Bad Times And Good Chapter Twenty-Four O’Neill experienced many bad fires during its early years but, even after the disastrous fire that burned the Academy in February, 1891, the city had done virtually nothing toward providing fire fighting equipment for its citizens. In August of that same year, however, another fire had threatened the town for a short time when a blaze started in the Pacific Short Line roundhouse. This time prompt action on the part of the townspeople had saved not only the roundhouse but the electric light plant, and possibly a major portion of the town, as well.
With the Frontier still earnestly prodding them, the city council finally 214 The first Golden Rule Clothing Store owned and operated by Fred Bazelman. Pictured: Mannequin, boy unknown, Slats (Paul) Beha, Sophia Pushart and Marie Bazelman. After the failure of the chicory business in O’Neill, Gabriel and Philomena Bazelman built and operated a flour mill on the Elkhorn River. When the mill burned down the family went into the lumber business. The Bazelman Lumber Company yard and buildings stood at 225 South 4th Street. The Bazelman sons, Fred and Martin, were co-owners. On March 16, 1931, fire destroyed the entire property, along with Fred’s Golden Rule Clothing Store, which stood next door. This fire was so bad that stores and offices were closed and the proprietors, as well as many home owners, climbed atop their building to wet them down and put out scores of fires started by flying sparks. That evening, while firemen still fought the main blaze, a man came running to the fire to report the Hanford Ice House ablaze. The fires were not entirely put out until three o’clock the next afternoon. The total loss suffered by the Bazelmans was $40,000, with only $15,000 insurance coverage. Peter Reifer’s garage also burned to the ground in this fire, and with it his new Ford coupe. The first Bazelman Lumber Company and Golden Rule Clothing Store. Note the O’Neill Pumphouse in the left-hand background. Pictured at far left is Roy Carl, Fred’s father-in-law. Martin is in his Stevens-ray automobile and Fred is standing directly behind his left shoulder. Others unknown. 215 The Deep Rock service station, one of the first in O’Neill. Left to right: Joe Bazelman (son of Martin Bazelman), Tommy Enright, John Kersenbrock and Fred McNally. Martin and his sons operated an oil business for several years after the fire. 216 took action and, in September, 1891, purchased a $600 engine, a good one for those times. Had they bought it seven months earlier, the Frontier reminded them, they might have saved the Academy.
The fierce drouth of the ‘nineties started in 1892 and worsened in 1893 and ’94. Little or no rain fell and hot south winds blew for days on end. In July 1893 the Holt County bank closed its doors. A card on the door stated, “Closed temporarily. Cannot collect as fast as deposits are withdrawn.” The bank was still closed in January, 1894.
By 1895 thousand of pounds of relief goods were being shipped into Holt County, and most of the rest of Nebraska. The supplies, mostly food, feed, seed and clothing, were donated by more fortunate people in eastern states, and hauled free of charge by the railroads. These goods, distributed as equitably as possible, kept the dried out Nebraskans going until the rains came again.
In 1897, while times were still hard, the O’Neill electric light plant was closed down. Dark times had, indeed, come to the county seat of Holt County.
As if times were not bad enough already, an even worse tragedy befell the community on February 15, 1893 when William E. Moore and Newton McCleary were killed by a freight train on the Burlington crossing a half mile east of O’Neill.
McCleary had come out from Omaha, where he was employed, to be groomsman for young Moore who was to marry Amelia Poratha of Ewing in a day or two. The two men, riding in a top buggy through a snow storm, were on their way from Inman to O’Neill to buy the mariage license when they were killed. The team had crossed the tracks safely but the buggy was squarely struck by the engine. McCleary’s body was strewn along the tracks for forty rods and Moore, too, was badly cut up.
McCleary’s family lived near Inman and the two young men were well- known in the whole community, which was deeply affected by the gruesome calamity.
In spite of the hard times and the struggle to keep afloat, James Stout liked O’Neill when he arrived about 1896 to work in P. C. Corrigan’s drug store. He liked it so much that he began urging his younger brother, Charlie, to join him there.
