← Before Today: A History of Holt County, Nebraska
event. They spent the first sixteen years of their married life on a farm north of Stuart. Some of those years fell in the ‘thirties and Ella well remembers the horror of the dust storms they lived through.
To earn a few dollars for food, those years when no crops grew, Charley and others worked the county’s poor “washboardy” roads with four horses hitched to a “scraper” or fresno, grading the dust into the semblence of a road. Walking behind his scraper for ten hours a day, a man made six dollars. In 1938 Charley and Ella bought the land John Crimmins had homesteaded more than sixty years earlier. They paid $7,500 for 360 acres.
The farm had the distinction of being the first to be irrigated by wells, two of them, with the water ditched down the rows. Later they bought the Pat Hayes and Joe Corrigan places, making a nice farmstead with the 252 Elkhorn river running through it. Ella comments on the changes that have come about since her marriage fifty years ago. “From kerosene lamps to electric lights; from wood burning stoves to pushing a button or turning a knob; from hand cranked telephones and ‘Hello Central’ to the dial system; from Model T’s to air-conditioned cars.” Charley and Ella’s son, Dale, served two years in the Korean conflict and now lives at home. Their daughter, Quintin, taught school for six years, starting at a salary of $40 a month. She married Albert Smith, a ranchman, and had four children. Three other 1885 settlers in Green Valley were the Dobrovolnys, Skrdlas and Kolenas. All were Bohemians. John Dobrovolny came to Chicago about 1870, and on to Fremont in 1880. His brother Thomas, with his wife, Antonia, and their six-weeks-old son, Frank came to America in 1878. On the ocean crossing the baby fell ill and nearly died. A third brother, Ferdinand, came over later and, in 1885, with Thomas, homesteaded fifteen and eighteen miles southwest of Atkinson. By then Thomas and Antonia had five sons. John came later and settled near Thomas. Thomas’ sod home was about eighteen feet long, plastered with alkali from their own land and whitewashed throughout with a dimes worth of lime. They raised fine corn crops, those first years, and Thomas’ tall corncrib could be seen across the treeless plains from as far away as Atkinson.
On the morning of the big blizzard Tom had turned six head of cattle and his pigs into the cornstalks. When the storm struck the two cows and the two big calves came back to the barn. The little calves didn’t make it. Later that day there was a noise at the door. Tom opened it and found three of his pigs there. He let them in’and they were the only ones that lived through the storm.
The next morning the little boys, Joe and Fred, sat in the deep window of the soddy and watched their parents carry a nearly frozen calf over the drifts. They brought her in and warmed her up. She lost her ears and tail and never again grew any hair on her legs, but in later years she became the lead cow of the herd. That same year nine-year-old Tom lost his appetite and became frail and listless. He was excused from field work and spent his days behind the stove, dozing. By corn picking time he had become so weak that Antonia had to stay home from the field to care for him. On November 18, 1888, he died. The neighbors came and laid his body out on two chairs until the coffin, made by Joseph Kubart and Anton Wondercheck, was ready. He was buried in St. Joseph’s cemetery. The Dobrovolny boys spent much of their time herding cattle. In the fall they sported with the tumbleweeds that rolled across the prairie on high winds. Occasionally they hunted or fished with their father and played on the shores of Dora Lake. More than eighty years later Fred looked back on his life and said, “Those were the good old days.” Prairie fires were especially bad in 1893, burning almost all the hay in Green Valley. John Dobrovolny lost his new barn, his hay and grain and all his horses except the team he was driving. Discouraged, he moved back to Fremont.
In the fall of 1893 Thomas lost six of his nine calves to “blackleg,” a scourge that sometimes decimated early cattle herds. The boys, who had pampered those calves, taking pride in every pound they were able to put on them, wondered why the six strongest, plumpest ones died. Remedies used in those days did little, if any, good. Some farmers bled the animals, believing that drawing off some blood would reduce the poison and speed up circulation. Others practiced “rowling,” cutting a hole in the brisket and tying a rope or rag soaked in turpentine through the opening. Still others cut the hide open at the shoulder, made a little pocket and stuffed it full of tobacco. The wound then festered, supposedly purifying the blood.
A few years later the government came out with a vaccine that looked like dried blood. Mashed with a mallet in a bowl, soaked in water and strained, the resulting solution was injected into the calves. It helped to Bill Sharp, Anton Dobrovolny’s hired man, on wagon running gears. Courtesy Lawrence Kramer.
control the disease, but a sure preventive was still some years in the future.
Many old timers remember stopping at the Dobrovolny well for a drink’and a pickle. Antonia made mild dill pickles and always kept a keg of them in the well house for travelers who stopped for a drink. The Dobrvolny boys worked out for the neighbors from the time they were ten years old, and put their money into Hereford cattle. In 1902 twenty-four-year-old Frank went to Canada and took a homestead. The next year he married Marguerite Simons. By 1908 he was back in Atkinson, bringing his wife and two children. Four more children were born to them there.
Anton married Laura Beebe in 1913 and ranched in the Brown Lake area for many years. Joseph went to Wyoming when he was eighteen, spent eleven years working for other ranchmen, then returned to Green Valley and went into ranching for himself. He married Ella Ziska in 1917 and had seven children. Fred, ranched with his father on Holt Creek for a good many years. In 1912 he married Elsie Weatherly. They had no children and now live in Atkinson. Fred, who nearly died crossing the Atlantic as a baby, is now eighty-nine years old.
Joseph Skrdla and his wife, Katherine, were both born in Bohemia. With three children, Annie, Kate and Joseph, Jr. they came to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1873. John and Mary were born there before the family came on to Nebraska City. Annie and Kate were married while they lived there. About 1885 Joseph and Katherine brought Joseph, Jr., John and Mary to a farm nine and a 253 half miles southwest of Atkinson. In May, 1894, they bought the William Hanely timber claim.
Joseph, Jr. married Emma Bercha in 1897 and filed on a claim near his father’s. Five children were born to them. In 1908 Joseph Skrdla, Jr., and his sons bought the Roller Mill in Atkinson. Joseph died in 1947, Emma in 1949.
Joseph’s brother, John, married Anna Kozicek at St. Joseph’s church in 1899. They lived on a farm near the senior Skrdlas and raised seven children. A family that loved to dance, John and Anna gave wedding dances for each of their daughters in the haymow of their long cattle barn. In 1920 they had a thirty-two volt light plant installed on their farm and the house wired for electric lights. A line shaft from the plant ran the washing machine and the churn, as well as a sickle grinder.
Mary Skrdla, the only daughter of Joseph and Katherine to come to Green Valley, married Ed Humpal in 1903, lived for a time on a farm and then moved into Atkinson, where Ed ran a pool hall.
Anton Kolena, too, came to Green Valley from Nebraska City, driving a wagon and herding some livestock. His wife, Anna, came on the train with their eight children. They bought a ranch in the Bohemian settlement and raised their family there. Born in Czechoslovakia, married in Nebraska City, they are buried in Woodlawn Cemetery.
Anton Dobrovolny plow crew. Left to right: Anton Dobrovolny, Bill Sharp, Joe Dobrovolny, unknown. Courtesy Lawrence Kramer. Family of Thomas and Antonia (Elias) Dobrovolny. 1896. Standing: Joe, Anton and Fred. Seated: Frank, Antonia and Thomas. Courtesy Lawrence Kramer. Chapter Twenty-Eight Another of the Nightengales, James, describes a Green Valley wedding that took place in 1886. “The largest and longest lasting wedding occurred at the home of the bride’s folks about nine miles southwest of Atkinson. These parents were old country people and did things as they had been accustomed to doing them in the old country’and that was not by halves. The couple was married by Father Kolon. The bride’s father had lumber hauled to his place and the neighbors helped build a dance floor beside the house. A sod house close by, ordinarily used for cooling cream and milk, on this occasion was to be used solely for storing twenty-eight kegs of beer bought from Frank Jones, who ran the brewery in Atkinson, close by the flour mill. There was everything good to eat for those invited and, as the wedding lasted three days and nights, they all had a whopping good time. “Now there were four young toughs who lived in the Rhutabaga Settlement a short way south of Stuart. These young fellows took a team and wagon and set out to swipe some of the kegs of beer. The wedding dance was in full blast, that first night, when the toughs arrived. The groom’s brother had charge of passing out the beer, which he carried around to all the merrymakers. A lantern hung in the sod cooler, where the beer was stored, and when the tender emptied a bucket to the crowd he’d go get another supply. While he was away, passing out beer, two of the toughs went in and rolled out eight kegs of beer, with the other two keeping watch for the tender to come back. Then they rolled the kegs out to the road, where they had left their wagon. But the bartender’s brother noticed that about eight kegs were missing.
“So he called the bride’s brother and some other boys over and told them about the missing beer. Then he told them to go to the wagon, take the wagon wrench out of the doubletrees, unscrew the burrs from all four wheels and throw them in the weeds. He warned them to be careful and do this while the beer rustlers were going back for the last kegs of beer.
The wedding guests did as they were told, then went back to the. dance. The four toughs loaded the last 254 of their beer, hitched the horses that had been tied to the wagon, and started for home. Right away a wheel came off. Puzzled, they got out and loaded the wheel into the wagon. They started on, lopsided, but the other wheels quickly fell off and they had to haul the wagon box for more than four miles, a heavy load sliding on the ground, to get it home.” Many years later one of the wedding guests told the story of the purloined beer. When asked if the four young toughs had to stand a lot of guying about their miscarried plans to get cheap beer, he replied, “There was never a word said about it.” Hy Nightengale had another queer story to tell about Green Valley’the tale of the mysterious “Ghost Lights,” seen now and again in a certain part of the valley. Today it is accepted that the ghostly lights are a “freak of nature,” perhaps a phosporescent gas that glows in the darkness, not a supernatural “something” that comes out only at night. Some of the settlers in the swampy region of the valley had seen the lights often enough to be somewhat used to them. Others, who had never seen the lights often refused to believe in them. Strangers, meeting or seeing the lights for the first time were terrified.
