Richardson County, Nebraska - Chapter 26, 1917

Chapter 26

On as fair a day in May as ever shone upon the workl. and at alx)ut the not;*- of high twelve in the year of grace, 1858, I. stepped from the deck of a Missouri river steanihoat. to the soil of Nebraska. In those days the most ra]Md and comfortable mode of travel, when the objective point could be reached in that way, was by steamboat. It happened so in my case. I took passage at Ouincv, Illinois, on the good boat "Hannibal City", plying on the Mississippi between St. Louis and St. Paul, and landed at St. Louis the next morning. From there I took passage on the Missouri river packet, called the "Rowena," for St. Joseph, Missouri. There were thirty or forty passengers for up-river points, but mostly for Kansas and Nebraska, all of whom with one single e.xception. were young men less than thirty years of age. At Leavenworth we were reshipped to another river boat by the same line called the "^^'ar Eagle" - the Missouri river was alive with boats in those days - and completed our \-oyage on that craft. At St. Joseph, those who Avere left of the passenger list, took passage on a more humble vessel, the "Wattosa," name<l ])erhaps for some mighty Indian brave somewhere, and on the day following, I, with another, was put ashore as before stated, at the town of Rulo in the Territorv of Nebraska. While yet upon my journey and while passing from one boat to another I somehow felt in touch with home and the state of m\- nativity; but as I stood on the bank of the fast-flowing river, and saw tine steamboat that had borne me there, cast ofT her moorings an,l .slowly float out into the stream to resume her voyage northward against the turbid flood of the ]\lissouri. an indescribable feeling of lonesomeness came over me. which I shall never forget. Eor the first time I realized what it was to break oft' the associations of a lifetime. When the little tramp steamer left me at the Rulo landing to churn its way through tlie muddy waters of the river, apparently too thick with mud and sand to swim in, and not thick enough to walk on, every tie that bound me to the old life and the old home - long ago broken up and its members scattered, with all the sacred memories that cluster around them, were severed once and forever.

Nebraska Isolated From The World

That tliL' situation may be better understood, it is proper in this connection to say, that lifty years ago Nebraska was as completely isolated from the world and civilization as the land of the "]\Iidnight Sun", in Alaska, was at the opening- of the past centur\-. There was not a railroad withm iiundreds of miles, and with no communication East except by the river that was frozen up half the year, and navigable for boats for only about three months of the year, in the later spring and early summer. But desixindency would not do and calling up the old resolution that impelled me to make the start, gathered my gripsack and with the words of the great English poet tloating through my mind:

My companion on the voyage from St. Louis, and who formed the exception in point of age among the passengers I have mentioned, was none other than Joseph Tesson, well known to the older residents in and about Falls (, ity and I\ulo, and who had debarked with me from the "Watossa," accompanied nie up town, and being acquainted with some of the people there, kindly invited me to take dinner with him at the house of one of his friends, a William Kenceleur. Aly acquaintance with j\[r. Kenceleur, .so happily L(jmmenced that day, continued unbroken until the end of his life.

I was anxious to go on to Falls City, which, I was told, was about ten miles west, that afternoon, but Tesson and Kenceleur both thought, as I was intending to make Richardson county my future residence or some point in it, and as Kulo was its most important town, I had better stay over the afternoon, and sec the town and get acquainted with the people and go out to Falls City tlie next day. On consideration, I concluded to do so. and we sailed fortli for the purpose. \\'hat struck me as most singular was the fact that ever\ tiling about it was new. There was not an old house in it, and there seemed to be about a hundred - all of them, as I learned, had been built within two }ears, and most of them within a very few months. Nor was there an old man or woman among its people, nor any who were much l)ast middle age. Everybody was young, the town was young, the territory was young, and the youth of spring was upon everything around them, in its greenest g;irh.

