← Before Today: A History of Holt County, Nebraska
Plows and Cows Chapter Eleven the rear end and two wooden shanks pointing down, with an iron shovel on the tip of each shank. You hitched an ox or a horse to the front end of the beam and started through the field. It took a full round, or twice through the field, to clear the weeds from between two rows of corn. If one of the shovels hit an obstruction, such as an extra tough root, the plow handles had the unfriendly habit of hopping up and gouging a man in the pit of the stomach or cracking some of his ribs. That machine was said to have been the best ever for enlarging a fellow’s profane vocabulary.
“In due time some smart man made a plow with a double share and moldboard— first lister. This put the corn down deep enough to get the roots to moisture. There was a small one-row drill made to hook to the back of the lister. Father got one of the first two that came into this country. His corn did so much better than the surface planted corn on each side of it that neighbor William Berry got a lister the next spring. Its one drawback was that the ground was so much colder at that depth that it caused slow germination of the seed. Berry solved that by unhooking the drill and listing the ground, then drilling the corn in the listed furrows a few days later.
“The old hop-jack wouldn’t work worth a cent on those listed ridges, so that called for another invention— a hog trough with both ends knocked out and knives sticking out from both sides. We hitched a team to that contraption and pulled it down the rows, bottom side up. It did a pretty good job of cutting weeds off the 87 ridges and rattling some loose dirt down around the corn. Next came the light, two-wheeled cultivator with hinged beams that straddled the corn rows and leveled the ground.” The virgin sod was first broken with a “breaking” plow which differed from a “stirring” or regular plow by having a longer moldboard with less curve, so that the sod was turned without breaking it as a stirring plow would do. Vegetables as well as corn were planted in the furrows made by the plow. The next ribbon of sod fell into the trough left by the over-turning of the last one, covering the seed that had just been planted. Potatoes, planted this way, grew wide and flat under the weight of the sod.
The following year the first plowing was “back-set.” That is, the breaking plow was set a little deeper and the sod turned right side up again. By the next year the grass was dead and the sod well “rotted,” after which the stirring plow could be used to make a fine, viable seed bed.
“Check-row” listers came next and corn rows were planted four feet apart. The field was first marked off cross wise. Then one man sat on the machine’s high seat and drove the team down the rows while a second person, usually a boy or girl, sat on the low seat between the seed boxes and pulled a lever every time the lister passed a row marker. This machine was soon improved so that a long wire with knots at regular intervals was staked down across the field. The wire ran through an attachment on the planter and each knot on the wire tripped a lever on the bottom of the seed boxes, depositing a kernel of corn in the ground. At the end of each row the wire was moved over to the next row.
“Go-devils” were the next step in the evolution of cultivators. This machine weeded two rows of corn at a time. After the corn grew too tall for the cultivator, weeds still grew in the spaces between the wide-apart rows. At this point the kids in the family had to go through the field with hoes, cutting out cockleburrs, sandburrs and milkweeds.
Corn, of course, was picked, or shucked, by hand, a slow, laborous method of harvesting the crop. Most pickers worked from daylight till dark in the fields. The teams, however, were fed and harnessed by lantern light and the pickers had breakfasted by the time it was light enough to see the ears on the stalks. From then on the ears played a steady tune on the high “bang boards” fastened to the top of the off side of the double wagon box. A quiet team of horses pulled the wagon through the fields, moving ahead a few steps when the Well stacked cribs of corn. George Davies, Inman banker, comparing two big ears of corn. Picture taken in Dec. 1913. picker yelled “Giddap,” stopping when he called “Whoa.” At dark the pickers pulled into the farm yard to unload into the corn cribs, then again to feed and care for their teams by lantern light and eat their own suppers. Good corn shuckers could make as much as $1.50 per day. Some corn shelling and grinding was done with horse powered machines, the rest was processed through small hand-operated affairs. Many a farm boy and girl had to turn the big fly-wheel on the side of the family shelter as a part of the evening chores— shelling enough to feed the milk cows and chickens and to make a batch of mush for supper. Pigs and horses shelled their own corn. The earliest settlers broadcast their wheat and other small grains by hand onto the prepared fields. Later there were small horse-drawn drills for the purpose. These grains did not require cultivation but harvesting them was a mammoth job. Wheat was usually cut in July and stacked or shocked to finish ripening or “curing.” The grain was cut with some type of binder or “reaper,” pulled by horses.
Threshing usually began in September or October. The first machines were horse powered, of course. A bull gear or pinion gear attached to a cylinder transferred the power to the big “separator”. Six teams, hitched to Grain stacks on the Donohoe Farm, Holt County, Nebraska. sweeps, walked in a circle, turning the cylinder. A man standing on a platform above it kept the horses moving. A long tumbling rod, barely clearing the ground, connected the cylinder to the separator. Each time around the horses had to step over the turning rod, which soon became known as the “stumbling” rod.
It took a hefty crew to feed one of those old time threshing machines. Jim Beck was probably the best known thresherman in the wheat area of Holt County. Neighbors exchanged work, threshing turn and turn about. Each man brought his team and a hayrack or wagon. Out in the fields two men pitched bundles from the shocks onto each rack. As the load grew higher the pitchfork handles seemed to get shorter and shorter. With full racks the men drove to the separator and lined up for their turn at the unloading platform, where three men stood to handle the bundles.
As the bundle men tossed the sheaves to the platform two men caught them and cut the twine that bound them, then passed them to the third man, the “feeder,” who fed the stalks evenly into the gaping maw of the thundering machine. Inside the separator a revolving drum turned against a solid wall, rubbing and vibrating the grain from the straw. 88 The heavier wheat kernels dropped down and poured out a spout on the side of the machine into the grain wagons; the straw whirled on out the back end of the separator to grow into a huge golden stack, used in winter as shelter and bedding for livestock. As each wagon was filled it was driven away” to be unloaded into the granary and another wagon took its place. There was neither wasted time nor motion as long as the horses walked and the machine rumbled its way through the harvest.
Threshing time involved the whole family. As many as twenty-two men made up the crew, and the farmer whose grain was being threshed was expected to board and room the separator men (usually two or three) and feed the whole crew of neighbors who came to help. This meant that the farmer’s women folk had their work cut out for them, too. It meant that everyone got up early, like 4:30 in the morning,* to get the cows milked and the chores done by the time Jim Beck had his machine oiled and ready and the first bundle racks pulled in with their loads. By 6:30 breakfast was over, the dishes and separator washed, and Mother was making pies while Cora and Delia cleaned at least eight fryers and Ralph and Laura rigged up a bench outside to hold a pail of water, wash basins, soap and towels.
While the chickens cooled in tubs of water the girls peeled potatoes and snapped beans. When the smell of the cooking food had drawn all the flies on the farm into the kitchen, Mother and all the children grabbed towels and took up positions around the kitchen. At a signal they all converged on the outside door, flapping and shooing as they went. At the right moment Laura opened the screen door and the cloud of flies poured out, leaving the kitchen reasonably free of the pests while the crew ate dinner.