Gus Gage, an unbeliever, had lived in the ghost light vicinity for quite awhile but had never seen a single light, so thought his neighbors were just trying to scare him when they talked of the lights that roamed the valley at night. Then one very dark night about ten o’clock he heard his cattle bawling out in the pasture. Thinking they might have broken down the gate he hastened to the corner where the gate was. He found it properly closed’and stood there wondering what made the cattle so uneasy. “Then,” he said, “I saw a red light coming toward me and I thought to myself, ‘Now’s my time to straighten this humbuger up,’ so I got an old fence post for a club and stepped to the center of the road. It kept coming and all at once it changed from bright red to yellow and, when it almost reached me, it turned to green, bounced over my head and hit the ground again and kept on going on the bounce until it disappeared.
“I hurried home and told my wife and said, ‘Mama, get me the rifle and I’ll go back there and find out what that was.’ but she answered me ‘Better you leave that thing alone.”‘ One of his listeners asked Gus why he didn’t land on the light with his club while it was passing over his head, and he replied “That would only make it Varsther (worser).” Another fellow in that region who had never seen the lights, but had heard of them, was a Mr. Britt, a neighbor of James Diehl’s. Britt walked over to Diehl’s one evening to ask to borrow his wagon for the next day. They sat up late, visiting, and it was very dark when Britt started home. About two hours later he was back at Diehl’s door, waking the family. He was a badly frightened man as he told his story.
He had reached the stubble field, he said, when a ball of fire crossed in front of him and a queer feeling came over him, a feeling that seemed to force him to follow that ball of light around the field for a long time. He couldn’t seem to break away from it until it finally vanished. He stayed at Diehl’s the rest of the night. Then there was Sherm Innis, an Atkinson saloon keeper, who had heard the fellows who lived in the ghost light country talking about the uncanny ball of fire. Sherm, a confirmed skeptic, scoffed at their stories. After awhile he sold his saloon and took up carpentering, working with Jim Humpal and Jack Hayes. They were building a large barn in the ghost light region, using Jim’s team and spring wagon to haul the tools and men to work and back. They stayed at the farm all week and went home on Saturday nights. One Saturday they got a late start for town. The night was dark and they hadn’t been on the road very long when one of the men said, “there comes a car.” The others agreed, but soon changed their minds as the light didn’t stay on the road but cut across a pasture and headed directly for them, jumping and bouncing along in front of the team across the road. Innis was pretty badly frightened, but from then on he was convinced that the light was real. “Seeing was believing,” he said.
Some people drove to that part of the Valley on purpose to see the ghost lights on dark nights, but so far as is known were never successful. And while so many people were interested in the strange lights a fellow by the name of Cook came to Atkinson to promote an oil boom in Holt County. He called his proposition the “Ghost Light Oil Field,” and had a lot of lease forms struck off. These he gave to farmers and land owners to sign, on a royalty basis.
“Cook seemed to be a very intelligent man,” wrote Hy Nighten-gale, “different in appearance and a . convincing talker in his line, which was geology and oil formations. He claimed that flowers, shrubs, trees and other plants in an oil field carried traces of oil, and carried resembling a magnifying glass. When making a test he’d very carefully focus the glass on a plant, and then exclaim, ‘Oh My! I can see plenty of oil oozing out of those leaves.’ “He spent quite some time in Atkinson; hiring a man and rig to drive him from place to place, setting stakes with small red flags at points where, in his opinion, oil was closest to the surface. He had plenty of lease signers, enough to justify sinking a test well, as most people thought he would do. But he got nothing out of the lease signers in Holt County and, after paying his expenses disappeared. So the “Ghost Light Oil Field Company” blew up like the 1894 irrigation ditch proposition had done some years earlier.
Through the latter years of the 1880 decade, and throughout the ‘nineties, homesteaders still came to Green Valley. Jacob Humpal, his wife Mary and their two little boys, came from Czechoslovakia to Jones County, Iowa, in 1854. After living in three different eastern Nebraska counties they settled on a homestead southwest of Atkinson, the family’s final move. The Humpals had twelve more children in Nebraska.
Jacob’s youngest son, James, born in Iowa in 1874, married Julie Halamek, and fathered three children, William, Arthur and Regina. The father, James, was a carpenter and Arthur learned the trade by working with him. After graduation from high school he spent one season traveling with the Walter Savage Carnival, playing in the band. Arthur married Elsie Skrdla of Atkinson in 1923, built a home for her and followed the carpenter trade for quite a few years. He contracted and tore down the old Atkinson schoolhouse, re-shingled the Catholic church and tore down its high steeple. He built St. Joseph Grade School, the K.C. Hall, the Atkinson Clinic and many other houses, barns and business buildings. He played a number of band instruments but specialized on the cornet. He led the Atkinson band for two years and the Stuart and Bassett City band for three years each.
In the early ‘thirties Andy Rissor of Norfolk taught Arthur to fly an airplane and the two men killed from fifty to one hundred and fifty coyotes a winter in 1935 and 1936, all from a plane. In 1937 Arthur bought a forty HP Cub, making him the first resident in Holt County to own his own plane. He equipped the plane with skis for winter flying. He taught his three daughters to fly and his second daughter, Donna, in 1945, had her solo license, even before she had a driver’s license. Art made many trips about with him an instrument 255 by plane to Omaha and to Denver and Kansas City.
In 1933 he started his Atkinson Sand and Gravel business and he and his wife, Elsie, flew down to Lincoln every month to the state house to bid on state highways and many other road projects. He did all the work on O’Neill’s first airport and also built the first swimming pool in the county seat. The family had its own lake, just south of Atkinson, created by his gravel pumping business. He then bought mated wild geese, acquired a State Game Permit and set up his own game refuge in 1955. The geese and wild ducks stay on the pond the year around now, a beautiful sight to see. Both Art and Elsie were active in many civic affairs. Art was a city councilman for sixteen years and a member of the hospital board. Elsie died in 1969. Art, married again in 1972 (to Rose Krobot Wedige) is now retired. He turned his Atkinson pits over to his son-in-law, Frank Schaaf, and his Inman pit to another son-in-law, Robert Cole. He puts in his time with his game refuge birds and in giving his grandchildren rides in his two new airplanes.
At seventeen years of age Richard Moon came from County Derry to Philadelphia in 1845. He worked at the blacksmith trade there and served on the police force for seventeen years. His wife Bessie passed away in 1861 when her third child, Richard, was born. An aunt cared for the children for seven years, then he took them back to Ireland to live with his parents and go to school. Seven years later he returned with them to Philadelphia, where he married again and had four more children.
The family came to Holt County in 1888. In 1887 the younger Richard had been married to Miss Selena Bell of Stuart and settled with her on a homestead twenty miles south of Atkinson. Richard Moon, Jr., was a blacksmith, farmer, cobbler, harnessmaker, carpenter, painter and musician. Many a time his violin provided shoes and other necessities for his family. He raised and sold fruit trees, was an excellent hunter and owned and operated a horse power threshing machine. He managed other odd jobs as well, such as appraising land for the Federal Land Bank of Omaha, and serving as precinct assessor and road overseer. Just when young Richard Moon struck out for himself is not stated, but his daughter, Rose Hovey of Stuart, writes that he had a difficult time after leaving home, often hungry and having to sleep in haystacks. He managed a little education by staying with friends and working for his clothes, room and board while going to school. A self-taught musician, he could both read and write music. He and Selena had eleven children. A progressive man, Mr. Moon was able to buy a new two-seated carriage for his family. Later he owned one of the first cars and radios in his area. He also installed a carbide light system on his farm and used the best farming machinery of his era. Mrs. Moon was a fine housekeeper and saw to it that, twice a year, the family ticks were emptied and refilled with fresh new straw. A feather bed topped each straw tick and, when freshly filled, the top of the bed was a long way up, especially for the youngsters. Rose remembers that, until the ticks were “packed down again,” . the centers were so high that a sleeping child now and then rolled off onto the floor.
Rose remembers the evenings too, “after a hard day’s work, when the This wreck of a Wyoming stock train occurred near Stuart in 1913. No list of fatalities is given. It would appear from one picture that another train ran into the stock train from behind. Damage to the train was extensive. Courtesy White Horse Museum.
chores were done and supper over, Dad would get out his violin and play for us. We had lots of company and the young folks would dance to his music. If there were eight of us we’d have a square dance, with Father doing the calling.” The Moons celebrated their Golden Wedding in 1937, with all their children at home for the event. Richard and Selena were almost inseparable and, when Selena’s health began to fail and there were nights when she couldn’t sleep, she would ask Richard to play his violin, which he did, very softly, until she fell asleep. After her death in 1941, Mr. Moon occupied his time as best he could by raising a huge garden and sharing with his friends during the scarcities of World War II. He also carved many fine diamond willow canes to give away.