Rulo As I Saw It Fifty Years Ago

Having concluded to stop over and see the town, we went out on the streets to begin the rounds. I think this statement needs some explanation, for if stepping into the immensity of all outdoors, means going- out on the street, we certainly did that. There was nothing in sight to indicate the existence of a street, alley or other municipal thoroughfare, in the whole \illage, unless the spaces between the houses were such, in which case, as the liuuses had fallen out among themselves, and to have set up in separate territ()r\- of their own, the town must have consisted mostly of all streets, which of course, coukl not lie. Grass grew everywhere, except in the traveled jiaths made here and there, by foot passengers, among the dwellings and places of business. There was certainly enough of such highways, and as nt) two of the houses were built within fifty feet of each other, the footpaths branched ofY in all directions, and in all shapes from a straight line in places, to \\indings in and out like the trail of a snake in a dusty road. We first visited a store kept l\v Martin & Gold.sberry. The senior member of the firm was a Canadian Frenchman, while his partner was the same Frank Goldsl)erry, who not long ago resided in Falls City, and is remembered by most of the present residents. The next person whom I remember to have met was A. D. Kirk, a lawyer by profession and one of the early settlers of Richardson count}-. He was one of the representatives in the first Territorial Legislature, held in the winter of 1855. JMr. Kirk had his law office in the store of his brother-in-law, Goldsberry, though from the surroundings 1 was not impressed with the notion that his law business was very extensive. The next prominent citizens of the town whom I met were Eli Bedard and Charles Rouleau, both of whom had I)een instrumental in the building of Ivouleau. The town possessed the most mixed population I have ever seen in a town of its size. There were a great number of idle people about the streets, who were neither I'Vench. Indian or American, but were in fact a iiKJiigrel race, compounded of the blood of all three, whom the general government had designated as half-breeds, and for whose benefit the reservation lietween the Xemahas had been set apart by treat}-. They were a new and strange people for me, differing in every physical characteristic from all anthropological classifications I had ever seen. In their relations with the government they were clas.sed as Indians, and }et, the efTect of the treaty assigning them l.-nids in severalty, would be to make them citizens.

Falls City

Thf da}- following my advent intu Kulu was Sunday, but nevertheless I must continue my journey to Falls City. For that purpose I went out after breakfast to the Goldsberry store to see aljout getting a conveyance for the trij). There was none to be had on any terms - in fact there was none to be had at all and there was nothing for it, but that I must do the distance on ftiot. While at the store I made the acquaintance of several gentlemen. whom i had n<it met the day before, among them wa> Felix Fitch, Hugh Boyd. E. H. Johnson and Thomas Tostavin, the young surveyor, who iiad surveyed and platted the town, and who told me he Mas al)out to enter uix)n the survey of an addition likely to be made to it, by Mr. Kenceleur. They ail tried to dissuade me from going to Falls City. They said it was an hole," "Jim Lane town," and other names of designation, which i thougiit betrayed an unfriendly disposition toward the town on the prairie. They further stated that it would never amount to anything l)ecause it was too far from the river and had no timber about it, and nothing to induce population, etc. I rejilied that I must go, for I expected to meet a friend there, at whose instance I had come to Nebraska, and I jjrepared for the start. Tile failure to get a conveyance was embarrassing, but all the .same 1 must go. notwithstanding they told me there was no road and only a path here and there, wliich if followed, would probably take me out of my course, and l)esides. I would find a tlense covering of high grass to walk through that w I mill be both tedious and tiresome. However, one of their number accompanied me to the highest point west of town, fnmi wliich Falls City could be seen in the distance, and pointed out such landmark- as were \isible, and they were few, to guide me.