Before the turn of the century huge Taken from the Calvin Allyn family history. steam tractors came into use, making numerous changes in the threshing business. Jim Beck bought a steamer and, altogether, threshed for his neighbors for more than thirty-five years. A Mr. Smooker was another custom thresher. He went up and down the Elkhorn with his outfit for many years. Another man bought a new tractor and separator and headed for South Dakota, where there were huge wheat fields. But when he drove onto the Missouri River ferry he failed to get his outfit stopped in time and drove right on off the other end of it. “I presume that new rig is at the bottom of the river yet,” said C. W. Beck, son of old Jim Beck.
About 1925 Cal Allyn, Henry Fuel-berth and Tom Berry (son of William Berry) bought a threshing machine and a huge Titon tractor to power it. With this outfit they took over some of Jim Beck’s territory. Eight men could haul grain to these smaller machines, which threshed it faster than the old horse powers. “Setting up” the old machines had taken a day or more, the new outfits could be moved and ready to go in a much shorter time. Although their advantages were many, the steamers brought one serious hazard into the wheat fields— sparks from the coal, wood, cobs or straw they burned were apt to start fires. As a precautionary measure a cable was usually laid from the front of the steamer to the separator so that, in case of fire, the belt could be thrown and the outfit pulled away from the burning straw stack.
Charles Siders and Earnest Henery bought a steam outfit together. As theirs was the only rig for thirty miles around they started their season as soon as the grain had been cut and shocked. They threshed away from home all week and came home after supper on Saturday nights, and kept this up until late in the fall. As soon as Charles’ son Ray was old enough to drive a team, and strong enough to pump water from a tank or creek, he took over the water wagon, hauling many a tank of water to fill the always thirsty steamer.
As Ray grew older he graduated to separator man, caring for and oiling the machine. Whistles on those old steam engines had a language all their own: one long blast meant they were finished at one place and moving on to the next job; there was a warning call to the water wagon driver to hurry it up, as water was needed at once; and to the hauler unloading at the granary to shovel faster and get his wagon back to the machine; and a dinner signal that made the cooks hurry up the meal. Each steamer engineer tried to be the first to sound his whistle in the morning, when the plaintive sounds of the different engines in a community echoed from hill to hill, alerting the farmer families to get lined up for another long day.
Other early operators of steam Gene Hubbard’s horse power threshing outfit of the early 1880’s. This machine worked the Chambers area. Courtesy E. M. Jarman.
89 outfits were John Erwin, Logue Stevens, Al Summers and Andy Falk and Sons, all of the Page area. Up on the Blackbird in the early days Andrew Johnson ran one of the old hand fed machines for his neighborhood. In 1901 he caught an arm in the whirling cylinder of the separator, where most of it was torn to shreds below the elbow. There were no hospitals and no cars but his son-in-law, John Robertson, (later Senator from that district) who was one of the crew immediately hitched up a team and rushed the injured man to Dr.
Trueblood in O’Neill, twelve miles away.
With his crude instruments the doctor went to work, sawed off the bone and dressed the arm, all without anesthesia, while Robertson held the struggling patient down. The operation was successful and the loss of the arm was later only a minor handicap to Johnson.
Combines soon followed the two- piece outfits onto the scene, cutting and threshing the grain in one operation. Big trucks hauled the cleaned wheat away from the field, and two or three men could do the job formerly done by twenty-two, and in far less time.
In this splendid grass country hay soon came to be one of the major crops. James Deming leaves an interesting account of early haying machinery. The earliest settlers put up the hay with a scythe and hand rake. Then came the first horse powered mowers— but a machine that could cut a four and one-half foot swath was far ahead of a whole crew of hand rakers. “That,” said Mr. Deming, “called for more inventing. Our first improved rake was a small log, ten or twelve feet long, with holes bored along one side. We drove foot-long stakes, sharpened on the outer end, into the holes, then tied a rope to each end of the log and hitched a horse to each rope. The horses were tied together and the driver walked behind.
“When the rake had picked up all the hay it would hold we lifted the log a little. This made the stakes, or teeth, catch in the ground and flip the rake over, leaving a windrow of hay. Then we flipped the log back and raked another windrow. With the rake we could push the windrows, a load at a time, to the stack. Someone soon invented a horsedrawn rake with a seat for the driver and a handle to dump the hay. It raked an eight-foot swath but we still stacked the hay by hand. We used to build two or three hay stacks close together and plow a fireguard around them.
“my father got one of the first two mowers that came to these parts. It Ed Graham with threshing machine and crew at O’Neill in 1910. Courtesy Jerry Graham.
was painted a tan color. One fall he left it standing in some tall grass along the edge of a swale where he had been mowing. Later on, when he was riding around looking after the cattle, he thought he saw a deer lying in some tall grass. He hurried home, loaded his old musket with buckshot and rode back, getting as close to the deer as he could. He aimed the musket and fired. It sounded like the shot struck metal and the object stayed motionless. He thought a bit, then stood up and took a good look— he had shot his own mowing machine.” The Richard Moon family worked as a unit to put up their hay. Each member harnassed his or her team and hooked it up, and each had a special job to do. Rose Mary did the raking. Sometimes her rake stirred up a bumble bees’ nest— and then she’d have to steer her team into a haystack to stop the runaway.
Before all the land was homesteaded, and afterward too, when many settlers had given up and abandoned their “hay bottoms,” it was an established custom that the first man to mow a swath around a patch of hay could claim it for his own. Each man thus marked the hay nearest to him and the other settlers respected his “label.” Hay stackers soon came into use, further cutting the time and labor Good picture of separator, bundle rack and grain wagon beside huge straw stack. Courtesy George Albrecht.
needed to put up hay. A man on a sweeprake brought loads of hay from the windrows and put them on the stacker teeth. A team of horses, hitched to the stacker rope, raised the load by means of a block and tackle and deposited it on the stack behind the stacker. A young boy or girl usually drove the stacker team, and most of them became skilled at stopping the team at exactly the right moment— so the hay neither overshot the stack nor fell inside the stacker.
A man or two on the stack built it into a square, solid shape and “topped it out” so that it would shed rain and snow. Before the advent of stackers many farmers hauled their hay home and stacked it by hand in long ricks beside their barns, then laid ropes over the ricks and fastened squares of sod to their ends to weight them down and keep the tops from blowing off the stacks.
After the coming of railroads Holt County’s fine hay began to be in demand by feeders and horsemen as far away as Iowa and Chicago.
Although much loose hay was packed into boxcars for shipment, baled hay loaded much better and brought a higher price. The first balers were horse powered, of course, and operated on the same principle as the threshing machines, except that one team could power a baler.
