrived at Atkinson, where the men enjoyed a bountiful meal in the home of the Bitney’s. “The evening was devoted to business (securing ads from Atkinson businessmen for his paper) and pleasure,” wrote the editor. The pleasure consisted mainly of participating in one of Sheriff Sagendorf’s “way up” frontier dances, “which tire as well as rest the physical man. The night was spent in Wheeler’s haymow, which proved a good place to rest, as old Morpheus performed his duty as satisfactorily as though we were responding on downy beds of ease. Early dawn found us up for a view of the town, and while we are writing we will give our readers an idea of what Atkinson is and will be in the future.
“The first to think of founding a town at this point was General John O’Neill, . . . The General was disappointed in money matters and for a time failed, but finally interested Colonel John Atkinson of Detroit, Michigan, in his scheme and the town was laid out and named in honor of the Colonel. Its natural location on the lovely Elkhorn is magnificent and is situated so far from O’Neill that there will never be any conflict between the two places. In all probability when the county of Holt is divided, which it will be someday, as it is altogether too large, being composed of as much territory as four ordinary counties, Atkinson will be made a county seat. The town is surrounded by a splendid farming country and is destined to become one of the best inland towns in the west.” In the above statement is noted the possibility of dividing the big county and of making Atkinson the county seat, thus satisfying the residents of that area, who also objected bitterly to the long drive to Paddock. At the same time the residents of O’Neill community were taking some steps to move the county seat to that place. All through 1878 the two camps built up their cause— one to change the location of the county seat to O’Neill, the other to divide the county and make Atkinson the county seat of the west half. Notwithstanding all the agitation, no change came about until May 12, 1879, when a special election was called for the purpose of voting on the county seat. The total vote polled was 391, with O’Neill receiving 279 votes, enough to take the seat of government away from Paddock.
On August 31, 1879, Sanford Parker, clerk, hauled the county records and safe from Paddock to O’Neill in a The home General O’Neill built for his family on East Clay Street between Fifth and Sixth Streets, just before it was moved to the southwest part of O’Neill in 1955. It is still standing, and occupied. Clay Johnson collection. wagon. “There,” he said, “I found no building or room provided to deposit said records.” The “safe” here referred to was a board from the ceiling of the official’s house. He had cleverly cut out a thin section of the wood and hollowed out the interior of the board. Money or valuable papers could be placed into the hollow and the top section replaced. When fitted back into the ceiling no one would have guessed the board’s purpose. This unique safe is now in the possession of the State Historical Society in Lincoln.
On August 4 the first county board meeting was held in a “two by four” room on Lot 26, Block 15, in the new county seat. From then on, for the next six years, the records were “on wheels,” being moved from the two by four room to the upper floor of B. J. Capwell’s store in Block 22, to the Brennan building in Block 24, to another Brennan building in Block 16, and then to the upper floor of the State Bank building on the corner of Fourth and Douglas, where at last they came to rest until the present courthouse was built on the northwest corner of Block 10 in 1885.
By the end of the 1870’s Holt County was solidly established in the western tier of Nebraska counties and its future looked bright. The devastating grasshopper flights had ceased; rainfall was fairly abundant; settlement was increasing with every passing month; railroads were pushing northwestward toward the new county; O’Neill, Atkinson, Ewing and Paddock were thriving towns. Several other embryo towns and numerous post offices were scattered across the prairie within the county’s boundaries, but General O’Neill was not there to see what he had helped to bring about. .
In the beginning the General’s dream had been a grand one— to “General O’Neill had settled his third group of colonists in O’Neill City sometime in late April or early May. This group consisted of one hundred and two men, women and children. The town was well under way by then, with a number of buildings completed and business flourishing. 9 “second the mo: ever sei went in: They rut selves c of inse “beauti had dis left. Th.
miles v Crop l< percent establish no less than one hundred colonies in Nebraska, stretching across most of the state all the way to the Black Hills. On these “salubrious” prairies he would settle the downtrodden, oppressed peoples from the crowded warrens of the East and give them the opportunity to be free. And he might have done it had he lived. Already, in barely four years, he had set up a colony in Greeley county to the south as well as the three in Holt county. In the fall of 1877 he had taken to the road again, to seek out and induce still more settlers to come to Nebraska. After giving a lecture in Little Rock, Arkansas, he contracted a cold which greatly aggravated the asthma from which he had suffered for years.
Heading home to the little white house he had built for his family in O’Neill some three years earlier, he suffered a slight stroke the first night The man tree abo’ Th.
arose Gove prod— n.
Kent eral appe Bern com spec Lake of f tem this to Wy Following the introductory chapter on the history of Holt County it seems best to bring in several chapters on events which have affected the entire county, and with the histories of some of its most interesting and prominent people. Hereafter, when these events and people are mentioned in the family histories which make up the body of this book the reader will better understand the reference. The one event mentioned most often by the early settlers of Holt County was the blizzard of ’88. The awesome severity of elemental nature on a rampage seems to have left its mark on the people of the Nebraska frontier in a special way. Countless articles and books have been written about the great storm. A blizzard of ’88 society has carried on for years, its members meeting to relive its frightful hours and to reiterate their declaration that “There has never been another storm like it.” Plains country people who lived through the “blizzard of ’49” may disagree, but of the fast decreasing remnant of those who were alive that January of 1888, eighty-seven years ago, there is no question as to which was the worst blizzard of all time. The fact that the morning of January 12, 1888, dawned unusually mild and sunny for that time of year, and that it was a school day, Friday, multiplied the terror and tragedy of the great storm. Not only did the chil-after his return. The next day his wife took him to St. Joseph’s hospital in Omaha. There, on January 8, he died. He was laid to rest in Holy Sepulcher cemetery, overlooking the city of Omaha, where, several years later, a square column of granite fifteen feet tall was erected to his memory by admiring countrymen.
General John O’Neill had been a well-to-do man when he quit his government position to aid his people in their fight for freedom in Canada. Stripped of his wealth, he had then devoted his life to succoring poor Irishmen and settling them on Nebraska’s plains. In carrying out his dream he had, himself, remained a poor man. In memory of his generous spirit the open hand that ornaments one face of the monument was well merited. On another face is chiseled an Irish harp, and on the third stars and the American eagle, entertwined
← Foreword | Table of Contents | Chapter 2: The Blizzard Of 88 →