There was but one house betw een Kulo and Falls City and that belonged to Joesph I'^orney, who is still living and a citizen of Falls City. The house was located in the vallev west of the Muddy. T was told to keep the Xemaha river on the south in sight and go straight we-t as much as ])0ssible. The i'orney house was not visible from that point and the Xemaha. indicated only liy a fringe of timl)er stretching along the valley, was the only reliable l;ui(lniark and that was not always in sight. F was told, further, that just before I would reach the Muddy. m\ course would take me into the valley of the Xemaha. This direction was correct and when after lalwrious walking 1 reached tlie Muddy. I found the ruins of ;i mill that somebody had started, to build ;ui(l scnu'lioiK else had tried to burn. T w.-dked across the creek on a few of the charred timbers that still remained and bej'ond it. to near the residence of Mr. l-'orney. I encountered a morass of at least half a mile in extent. Splashinjj through that as best I could, I came to the Fornev residence and applied for 'further information as to my course to Falls City.

At that ixjint the town was in\-isible and in fact remained so until I got 10 within a mile or so of it. After I left the Forney place I missed mv course and w-andered over to the north till I came in sight of a house, that of E. T. Minshail, as I afterwards learned, in the valley of the IMuddy, and then I knew I was far out of my course, for I had been told that Falls City was located on the high ground overlooking the valley of the Nemaha river and tiiat stream 1 already knew was on my left hand and miles away to the south. I also saw from that point, the site and remnants of the old town of .\rcher. on the north side of the Aluddy. From there I turned to the southwest and shortly discovered the place of my destinati<jn.

At first on my lonesome tramp that day, it was a positive pleasure to look out on the wide expanse of prairie, as green as an emerald and arched liy a sky as blue as an amethyst, stretching away into the distance, vast, vacant and silent. 1 was on the edge of the great plains I had heard and read s<i much al)out - tiie land of the Indian and the buffalo, those restless nomads of these solitary wastes, and of the wild deer and the antelope.

There was not a tree or bush in sight, save on the Xemaha and along the smaller streams, and nothing whatever that suggested the presence of man, until 1 reached the l-"orney house on the Muddy and that of Mr. Minsliall, further up the stream.

.\fter a long and wearisome walk. co\ering at least twelve miles through a tangled mimic wilderness of grass, I arrived at Falls City some time in the afternoon.

There was a log house st.nnding about where the jMaddox Ijlock .-tands now. to the west, opposite from the present site of the court house, in which a man by the name of N'an Lew and his good wife kept a kind of a boarding liouse. They were formerly of Elmira, New York, and my friend, who had induced me to come to Nebraska, was .stopping with them. As the\' were e\])ecting me some arrangements had been made for my entertainment, for which I was. indeed, thankful. The house was what would be called a storv and a half high, iiut had not a yard of plastering in it. nor a smear of paint on any part of it. nor for that matter was there such in or on any house in town.

In speaking of Kulo I have said that everything appeared to he new. hut in Falls City everything appeared to he old. except the people. Most of the houses were huilt of second-hand lumjjer, hrought over from the wreck of old Archer and Yankton, and made into six or eight sliacks. or excuses for

The intluences that silently control the movements and destinies of pei)- ple are not always palpahle to the senses, nor exist as facts confessed in consciousness, hut permeate the s<jcial fabric in all its multitudinous ramifications, felt exerywhcre and seen nowhere, like the wind that bloweth where it listeth.

I know why I came to h'alls City, but I do not know why I stayed, any more than I know who will be President of the United States a hundred \ears hence. Somebod)- must stay in the little hamlet, or it would cease to exist, and why not I as well as others.

h'alls City was not much to look at that (juiet Sunday afternoon. There were four houses on the west side of Stone street and one small carpenter shop located where the Gehling Opera House now stands. On the other side, diagonally across the street, where the Richardson County Bank building is located. I saw a pile of newly-sawed walnut lumber, which I was told Jesse Croiik. who li\ etl on a pre-emption claim north of town, was intending to put into a hotel; and below that was a double-logged house, veneered witii bii;irds. In one of these, John A. Burbank had a kind of general store, and the other was used as a dwelling for his family, consisting of his wife and little girl, less than two years old. That same little girl is now the wife of Judge Kibby, the pre.sent governor of the Territory of Arizona, while the wife and mother, as brave and true a Christian woman and refined lady as the good God ever sent into this sin-ljedeviled world to bless it. has been at rest, these many, many years.

