Читать книгу Collection of Nebraska Pioneer Reminiscences - Daughters of the American Revolution. Nebraska - Страница 8

Oregon Trail Monument on Nebraska-Wyoming State Line Erected by the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution of Nebraska and Wyoming. Dedicated April 4, 1913. Cost $200

Monument on the Oregon Trail Seven miles south of Hastings. Erected by Niobrara Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution at a cost of $100

Six miles farther on we arrived at Juniata and the first thing we did was to drink from the well in the center of the section between the four houses. This was the only well in the district and that first drink of water in Adams county was indeed refreshing. The first man we met was Judson Buswell, a civil war veteran, who had a homestead a mile away and was watering his mule team at the well. Although forty-four years have passed, I shall never forget those mules; one had a crooked leg, but they were the best Mr. Buswell could afford. Now at the age of seventy-three he spends his winters in California and rides in his automobile, but still retains his original homestead.

Juniata had in addition to the four houses a small frame building used as a hotel kept by John Jacobson. It was a frail structure, a story and a half, and when the Nebraska wind blew it would shake on its foundation. There was one room upstairs with a bed in each corner. During the night there came up a northwest wind and every bed was on the floor the next morning. Later another hotel was built called the Juniata House. Land seekers poured into Adams county after the Burlington was completed in July, 1872, and there was quite a strife between the Jacobson House and the Juniata House. Finally a runner for the latter hotel advertised it as the only hotel in town with a cook stove.

Adams county was organized December 12, 1871. Twenty-nine voters took part in the first election and Juniata was made the county-seat.

We started out the next morning after our arrival to find a quarter section of land. About a mile north we came to the dugout of Mr. Chandler. He lived in the back end of his house and kept his horses in the front part. Mr. Chandler went with us to locate our claims. We preëmpted land on section twenty-eight north of range ten west, in what is now Highland township. I turned the first sod in that township and put down the first bored well, which was 117 feet deep and cost $82.70. Our first shanty was 10x12 feet in size, boarded up and down and papered on the inside with tar paper. Our bed was made of soft-pine lumber with slats but no springs. The table was a flat-top trunk.

In the spring of 1872 my wife's brother, George Crane, came from Michigan and took 80 acres near me. We began our spring work by breaking the virgin sod. We each bought a yoke of oxen and a Fish Brothers wagon, in Crete, eighty miles away, and then with garden tools and provisions in the wagon we started home, being four days on the way. A few miles west of Fairmont we met the Gaylord brothers, who had been to Grand Island and bought a printing press. They were going to publish a paper in Fairmont. They were stuck in a deep draw of mud, so deeply imbedded that our oxen could not pull their wagon out, so we hitched onto the press and pulled it out on dry land. It was not in very good condition when we left it but the boys printed a very clean paper on it for a number of years.

In August Mrs. Cole came out and joined me. I had broken 30 acres and planted corn, harvesting a fair crop which I fed to my oxen and cows. Mrs. Cole made butter, our first churn being a wash bowl in which she stirred the cream with a spoon, but the butter was sweet and we were happy, except that Mrs. Cole was very homesick. She was only nineteen years old and a thousand miles from her people, never before having been separated from her mother. I had never had a home, my parents having died when I was very small, and I had been pushed around from pillar to post. Now I had a home of my own and was delighted with the wildness of Nebraska, yet my heart went out to Mrs. Cole. The wind blew more fiercely than now and she made me promise that if our house ever blew down I would take her back to Michigan. That time very nearly came on April 13, 1873. The storm raged three days and nights and the snow flew so it could not be faced. I have experienced colder blizzards but never such a storm as this Easter one. I had built an addition of two rooms on my shanty and it was fortunate we had that much room before the storm for it was the means of saving the lives of four friends who were caught without shelter. Two of them, a man and wife, were building a house on their claim one-half mile east, the others were a young couple who had been taking a ride on that beautiful Sunday afternoon. The storm came suddenly about four in the afternoon; not a breath of air was stirring and it became very dark. The storm burst, black dirt filled the air, and the house rocked. Mrs. Cole almost prayed that the house would go down so she could go back East. But it weathered the blast; if it had not I know we would all have perished. The young man's team had to have shelter and my board stable was only large enough for my oxen and cow so we took his horses to the sod house on the girl's claim a mile away. Rain and hail were falling but the snow did not come until we got home or we would not have found our way. There were six grown people and one child to camp in our house three days and only one bed. The three women and the child occupied the bed, the men slept on the floor in another room. Monday morning the snow was drifted around and over the house and had packed in the cellar through a hole where I intended to put in a window some day. To get the potatoes from the cellar for breakfast I had to tunnel through the snow from the trap door in the kitchen. It was impossible to get to the well so we lifted the trap door and melted fresh snow when water was needed.

The shack that sheltered my live stock was 125 feet from the house and it took three of us to get to the shack to feed. Number two would keep within hearing of number one and the third man kept in touch with number two until he reached the stable. Wednesday evening we went for the horses in the sod house and found one dead. They had gnawed the wall of the house so that it afterwards fell down.

I could tell many other incidents of a homesteader's life, of trials and short rations, of the grasshoppers in 1874-75-76, of hail storms and hot winds; yet all who remained through those days of hardship are driving automobiles instead of oxen and their land is worth, not $2.50 an acre, but $150.