90 The farm wife often packed dinner into the buggy and took it to the hay field for the crew. Left to right: Elmer and Clara Krueger, Clyde Hall, Leon Tompkins. August Krueger, the old man who wandered away on a cold night, standing. His story is told in the chapter on telephones. Those early balers had a chamber and an opening into which the hay was fed. A cam on a long heavy plunger pushed the hay into the chamber and compressed it into bales. Before starting the machine the crew removed the baler wheels and staked it solidly to the ground. A dry track was a must for the circling team and in wet weather it had to be “bedded” with old hay to keep the horses out of the mud.
Walter Sire remembers the names of four popular makes of balers: the Lightning, the O.K., the Auto Feed-An, and the Admiral. The last two had automatic feeder attachments. The other two were fed with “a short-tine pitchfork and your foot.” Feeding either of these machines took “timing, agility and coordination.” If you saw a man on crutches, or limping badly, your first guess was that he’d caught his foot in the baler. When a man’s foot was caught most teams could be stopped immediately unless they were crossing the “stumbling rod.” As it was, the town cobbler was kept busy replacing shoe heels taken off in the baler.
The Auto Feed-An was often called the “oughta be damned,” as it was slow and could not take a large feed of hay. The Admiral was the best of the lot as it made three strokes to every round of the horses while the others made only two. Many town residents made their living by custom baling. Three men and two teams could bale from ten to fourteen tons of hay a day.
Putting up extra hay on the shares was a means of earning a little extra cash, though it meant hard work in winter as well as summer; for the hay had to be baled and hauled after the meadows froze solid. Robert Zink describes the hauling. Hay from his area was taken to Stuart on big baled hay racks, carrying four tons and pulled by six horses. “Sitting on top of a load of hay for the three-hour trip on a cold winter day was as cold a job as you could imagine, and a good way to freeze some fingers and toes. We generally hauled with two wagons. We each had big horsehide overcoats and horsehide mittens over Baling hay for E. Sire with a muie powered baler about 1914.
cottonflannel, and beaver caps— and still we couldn’t keep warm.
“Coming home was better because we could let the horses trot while we ran along beside them, but going in we had to ride the load and hold the horses to a slow pace over the chuck holes to keep from breaking the 0 A ranch sized hay crew.
wagon reach or, worse yet, upsetting. This happened to Fred once on the main street and he piled his load on the sidewalk in front of Chitticks’ Drug Store. It was lucky he hit the ground on his feet and running or he would have been under the bales, which could have been fatal.
“I liked to unload in the immense hay barns that were then in Stuart. It was warmer in there and I had extra help, especially when the bales went clear to the top of the barn. I hated to unload directly into the boxcars on the siding. That was the coldest place in town and a fellow could break his back putting bales in the top tier. You couldn’t toss them up there with your leg, but had to lift them (80 pounds) up over your head and slide them in just right.” During the years from 1909 to 1916 Leon Tompkins and George Keefer shipped a great deal of hay to Omaha, Lincoln, Des Moines, Chicago and Surprise, the last a little town in Butler County. The hay was carred at Inman and Stafford. Prairie hay sold from $4.50 to $15.50 a ton, baled and delivered to the car. The price depended on the quality of the hay and the size of the hay crop. Tom Hartington baled for them for $1.10 per ton and his wife cooked for the crew. Men who worked on the baler those long, cold winter days drew a dollar a day.
The following story told by Matt Beha illustrates the rigors experienced by hay haulers in the early years of this century. William Beha, Matt’s father, ran the Evans hotel in O’Neill in 1910 when a severe snow storm struck one night. Two traveling men took refuge from the storm there and were given a room upstairs. The hotel was heated by a big “pot-bellied” stove in the lobby and the upper rooms by means of small ventilators 91 McKim and Hardigan Hay Balers, Inman, 1910. The baler is an Auto Feed-An. horse power. The crew, left to right: Tom Hartigan, Jack and Bill McKim. Clay Johnson collection.
in the ceiling of the lobby.
About two o’clock that morning a group of hay haulers from around Chambers stumbled into the hotel, covered with snow and ice and almost frozen. They were huddling around the stove when the chilly Unloading hay into cars at Burlington depot, O’Neill. Courtesy Clay Johnson. side up, when George ran up, grabbed the back of the rack on the high side and lifted with all his might. Over it went, rack, hay, old Bill and all.
“By Jalivan, Yawtch, this is a bad place, all right,” the miller sputtered chopped, cooked and mixed into many varieties of choice and expensive feeds. Even where the cattlemen still put up their own hay and feed it to their own cattle, it is all done differently. “It used to be that all the hay was pitched onto a rack, hauled out to the cattle and pitched off,” said Mark Hendricks. “Now I never touch a pitchfork. The work is all done by a tractor and loader with a grapple fork.” Another crop that, for a brief period, held forth great promise was chicory. The business flourished for only three years, 1893-1895, but it meant a great deal to the O’Neill area while it lasted.
Connie Bazelman Hollenbeck relates that her great-grandparents, Gabriel and Philomena Bazelman, immigrants from Belgium and Holland who came to a homestead north of Atkinson in 1882, were partially responsible for the short lived chicory industry. After six years in her sod hut on the prairie Philomena was disillusioned with life in America. As she labored over her washboard she was heard to mutter, “This was supposed to be a land of milk and honey, but I still have dirt floors and raw knuckles, just like in the old country.” Philomena was determined to try something besides dry farming and her husband thought of chicory, a crop he had known about in Belgium. There the root of the beet-like plant was dried, granulated and used as a beverage. Coffee was high priced in the eighties and nineties and few settlers could afford it. The Bazelmans traveling men, awakened by the commotion, got up and came down to see what was going on. “My Gosh,” one of them exclaimed as he gazed at the frosted men, “what rooms did you have?” Among the many Holt County men who worked in the hay was George Spindler. George’s boss was Bill Noll- kamper of the Eagle Mill, who put him to hauling hay from the big sandhill meadow to the north. George came to grief several times by upsetting his load on the steeply sidling Eagle Hill. One day old Bill said, “By jalivan, Yawtch, seems like you’re always upsettin’. That ain’t such a bad place. I think I could drive over it without upsettin’.” George took him up on the offer and the miller was waiting on the hill when he came with his next load. They traded places and George followed on foot behind the wagon as old Bill started slowly and cautiously along the sidling place, keeping himself on the high side of the load to help balance it. He was almost across the bad place, with his load still right as he crawled out from under the hay. Great quantities of hay are still baled in Holt County, with high speed automatic balers, and shipped coast to coast. But new kinds of machinery also do all sorts of strange things to native hay and alfalfa. It is shredded, Seventy ton stack of bales on the Frederick ranch 1912. Courtesy of Bessie Hudson. southwest of Atkinson, about moved to O’Neill and, in partnership with G. C. Hazelet and Robert R. Dickson built a three-storied mill at a cost of about $15,000. The factory stood on the north side of the F.E. & M.V. railroad tracks a little way west of town. (Three of the old beet dump pits are still visible at the site.) 92 O’Neill Chicory factory. Clay Johnson collection. The factory was put into use in October, the first successful chicory business in the state, and water to operate it was taken from a millrace on the Elkhorn River. Hurley Jones, who lived just east of the plant, wrote that it turned out three products: the all chicory beverage, a coffee-chicory blend and a plug to chew. The nearby farmers raised the beets, hand dug them and hauled them to the factory where they were processed.