S(iUtb of the Burbank building, on the corner of the same block - where Jcnne's shoe store nnw is (lot 13, block Xo. 70) - there was another boarding house kept b\ one Alexander Rickard. He and his family had come up frcmi Kans.'is witli den. Jim Lane, together with several umnarried young men, all ni whom had l)een retainers and followers of that famous l-'rce State leader down there, to help him build a town in Nebraska. .About midway in the next block south (west side of l)lock No. 91), a man named W. W. Buchan;ui had put a one-stor\ house, probably twelve by sixteen feet in diameter, and was occupving it witii his family, consisting of his wife and three or four cliildien. His brother, James Buchanan (not the President), was hving <>n the quarter section directly east of the townsite, to wit, the southwest quarter of section ii, township No. i north, of range No. i6, east of the sixth principal meridian, and later in the season built the house now owned by Benjamin Poteet. It was built of walnut lumber, and is just as good after the wear and tear of half a century, as it was on the day it was finished for occupation. It is standing today and is occupied. Still further to the south (in block No. 134 on lot 13), Isaac L. Hamby had his residence. It was a shade better than the other residences in the town. He was one of the town proprietors as well as proprietor of one of the largest families in the town, and a saw-mill at the lower end of the town, near the present Missouri Pacific station and city electric light plant. There were two or three other houses in process of construction, east of Stone street, and one on the street west, in block No. 153, that had just been built by Wingate King, long a resident here, and at that time the owner of a pre-emption claim, on the northwest quarter of section .No. 15 - i - 16, originally part of the land selected for the site of Falls City, but was dropped when the town company came to enter the land and pa\- for it under the laws of Congress providing for the location of towns on the public lands. In another of the Ikjuscs west of Stone street, Squire Dorrington and his family resided, lot 12. block No. 71. Another building was standing on the west side of Stone street in block No. 90, south of the carpenter shop abo\^e referred to; it was a boarded veneered structure and in which one William M. Brooks had a store of general merchandise, and which Fred Dorrington, a young fellow of about twenty, was managing for him. Just across the street below it in block No. 103, was a hole in the ground perhaps fifty feet scjuare, and walled up with cobble stones, upon which ^Ir. Haml>y had told me he intended to erect a hotel that would rival the best west of the [Mississippi. It was another of his impossible .schemes. Tliis unsiglitly scar on the surface of the earth remained a monument to the foil)- (if its projector for four years. Afterwards Doctor Hanana Ijuilt a residence thereon and later it Ijecame the site for the Hue store building of Samuel W'ahl.

The town companv consisted of James H. Lane, John i\. Burbank. J. Fdward Burbank, a Judge Hunt, of Doniphan, Kansas, and Isaac L. Hamliy, I have just been writing al)Out. Lane and Hunt never became citizens of Nebraska: all the others did.

The townsite was selected, .surveyed and platted in the summer of 1857. Ijut its articles of incorporation were not made a matter of reconl until April. 1858, about twenty days before my arrival.

First Sunday School In Falls City

The house I inenti( med as built In Mr. Wingate King", in block Xu. 153. is still standing (in iqij) and in the same place. Xo alteration in shape or otherwise has been made, and it stands precisely as it was built and it has stood for more than lialf a century, while every odier structiue then in town, has long ago disappeared or been remodeled. I like that old house for other reasons than its great age. and particularly for certain associations with it. The house was new but not occupied, and it was suggested by Mrs. Burbank and Mrs. \'an Lew that we get all of the children in town to attend there on next Sunday and organize a Sunday school. I think that was in the early days of Jime, and as anything in the shape of a diversiim would relieve the dreary sameness, 1 readily fell in with the proposal. I have no distinct recollection of the nimiljer of these little human "mavericks" we rounded up for the occasion, but we got some, probably ten or a doze'i. and the function was pulled off, I suppose, in regulation order.