In a letter to his daughter Rose he wrote, “My old heart grieves that all 256 but one of my grandsons (seven in all) are in this awful war.” He wrote regularly to them all and hoped to live to see them all come home. But only one, Richard Hovey, was home in time to see his grandfather again. The old gentleman died in July, 1944. As vivid to Rose as memory itself was the story told to her by her parents of the day she was born, July 26, 1894. The drouth of 1894 was well advanced, but that day the temperature reached “a hundred and twenty in the shade.” By night corn stalks stood white and shriveled in the heat and Mrs. Moon, giving birth to Rose Mary Moon that day, declared it was the hottest she had ever lived through.
James Brook and Fannie Ward were married in England and lived in London, where James had done carpentry and masonry work on the Tower of London. They emigrated to America in 1860 with their four-year- old daughter, Nellie. On the way over their ship was wrecked and they ran out of food, except for a huge store of peanuts. After the journey none of them cared much for peanuts.
They settled in Illinois, where two sons were born, Charles in 1862 and Jesse in 1868. They later moved to Davenport, Iowa, where Charles married Lou Ella Clark in 1884. The couple had a daughter, born in 1887, and the next year moved to Atkinson. James and Fannie moved there with them and James immediately established a hardware store. At that time all tinware articles, pails, wash boilers, pans, were made right in the store. After a time James sold the store to Charles and Jesse and turned to truck gardening, specializing in strawberries which he shipped all over the central part of Nebraska.
William and Sarah Clark, Lou Ella Brook’s parents, and her younger sister Cora, also moved to Atkinson. Cora graduated from Atkinson High School and, in 1892, married Jesse Brook.
Charles and Jesse, sports enthusiasts, sponsored the first blue rock shoots held in and around Atkinson. An undated newspaper clipping in the Brook’s family album reads: “At the state shoot at Lincoln last week, Charley Brook, in the face of all the machinations favoring the pets of the metropolitan gun clubs, stayed in the race and divided first money with four of the celebrated shots of America, getting fifteen birds straight. Jack Parker, Will Duer and R.O Heiks, live bird shots of national reknown, divided the honors with Charley. Vern McDonald also did some remarkable shooting at blue rocks, entering seven matches and getting money in five. Atkinson may well be proud of her gun club.” Charles and Jesse ran the hardware store until their deaths in 1901 and 1913 respectively. Charles’ daughter Jessie graduated from Atkinson High in 1903 and married Merle Richards in 1906. They died in Atkinson, Jessie in 1951, Merle in 1971. One of their four children now survives them. Jesse and Cora had one son and six daughters. The entire Brook family that moved to Atkinson in 1888 now rests in Woodlawn Cemetery.
Charles’ wife, Lou Ella, used to tell her grandchildren how it was when they first came to Atkinson. There were no trees in the town and the pleasantest way to spend a summer Sunday was to rent a horse and buggy from the livery and drive a mile out of town to the lone tree by the river and have a picnic.
Since the first settlers had come into the region in the 1870’s there had been little real cause for uneasiness due to any activities of the Indians and most people had no idea they would ever have to fear their red brothers again. Then in 1890 came frightening news of ghost dancing and another Indian uprising. Most of the tales were distorted and exaggerated, but the settlers couldn’t know that at the time.
The Nightengale history of the period tells it this way. “Things looked pretty dangerous for the settlers all over Nebraska and South Dakota. It happened in the month of November (1890 ). The weather was lovely at that time. A pale bright moon rose each evening in a clear starlit sky. Everything was peaceful up to the last part of October. Then trouble started to brew like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. The ghost dances were getting hotter and more earnest.
“In this neighborhood the neighbors got together and talked of nothing else but the slim chance they would have when the Indians came through, if they made a break with only a few soldiers stationed at Fort Robinson. In Green Valley Township Nels Tuller was chosen as commander. He gave orders to the settlers to get all of their guns in working order for the expected attack, as it wouldn’t take the Indians long to reach this locality. John Torpy and J.O.D. Nightengale would visit back and forth each night to discuss the latest events of the expected outbreak. “John had a No. 10 gauge shotgun hung up on pegs over his bedroom door. J.O.D. had no gun but tried to borrow one from George Dexter, who had loaned all the guns he had in his shop out to other married citizens, so the only weapon available was a long-handled bundle fork which he placed behind the door.
“Will Nightengale, a son, was sent to town one of those tense evenings to learn the latest reports wired in of conditions in the Wounded Knee section. It was a lovely moonlit night and we all stayed up, with lamps out, waiting for the news. Midnight came, then one o’clock, then two, with no sign of Will. Then something very exciting happened. We could hear the clatter of horse hoofs coming at full speed from the Timothy Cross claim, eighty rods east.
John O. D., who was guarding the door and looking out of the window at the same time, reached for the fork and exclaimed in a fearful tone, “Here comes the first object.” The supposed Indian horseman was Will, however, who had been badly scared himself as he rode past the Cross grove. Some of the Cross’ hogs were asleep in the timber and when they heard the horse passing by took fright and ran, with loud grunts, which Will mistook for Indians. Will lost his hat on that mad run. It was an eight dollar headgear he had bought in Oklahoma a short time before and he treasured that hat but didn’t care to venture back after it, as he still thought he’d heard Indians in the grove.
“Mom Nightengale was the only one who wasn’t worried during those nerve racking two weeks of the uprising. She said, “What’s the use of being scared? If one of them dares come in the house I’ll give him a good welt on the nose with the lid lifter.” “John and Mrs. Torpy had an exciting night during the Indian scare, but a couple of nights before it happened we also got a thriller. We had all packed up after supper and started for the Torpy place, reasoning that if we were to be scalped we had all just as well go the route together. The moon was at its best, casting light on clumps of weeds that we watched closely, lest they be skulking Indians in ambush. About half way to Torpy’s we heard a volley of shots, fired off to the northwest, and our hair began to raise.
“The shots rang out clear and loud and not far off, making us move on the double quick. Another and another volley followed and we knew the Indians finally had us trapped. Then came a thunderous report or explosion. We came to the conclusion that the Indians had no cannon, so hurried on to Torpys. They, too, were wondering what was going on up at the old railroad gravel pit, about two miles west of town, where the noise seemed to come from.
“We stayed at Torpy’s most of the night, and didn’t learn until the next 257 day that the shooting had been done by some soldiers from Fort Riley, Kansas, who were on their way to Wounded Knee. When their train left Atkinson, the officers had the cars sidetracked at the gravel pit and the whole force took part in some target practice at the pit, even bringing some cannon into action— and knocking terror into all who heard the shooting until the real facts were known.
The Torpys had gone to bed about two nights later when, about two o’clock in the morning, their dog set up a continuous howl. They had all the doors locked and the children collected in the parents’ room. John got up and got his No. 10 gauge down, all loaded and ready for action. The window blinds were down and John didn’t light the lamp. Then the family heard the window in the front room being raised. Mrs. Torpy lamented, “John, we’ll all be killed.” John motioned to her to be quiet, then pulled the blind a little to one side to see what was going on. To his great surprise he saw a team of horses tied to a wagon box in the yard. Then he called “Who’s in that room.” “I’m Martin Torpy,” came the answer from the livingroom window. “Your door was locked so I thought I’d crawl through the window and not wake you up.” Martin, who was holding down a homestead up in Boyd County, was scared of Indians, too, so thought he’d drive down to his relatives and stay with them until things settled down. A few days later the grim battle of Wounded Knee put the whole business to rest, for the whites, at least. Throughout the ‘nineties settlers continued to come to the Green Valley area, some finding unclaimed land to file on, others buying or renting farms. Among these was Mathew Mick. His father, Peter Mick, came to Wisconsin from Germany in the 1860’s, married there in 1870 and had two sons, Peter, Jr. and Mathew. The mother died at Mathew’s birth and the father remarried.
In the late ‘nineties Peter Weber, a settler from southeast of Atkinson, went to Wisconsin to visit relatives at Mineral Point. While there he met and married Susan Mick, one of Peter Mick’s six children by his second marriage. They returned to Holt County to live on Weber’s place. Soon afterward Mathew Mick decided to move to Atkinson and join his sister. He came by train, found work in the Valley and became friends of the Seger family.
In November, 1901, he married Caroline Seger at St. Joseph’s church. Later he homesteaded one of the few remaining quarters of unclaimed land, some six miles southwest of Atkinson. About a year after Mathew’s marriage a neighboring homesteader, Bernard Bonenberger, went to Wisconsin, married Caroline’s sister, Mary Mick, and brought her back to the Valley.
Mathew and Caroline were the parents of four children, all of whom are married and living in or around Atkinson. Caroline died in 1945, Mathew stayed on at the home place until his grandson came home from the Army in 1947 and bought the homestead. Mathew died two years later.
John Edward Schindler, descendant of a family of early immigrants, had an exciting and tragic background. His grandfather, John Jacob Schindler, born in Switzerland in 1804, was a merchant and locksmith. With two of his sons, Dietrich and Edward, and a daughter, Ursula, he came to Otoe County, Nebraska, in 1857 and bought a half section of land. His wife and two younger daughters remained in Switzerland until the girls finished their private school education. The climate in Nebraska did not agree with Mr. Schindler. Leasing his land, he moved with the children to Arkansas where, in 1859, his wife and daughters, Anna and Emilie, joined him. During the Civil War Jacob was killed by guerrillas, who attacked their home and stole or destroyed everything they owned, even taking the blankets off the bed where Edward lay sick. The seventeen-year- old lad died from shock and exposure. Mrs. Schindler and her daughters then moved back to Otoe County, where Emilie died of yellow jaundice that same year, 1864. The distraught mother went home to Switzerland for two years, then returned to the United States and lived out her life with her children.