The two young men were the sons of Bennett and Demaris Stout, who had come from Rome, Ohio, to Blair, Nebraska, where Mr. Stout, a construction worker, had helped build the railroad bridge across the Missouri. Charlie had been born there in 1875, P. C. Corrigan Drug Store. P. C. Corrigan and Charlie Stout standing in front of the door. Mike Long at far left. Bob Hunt is the boy. Clay Johnson Collection. Barney Ryan Grocery Store about 1890. Left to right: John J. McCafferty, owner of the hardware store. Neil Brennan, another hardware merchant. Pat Hagerty, first O’Neill general store owner, later one of the town bankers; Bill Fallon. Ryan’s store stood where the Golden Hotel is now located. Clay Johnson Collection. 217 Old Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Depot. The Chicory Factory people are serving chicory drinks and lunch to the passengers. About 1894. Clay Johnson Collection.
The second Golden Rule Clothing Store, built after the 1931 fire. Owner Fred Bazelman on far left. The Deep Rock service station, one of the first in O’Neill. Left to right: Joe Bazelman (son of Martin Bazelman), Tommy Enright, John Kersenbrock and Fred McNally. Martin and his sons operated an oil business for several years after the fire. 216 took action and, in September, 1891, purchased a $600 engine, a good one for those times. Had they bought it seven months earlier, the Frontier reminded them, they might have saved the Academy.
The fierce drouth of the ‘nineties started in 1892 and worsened in 1893 and ’94. Little or no rain fell and hot south winds blew for days on end. In July 1893 the Holt County bank closed its doors. A card on the door stated, “Closed temporarily. Cannot collect as fast as deposits are withdrawn.” The bank was still closed in January, 1894.
By 1895 thousand of pounds of relief goods were being shipped into Holt County, and most of the rest of Nebraska. The supplies, mostly food, feed, seed and clothing, were donated by more fortunate people in eastern states, and hauled free of charge by the railroads. These goods, distributed as equitably as possible, kept the dried out Nebraskans going until the rains came again.
In 1897, while times were still hard, the O’Neill electric light plant was closed down. Dark times had, indeed, come to the county seat of Holt County.
As if times were not bad enough already, an even worse tragedy befell the community on February 15, 1893 when William E. Moore and Newton McCleary were killed by a freight train on the Burlington crossing a half mile east of O’Neill.
McCleary had come out from Omaha, where he was employed, to be groomsman for young Moore who was to marry Amelia Poratha of Ewing in a day or two. The two men, riding in a top buggy through a snow storm, were on their way from Inman to P. C. Corrigan Drug Store. P. C. Corrigan and Charlie Stout standing in front of the door. Mike Long at far left. Bob Hunt is the boy. Clay Johnson collection: O’Neill to buy the manage license when they were killed. The team had crossed the tracks safely but the buggy was squarely struck by the engine. McCleary’s body was strewn along the tracks for forty rods and Moore, too, was badly cut up.
McCleary’s family lived near Inman and the two young men were well- known in the whole community, which was deeply affected by the gruesome calamity.
In spite of the hard times and the struggle to keep afloat, James Stout liked O’Neill when he arrived about 1896 to work in P. C. Corrigan’s drug store. He liked it so much that he began urging his younger brother, Charlie, to join him there.
The two young men were the sons of Bennett and Demon’s Stout, who had come from Rome, Ohio, to Blair, Nebraska, where Mr. Stout, a construction worker, had helped build the railroad bridge across the Missouri. Charlie had been born there in 1875, Barney Ryan Grocery Store about 1890. Left to right: John J. McCafferty, owner of the hardware store. Neil Brennan, another hardware merchant. Pat Hagerty, first O’Neill general store owner, later one of the town bankers; Bill Fallon. Ryan’s store stood where the Golden Hotel is now located. Clay Johnson Collection. 217 and orphaned while yet a small lad. His seventeen-year-old brother and fifteen-year-old sister had then taken over the job of raising their five younger brothers and sisters.
After finishing high school in Blair, Charlie had gone to a pharmacist school in Des Moines and was ready to serve his apprenticeship in a drug store when James wrote him from O’Neill that there was an opening for an apprentice in Dr. Gilligan’s drug store there. He took the job, after which his sister Maude came on to keep house for her two brothers. In 1897 she and Dr. Gilligan were married.
A registered pharmacist by 1900, the next year Charlie bought a half interest in the store, which then became “Gilligan & Stout.” In June of that year he married Catherine Dwyer, daughter of Timothy and Mary Dwyer, old settlers who had come from Ireland to Hancock, and then to O’Neill with one of General O’Neill’s colonies.