Cleanliness was not emphasized and broken windows in the upper stories gave birds free access to the hoppers full of beets. Their droppings, and those of mice and rats, were processed along with the chicory. The dry years of the nineties held down production of the crop, a sharp drop in the price of coffee added to the factory’s troubles. By 1897 farmers were no longer raising enough chicory to keep the plant going. Dewey C. Schaffer *Yost, Call of the d _ **lbid. the Range, p. 335.
However, the chicory business had been a life saver to the people of O’Neill. In addition to the cash earned by the farmers in years when corn and hay were worth almost nothing, the factory had paid $8,000 to $12,000 a year for labor in the plant. Ranching has always been important to Holt County. Many years ago a speaker at an early Nebraska Stock Growers convention stated that, “Early Nebraska settlers farmed and starved and many left the country. Those who stayed prayed the Lord to tell them what to do and He told them to raise grass. Since that time the country has prospered and grown wealthy.”* .
Dewey Schaffer, a firm believer in that statement, kept all his Holt County ranchland in gras. Born in 1898 and raised near Syracuse, Nebraska, Mr. Schaffer tried many things before becoming a rancher. He cow- boyed in Texas, fitted pipe in Kansas City and worked in the Omaha stock- yards. Then he married and settled in O’Neill in 1923. Leasing at first, he was finally able to buy the ranch. By 1952 he was president of the Nebraska Stock Growers Association, the most “easterly” of any of its long line of presidents.
In March, 1953, Dewey Schaffer was appointed to an eighteen man committee of cattle industry leaders to meet with Secretary of Agriculture Benson in Washington to discuss a program to halt skidding cattle prices and oppose any kind of a government subsidy or support on beef. Instead, the committee requested a slow down on meat imports, the use of more American beef in school lunch programs and expanded research in the uses of tallow, animal fats and hides. These recommendations did result in the stepped up use of beef.** Quite a few years ahead of Schaffer, the Riley ranch was established near Amelia. In the eighties Sam and Will Riley had the largest herd of registered Shorthorns in the United States. Shorthorns range in color from pure silvery white through many shades of roan to dark red and are impressive looking cattle. When shown by pretty lassies in gay plaids and kilts they are among the showiest of breeds.
One of the first ranches between Ewing and Inman was that of John Carr, who had the run-in with Big Bill Thompson over hired hands, and was one of the first to bring Aberdeen Angus cattle to the county. Carr maintained a fine set of ranch buildings near Stafford and also claimed a considerable range in the Sandhills fifteen miles to the west. Moving cattle from the hills to the headquarters ranch was a two-day drive and Carr arranged with Leon Tompkins, who lived three miles west of the Carr ranch, to use his corrals overnight.
During the spring move Carr and his men drove the herd to Tompkins’ corrals in the afternoon and let them rest until morning, then moved them on west. In the fall the herd of black cattle showed up in a cloud of dust about sundown, and was taken on home the next morning. Tompkins, a young married man just getting a start in farming, had a small herd of cows of mixed breeds and colors.
John Carr rode by one day and told Leon he wanted him to have one of his best pedigreed Angus bulls. Leon, liking the looks of the black cattle, went right down and picked out what he considered to be the best bull. John named him “Tompkins Choice” and agreed to take his pay after Leon sold his first calf crop. This was in 1913 and was the beginning of the Tompkins Corners prize winning Angus herd. The herd has grown to approximately 220 cows and is probably one of the oldest Angus herds in the county. Leon’s son, Harvey, and A registered Hereford purchased by David Bowen in Denver about 1920. Mr. Bowen first brought registered Herefords to Holt County in 1912. 93 his grandson, Neil (Harvey’s son) are carrying on and improving the herd. One of the first ranches in the Dorsey area was that of Tom Crowe, a young Englishman who made his way to America by caring for some purebred Shorthorn cattle on their way to Canada. After delivering the breeding stock, Tom came down to Niobrara and worked one year for Isaac Davidson, then took a tree claim near Dorsey and got some sheep. Not long afterward he married a widow with two children.
Mrs. Crowe’s daughter, Mary, was the head sheep herder on the Crowe ranch until she married. The Crowes then shifted to cattle, bought more land and built the ranch up to more than 7,000 acres. Tom fenced and cross-fenced his land, for he kept his steers until they were three-year-olds, then moved them into his own fattening yards until they became prime beef.
Tom soon became such a big feeder of cattle and hogs that he provided a market for all the corn raised by farmers in the northeastern part of the county. In the early days the fat cattle were moved slowly to the railroad station in Lynch, up on the Niobrara, and shipped to Omaha and Chicago. Today all cattle are trucked to market.
Artificial insemination, as a means of improving cattle, was introduced into Holt County in 1955 by Duane Gray of O’Neill, who took his training for the process at the Curtiss Breeding Farms in Illinois. At first artificial breeding of cattle was regarded as too mysterious to be practical. One mother told her son she wouldn’t believe it could happen even if she saw the calf. Consequently it took a lot of persuasion on the part of the technician to dispel the doubts until the first fine calf produced by the new method arrived.
At first the process was used only in dairy herds. After the first year Herefords were added to the list, and then other breeds commonly known in the United States. When farmers first began to use the new method one man ordered his children to the house while the inseminator was there, only to be deluged by questions after he had gone. The small fry had slipped out and glued their eyes to the cracks in the barn. The father groaned, “Oh, what the teacher won’t hear at school tomorrow!” The only technician in the area, Duane did a lot of driving in his first three years, traveling thirty to forty miles in every direction from O’Neill. In his first year he inseminated about 250 dairy cows and no beef cows. By 1974 he was inseminating nearly Material supplied by Duane Gray of O’Neill. Shoemaker Stock Farm, Holt County, lished 1884.
Nebraska, southwest of O’Neill. Herd estab- 8,000 cows, ninety per cent of them beef cattle. There are many insemin- ators in the area now, some of them trained by Duane himself.
The introduction of exotic breeds of cattle brought about the great increase in the use of the method in beef herds. As soon as cattlemen saw that cross-breeding with Charolais and similar foreign breeds resulted in better weight gains and cutability, they turned to artificial insemination. Since then Simmental from Switzerland, Limousin and Maine-Anjou from France, Chianina from Italy, Gelbvieh from Germany, Murray Grey from Australia and Pinzgauer from Austria, have brought quick changes in beef cattle here.
The first of these breeds was Simmental, and the first insemination in the U. S. was made in O’Neill by Travers Smith, the man who imported the first bull to Canada. The first Pinzgauer bull came into Canada in 1973 and the first Pinzgauer cross calves in Holt County were born in January, 1974 at Gray’s place near Wm. J. Gray Sheep Ranch, Holt County, Nebraska, 5 miles southwest of O’Neill. Flock established 1883.