Dietrich, meanwhile, had contracted with a Colonel Shoohp of the Third Colorado Militia to drive supply wagons for his troops. Later he drove a six mule team for Majors and Waddell, freighting between Nebraska City and Denver. Then he married Marianna Teschantz, also a native of Switzerland, and built a four-room log cabin home near Nebraska City. A neighbor of J. Sterling Morton, he and Morton studied the soil and planted trees and windbreaks. Dietrich and other Otoe County settlers each cut, hauled and placed a tree in the log cabin at Arbor Lodge. His family name is carved into his log in the historic cabin.
Dietrich and Marianna had nine children. Of these one son, John Edward, broke the family circle at Nebraska City by moving to the headwaters of Helt Creek in western Holt County. Born in 1870 at Nebraska City, he had had pneumonia twice and his doctor had ordered him to a higher climate. Educated in Otoe County schools and a graduate of the Chillicothe, Missouri, business college, he was interesting to the neighbors because he had to wear woolen underwear the year around, and in winter wore chamois skin underwear over the woolen under garments. Ed Schindler married Bertha Tuller at O’Neill in June, 1902, with Judge Dickson officiating. Following in the footsteps of his father, Ed scattered a great deal of red clover and timothy seed in his meadows, put up hay and raised and fed cattle. The Hammond post office was located in the yard of the Schindler ranch and Barney Earnhardt was its postmaster for more than sixty years.
From his isolated ranch Ed made two trips a year to town for supplies— a dozen fifty pound sacks of flour, two one hundred pound sacks of white sugar, one of brown sugar, two large wooden boxes each of dried peaches, apricots and prunes. His father, Dietrich, sent him nine barrels of Nebraska City apples every fall. Coffee came in three gallon tins which they later used for milk pails. The seven Schindler children sledded down the hill back of the post office on sleds that Barney made them, and skated on Holt Creek in winter and swam in it in summer. Dances and picnics were held in the Woodmen of the World Lodge Hall on the Schindler ranch, until Ed bought the building and remodeled it into the ranch home, where his son George still lives.
The schoolhouse also stood in the Schindler yard, and usually had three teachers a year because few of the teachers would stay any longer than that, so far from town. In later years Ed’s daughter Hazel and his granddaughter Geraldine Hanel taught the Hammond school. When his own children were ready for highschool Ed bought the Dell Akin house, a half-mile north of Atkinson, for the family to live in during the school term. Ed died in 1953, at the good old age of eighty-three.
Another rancher in this far southwest portion of Holt County was Robert Orren Clifford, usually called “R.O.” Born in Wisconsin in 1866, he came with his parents to York, Nebraska at eight years of age. The oldest child in the family, R. O. never had time to play; for his English German Scottish father believed in hard work and lots of it.
After finishing school at York Robert, who wanted to be a doctor, 258 settled (due to lack of funds) for a business college course. He graduated from the Omaha Business College in 1888, went out to Julesburg, Colorado, and operated a sheep ranch for a few years, then moved to Gandy, Nebraska, and went into the cattle business. There a feud between two families, the Gilkersons and the Wells, resulted in the shooting of Gilkerson. Wells spent a year in prison, then was released to care for his starving family. The shooting took place on the A. G.West place and, in January, 1893, R. O. married West’s daughter, Bertha.
The newly weds moved to Fairbury, Nebraska, where Robert operated a flour mill for a few years. Still hankering to get into the cattle business, he finally bought a place in Green Valley, near the John Mick place. After the death of his wife in 1901 Robert moved into an office in Atkinson and continued in the ranch and real estate business.
In 1904 he built a new house half a mile east of Atkinson and married Maude Henderson, a teacher. Three daughters were born to them, Sylvia and Florence and Feme, the last two were twins. Taking advantage of the Kinkaid Act, Robert homesteaded twenty-eight miles southwest of Atkinson and moved his family there. He bought more land, built new buildings and built up a good ranch.
Robert was hauling lumber from Atkinson for a new cattle shed when the great fire, described in another chapter, swept up from the south on a high wind. The whole country turned out to fight the destroyer. Feme Clifford Coxbill writes that the fire forked, the west fork burning up the Boettcher and Vrooman valley, where the Pachas, Dobrovolnys and others beat out the flames. The Bakers, Smiths, Whipples, Jonases and many others fought the east fork, whipping it to a standstill at the Whipple and Slaymaker lakes.
The Cliffords had a hard time that winter, with no hay to burn or feed. But everyone for twenty miles in any direction was still a neighbor and their place was still a “half-way house” between the south country and Atkinson. The Cliffords, too, bought dried fruit and codfish in twenty-five pound boxes, and all other groceries in bulk on the once-in- a-long-while trips to town. Most of their clothing was ordered from Sears Roebuck, and Feme remembers that the family’s long underwear looked like skeletons when frozen on the clothes line and swinging in the wind. The Cliffords got their mail at Inez, six miles east of the ranch. If there was some blacksmithing to be done when going after the mail one could figure on the trip taking all day, for Charley Preston, the genial smith, loved to spin tall tales, “which were considered a part of the fixing.” The three Clifford girls started to school in 1912, in a schoolhouse on the Whipple place, three miles away. The teacher, Alice Antill of Lincoln, boarded with the Cliffords. She always wore a black shawl and, as soon as the hired man came into the house, retired to her room. Another daughter was born to R. O. and Bertha in 1913. Mrs. Crabs, the neighborhood midwife was in attendance.
The older girls heartily disliked Mrs. Crabs, who drove about the countryside, distributing suffragette literature and promoting the “women’s lib” of her time. “She made us step,” wrote Feme, “and wouldn’t tolerate one bit of noise.” The whole family often took a lunch along in the wagon and drove about on the ranch, spending whole days plowing furrows and planting jackpines for windbreaks for the cattle. Some of the pines are still living. Other days he had one of his daughters drive for him while he sat in the back of the wagon, working his clover seeder. “We had quite a time driving in a straight line across the meadow,” Feme recorded, “especially when driving a fast horse and a slow mule together.” “Father always demanded that we all be at the table together for every meal,” Feme went on, “and we weren’t allowed to be sick. Luckily, we were a healthy family. When our legs ached badly we rubbed them with kerosene, for it was just ‘growing pains’ we had.” The Cliffords, too, loved music and dancing. They had an organ and an Edison cylinder record phonograph, the first in their area. The neighbors came to listen to it and Olin Baker brought his violin. With his daughter, Gladys, and Mrs. Clifford chording on the organ there was plenty of music for rolling back the rug and dancing. While the girls were still in school Mr. Clifford bought more land to the north, cut his house in two and moved it to the new place, built barns and other buildings, and so established the Star Ranch. This move put them only a mile from Tonawanda post office on the Jonas place.
Haying was the main work in the summers. Mrs. Clifford and the girls worked in the hay fields and Robert sometimes hired entire families to help get the hay up. The work was all done with horses, of course, and Feme wrote that she and her sisters drove horses in the hayfield that she “would not even think of letting my children go near.” A son, Robert H. was born to the Cliffords in 1916 and the girls had to put up with Mrs. Crab again for awhile. The first World War, which came so soon afterward, brought many changes. R. O. sold two carloads of horses and mules for war use. Then, as his health began to fail, rented the east part of his ranch to Charlie Freouf and the west part to Fred Tasler on a three year contract. The girls were now ready for high school, so the Cliffords bought back the house east of Atkinson, where they had lived when they were first married. The family moved back and forth from the ranch to town as school and ranch work required.
Robert Clifford was a benefactor to the people in the “south country.” When the dry ‘thirties came on and the banks couldn’t or wouldn’t “stake” some of his hard pressed neighbors, R. O. did. He bought their cattle when there was no other buyer, loaned them money, or started them out with cattle on the shares. He had faith in his fellow man and that faith was honored in all but a few instances. His big dream was to provide a ranch for each of his children and he lived to see it realized. Sylvia married Albert Lemmer; Florence married Fred Boettcher; Feme married Earl Coxbill; Melba married Rudy Dvorak and Robert married Helen Dvorak. R. O. Clifford passed on in November, 1933. Mrs. Clifford moved to Atkinson and lived on for thirty-nine years after her husband’s death. She took an active part in church and community life and, having lived her entire life in the region, knew everybody. Her favorite entertainment was riding out into the countryside on Sunday afternoons, past homes and landmarks she had known all her life, and often lamenting the piles of wood and corncobs going to waste. So many of her early years had been spent in searching for fuel that it saddened her to see so much of it lying about unused. As has been noted in another chapter, she was the first woman in Atkinson to go up in a plane.
Afterward she flew often with her son Bob, and even took some spins and loops with her son-in-law, Earl Cox-bill. She died in 1972 at the age of ninety-one.
John and Antonia Zahradnicek were born in Czechoslovakia. With John’s brothers, Frank, Mike and Anton, and a family named Coufal, they came to America and settled near Schuyler, Nebraska. Frank came on to Holt County and took a claim near Wesley Slay maker’s place in Green Valley. Before he could prove up on his claim he was killed by a runaway team and buried on the Louis Dvorak place.
To keep the claim from being 259 “jumped” by someone else, fourteen- year-old Mike was sent by his parents to live on the place until his parents could sell their Colfax County home and move to Green Valley. After his parents came he lived with them until Oklahoma was opened for homesteading. He took a claim in the Cherokee Strip, married Mary Semrad and had four children before a series of dry years forced them to sell out in 1909 and return to Holt County. He worked about on different farms, then obtained a job on the Chicago Northwestern railroad which he kept for twenty-three years.