By the end of the ‘nineties O’Neill had put its first quarter of a century behind it, but a good deal of building was still going on. Many of the town’s first buildings, both homes and businesses, had been rough, and often crude, buildings. By the turn of the century, with better times spreading across the land, they were being replaced with bigger, better and more up-to-date structures, while newcomers to the town were also putting up first class homes, stores and offices.
Alfred Gunn, his wife and four children had moved from Saline County to Holt in 1899 and settled on a farm near town. A little later, noting the boom in construction and the need for more carpenters, Alfred took up the trade and moved into town. He did well for a time and another daughter was born to the family in 1904. Five years later the mother died and the oldest daughter took over as mother-housekeeper to her brothers and sisters.
Two years later the family home at Seventh and Fremont burned down during a blizzard and the father and one son were severely burned. After a lengthy recuperation they went back to carpentering, rebuilt the home and worked on other homes. For many years Alfred Gunn’s carpenter shop stood on South Fourth Street and he and his three sons catered to the building needs of the area.
At the turn of the century O’Neill started up its light plant again, but sacrificed its one law enforcement official to do so. The money saved by dispensing with its town marshal would nearly pay for the street lights, the city fathers said. The last year of the old century had been another bad one for fires. De Yarman’s and the nearby Fallon livery barns, with fifty-five horse inside, had burned, along with an adjacent blacksmith shop. Shortly afterward another fire took the big icehouse behind the Evans hotel and, for a time, it had looked as if the whole town might go up in that blaze. But the heroic efforts of the firemen saved the hotel and the rest of the town, except for some small buildings.
Then, in April 1900, the lights went out again. The owner of the light plant, a Mr. Minnick, had offered to sell his outfit to the city, and when the city fathers turned down his offer he moved the plant to Alliance, Nebraska, where he had another in operation. He moved the huge boiler and other equipment from its original site by team and wagon, hauling it J. B. RYAN hay co.
Tom Quilty and Melvin Wright in buggy in front of Mellor and Quilty livery barn. 1901. The Safeway store now occupies the site. Clay Johnson Collection. Moving the O’Neill light plant boiler to the railroad tracks to load it on flat cars for shipment to Alliance, Nebraska. Left to right: Bob Arbuthnot, Clayton Messner, Ed Bessie and Reuban Knapp. Clay Johnson Collection. through the streets to the railroad, whereupon the town went back to carbide gas lights for a few years. During this period (1902) Frank Leahy, Sr. moved into O’Neill. Frank was one of the ten sons and daughters of Michael Leahy of Canada. Of the seven sons two became pharmacists, two physicians, two farmers and one a priest; three of the daughters were teachers, one a pharmacist. Frank was one of the farmers. He married Mary W. Kane at Humphrey, Nebraska, and farmed north of Wisner for a time.
When corn dropped to nine cents a bushel and his hogs died of cholera, he moved his family to a ranch near Long Pine, and then to O’Neill, where he opened a tavern. Of his eight children, four were born in O’Neill. Mary Kane Leahy’s parents followed their daughter’s family to O’Neill in 1903. “Dad” and Kane, as 218 everyone called them, came from Pennsylvania to Nebraska and Dad Kane served as chief of police in the county seat for twelve years. When curfew rang at nine o’clock, said Gene Leahy, Frank’s oldest son, “I was always the first boy Grandpa ordered to go home.” Dad and Ma were expert swimmers and Dad taught all the town boys to swim while Ma taught the girls. The Elkhorn, south of town, was the swimming hole. The kids walked to the river except for the times Gene’s dad hauled some of them with his fancy trotting horse. The horse had been trained to race but wasn’t quite speedy enough to win, so wound up as the Leahy’s buggy horse.