There was n(j church building in town, and the little hduse was inipro- \ised for such public worship as chanced to come our \\a\-. Wingate King was something of a preacher and held forth, now and then, and always in the little house, and always with a great deal of fervor. He has been dead fiir more than thirt\- years and the g'ood women who organized that Sunda\- school have faded from the world : while those bright-e) ed little urchins who lisped the old story, old with the ages, but as young as eternal spring, under the roof of this meager and neglected habitation, have drifted away to grow did, (ir die. as God has willed, in other places. But our ancient substitute for a church still remains, solitarv in its loneliness and littleness, like something forgotten I)y the wayside, the last of the old town in the day of its small things.

The Death Of Archer

Falls City was made possible b\' the death of old Archer, not perhaps li\ tlie process the Greeks called metempsychosis, by which it was believed by ilieni. and by T>rahmin philosophers in an older age, that the soul of one dying would pass into the liodv of one about to be born - in other words, in tlie transmigration of souls, l)ut from the fact that .\rcher had become untenable as a site for a town and the Falls City location afforded better facilities for the ])urpose. Certain it is, there was a pt-etty large transmigration of s(iuls vn toot and otherwise, from the wreck beyond the Muddy to the new town to the south.

Archer was laid out as a town liy a man by that name on what he suppcised to be pubhc lands of the United States, shortly after the erection of the Territorial government, in the fall of 1854.

The western line of the Half-Breed tract, a body of land between the two Nemahas, that had been reserved for the half-breeds and mixed bloods of certain Indian tribes, as then located, was about one and a half miles east of the site of the proposed town. That line had been surveyed and established several years before, and was known as the "McCoy line."

After Congress had created the Territory of Nebraska, a move was made to have the treaty of Prairie du Chien, made in 1830, under the provisions of which, among (jthers, the reservation was made, executed, l)y allotting the land in severalty among the benficiaries named in the treaty. To that end the Indian officer caused a census to be taken of the half and mixed bloods of the tribe named, which were, as I now recollect without consulting the records of the Yankton and Santee Ijands of Sioux, the Omahas, Otoes and lowas.

\\'hile this was going on, some enterprising land graljber, or may be several of them, induced the authorities at \\'ashington to cause a resurvey of the boundaries of the reservation, and the mischief was done. Bv the provisions of the treaty, the boundaries of the reserved tract were to be ascertained by surveying ten miles up each river, from its confluence with the Missouri, to points thereon, and then by a straight line between these points, which woukl mark the western boundary, while the Missouri would form the eastern. The McCoy survey was made by following the river in its sinuosities, which was the only way a sensible and fair surveyor could execute tile calls of the treaty. When thus made, the western initial point on the (ireat Nemaha was located about the mouth of the Muddy, and a line drawn from that point to a like point ten miles west of tlie mouth of the Little Xemaha, left .\.rcher about a mile and a half west of it.

The new survey \\as made on an entirely different basis of oi)eration. Instead of following the meanderings of the river, the surveyor, whoever he was, started at the mouth (or somewhere thereabouts) and ran a straight line up the vallex', to a ])oint ten miles west, \\'hich moved the initial ix)int on the Great Nemaha for the line to a corresponding point northwest on the l.ittie Xemaha, about four miles further west; and when the line was run it located Archer on the Half-Breed tract. That gave the half-breeds a slice out of the public domain, four .sections wide and some thirty miles long. Not a bad land gral).

Survey A Fraud

Uf course, tliat survey was a fraud and a wicked one, and though it failed of success in the end, it nevertheless ruined Archer, and wrecked the iiopes and plans, as well as the fortunes, of many worthy people.

This occurred some time in the latter part of 1856, and at the session of the Legislature that convened shortly thereafter in 1857, the final deathhlow was given Archer by the removal of the county seat, located there by an act of the lirst Territorial Legislature in 1855, to Salem, seven or eight miles further west.