Young John, son of John and Antonia, grew to manhood on the Green Valley farm and married Bertha Voigt. They continued to live in Green Valley and there reared their three children, Pearl, Walter and Harry. Harry was killed in World War II; Walter lives at Stuart and Pearl, who married Leon Kaiser, lives northeast of Atkinson. As music loving as most of their countrymen, they often got together with their neighbors “and danced for pure enjoyment.” John, Sr. was buried in Atkinson’s first cemetery in the northeast part of town on what is now the Coxbill place. His grave was later moved to Woodlawn cemetery. John, Jr. lives with his daughter Pearl.
Stewart Beck, of Dutch parentage, was born and reared in Pennsylvania. He married Jennie Wiggins in 1869 and lived in Iowa before coming to Atkinson in 1898, bringing eight of their twelve children with them. Elizabeth, the oldest daughter, worked in the courthouse in O’Neill until she married James Morgan of Neligh in 1902. George, a son, died in Atkinson as a young man. James, another son, married Myrtle Haigh in Atkinson in 1910. Two of their four sons still live in or near Atkinson. David Beck had married his boyhood sweetheart, Amy Davenport, in Iowa the year before they came to Nebraska. Their first home was a farm three miles south of Atkinson. After three years they moved to Green Valley, sixteen miles southwest of Atkinson. Nine children were born to them, two in Atkinson and seven in the Valley. Grandma LeMunyan, a mid-wife, delivered the seven born in Green Valley.
Merrield, the oldest of the family, relates many incidents from the family life of the Becks. He started to school in the Valley in the fall of 1903, where his first teacher was his father’s brother, Roy. The Green Valley post office was three miles southeast of their place, in the Frank Powell home.
Before they could fence their homestead they had to survey it. There was a government survey stake at the southeast corner of their place, Merrield wrote, “and this is how we surveyed the land. My father and a neighbor, John Kemp, measured the distance around our rear wagon wheel and figured how many times that wheel would have to turn to make 5280 feet, the distance in one mile.
“One moring Father told me to get ready to go with him and John. When we arrived at the stake they stopped the wagon so that one wheel spoke was even with the stake. Then they tied a piece of red cloth around that spoke. They pointed out an object on a hillside about three miles away, and told me to drive toward it and keep that object” right between the horses’ heads.
“Father and John sat in the back end of the wagon and counted the times the wheel turned until it had turned enough times to equal 5280 feet. When the red cloth touched the ground at that point they set a survey stake. We made several surveys of land around there, and the owners are still abiding by those old stakes. “In our early years on the farm we had the milk cows in the corral one night when an electrical storm came up and lightning struck the fence and killed seven of the cows. Bill and Anton Tasler did our threshing for us with a horse powered machine until steam powered outfits came into style.
“When I was about seven years old my father decided to drive up to South Dakota to look at some land. We traveled by team and buggy. When we came to the Niobrara there was only a swinging bridge across it and Dad pulled up to a hitching post and tied the horses, he then unhitched the team and pulled the buggy and me across the bridge by hand. He went back then and led the horses across the bridge one at a time. He would take the horse ten or twelve steps. When the bridge began to rock he would stop until it became steady again, then go on. That was some experience.
“We milked a lot of cows and churned the cream, as there was no market for cream at that time. We had a thirty gallon barrel churn we turned by hand until my father and a neighbor built a “dog power.” By putting our shepherd dog on the platform and starting him going, he churned the butter and also pumped water when the wind didn’t blow to run the windmill.
“Our mother always had poor teeth. She decided to have them pulled and Nora Stone, our hired girl, drove her to Stuart with the team and buggy. She had thirty-two teeth and snags pulled that day, with no anesthetic, and drove home the same day.” Inez Beck Hayes, the youngest of David Beck’s children, also wrote her recollections of growing up in Green Valley. Many members of the community, including the Becks, attended the Green Valley Methodist church. “In winter,” Inez wrote, “we drove the three miles in the sled, where we sat on hay, with heated stones at our feet, and covered up with fur robes. We often took some of the neighbors with us. In the early days my grandmother Beck taught Bible School and preached sermons. She was also a leader in getting rid of the saloons. “When I was three years old our house burned to the ground. The men were in the hay field about a mile from the house. The wind was blowing hard and when the fire was discovered it was too late to save the house. Mother gave the general ring over the phone and the neighbors came to help us. We saved the piano, a cabinet, some bedding and clothes. The only clothes I had left were the ones I was wearing. My sister Gladys and I stayed at Uncle Jim Beck’s for three months and Aunt Myrtle took care of us and made us clothes. “The families we neighbored with included the George Robertsons, Frank LeMunyans, Gaughenbaughs and Clif-fords. We used to go fishing in Dora Lake, where Dad would back the wagon out in the water up to the box. We fished out of the back end of the wagon and in a couple of hours would have a five gallon can full of fish. Then we’d go home and invite some of the neighbors in for a fish fry. “After World War II all the family had the flu. Mother had pneumonia and was sick all winter. Mrs. Bill Long came and stayed with us. There was no bed left for me and when I became ill I was put on two chairs padded with pillows. I can remember Mr. Silverstrand, our neighbor to the east, holding me in his arms and rocking me at night. All the neighbors took turns coming in and caring for us.
“I also remember the awful prairie fires. As a child I sat at my bedroom windows, watching the flames leap up over the hills to the southwest of our house, too scared to go to bed.” William Conklin came from New York in the closing years of the nineteenth century. A cheese maker, he drove around Holt County, looking for a suitable site for a factory. He finally chose a location near John Slay-maker’s and built a two-story structure. The cheese making equipment was housed on the upper floor and dances were held on the ground floor. One old-time resident of the 260 community remembered how the building used to shake when the floor was full of dancing couples.
Sweet milk was used in making the cheese and the cheese knife was made from a blade from a windmill wheel. The cheese sold for ten cents a pound. Conklin was said to have had a large herd of Holstein cows for supplying milk for his factory and he also bought milk from his neighbors. The milk was cooled in flowing well or windmill tanks but in very hot weather it was almost impossible to keep the milk in the proper condition by such means.
Mr. Conklin taught several of the farm women to make cheese, too. Ora Whipple still has “the outside rim of one of the cheese hoops.” The hoops held forty to fifty pound cheeses. John Dobias built an ice-house into a nearby hill and the neighbors helped him fill it from neighboring lakes. Everyone for miles saved the sawdust from the trees sawed for firewood and took it to the ice-house to be packed around the cakes of ice.
Mr. Conklin gave up the cheese factory after a few years and moved to a claim a few miles north of Whipple Lake. He later moved to O’Neill and served as Holt County treasurer for some years.
Claude V. Wicks, who worked for Conklin in his cheese factory, was born Claude V. Moore in 1878 in New York state. His mother died a few days after his birth and the next-door neighbors took the infant, reared him and gave him their name. Claude came to Atkinson about 1890 and, soon after arriving wrote to Altheria Louise Frink, asking her to be his bride. She came by train and they were married by Hiram Beebe, Justice of the Peace, the day she got off the train.
Claude and Altheria had five children and Mrs. Wicks was a popular mid-wife in Atkinson, helping the town’s three doctors, Douglas, McKee and Sturdevant, with their baby cases.
With the turn of the century there was still quite a brisk turnover in settlers coming and going in Atkinson and Green Valley. Among those who came and stayed as the old century waned was the Thomas Richards family. Thomas, the son of emmigrant parents from Cromwell, England, was born in Hazel Green, Wisconsin in 1853. He married Catherine Begenrief in 1879 and twenty years later came to the Atkinson community in a covered wagon with his wife and five children. All the long way to their new home the three boys took turns riding a bicycle behind the wagon. Mr. Richards and his family engaged in farming and livestock and two of the boys, LeRoy and Merle, and a daughter, Edna (Crippen) made Atkinson their home as long as they lived. William L. Schultz and Violet Mal- zacher were married in Antelope County in 1903. Both were of German parentage. William and his brother, Erwin, had opened the Schultz Drug Store in Atkinson in 1898. Erwin was a jeweler and William, who had worked as an apprentice pharmacist in Neligh, a registered pharmacist. Both brothers had families, William five children and Erwin four. William operated the drug store until he died in 1945. His son Kenneth, also a registered pharmacist, ran the store until he sold it in 1971. Erwin’s daughter Helen operated a millinery shop in Atkinson for many years and his son Paul owned and operated the Shultz Barber Shop.
In 1905, when William and Violet built their home in Atkinson it was necessary to haul in one hundred loads of earth to fill in the sand blowout on the three lots where they planned to build. There was no city water then and a busy windmill beside the house supplied that commodity. Will Schultz is believed to have been the first person in Atkinson to install a telephone. His son, Gerald, operated the first radio— a crystal set which he put together himself. Later he built and operated a small broadcasting station in the drug store— in the days before a license was required. His station was heard in surrounding counties and even as far away as Oklahoma. The family’s first automobile was a 1914 “Abbott- Detroit.” William Blackburn was born at Le- Mars, Iowa, in 1864. His father came from England and his mother from Ireland. His father was killed in the Civil War. Young William attended a local school in the winter time and worked on farms in the summer— for fifty cents a month and his board and room. When he was grown he went out to Denver and secured a job as brakeman on trains that ran into Wyoming and South Dakota, a vocation that was the highlight of his life. In 1890 he homesteaded near Hemingford, Nebraska and four years later married Mary Condon, an Iowa girl who was teaching school near Alliance. Their three daughters were born in their sod home near Heming-ford. In 1900 they moved to Holt County, “lured there by the beautiful trees, the abundant green grass and splendid flowing wells.” At that time northwest Nebraska, a newer frontier than Holt County, was treeless prairie, just as most of Holt County had been a quarter century earlier.