Gene’s memories of O’Neill in the early years of the present century are many and varied. He remembers that he and Julius Cronin were altar boys for the big wedding of Susie McMan-us and Joe Horisky; and the day in 1906 when a lumber yard and livery stable burned. They got all the horses out of the stable, he said, but they went back in and perished with the building. To earn spending money the town kids collected empty beer bottles and sold them for a penny apiece, and some of them worked for Leo Mullen, pulling cockle burrs from his cornfield for fifty cents a day. “Dr. Gilligan was our family doctor,” Gene said, “a sturdy fellow, dedicated to his profession. He lanced a big gathering on my leg when I was seven or eight years old. Later he told my mom that I did a man-sized job of cussing. George Harrington, the son of M. F. Harrington, the lawyer, gave me my first horseback ride and Edward M. Gallagher gave me my first car ride in a two-cylinder Reo or Rambler. I was about seven when I won my first bicycle, a second hand one, on a raffle. It cost my dad about $10 for repairs the first week. The highlight of my vacations would be a trip to the Walt, Dick and John O’Malley farm for a weekend, where I could ride their pony.” Although the great football player and coach, Frank Leahy, Jr. was his younger brother, Gene freely admits that he was not a football star. “I attended highschool in O’Neill in 1914-1915,” he wrote, “but our football team was POOR. We couldn’t even beat Norfolk, but we did have a good baseball team during those years, one that was able to cope with any team in the area.” Archie Bowen was seven years old when he first saw O’Neill in 1902. He remembers it as a town with three banks, two hotels, three livery stables, (this number varied seasonally as one or another of the barns burned down), several stores, the post office, First O’Neill High School, built in 1889. Clay Johnson Collection. Left to right, bottom row: William J. Froelich, Arnold Longstaff, John Harrington, Francis Mullen, Clinton Gatz, Zeke Chandler. Middle row: Clarence Stannard, Ray Hoffman, Max Golden, Lloyd Gleed, Edward Whelan, Dan Sullivan, Paul Henry, Hess Baker, Orville Kellar. Top row: Anselm Whelan, Arthur Hammond, Ike Chandler. Many of these lads served as Altar Boys for Father Cassidy and were among the early graduates from the new High School. Courtesy John J Harrington.
O’Neill Main Street looking east. Picture undated but there are no cars on street, only two horse-drawn type vehicles in foreground. Courtesy E. M. Jarman. 219 a handball alley and a much used half-mile race track. There was also a shoe shop, a barber shop, feed mill, a bakery, two drug stores, a tailor shop, hardware store, furniture store, blacksmith shop and several saloons. Douglas Street had board sidewalks on both sides of the street for a distance of two blocks down town. Archie was born in Whitesboro, New York in 1894, the second son in the family. His father deserted his mother before Archie’s birth. When he was about a year old his mother, Emily, brought her two little boys to Omaha, where she had a brother in the barbering business. Six years later she married Frank Bowen who, the following day, brought his new family to O’Neill. There the Bowens opened a small variety store on South Fourth Street, next to the big McManus drygoods and clothing store.
Through the years Archie Bowen watched O’Neill grow. He not only saw the construction of the Knights of Columbus Hall, the Golden Hotel, the new courthouse and its annex, the new post office, several churches and many homes, but helped build some of them, he graduated from high school in 1913, joined the Navy in 1917 and served through the first World War. In 1919, after the death of his stepfather, he took over the variety store and, the same year, married Mary B. Pendergast.
Except for the war years Archie has lived in O’Neill since 1902, and expects to live out his life there. “We have traveled all over this great country of ours,” he says, “and have always been glad to come back to O’Neill, for we have never found a place we like as well.” The Miles family, to be important in Holt County affairs for at least three-quarters of a century, came to O’Neill in January, 1904. Their history in the newspaper business in the county has been told in the chapter on newspapers, but here it should be recorded that George Miles, founder of the company, lived through the days when rural subscribers paid their subscriptions in cobs, corn, wood, cabbage and chickens— just about anything the printer, his family and his livestock could use. He remembered, too, the time 150 masked men came to his office in a body, each paying cash for a subscription and the privilege of explaining the purpose of the vigilante organization, which practically controlled the county. Gerald Miles, George’s oldest son, in 1924 joined the O’Neill Volunteer Fire Department and served as its chief until his death in 1971. For a good many years he urged his town to build a new, modern fire hall. When it was finally built in 1973, two years after his death, a plaque honoring his many years of faithful service was placed in the building at its dedication. His two sons, also longtime active members of the department, and his two daughters, Lanone and Mary, were present for the ceremonies.
About 1910 the William Beha family moved into O’Neill to take over the old Evans hotel. Mr. Evans was moving into the newly built Golden Hotel, so named because its builder was T. V. Golden. The Behas had operated a cafe in Lincoln, which they traded for a farm at Hay Point, a hay shipping station a few miles southeast of O’Neill. While they lived there Bill Beha and a neighbor drove the four miles into Inman every Saturday night to play the phonograph for tent shows.