O’Neill.
In the beginning fresh semen, chilled to about thirty-eight degrees, came to Gray three times a week. A little later it was received, frozen, at 320 degrees below zero in liquid nitrogen. The nitrogen came to Gray in large containers from Kansas City and technicians from all the surrounding area came to him to fill their nitrogen containers and get semen shipped by bus from Illinois. Then semen suppliers began delivering all supplies and training farmers and ranchers to inseminate their own cattle.
A new artificial insemination center at Murdock, Nebraska, is now specializing in sex-segregated semen under the guidance of a Doctor-Scientist from India. This will eventually lead to a pre-selection of sex in animals before conception. So who can guess what the future use of this method holds for beef breeding herds.* In June, 1907, a reporter for the Stuart Advocate rode out through the country to see how things were doing. 94 Eiabl SAavs Hogs on Nollkamper Place, Holt County, Nebraska, north of O’Neill. groceries and incidentals. Every farm had its milk cow herd of from three to fifteen cows. Usually, the more boys and girls there were in the family the bigger the herd; for all milking was done by hand and the more hands the quicker the morning and evening chore was done. After separating the cream from the milk it was poured into five- or ten-gallon cream cans to go to town. The skim milk was fed to the “skimmer” calves and the pigs. In those days pigs and milk cows were known as “mortgage lifters.” Without them few families could hope to exist and, at the same time, pay off the inevitable mortgage. At least once a week, usually on Saturdays, the family took the cream to town. Every village had two or three cream stations where the cream was tested to determine its butterfat content. The His June 13 issue carried this item: “We noticed a bunch of red shoots in Charlie Morse’s alfalfa hog pasture, and three cribs of corn with which to finish them up. It looks like good, easy money to us.” It wasn’t all that easy and simple, of course. At the very least there was a lot of work involved in getting the shoots— and the corn— to the stage of which the reporter wrote. And cholera could have carried off all those thrifty red pigs almost over night. Many a farmer of that period watched his hopes go up in the smoke of the funeral fire that consumed the deadly carcasses. Too, a man could lose quite a few at farrowing time if the piglets arrived in cold weather, and those he saved had to be fed and slopped and sheltered from storms and the hot summer sun, right up to market time.
Lee Brady in 1939 had some most unusual help in saving a litter of seven pigs. A cow on his farm adopted the pigs and nursed them, along with her own calf, until they weighed about eighty pounds apiece. When they were sold she bawled for her foster family for several days. Until the 1920’s getting the fat hogs to market was not the least of the farmers’ problems. If the owner lived more than three or four miles from town he had to get up very early in the morning, load the pigs into a double wagon box (so they could not jump out), and head for market in the cool of the day; for hogs, crowded into a wagon on a hot day, will die in a short time.
Farmers who lived a long way from town walked their pigs to market. Charles Adams, twelve miles from Stuart, raised enough pigs to take a carload to town each trip. The first day on the road they planned to reach the vicinity of the Cleveland church, about halfway. There they stopped for the night and threw out ear corn from the wagon which followed the herd with food and camp gear. The hogs, tired from their day’s walking, laid down as soon as darkness fell, but the herders had to be up at the crack of dawn to make sure none of the pigs got away. After tossing out more corn and eating their own breakfasts, they headed on down the road. They usually reached Stuart before dark on the second day, but once it got dark before they had the herd safely in the stockyards in town. One or two pigs got away and they had a lively time chasing them through peoples’ yards before they caught them.
After Rennie Lofquist got his Model T truck in 1917 or 1918, the first in the Stuart community, getting pigs to market was simplified. Even for the outlying farmers, Rennie could have the pigs in town in an hour or so, and he could haul for two or three farmers on market day.
For many years most farmers depended on “the cream check” for Emerson’s Angora Goat Farm, Holt County, Nebraska, northwest of ONei Herd established 1888. 1,300 head.
price per pound followed the test, up or down. Daily shipments of cream cans left the towns for butter factories in Fremont, Omaha or elsewhere. Some of the cream was clean and well cared for; some, like the chicory, contained all manner of extraneous matter.
A few farm wives churned their cream and made butter for sale at the village stores. A woman whose product was clean and tasty soon had a “following” and townspeople placed standing orders with their merchants for Mrs.————- s butter and Feeding the skimmer calves, a morning and evening chore on every farm that kept milk cows. Courtesy E. Sire. Carl Smith, Atkinson, in 1920’s. His hounds and some pelts.
95 ,22 feees SntaG ‘ would have no other.
Some families turned to cheese making for extra income. One summer when the A. F. Parkhurst family was “between a wornout old separator and a new Sharples separator” they took up cheese making. The cheeses varied considerably in taste and texture but most were salable at the general store in Dustin.
When the Axtells were hailed out at South Side and wondering how they could make out, Mrs. Axtell said if she had the things to work with she could make cheese to sell. Mr. Axtell built her a cheese press and put shelves in the “spare” room to set the curing heads of cheese on. They sent to Montgomery Ward for the rennet (the lining from a calf’s stomach) to curdle the milk, and bought a big copper wash boiler and a wash tub to hold the milk.
In pioneer times, and for years thereafter, chickens were the farm wife’s business. Poultry not only provided her with some “egg” money but kept the table supplied with fresh eggs, corn fed fryers and many a tempting dish made from a fat hen or roaster. She set broody hens on nests of eggs, usually fifteen, and at the end of twenty-one days she had a brood of baby chicks. In this manner chickens numbering into the hundreds were often hatched by one woman. Then a Clay Center firm began making “Old Trusty” incubators and many setting hens lost their jobs. From one to three hundred eggs at a time could be hatched in the box-like contraptions, which were heated by a kerosene lamp flame. One or more incubators became a part of the living room furniture in many a farm home every spring. By removing the legs and stacking one on top of another, with blocks between to permit air circulation, several of the mechanical hens could be utilized in the space needed for one.
There was a lot of work connected with tending an incubator. The eggs had to be turned twice a day and “aired” for five to fifteen minutes. Keeping the lamp trimmed, filled and tended was most important. If it went out for any reason the whole incubator full of eggs could be a total loss. As the chicks developed the temperature had to be increased. After seven days the eggs were “candled” and the infertile ones removed, another seven days later the process was repeated. The hatch eventually came off and the chicks were given to broody hens, to be raised in the way provided by nature. Large numbers of goose, duck and turkey eggs were hatched in the same manner. Chicken breeds common in those days were brown and white Leghorns, Rhode Island Reds, Wyan-dottes, Buff Orphingtons, Plymouth Rocks, White Rocks, Brahmas and Minorcas.* Ralph Leidy, Aurora, Missouri, wrote as follows, “On October 11, 1929, the New York stock market fell and the Great Depression began. I was shucking corn north of Inman when two men from Norfolk approached me with the idea of starting a hatchery in O’Neill. We leased the old Mellor & Quilty barn and Scott Hough, the marshal, made it over and we installed two Buckeye incubators of 16,000 eggs capacity each. In December we culled hens daytimes and set up the incubators at night.