The family first lived on the Doolittle farm, five miles southwest of Atkinson, near the Torpy and Nighten-gale families. Mr. Blackburn then bought a farm farther over in Green Valley in the Ziska, LeMunyan, Pacha and Mlinar neighborhood. Here on the new place the Blackburn’s only son, William Jr., was born in 1902. All the children went to school in the little one-room schoolhouse a mile and a half distant. After completing the eighth grade all of them went into O’Neill to St. Mary’s Academy. One daughter took a business course, the other two became teachers. William Jr., died at the age of thirty. Anna Blackburn Chaney, the biographer for this family, notes that most farmer families paid their grocery bills only once a year, in the fall after they had sold their crops and cattle. One year the Blackburn bill was pretty big, “around $50.00.” Of course the family had its own butter, milk, eggs, meat and garden vegetables. The Blackburns and their neighbors got their mail on the Atkinson-Tona-wanda mail route. “Dad” LeMunyan, “a wonderful man,” traveled the sixty mile (round trip) route three times a week. Mrs. Blackburn died in 1938 at seventy-four years of age; Mr. Blackburn in 1952 at ninety-two years of age. Both are buried in Atkinson, along with most of their good neighbors of those long ago years. George Collins was one of the few native Nebraskans to play an important part in the turn-of-the-century building up of the village of Atkinson. Born in Saunders County in 1882, he was the son of a Civil War veteran, Joseph S. Collins, who was severely wounded in the Battle of Gettysburg and whose name is inscribed on the monument there. He owned ranch land in both Saunders and Holt County.
After graduating from Fremont Normal, George settled in Atkinson, organized and opened the Atkinson State Bank and, in 1903, married Lettie Tuller. He owned and developed a considerable portion of the town, building homes and store buildings and donating land to the Catholic church on which to construct its church plant. At various times he operated the Atkinson Milling and Light Company, the Atkinson Garage, the Case Implement Company and a large cattle ranch. He contributed generously to the Atkinson Ball Club and the band, playing solo cornet in the latter for years. He was a member of a number of the town lodges and served as County Red Cross chairman through World War I.
He laid out a system of roads that not only helped Atkinson but made it easier for the country people to get to 261 became foreman and moved his family to Abie, where his oldest son, Joe, who had been a baby when the tornado struck, became a helper on the railroad at sixteen years of age. he later became a telegrapher and agent. His two brothers and his sister also were telegraphers for the C. and N. W.
in 1910 young Joe Krska came to Atkinson as a telegrapher. Those were busy days for the railroad. As many as six passenger trains a day ran through Atkinson, besides the many freight and cattle trains. In 1918 he resigned to become a clerk in the Security State Bank, later working his way up to the position of cashier, the post he held until the bank was discontinued in 1934.
Joe served with the Nebraska Home guard during World War I and married Helen Williams in 1917. He built and furnished a new home in Atkinson for his bride, a property which is still owned by his daughter, Mrs. George Verzal.
In 1940 the Krskas bought the Wilson Drug Store from its founder, Carl J. Wilson. After the war they sold it to B. H. Wilson and Joe returned to railroad work until the end of 1957, when he retired. Active in the affairs of his community, he served on the town school board and became a member of the Atkinson Masonic Lodge in 1915. In 1965 he was presented a fifty year membership pin.
Joe, a devotee of hunting and fishing, nearly lost his life in a boating accident on the Niobrara one fall. Although heavily dressed and wearing boots, he managed to swim to shore. He did, however, lose his precious shotgun and, since it was in the depths of the depression, the loss was doubly hard to bear.
In 1928 he and some of his friends, using picks and shovels, dammed a spring fed lake north of Atkinson and stocked it with rainbow trout. The lake is now managed by the Rainbow Trout Club, which has a large membership in the area. Two of his three daughters, Maralee (Gilg) and Dona (Verzal) still live in Atkinson. Mr. Krska died in 1965.
Joseph and Elizabeth Mack came from Indiana to O’Neill in the early ‘eighties. Their son, Ellsworth J., born near Michigan City, Indiana, became a brakeman on the Michigan Central railroad at seventeen. He later married Ada Perry and joined his parents in O’Neill in 1884. From 1888 until 1894 he served as Deputy Sheriff of Holt County under Sheriff McEvony, and also was a member of the County Board of Supervisors for two terms. In O’Neill, in 1890, he married Clara O. Johnson. He had a daughter by each of his marriages.
In 1901 the family moved to Inman where Mr. Mack opened a bank for T. F. Birmingham and Edward F. Gallagher. In 1906 he managed a bank at Allen, Nebraska until he moved to Atkinson in 1907 and went into a national bank there as cashier. In 1914 the firm became the Security State Bank of Atkinson. E. J. Mack was cashier of this bank for twenty-six years, then became its president in 1933.
The next year the officers and directors of the bank decided to quit the banking business and turned over to Mr. Mack the responsibility of directing the orderly liquidation of the institution. At the end of ten months all depositors had been paid in full and Mr. Mack was given a citation as Atkinson’s “Man of the Year” for 1934. In those depression years of escalating bank failures E. J. Mack’s handling of the liquidation was outstanding. Mr. Mack was mayor of Atkinson for a time, and treasurer of the city and the school district for many years. After the closing of the bank he conducted a real estate business for a number of years. Both Mr. Mack and his wife are buried in O’Neill. Their daughter Helen married James Walter Rooney, Jr. in 1932 and lived in O’Neill, where Mr. Rooney served as Holt County Extension Agent and later as Secretary of the O’Neill Production Credit Association. Helen was employed as Record Librarian of St. Anthony’s Hospital. After their retirement the couple operated Rooney’s Antiques. Helen Mack-Rooney passed away in 1973 and is buried in O’Neill. Andrew Joseph Mack (probably no relation to the E. J. Mack family) was born in Pennsylvania in 1857 and married Mary Figg of Wayne, Michigan, at Albion, Nebraska, in 1883. With their three children they moved to Atkinson in 1908. Andrew opened and ran a blacksmith shop until he was able to buy several quarters of land near town, after which he farmed and raised cattle.
Andrew’s son, Fred, was fifteen when he came with his parents to Atkinson. Seven years later he married Ella Prussa in St. Joseph’s church and became the father of seven children. Ella and Fred bought the Cross land, a mile southwest of town, in 1917. Haying and farming was their business and all was done with horses until 1932 when Fred and his father bought an International tractor with various attachments.
Fred was chairman of the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Department program for many years and was also Corn Supervisor in the ASC program until his retirement at the age of seventy. He died of a heart attack in 1965 but his land is still owned by his sons, who now irrigate all the quarters.
Elizabeth Katherine Pelcer came at the age of twelve with her parents from Germany to Ohio where, in 1855, her son William K. Pelcer, was born. The family came on to Saline County, Nebraska, in 1866, and finally to Holt County in 1909. Elizabeth Catherine Wyoming, also born of German parentage in Ohio, moved with her parents to Clatonia, Nebraska. In 1881 she married William K. Pelcer and had two sons, Harry E. and Clarence.
William Pelcer and his son Harry sold their meat market in Tobias in 1909 and moved to a farm southwest of town where they raised cattle. Later William moved to a farm near town and Harry, with his wife Ida and daughter Anna, moved into town where he made his living by carpentry. In 1920 he bought the Nite and Day Cafe. Shortly afterward he built a new building and there operated a cafe for the next nineteen years. Harry sold the cafe about 1940 and bought a local meat market. Later his son-in-law, Clarence Spence, went into partnership with him. Mr. Spence continued to operate the IGA Market after Harry retired. At the end of twenty-nine years in the market C. E. Spence also retired, leaving the business in the hands of his son-in- law, R. C. Braun.
John Dvorak, born in Czecho- vakia in 1876, came to New York with his parents in 1884. The family located near Madison, Nebraska, where John grew to manhood, going to school in the “slack months,” or wintertime. Barbara Koudela, also born in Czechoslovakia, was one of five children. When her father passed away at an early age, leaving a heavy burden on her mother, she decided to come to America with a cousin in 1903. She was only sixteen and neither she nor her cousin could speak English. From the tales they had heard the girls expected that it would be easy to make their fortunes in the United States, after which they would return to the old country and share with their hard pressed relatives. They landed in Galveston, Texas and faced reality. Work was scarce and hard and the pay was poor. Their visas expired and Barbara, having a cousin in Madison, ended up working there. She met John Dvorak there and they were married in 1906. In 1911 they decided to move to Holt County where land was less expensive. John bought a half section of land three miles south of Atkinson and settled his wife and three children in an old five-room wooden house on the 264 place. The old building was so poorly constructed that many a winter morning Barbara got up and brushed snow off the bed.
Two more children had been born on the new farm by the time the two oldest children, Bill and Anna, started to school. Neither of them could speak a word of English and the teacher spoke nothing else, making it equally difficult for all concerned for awhile. Two more children were born, making seven in all.
School was only a mile away and the Dvorak children walked most of the time, although occasionally they rode a mule, Ginny, four at a time. “Old Ginny used to shy,” wrote Helen Dvorak Clifford, “and we’d go off in a heap, in the snow or on the frozen ground.” When John and Barbara went to town the neighbor children headed for the Dvorak place where, according to Helen, they held their own private rodeos. Their bucking stock was the skimmer calves, a practice their father would have sternly objected to. Therefore, when Frank Dvorak was bucked off and his collar bone broken, no one breathed a word and Frank had to recover without medical aid and without letting his parents see that anything had happened.