After they began operating the hotel Joe Parker, who owned the first radio in O’Neill, took to bringing it over to the hotel lobby. People from all over town dropped in to listen to the marvel. One of the first programs he managed to bring in was from Leavenworth, Kansas— a Mr. Snod-grass playing the piano. Four Beha sons and daughters grew up in the old Evans hotel and went off to college, or to occupations of their own. One son graduated from Creighton Law School, another from Columbia. Matt, the youngest, has been an electrician in O’Neill for well over thirty years. For the past twenty he has been a ham radio operator, a sideline that has stood his area in good stead.
During the storm emergency of April, 1956, in South Dakota he was able to get messages through to otherwise completely isolated people. He received a Public Service Award from the American Radio League for his services during the widespread ice storms of January, 1960, and was of great help throughout the March 1 blizzard of 1965. On this occasion he was featured in the Q S T magazine for making contacts with radio equipment from a horse drawn buggy. In 1876 Thomas Donlin was employed-by the government to carry mail back and forth across the Missouri from Fort Randall in a row boat. He also had charge of equipment and supplies for the cavalry at the Fort. While there he met Catherine Cas-sidy. In 1890 his outfit was transferred to Sidney, out in the Panhandle of Nebraska and a long way from Fort Randall.
Presently, however, Catherine came to Sidney to visit a friend, a daughter of Colonel Lister, an officer at the Sidney Barracks. Catherine stayed to work in Sidney and she and Thomas were married there in 1893. Two years later they returned to Fort Randall, took a homestead near there and became the parents of eight children. Catherine died in 1909 and the following year Thomas moved his children to O’Neill where there were good schools.
While Thomas was looking for a home in O’Neill his wife’s parents took the five little girls to their home in Boyd County. The three boys stayed with their grandfather Donlin in Holt County. When the new home was ready Thomas sent word to the Cassidy grandfather, who put the girls on the train at Bristow for the long, roundabout trip, explaining to the conductor that their father would meet them in O’Neill.
On the train a woman offered the five frightened little girls some candy, which they refused as they had been told to do. When the train reached Norfolk the woman insisted they get off the train with her. The conductor came to their aid and would not let them off. At the proper station he put them on the train that would take “Hap” Mles m them north again to O’Neill, where their father was waiting to meet them.
They walked to one of the hotels, where a Mrs. Zeimer had a good dinner ready for them. Afterward, carrying the two youngest girls, they walked to the John McCafferty house, which Donlin had rented. There were not enough bedrooms in the house for so large a family, so Thomas built a summer house in back for himself and the boys to sleep in. They carried their drinking water from the McCafferty well next door and one night when the boys, Thomas and Edward, were coming home with two pails of water someone jumped out at them from behind the McCafferty barn. They dropped the pails and fled. Later Florence McCafferty came over to say she was sorry, that she hadn’t meant to scare them so badly— but they wouldn’t go back for water that night. During the day Bridget Liddy Slaight stayed at the Donlin house, cooking the meals and caring for the children too young to go to school.
Before long Thomas bought eight lots only three blocks from St. Mary’s Academy, and there built a three- story house with a full basement. The new house had gas lights, hot water heat and a hot water tank connected to the furnace. The gas tank was buried in the ground beside the house A State of Nebraska College Course Class picture taken in front of the Court House in 1911. Courtesy Bob Tomlinson. First Boy Scout Troop— 1912. Boy at left is Edward Davidson, son of James E. and Anna Davidson. Courtesy Edith Davidson. June 28, 1904. Crowd in O’Neill to file on land when the Kinkaid Act went into effect, enabling eligible citizens to claim up to 640 acres of sandhill land. Clay Johnson Collection. 221 and there was a big sand-filled tank in the basement. This tank operated on cables and was hand-cranked up to the ceiling. As the gas was used the tank gradually settled to the floor. At this point it had to be cranked up again— else the lights went out. The Donlin home was a paradise for kids. All the neighborhood children came to roller skate with the Donlins in the big basement, or to play on the extra lots west of the house. Grandfather John Donlin, who had homesteaded in the Eagle Creek area in 1876, came to O’Neill to live in the big house with his motherless grandchildren (his wife had died in 1904) and the playground came under his supervision. He installed swings and teeter-totters there, and a merry- go-round made from a big wheel, and a ship that had once been an old hay wagon.