“The incubators burned kerosene but the fans were powered by electricity. the eggs in the trays were turned by levers on the ends of the machines. We took off two hatches a week, Thursdays and Sundays, so chicks were available on Fridays and Mondays, the first hatch was March 15 , the last about June 1. We sold heavy breeds at $15 a hundred, Leghorns at $12.50. One man told us ‘You’ll never sell a chick at that price,’ but we managed to sell them.
“We paid eight cents a dozen over the market price for eggs. Brooder houses on the farms were small and often used to house old hens in winter. By spring they were full of lice and I tried to get people to scrub them with lye before putting baby chicks in them; but that took work. People would rather pay a $1.50 for a quart of evil smelling disinfectant than to use lye and a scrub brush.
“Veterinarians didn’t consider poultry worth bothering with, so we went to Poultry School and came home and sold remedies. Later the vets tried to get a law passed that would allow only vets to treat poultry, but the hatchery men outnumbered them. “Turkeys lived mostly on grasshoppers in those days and the flocks were small as there was no year around market as there is now. Bartak Brothers brought in turkey eggs and we were about the first in Nebraska to hatch them commercially. We couldn’t afford a special turkey machine and our hatches were lower than those later achieved. Then the big feed companies induced turkey growers to expand. They financed the feed and bought the turkeys. Today you can’t find a market for either broilers or turkeys unless you contract with a large feed company— and the feed comes high. If poultry prices are good they pick up every bird on schedule; if not, they cull close and may delay in picking up the birds. “The last time I saw the Tri-State turkey farm, south of O’Neill, they had 60,000 birds. Like farming, turkeys are now corporate business. Then Jim Corkle moved in and started a hatchery, as did Armours. After Roosevelt was elected he put out an edict (later declared unconstitutional) that prevented hatcheries from selling chicks under $6 per hundred. That was at the time baby pigs were being killed and buried and farmers couldn’t pay that much for chicks. We handled market eggs without profit.
“In 1934 the Depression really hit. There was no rain and grasshoppers came in. We got through by doing a lot of trading and doing without a lot of things. People bought weeds, ten- year-old stacks of hay, anything to get their cattle through the winter. I had to sell my top quality cows at $19 a head, as it would have cost me $45 a head to winter them. In that Depression, when young folks lost their jobs on the west coast, they came home to the old folks on the farm. In this depression there ain’t no old folks on the farm.” (The Leidys left Holt County in 1953.) The Armour Poultry Packing Plant, built about 1925, stood at the corner of the intersection of Fourth Street and the C. & N. W. railroad tracks. As a boy in the early thirties, Clay Johnson, Jr., often made weekly trips to the plant with his parents when they delivered sixty to ninety dozen eggs from their farm near Page. Most of the first floor, he remembers, had rows of chicken fattening batteries. The kill room was in the center of the basement. Picked and dressed, the chickens were packed, four to six in a carton, and shunted into refrigerated storage rooms. They were later loaded out by the boxcar full and shipped to market.
In 1940 or ’41 a fire in the building posed some danger to the town and the fire watchers for awhile. Had the plant’s ammonia tanks exploded, the damage could have been much greater. At about this time it became the “Tri-State Hatchery” and a new Incubator house was built just north of the main plant. In 1954-’55, while employed by Gillespie’s Radio and Electric Company, Clay wired twenty gleaming new white metal incubators for the hatchery. Turkeys, hatched in the incubators, were started in the main building, then moved to the turkey farm south of town for “growing out.” The plant, under its two names, provided jobs for many people through the years. The building is now a storage warehouse. Some excerpts from the Jubilee edition of the Frontier illustrate the size of the poultry ibusiness in Holt County in years prior to 1949. “R. G. Shelhamer of Shelhamer Information supplied by Eugenia Bowen. 96 Carl Smith, Atkinson, in 1920’s. His hounds and some pelts.
Produce reports that his firm, which includes a choin of outlying receiving stations, last year shipped 100 car-loads of eggs, bought upwards of a half-million pounds of butterfat and upwards of a million pounds of poultry. The firm is equipped to sharp freeze eggs that are purchased on the grade and the freezer can handle several carloads of eggs at one time.” “In 1939 the Tri-State plant dressed 1,000 chickens a day and had sixty employees. In 1949 from three to four thousand chickens a day are prepared for packing and shipping during the season. The annual output of poultry for shipment amounts to 40 cars of chickens and 30 cars of turkeys. One hundred carloads of eggs are supplied by poultry raisers of the territory.” “The Corkle industries of O’Neill bring off an annual baby chick hatch of 300,000 and a turkey hatch of 30,000. The owner, James Corkle, brings 13,000 turkeys to maturity annually on his two ranches. The firm also ships out 200 cases of graded eggs per week. Virtually all grocery and food stores in this city buy eggs from their rural patrons, and most of these eggs are rushed to terminal markets by truck.” Today there are no hatcheries in Holt County and it is difficult to find a farm that keeps chickens.
In addition to baling hay or shucking corn, a man or boy could earn extra money by doing general farm work, from dawn to dark for $15 a month and keep, or working on the railroad. If a man had extra pasture he could “take in” horses or cattle from May 1 to October 1 at $3 a head for cattle and $5 for horses. This was for the season, not by the month. Before the turn of the century a number of Holt County men did pretty well at market hunting, shooting quail, ducks and prairie chickens for shipment east in barrels to fancy restaurants and hotel dining rooms. Another winter occupation was trapping. Many boys handled this job. The Zink boys tell about it. “We generally had a trap-line to look after on our way home from school. We could put the muskrats and mink we caught into the wagon to take home for skinning. But if we caught a skunk our sisters objected, and either my brother or I had to walk home and carry those.” Older men, too, added to the family income by trapping, but with the Douglas brothers of South Valley it was a way of life. Dave and Al, typical trappers and old-time mountain men, lived strictly off the land and curried no favors from anyone. “Just when they came to Holt County,” writes Walter Sire, “I cannot find out, but they were here and well established in the early 1900’s. The Elkhorn and South Valley, all the way to Goose Lake, furnished them a wide territory for their trap-lines. I never knew them to own a horse. They always walked. If you met one and offered him a ride he would say, ‘No, I’ll cut across and save a mile.’ “After Dave had the flu in 1919 he started to walk his twenty-five mile trap-line on the South Fork. His neighbor, Clyde Hall met him and offered to take him home. As usual, he refused. The next morning he was found frozen to death just half a mile from home. He had left part of his furs on the trail and tried to get on home, but was too exhausted to make it.
“The brothers hunted every fur bearer native to the area: skunks, mink, muskrat, beaver, raccoon, coyote, weasel, civits, oppossum and Joe Mlinar, his hounds and what he caught with them in the winter of 1910. Courtesy of Mrs. Dwaine Lockmon, Stuart. furs to tanners. They kept a pack of hounds that had to eat, too. After returning from their trap-lines— they skinned out their day’s catch, fed the dogs, fixed themselves a meal, then rolled up in old cow hides and slept on the floor with their dogs.