The Dvoraks “stripped feathers” of evenings, too. A job the children disliked (stripping the quill from the feathery part) but endured because they enjoyed the stories with which their mother entertained them while they, and she, worked.
In 1924 the family moved into the granary while the house was rebuilt. When completed it was an eight-room house with five bedrooms. “We thought it was a mansion,” wrote Helen, “although it had no conveniences. Our place was a stop-over for southern ranchers. Dad took care of their horses, grain, hay, etc., for 25 cents a night. Mother changed beds and fixed meals for 75 cents a night. They came with no forewarning. “Time went by and Dad bought a Hupmobile. The roads being what they were we had a few hairy rides, then it ended up out among the trees. We used it as a plaything and many an imaginary mile we drove in the stationary old car; often fighting among outselves, and with the neighbor children, for the wheel.” All seven of the Dvorak children had high school educations, driving a horse and buggy into Atkinson to school. Mary, Helen and Johnny all taught elementary rural schools after graduating from high school. Bill and Frank set up and operated a dray business in town. Rudy worked for the Federal Land Bank office in O’Neill and Anna married soon after graduation. After teaching for several years Johnny was called into the service in 1943. He was in England, a belly gunner on a B-26 bomber, when, on a mission over Germany, two of their engines were disabled by enemy fire. They limped across the border into neutral Switzerland and were interned there for seven months. After an exchange of prisoners of war, Johnny was honorably discharged in September, 1945. John, Sr., Bill, Anna and Rudy are gone now, but when the remaining members of the family get together with their mother, Barbara, they enjoy reminiscing over the good times they used to have, dancing at O’Connell’s, Hipke’s, Mack’s or Bond’s. How Spot Livingston used to dance with Helen when she was only seven, and small for her age. When he would look down from his great height and ask, “Are you dancing down there?” it convulsed the crowd. As Helen grew up her favorite partner was Donald Spann. The pair would “Charleston like crazy” and men in the crowd would give them money “just to keep them dancing.” They remember some of the bad times, too. How, on the occasion of a great wind storm, they all took refuge in the cellar. “Dad was the last one in and just as he closed the slanting door a big tree fell across it. Dad and the boys got it open again, just in time to see our windmill blow away.” Mother Dvorak still lives on the land she and John bought when they first came to Atkinson. John Jr. lives on the “home place,” a quarter of a mile away.
Silas Warren Kelly came to Atkinson in 1914 and purchased the Graphic, which he edited until his death. He arrived by way of a long and roundabout route from his birthplace in Illinois. A farm boy, he later graduated from Central College, Danville, Indiana. Coming to Nebraska in 1886, he helped establish his first newspaper in Champion, a village in the far southwest corner of Nebraska. With the Chase County Champion he launched his forty-one years long career as a country editor.
He married Isabelle Todd in 1891, then moved to Arkansas in 1894. Three years later he was back in Nebraska. Trading a tree claim for a newspaper plant, he established the Wisner Free Press in the little town of Wisner, where he remained until he came to Atkinson.
When, during the first World War, he was commissioned Chairman of the Four Minute Men for his community he helped to keep unbroken his family’s service record. His great-grandfather, Lawrence Kelly, had served in the Revolution, his grandfather, Davis Kelly, in the war of 1812; his father, Silas, in the Civil War. His son, Eric, was commissioned during World War I.
Mr. Kelly served a two-year term as mayor of Atkinson and was president of the school board. As mayor he was able to get the stockyards moved from their location east of the depot to the area they now occupy, east of the highway. Until then, herds of cattle driven through the streets to the shipping pens, with their accompanying noise, dirt, smell and flies, had been a nuisance to the townspeople. Mr. Kelly’s main diversions were golf and bridge. Banker Fred Swing- ley, merchant J. M. Hoskinson, J. J. Stilson and the editor were a regular foursome on the cactus ridden, nine hole pasture course north of the Elkhorn. Local wits made fun of what they called “pasture pool.” The same group formed a bridge club which met weekly, and for which the best food possible was contrived by the wives.
The Hudson Super Six was the proper car to own at this time. The big seven passenger, jump-seated, open touring cars were popular among the families living along Madison and First Streets near the old school grounds. They were used for transportation to Sunday picnics in groves along the Elkhorn, or more adventurous drives to the Niobrara. By the middle ‘twenties Swingley was making regular trips over the old country roads to Iowa, and the young set, including Ralph Kelly, was driving to dances in neighboring towns. Ralph turned the Kelly’s new Hudson over in a ditch when a front wheel broke on a corner as he was coming home from one of these dances. Only an eight-inch remnant of a windshield post held the body of the big car off his neck, and he sustained a back injury that bothered him for years.
Those were the days when quite a few Atkinson families enjoyed the luxury of Sunday noon dinners at Pelcer’s restaurant, or Mrs. Bess Kelley’s (no relation) home dining room. The men usually played golf afterward, but on a Sunday afternoon in June, 1928, Mr. Kelly begged off, saying he did not feel well and would go home and take a nap. He did not waken from his nap.
Mrs. Kelly, who missed the trees and flowers she had enjoyed in her southwest Iowa girlhood home, had early set about changing the treeless condition of Atkinson. She organized the Atkinson Garden Club, served on the Park Board, designed the park house and the grounds around it and supervised the planting. She had trees 265 planted along the east side of Madison Street north of the tracks, where the removal of the stockyards had left open space, and along Holt Street and on the High School lawn. She beautified her own lawn and installed an artificial gold fish pond, thereby starting a fad among the garden club members.
Mrs. Kelly was a musician and saw to it that her children had musical opportunities. Her daughter, Truby, in time performed on the Chautauqua circuit as an accompanist and vocal soloist. She bought one of the first phonographs in Atkinson and a goodly supply of “His Master’s Voice” records. Both Ralph and Tabor played in the town band and Tabor became a music teacher.
Mrs. Kelly was active in town groups such as Utile Dulce, Shakespeare, Eastern Star and the Library Board, serving as president of all of them at one time or another. After her husband’s death she opened the “Bonnet Shop” and made and trimmed hats until her own health failed. She died in 1944 at the age of seventy-three.
Of the four Kelly children only Ralph stayed in Atkinson. He had always taken an interest in the family newspaper. When the time came that he was needed, he took over the Graphic, expanded and improved it. His paper and his town were his lifelong interests. He was honored by Ak-Sar-Ben for service to his community and was elected president of the Nebraska Press Association; he served on the City Council and in the Service Club and was a member of the Masons, the Odd Fellows and the Methodist Church. His pleasures were golf, trout pond fishing, music and model railroads. He died at age sixty- five in 1967, shortly after turning the Graphic over to his son Warren. The Hickok brothers, Ralph and Emory, with their wives, came to Atkinson by train from Douglas, Nebraska, in 1916. Ralph operated a cream station in the town for several years. They were the parents of two sons and a daughter. One son, Elton, was killed in a plane crash in Colorado in 1955. The plane was carrying a homemade bomb, which exploded in the air.
Emory Hickok and his wife lived and worked on the Hendricks ranch for two years, then moved into town where he managed the Farmers Union store for several years. He was next employed at the A. J. Frost Grocery Store, then as night cook for the Pelcer Nite and Day Cafe. Later he worked at the Pelcer and Spence IGA store and finally for the Hoskinson Mercantile firm. He was elected a city councilman in 1925. The Emory Hickoks had three children. Their two daughters, Doris (Spann) and Madeline (Ohde) still live in Atkinson. Another brother, Eugene, and his wife came to Atkinson in 1919, a few months after Eugene’s discharge from the Army after service over seas. He first worked for his brother Emory in the Farmers Union Store. He became postmaster in Atkinson in 1924, maintaining the office until 1933. He then served as a rural mail carrier on Route one for nineteen years, making a total of almost thirty-two years under Civil Service.
Mr. and Mrs. Hickok were charter members of the Legion and Auxiliary of John Farley Post No. 86. Eugene served as Commander for two terms and filled various other offices for many years. His wife, Mildred, served four years as Legion Auxiliary President and several years in other offices, including that of County President. The family was active in the Presbyterian church, for which Eugene was an Elder for forty-four years. All of their three sons were in service, the Army, Navy and the Air Force, and all are members of Farley – Tushla Post No. 86.
John and Daisy McNulty, born in Washington, Kansas, and married there in 1901, had five children when they bought a ranch, known as the O’Brian place, between O’Neill and Atkinson, in 1917. Later they bought the Louis Steabner ranch as well. They also owned a home in Atkinson, where they lived while the children attended school. In 1945 the parents retired and moved back to Kansas. Their only son, James, was the only member of the family to stay on in Atkinson. In 1934 he married Margery Grutsch, daughter of a pioneer family. James and his family endured the famous blizzard of 1949, when the roads to their ranch, and over most of the rest of the county, were blocked from November 18 until late in March, when the Army sent in snow plows to open the thoroughfares. In 1964 James and Margery moved into O’Neill, where he is employed by the Holt County Natural Resource District and the Weed Control Board and she works in the S and S Farm Store. Earl J. Coxbill, the youngest of five boys, was born in Deweese, Nebraska, and grew up there. His English parents are now buried in Woodlawn cemetery. A “born mechanic,” Earl from early boyhood could fix almost anything. At age fourteen he took a job in a local garage as a mechanic’s helper. His reputation spread and soon people from all around were bringing their Model T’s to him to repair. While still in highschool he bought a Sax car that had been junked, giving ten dollars for it, and made a workable car out of it, one that he prized highly.
Earl also cranked the picture show machine, a job that took a steady hand, and was thereby entitled to see all the shows free. He graduated from the” Edgar High School in 1923, then ran a threshing machine for a while, for the huge old steamers fascinated him.