For a few years after Grandfather Donlin came to live with them, ten family members three times a day sat down at the big dining table covered with its three-yards-long white linen table cloth. Father Cassidy, on his daily walks, often stopped to visit with John Donlin. They had much in common since both had come from the same part of Ireland.
One of the Donlin boys, Edward, stayed with the priest and his housekeeper, Miss Cullen, to run errands and to ring the church bell at noon and at six in the evening. He was so small that he had to jump up to catch hold of the rope, and then pull as hard as he could three times before a sound came from the bell. After that it was easy, as the huge bell would ring itself. One day he was playing about ten blocks from the church and forgot to watch the time. It was almost six when he noticed— and ran all the way to the church. Even so he was a little late, but Father Cassidy pretended not to notice. He knew how proud Edward was of his job and his big old dollar watch that kept him abreast of the times.
Thomas Donlin built two little houses on a hundred and sixty acre tract of land he owned between the Northwestern Depot and the river. One house was for the boys, the other for the girls and each was furnished with a wood stove. There the children of O’Neill gathered to get ready to swim in summer and to skate in winter. On the way home from their parties at the river the young folk stopped for Denver sandwiches at Pat Harty’s cafe.
For quite awhile the Donlin boys tended the town herd. Almost every family in town had a milk cow and a barn. The boys gathered the cows in the morning before school and brought them home in the evening, driving them down Main Street (now Fourth Street) where each cow turned off at her own side street and went on home by herself.
Thomas Donlin was a busy man, what with his big family, his town business and his ranch at Fort Randall, fifty miles to the northeast. He made the long trips to the ranch with a team and wagon until 1911, when he bought a car. He wasn’t much better off then, for a sudden rain on the high hill at the Niobrara activated the gumbo and he’d have to stop every few yards to clean, the gooey mud from the wheels so he could make a few more yards.
The first of the family to leave home was James, who answered his country’s call in 1917. When influenza spread across the country the next year, Thomas consulted Dr. Gilligan, Holt County Supervisors, 1913-1914. Back row: Detlef Sievers, Ewing; Roy Townsend, Page; M. R. Sullivan, O’Neill. Front row: Charles Fauquier, Chambers. The second man was from Atkinson, name unknown. Courtesy Marian Van Horn. First Boy Scout Troop – 1912. Boy at left is Edward Davidson, son of James E. and Anna Davidson. Courtesy Edith Davidson. who gave him a quart bottle of medicine— to be passed around the table at each meal. Every diner took a teaspoon of it. When the epidemic worsened and the schools were closed, Thomas divided his family. Catherine stayed at the convent, the grandfather and three of the other girls stayed in the town house, Edward, Thomas, Jr. and Eileen went to the ranch with their father, who was the only one of the family to come down with the sickness.
The Scanlon family, about three miles from the ranch, all had the flu, and no one to take care of them. So Thomas went there daily to cut wood, keep up the fires, prepare meals and administer medicine. Mrs. Scanlon died. Then Thomas fell ill. When his condition worsened Eileen tried to get a doctor. The nearest was at 222 Spencer, seventeen miles away, but none could come. After two suspense filled weeks, the sick man began to get better and finally recovered. Regina, the baby of the family, was only three years old when she sang “What would you take for me, Papa?” on the stage at the Knights of Columbus Hall for a program given by St. Mary’s Academy. At such times as there was no one at home to take care of her, the little girl went to St. Mary’s with her older sisters. There the good nuns gave her snacks and put her to bed for naps. With their help, and that of Grandfather Donlin and Father Cassidy (who often said he held Grandma Donlin next to his own mother because she had been so good to him when he first came to Holt County), Thomas Donlin raised a hearty, healthy family. He died in 1954 at the age of eighty-five years. In 1911 George Gaughenbaugh left his farm southwest of O’Neill and moved into town, where he owned and operated a feed store. He sold flour, bran shorts, poultry and livestock feeds. Later he added a flour mill which stood where the Nebraska Public Power District office is now located. The first flour he made was named “Our Own” by the Sisters of St. Mary’s. The trade mark was a large circle with shamrocks inside it and the words “Our Own” in green in the center. Later he added another brand which he named “Northern Light.” About 1916 he moved the mill to the west side of Fourth Street, just north of the Burlington tracks, where grain could be shipped in and unloaded at the mill and flour loaded directly from the mill and shipped out, thus eliminating drayage. The mill closed in 1921.