“After Dave’s death Al lived on for several years in a cabin he moved onto the Geary place. In his later years, after game and furs became scarce, he worked on hay balers to eke out his income. In the summer of 1927, when he had not been seen for several days, the neighbors went in and found him dead in the cabin. “Although water in flowing streams had played a great part in their lives, it had never become an obsession with the brothers. They would not have known what to do with bath tubs and modern plumbing. Although they lived so much to themselves they were not without friends, and would surprise you with their keen intellect and accurate information on many subjects. With their passing a way of life, as well as the furs, was gone.” From the preceding pages it can readily be seen that there was need for every pair of able hands on any farm. Few children had any idle hours left after they had fed the chickens, gathered the eggs, chopped and carried wood, or cobs, slopped the hogs, milked the cows, pumped and carried water, picked potato bugs, helped clean the stable, cow shed and chicken house, herded cattle and hoed weeds out of the corn field and weeded the garden. The Moon family raised lots of onions from seed and the rows had to be weeded by hand. The children made the tiresome job interesting by dividing the rows equally and competing to see who could tend and grow the finest row. Another custom that attended farming for many years was “moving day.” Come the first of March each year a good many families, mostly 97 Scene in Page in spring of 1905. All of the wagons in the foreground are full of the heading for new farm homes. Courtesy household and farm effects of “movers,” C. E. Walker.
renters, shifted from one form to another; some to better themselves, some to be nearer school, some because they’d had trouble with the landlord or a neighbor, some because they had sold out. In the latter case the farmer held a farm sale, putting his livestock, machinery, tools and household goods on the block.
Sale bills, listing all the offerings, were posted for miles around, well in advance of the sale. The bidding started in mid-forenoon and lasted until everything was sold, usually well into the afternoon. The seller always provided a free lunch at noon, bread, bologna, doughnuts or gingersnaps, and a wash boiler full of coffee. performances and acts made up the entertainment. In 1889 there was even a wedding at the fair grounds. Elmer M. Merriman, 25, and Hanna L. Walker, 21, were united in marriage by the Rev. N. S. Lowrie, pastor of the O’Neill Presbyterian Church. The bride and groom received a purse of $150, taken up by the enthusiastic fair goers.
In a wild pony race at the fairgrounds in July, 1887, eighteen-year- old James Harrington (later Judge Harrington) was thrown against the fence at the south end of the track and rather badly wounded in the right leg, laying him up for several weeks. In the late ‘eighties W. J. Dobbs, O’Neill railroad agent, undertook to put together an exhibit to take to the state fair at Lincoln. The exhibit, composed of all kinds of agricultural exhibits except those with hoofs or I will sell at my resident 10 miles north of Ewing and 10 miles east of Inman, ft 1 o’clock, p. m.. sharp, on People came from miles around, to visit and, hopefully, to pick up some bargains. The general run of people ate outside, but the auctioneer and the bank official who clerked the sale were taken into the house, seated at the table and served chicken, noodles and pie.
The annual county fairs were important to every farm community. Holt County’s fairs began in 1884 when the O’Neill area farmers decided their products were worthy of display for all to see. They first organized a fair association and elected officers. Patrick Fahy was the first president, James Skirving vice president, W. D. Mathews secretary and D. L. Darr treasurer. Twenty other vice presidents, one from each county precinct, were also elected. A constitution was adopted and the President instructed to file notice of the organization with the county clerk so that the society could secure county aid— “three cents for each inhabitant of the county.” Besides the fine livestock, poultry, crop and garden produce, machinery and food exhibits, races, “fast horse and slow mule,” wrestling, clown Two Cows, 2 Calves, 3 Shoats, Chickens, a lot of Potatoes, a two-horse Cultivator. I one-horse Cultivator. 2 Gig. one four-wheeled Rig, Harness, 1 Stove. Chairs. Bedsteads, Etc., 1 Clock. 1 fourteen-foot extension Table, A Top to a Buggy, Pails, Jars. Etc. Several thousand feet of Lumber, some good Posts and Poles, 1 corn crib. a quantity of Hay in Stack, with other articles too numerous to mention. TERMS: All sums of $10 and under, cash in hand; all over $10 a credit of 9 months will be given on bankable paper at 7 per cent, interest if paid when due. If not paid when due, 10 per cent, from date. Ten per cent, discount for cash on sums over $10. J. R GORTNER. J. R. VENNEDY, Auctioneer 98 The original “Corn Palace” in O’Neill about 1885. It was constructed at Fourth and Douglas. The wagon belongs to A. B. Miller of Chambers. Clay Johnson Collection.
horns, was collected into the old skating rink— and was so outstanding that it even amazed the Holt Countians. It was also the best at the state fair that year.
Because the county was so large, the Chambers people organized their own fair in 1886 and called it the Harvest Home Festival. (It later— 1892— became the South Fork Fair.) The first six Festivals were held in Wry’s pasture, where the Methodist Church now stands.
In 1892 the site was moved to the present fair grounds. There were no buildings, so posts were set and poles wired to them to make stalls for the livestock exhibits. A few rounds with a mowing machine outlined the race track. Two fairs were held there before the fierce drouth of 1894, when nothing grew, caused the fair to be called off. The next year was better and the fair went on again, as it has every year since.
In order to secure county funds for their fair an “Association” was organized in 1889 and a constitution adopted. These early papers were either lost or destroyed by fire and there is no existing record of the first officers. At the close of the 1933 season O’Neill discontinued its fair and Chambers became the headquarters of the annual county fair. In 1937 the association dropped the words “South Fork” and adopted the official title of Holt County Agricultural Society. The year 1973 marked the eighty- first anniversary of the fair at Chambers and a resident notes proudly that, from the beginning, the entertainment included horses. Down through the years the fair has featured “stake races, chair races, chariot races, potato races, relay and wild horse races and quarter and half-mile races. Roman Riding teams had a place, and harness races attracted many entries.
Both horses and mules were used in the chariot races and unbroke teams were often hitched to the stout chariots to add a bit of excitement. The drivers who could first wrestle their team to the end of the track won the race. Interest in rodeo began when local ranchers started bringing their outlaw horses to the fair to be ridden. Many were work horses that had been used in the fields all summer. Grained and in good condition, some were excellent buckers. After the fair they were taken home for another year’s work, then brought back the next year to make the riders pull leather. A few built outstanding reputations. “Swastika” from the Charlie Peterson ranch (named for its brand) was one. “Pole Cats Kitten,” out of “Pole Cat,” and “Klondike Poker,” were others.