About this time his brother, Chauncey, and family went to Atkinson to visit the Walt Pokorney family— and liked the country so well he stayed and bid on the Star mail route from Atkinson to Inez and Amelia. He got the route, then found he needed a relief driver, so sent for Earl. Before long Earl saw that a good repair shop was needed in Atkinson. He bought some ground from Jim Humpal, built a shop and went into business. By 1931 he needed a larger and better place, so built a new shop on Highway 20 and took Bernard Black- more in as a partner. Earl worked for seventy-five cents an hour— and was told by one customer, “No man is worth that much.” He did entire overhaul jobs for thirty or thirty-five dollars and ground valves for fifteen dollars a set.
In 1935 Earl built a snowmobile, powered with a Model A motor and pushed by an airplane propeller. That winter the snow was deep and his machine came in handy for delivering mail to some places on the route that could not otherwise have been reached. His mechanical “know how” stood him in good stead all his life. If he needed a tool and couldn’t get one right away, he made one that served his purpose. His was a rare ability to see a problem, analyze it and repair it.
Earl married Feme Clifford in 1933, and in later years his wife was wont to say that she didn’t believe she could tolerate a man without such God-given talents for keeping a household going.
In 1935 Earl bought Outlet A from the railroad company. Long ago it had been the old cemetery. Now it was the town cow pasture. On this land they built a new home, but first the new owner put down a well. The pit, six feet wide and forty-five feet deep, was cased with cement all the way down and the pump, powered by a turbine motor, is a marvel of efficiency. The entire lot can be irrigated with the resulting six-inch flow of water.
Always interested in flying, Earl was one of the first people in Atkinson to own a plane, a forty horsepower Aeronica. Later he sold Taylorcrafts, ferrying the planes out from Toledo, Ohio. He worked hard to establish an airport in Atkinson and 266 has served continuously on the Airport Board, looking forward to the time that a county airport authority can be secured.
During the terrible winter of 1948- 1949 he flew missions from sunup to sunset, some for the Red Cross, many on his own, bringing in people who had been stranded, taking mail, groceries and medicine to folks throughout the sandhills. He regularly flew a doctor out to a ranch home every few days, to treat a bedfast patient.
In 1948 he gave up his garage business, built his bluegrass threshing plant and its remarkable “delinter.” He secured a patent on the machine and has built and sold several, one to the Department of Agriculture in Alaska. Earl operated his bluegrass plant, a most lucrative business in the fine grass country surrounding Atkinson, until he “retired” in the fall of 1973. The townspeople, however, are reluctant to give up their dependable mechanic and fixer of all things mechanical, so retirement will not come easily for Earl Coxbill.
Pastor William Vahle was a well-loved resident of Atkinson for twenty- two years. Born in St. Louis in 1884, he graduated from Concordia College, Springfield, Illinois, in 1907. He was ordained that September in the Lutheran church in Stuttgart, Kansas, where he later met and married Miss Emma Mueller. Their only child, Dorothy, was born while he was pastor of a church in Coffeyville, Kansas. He served the Lutheran church of Rushville for three years before coming to Atkinson by train in 1922 and moving into the parsonage there.
Until then services in the Atkinson church had been held in the German language. Rev. Vahle soon introduced English services, which he held on Sunday mornings after the German service, and again on Sunday evenings. His services drew ever larger crowds— until the small frame church, built in 1904, could no longer hold the faithful. A new church called for a new location and land north of the tracks was purchased from Lums-dens. A bevy of parish activities helped finance the new church. The parishioners butchered hogs, made the meat into sausage and sold it at food sales. A car was given away after the public had bought enough “gold bricks.” Ice cream socials, turkey suppers, quilting parties, bazaars, and many other activities slowly swelled the treasury until there was money enough to build the church in 1924. A great deal of social life revolved around the church during Rev. Vahle’s pastorate. Surprise birthday parties offered good excuses for fellowship; congregational dinners, held after Confirmation services, were well attended, especially by those who drove long distances to church. Whole families attended the Luther League meetings and parties.
Pastor Vahle loved the vast reaches of prairie land over which he drove his early model Fords, visiting his people and holding services in the Phoenix schoolhouse, in O’Neill and Bassett. During his first years in the parish Herb Bitney often drove for him when he was called, many times late at night, to the bedsides of ill parishioners.
The pastor was often in demand as a speaker for Baccalaureate, Commencement and Memorial Day addresses, as well as for Fourth of July orations and, of course, for weddings and funerals. He performed the midnight wedding ceremony for Miss Truby Kelly and Dwight Kirsch in the Kelly home, and gave the address at the dedication of the Atkinson City Hall. At the suggestion of Leo Seger, Pastor Vahle’s signature was copied and placed in script on his grave marker. A fitting memorial to the faithful minister, since his signature had appeared on so many certificates in the community over the years in which he served it.
He never cancelled a service if there was any possibility of holding it. His Christmas and Easter sunrise services were well attended. His Good Friday services, held from twelve until four in the afternoon, were divided into seven meditations to enable people to stay as long as convenient. The Lutheran high school students of the congregation were always dismissed from school for this service, and lunch provided for them in the church basement.
On one occasion Rev. Vahle took a little homemade coffin and the undertaker, Mr. Kilmurry, out into the country for the funeral of a baby. After the service he brought the baby back to the cemetery in his car— all to save the family the price of the use of the hearse, which they could ill afford.
One of the best known men in the Atkinson community was probably Joseph Verzal, who “worked in stores all his life.” He worked for Sturdevant Brothers until they went out of business; then for Robert Hart, R. F. Hansen and, lastly, for J. M. Hoskin-son, where he dropped dead at his job on January 15, 1933. Each time the store was sold to a new owner Joe went with it.
One of the owners, Hansen, had been a general salesman for Marshal Field of Chicago, and was the first to hire a shoe clerk, Fred Busse, who knew how to fit shoes. Until then the shoe was handed to the customer, who put it on, stomped around in it a few times and decided for himself whether or not it fit. Consequently, most shoes sold were wide enough but too short. As a result most of the old-timers had bunions.
Joseph Verzal was born in Czechoslovakia in 1863 and came to America as a young man. For a short time he worked at the gravel pit west of Atkinson, then went into the Sturde-vant store. His wife, Katherine Weich- man, also born in Czechoslovakia, came to America with an older brother, a tailor, who went to Fort Robinson, in the northwest corner of Nebraska, to make uniforms for the soldiers there.
Katherine, only thirteen at the time, stayed with an older sister, Mrs. Conrad Kramer, Sr., who had preceded her to the United States. The young girl was soon working in various Atkinson homes for a wage of one dollar a week. She and Joe Verzal were married in April, 1893. The couple had eight children, all of whom attended the public school until St. Joseph’s school in Atkinson opened in January, 1911. The family supplemented Joe’s wages by raising a large garden, pigs, chickens and geese, and milking cows.
Mary and Bertha Verzal married Peter and Michael Gonderinger. Josephine and Karl Verzal died. Ray married Margaret Quinn, George married Dona Krska, Edward married MyrI Burge and Aloysius married Eileen Hitchcock. The mother, Katherine, died in Atkinson in 1955. On Sunday, September 6, 1970, Atkinson and the surrounding area were devastated by cyclonic winds that blasted the region for twenty awful minutes. Its passing left the town a shambles of fallen and uprooted trees, damaged roofs and dwellings, shattered windows, broken electrical wires and twisted, overturned mobile homes. No lives were lost, although members of the Kenny Osborne family and Mrs. Francis Tunender were hospitalized. Eight-year-old Roland Osborne was taken to Omaha with a broken leg. There was no power and outside communications were virtually at a standstill; streets were cordoned off and officers warned sight seers away. Cleaning up the frightful wreckage seemed an impossible task.
However, electrical maintenance crews worked through the night, mending broken lines and restoring power.
Out in the country ranchers and farmers, fighting their way through fallen trees and farm wreckage, found their winter’s supply of hay 267 gone, corn and alfalfa fields destroyed, barns and outbuildings blown away, livestock dead and injured and costly irrigation equipment damaged beyond repair. On the Mlinar farm, two and a half miles southeast of town, the huge barn was flattened and its cupola carried half a mile to the northeast. Windbreaks were blown down, trees uprooted on fences and cattle out of their pastures. One stock tank was never found.
The sun came up on Monday morning on a day that lived up to its name— Labor Day. Neighboring farmers and ranchers moved into the stricken area with tractors, heavy equipment and manpower. Civic organizations rallied to help. Neighbor helped neighbor. By Tuesday morning order was beginning to emerge from chaos. But the scars would remain for some time.
Atkinson’s lovely tree-lined streets suffered heavily. But here, too, restoration was soon under way. The next spring twenty trees were planted in the City Park and fifty to one hundred in the State Park. Residents replaced destroyed trees around their homes and, already, the pretty town is almost back to normal.
Today Atkinson is proud of its seven churches, its thirty bed hospital, retirement center, two elementary schools and high school. Its two doctor clinic is ably manned by Dr. Richard Serbousek and Dr. James Ramsey. It has a famed livestock auction market and the usual goodly complement of retail and professional establishments. Any town would be proud of Atkinson’s City Park and its state recreation area, Atkinson Lake, a mile out of town.
The townspeople are group oriented, belonging to some fifty-eight organized clubs, not including the church related or social clubs. For recreation, baseball, softball and basketball teams are organized into leagues. Golf, swimming, camping, fishing, hunting, boating, water skiing, picnicking, sailing, bowling and card playing occupy the Atkinsonians’ leisure hours.
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