The Zastrows, Louis H. and Mary, with two small children, Louis C. and Catherine, came to O’Neill from Sullivan, Wisconsin, in 1912. Louis’ health was very poor and it was hoped the Nebraska climate would benefit him. Mary’s brother, Michael Clinton, was at that time operating a livery barn and hay business in the town, which was another reason why the Zastrows came to O’Neill.
A painter, Louis tried to support his family, but finally sucumbed to tuberculosis in 1918. To maintain a home for her children and a young brother who lived with her, the widow first worked as a telephone operator, then turned to practical nursing, a career she followed for nearly thirty-five years.
First employed by Dr. Gilligan as his office nurse, Mary Zastrow was still there when the aging doctor took in a partner, Dr. Brown. When Dr. Brown in his turn teamed with Dr. French, Mary was a part of the firm. In those days doctors took their nurses with them when they drove into the country to deliver babies or on other urgent house calls. In her time Mary helped with so many baby cases that, in later years, she referred to many individuals in the county and state as “one of my babies.” She also nursed and cared for many patients in the doctor’s office in those pre-hospital days.
Mary died in 1964. Her son Louis married Jean Biglin, granddaughter of Scrantonian Timothy Biglin. The couple had nine children and Louis died in April, 1973. Mary’s daughter Catherine married Sidney Faulhaber, son of Middlebranch rancher Fred Faulhaber. The couple operated the ranch until Sidney’s death in 1972. They had one daughter.
George Bressler, a Methodist minister in Holt County for a number of years, moved from his farm parish, north of O’Neill, and settled in town to put his children in school. George had been a barber before he came to Holt County and for a time he worked at that trade in McPharlin’s Barber Shop in O’Neill. Next he went into the merchandise business for himself in a store on south Fourth Street, stocking it with goods he bought on sale from other firms. In 1918 he had just received a large stock of goods when his store caught on fire one evening. He lost $70,000 worth of merchandise. With the $4,000 worth of stock he managed to salvage he stocked a rented building on Douglas Street and had a good sale. Back in business again, he bought a brick building at the corner of Third and Douglas and continued in the store business until 1934. Only one of the seven Bressler children, Nona Beckwith, now lives in O’Neill.
Clay H. Johnson, Sr., with his wife Elsie and three small children, moved from Antelope to Holt County inl926, and farmed southwest of Page until they lost the farm to the drouth and depression of the ‘thirties. Clay Johnson, Jr. remembered those bad times very well. “Right after the Fourth of July, 1934, he wrote, “Dad plowed a patch of low ground where there was a little moisture, hoping to raise a crop of sweetcorn and potatoes. The plants got about knee- high and were staying pretty green. After a two-day absence he went to the patch and found no trace of anything— only holes in the ground where the roots had been. Grasshoppers had eaten every plant. “In 1933-34, when the drouth was at its worst, we poured water in holes in the yard and the chickens scratched in the wet dirt to get down to cooler ground. That way we didn’t have so many die of the heat when the temperature got up to 110. We raised around 3009 chickens, those years, and my brother Roy and I had to help run the incubators to hatch them. When the chickens were small rats would undermine the chicken house and Roy and I took shovels and dug them out and killed them with a ball bat.” Those were the years of the terrible dust storms on the plains. “You could see the black clouds of dirt coming,” Clay went on, “like a rain or snow storm as it moves across the fields toward you. We’d go in the house and shut the doors and windows, no matter how hot and stifling it was inside. But the awful winds drove the dust in around the openings anyway— for us to clean up after it was over.” After losing the farm in 1935, the family moved to a place on the east edge of O’Neill. There all five worked together, running the Johnson Dairy and slowly climbing out of the “no money days of the Great Depression.” During their first summer there a five inch rain fell in just a little over an hour. The highway ran straight east from O’Neill, Clay wrote, “and when my dad came home from town, late that afternoon, the water was about four feet deep on the road at the east edge of town. He drove a team and wagon, as we didn’t yet have money enough to buy a car, and the horses’ bellies were under water and only the tops of the wheels showing above it. I can still see the sun setting that evening. Everything, including the west half of our place, was a lake, clear to the Elkhorn River.” Clay Johnson, Sr. operated the dairy for twenty-three years, until his wife’s death in 1959. He still keeps his hand in by fattening a few cows at his place on the southwest edge of town, and whittling wooden log chains for a hobby. Clay, Jr. served in the Navy during World War II, then came home to take up radio, television and appliance repair at the Gillespie Radio – Electric Company. After fourteen years in that position he became a watch and clock repairman at the McIntosh Jewelry Store. On January 30, 1928, Eileen Donlin and Thomas A. Greene were married in St. Patrick’s church by Father Cassidy, the priest who stayed overnight and said Mass at the Donlin ranch home in the 1880’s while going to and from Spencer, across the Niobrara, in what is now Boyd County.