Products of Holt County, Nebraska. 99 Holt County Fair Grandstand, O’Neill, Nebraska, 1908. Submitted by Mrs. Godfrey (Srb) Machal, Schuyler, Nebraska. From John J. Harrington, O’Neill, collection. There were no chutes at those first fairs. Horses were thrown to be saddled, or snubbed to another horse and an ear bitten (this last to keep it from noticing the saddle being anchored to its back). All in all, the entertainment was fast and lively and drew good crowds.
Organized rodeo grew out of these beginnings at Chambers in the late teens, with local ranchers providing the stock. Gus Obermire of Stuart, a member of the Turtle Association, forerunner of the R.C.A.* rodeoed at Pendleton and Rapid City in the ‘twenties, then came home to produce Stuart’s first rodeo in 1930. He furnished the stock for the show and put on a lively exhibition of saddle bronc and wild cow riding, along with surcingle mule riding and a wild cow milking contest. The county’s first rodeo stock contractor, Gus furnished stock for rodeos held at Chambers and Johnstown. Other early R.C.A. contractors were Bob Roberts of Ains-worth (1936), Lynn Babb of Stuart and Hoss Inman.
Kenny Adams was one of the area’s first all-around cowboys. He earned his title by earning points in dogging and roping, relay and wild horse chariot races and both bareback and saddle bronc contests. He was so badly cut in a wild horse race that more than forty stitches were needed in sewing him up. One year Gary Schmidt of Chambers won the State Amateur Champion Saddle Bronc event, and Vern Whitaker, also of Chambers, was the first Holt County cowboy to place in the money at the big R.C.A. Burwell rodeo.
Rodeoing, especially the fast growing High School Rodeo events, attracted many Holt County girls. Sharon Miner, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Everett Miner of O’Neill, was the first *Rodeo Cowboy Association.
National Rodeo Association.
Girls Rodeo Association.
to compete in the State High School Rodeo held at Harrison. In 1957 she was the State High School Rodeo Queen and won first place in barrel racing, tied in break-away roping and was the “All-around Cow Girl.” The following year Russ Miner, competing in roping, dogging and saddle bronc events throughout Nebraska and South Dakota, was named All-around Cowboy at the Inter-Collegiate Rodeo at the University of Nebraska. In the.early ‘sixties Carol Hanson, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Hanson, contested at N.R.A.* barrel racing events held at Bassett, Valentine, Alliance and Burwell. In 1967 she was G.R.A.** barrel racing champion. The golden year for Holt County contestants seems to have been that year of 1967. Miss Jean Elaine Mohr of Amelia was named “Miss Rodeo Nebraska” at Burwell, and in November participated in the Miss Rodeo America finals in Las Vegas. Although not a winner there, she was the youngest girl in the contest— and she brought home a wealth of experience and happy memories.
Early picture showing the difficulty of saddling a bronc without a chute. That same year Miss Nancy Griffin of Atkinson was chosen “Miss Nebraska Centennial.” A freshman at the University of Nebraska, she won over seventy other contestants from other Nebraska counties. Her parents are Mr. and Mrs. Lane Griffin and her great-grandparents were William and Nell Donelly Griffin, Atkinson pioneers. She was also Nebraska Cherry Blossom Princess in Washington, D. C. and represented her state in the Rose Bowl Parade at Pasadena, at Alaska’s Centennial celebration and at the Lions International in Chicago. After three years at the Nebraska University, Nebraska’s Golden Girl went on to graduate from the University of Hawaii.
And finally, De Marus Wefso Carlson, (born and raised in Atkinson) was chosen “Mrs. Nebraska” in the Mrs. America contest. Housewife and mother of two, she went on to the exciting finals in Minneapolis. The brown-haired, blue-eyed daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Wefso, she was a graduate of Atkinson high school and of Kansas State College.
Carrying on the splendid tradition so ably started in 1967 by Mohr, Griffin and Carlson, Miss Debbie Weigel, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Ed Weigel of Amelia, was chosen queen of the University of Nebraska Intercollegiate Rodeo Association in 1973. Riding her registered quarter horse, “Sue K,” she won the horsemanship contest which qualified her for the national competition held at Boze-man, Montana. There, out of a possible 100 points, she won 94 on “Bo.” also a registered quarter horse. With the exception of 1969, “Bo” has won the pleasure horse class at the Holt County Fair every year since 1967.
An outgrowth of fairs and rodeos has been the county’s popular roping and saddle clubs. Earliest of these was 100 MISS O’NEILL Sharon Miner O’NEILL, NEBRASKA Age 18 years Height 5 feet 7 inches Weight 122 pounds Bust 34 inches Waist 24 inches Hips 36 inches School’Enrolled at the University of Nebraska Sharon Miner, “Miss O’Neill”. Age 18 years; height 5 ft. 7 in.; weight 122 lbs. 6th Runner-up Miss Universe Contest at McCook, 1958. Page’s Saddle Club, organized by and for the young folks in 1951. The club took part in Page’s Labor Day celebrations and in parades in surrounding towns. In 1970 another group of young Holt County men associated together to form a roping club. They met in the rodeo arena north of O’Neill for awhile, later in private arenas and training barns. Although organized solely for recreation, the members have attained a high degree of skill and provide tough competition wherever they rope.
Inman’s Saddle Club began in 1971. A family club, the members gather once a month for trail rides and picnics. They take part in pole bending, barrel races, hat races, rescue and key-hole races and ride in parades wherever they find them. The Golden Valley 4-H Horse Club meets regularly the year around, rides in parades and enjoys trail riding. The members are trained in western pleasure, horsemanship and halter classes, as well as pole bending and barrel racing.
The Atkinson High School Rodeo began in 1972 with Mike and Bethel Kissinger as sponsors. Then Dr. Lyman White joined and helped form the West Holt Rodeo Association. Doc White took over the training of calf ropers. Mike, aided by Doc and area rodeo veterans, helped the boys in other events. Bethel and others worked with the girls. The first year Cheryl White had the fastest time at the Ainsworth High School Rodeo and finished fourth in the state finals. As a team, West Holt Rodeo members captured two of seven firsts given, and finished in the top ten at the state finals.
In their second year five members: Cheryl White, Terry Davis, Lyle Davis, Bruce Boettcher and Bob Kennedy, Vern “Chip” Whitaker, 1968. Courtesy E. L. Miner. 101 Nancy Griffin, Atkinson, Nebraska, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lane Griffin Miss Nebraska in 1967. “Nebraska Golden Girl” went on to the state finals, where Cheryl won the barrel racing event and did well in the National finals. The Association ended the 1973 season with fifty trophies, one All- around saddle and one first place saddle, won at the state finals, and a trophy plaque won at the National show.
The Stuart Community Club sponsors the Circle S Club, a 4-H club for local young people. In addition to regular 4-H activities, the club has an annual July 3 horse show and a yearly invitational horse show and rodeo, the club has already raised $2,500 and improved the rodeo grounds by putting up a lunch room and rest rooms. As the past has been illustrous for Holt County and its horses, so the future looks equally bright.
Mrs. James (De Marus) Carlson, Mrs. Nebraska.
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