Tom Greene was in the hay, grain and coal business and did “general hauling” with his little fleet of trucks. One winter during the ‘thirties he hauled snow shovelers for the State. This meant that he had to be at the 223 State garage very early in the mornings to start the truck and warm it for the shovelers. He had enclosed the truck with a tarpaulin and furnished it with bales of hay for the workers to sit on, and little oil stoves to warm the interior while driving to and from work. The truck left town before daybreak and returned after dark.
When the Shoemaker sisters closed their hospital in O’Neill in the late ‘forties Tom moved their equipment to California. Clay Johnson went along to help drive and, except for some inspection stops, they drove straight through to Long Beach without pausing. Arriving too late in the day to unload, Clay slept in the truck that night to guard the property. It is well that he did for, though he had “callers” in the night, they went away in a hurry when he “hollered.” Tom and Ellen bought the old Donlin ranch in 1947 and stocked it with cows. When the first of the blizzards of 1948-1949 struck in November they were living in O’Neill. The storm was so bad that all roads were blocked and snow plows helpless. Telephone lines were down and Tom could not even call his ranch neighbors to find out how things were at the ranch. In his anxiety he finally decided to walk the twenty-two miles to the place.
He started at ten o’clock in the morning. When he reached Midway, fifteen miles north of O’Neill, he found the little store out of all food except some cheese and crackers. After eating and resting a little he went on. The snow was so deep that all fences and landmarks were covered, with not even a fencepost showing anywhere. When he had walked what he guessed to be four miles on north he turned west for the final three miles to his ranch. Almost totally exhausted, he crawled the last mile. Darkness came on and he had almost given up when he heard his dog Laddie barking. A minute later the dog came running to meet him. When he finally staggered into the house he fell cross the bed and slept until daylight.
With first light he wakened, saddled his horse, Starlight, and went looking for his cows. Not an animal was in sight but the good dog struck out to the east toward a spring that never froze— and there he found the cows in a plum thicket about a quarter-mile from the house. They had milled in the thicket as the snow fell, trampling it down until the drifts surrounding them were so high they were trapped in their self-made pen. Starlight, the saddlehorse, was big and strong enough to break a trail through the deep snow for the cows to follow, and so they led them back to the ranch and feed.
Meanwhile, back in O’Neill Eileen was frantic with worry. When she had heard nothing from him by afternoon of the day after he left, she struggled down town through the drifts and found some townsmen in front of the Royal Theater. One, Art King, was standing on a drift as high as the theater. When she told him her fears for Tom, Art assured her that Tom knew what he was doing and could take care of himself. The next day, when there was still no word, she called on a neighbor, Levi Fuller, for help. He said he would try to get through by phone to Ralph Ernst, just east of the Eagle Creek bridge and not far from the Donlin ranch. If he couldn’t reach Ernst, he promised to get some men together and go looking for Tom Greene.
Late that night Fuller reached Ernst by phone and the next morning the ranchman called back to tell him he could see Tom across the creek on top of a haystack, pitching hay to his cattle. The next day Tom rode his big horse through the drifts to Ernst’s place, and when the snow plow finally got through, that day, he caught a ride back to O’Neill. As soon Mrs. Luella A. Parker, County Superintendent of Schools; Edith J. Sexsmith, assistant. Picture taken in 1927 in the office at the old Holt County Court House. Courtesy Edith J. Davidson. 224 as the town was able to get its airport open he took a plane to the flat near the Ernst ranch, rode Starlight to his own place, fed the cattle, then returned to Ernst’s and flew home. Tom Greene died in December, 1972, and Eileen now owns and runs the ranch, which has belonged to
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