Charles ALicDonald. a citizen of Salem, and a member of the Legislature, introduced a bill providing, with apparent delicacy, that if the commissioners of the country should ascertain that Archer was in fact located on the Half- Breed tract, they would at once move the ct)unty otitices to the town of Salem: and immediately afterwards, without awaiting developments under the tirst bill, he introduced another, removing the county seat bodily, and at once, from Archer to Salem. Both bills were probably passed the same day, as the record shows that they were both approved on the same day. That was "the mcist unkindest cut of all." as those people of Archer were largely instrumental in electing AlacDonald to the office, the powers of which he used for the destruction of their town. From that hour Archer was lost.

The most prominent of the men living there at that time were John C. Aliller. Ambrose Shelly, William Level, W. W. Maddox, John Welty, A. D. Kirk, l'"rank Goldsberry, William P. Loan, and a greater number of other persons than I have space to name here. They were all involved in the wreck and injured correspondingly.

Kirk and Goldsberry went to Rulo, which had been started the year Ijefore: Loan went to St. Stephens, another town on the Missouri, some miles aljoA-e Ruld, but as I recollect, he passed most of his time at the house of \\'illiam R. Cain, his brother-in-law. who was then engaged in opening a farm in the near vicinity. William R. Cain was long a leading citizen in this part of the country. The others wandered off in one direction or another, and to one place or another, but most of them to that land starward. It was a cruel thing to destroy that young community, and especially when no substantial benefit accrued to anybody or to any locality.

Three years afterward, that same Legislature, by the same arbitrary ] lower, passed another act to take effect in the same month of the year and almost on the same day of the month, removing the county seat from Salem, ;uid locating it at l'"alls Citv.

Judge Miller was probably the hardest hit of them all. lie was among the first settlers, and had invested his all in the town and expected to reap the reward of a frugal and economic life in the anticipated prosperity of the town and the country. He had his family about him; was the first probate judge of tlie county, with every prospect of holding it as long as he desiretl it. i'lUt in an evil hour everything was swept away, and he was a ruined man in his old age. It broke his spirit and probably shortened his life. He died in i860, and is buried with others of his family in the cemetery near where, the old town stood. One of his daughters, Mrs. W. M. Maddox, is still a citizen of Falls City. She was married to Captain Maddox irom her father's hou.se at Archer in the year 1855.

In a previous place I mentioned the rivalry between the town at the falls and I'"alls City, and will now tell what came of it. The Hamilton brothers and their associate, Sackett, were young men and natives of Ohio, and full of energy and the enthusiasm of youth, but wholly unacquainted with the West, and especially the climatic conditions of Nebraska. The\- associated the water fall in the Xemaha with the idea they liad of what such a power would be worth in their old state, and without hesitation concluded that it would I)e the verv place to found the future manufacturing town of the countr)-. The surroundings were certainly pretty to look at, and the conditions appeared favorable to the success of the schemes conjured up in the minds of those boys, but who, before the summer waned, were to learn, like all the children in the family of man, that the'-e is a great He out in the world and things are not always what they seem to I'e.

The\- naturally argued that there l)eing an abundance of water in the river, flowing <i\er a Ijed of solid rock, and then pitching down between five and six feet, a permanent foundation was thus furnished for mills or other estalilishments for manufacturing purposes.

lutrly in June we concluded to hold a l-'ourth of July celebration, and our friends at Xemaha Falls heanl of it and deternn'ncil to have one, also. Tiie\ strove to outdo us at every ix)int and in everything.

Tliere was no shade of any kind in town, no grove, nor tree, nor an\ ol)ject that would cast a shadow of sufficient extent to cover twenty people. S<T we made one on the court house s(]uare, by setting posts in the ground with |)( les across, upon which we put boughs of trees cut in the iVemaha timber and liauled up for this pur])ose. In that w;i\- we ni.-ide an arbor shad\-

A beef, as they called a slaughtered specimen of the Injvine tribe, was provided tt) l)e roasted for the refreshment of the people, and other provisions were made for the entertainment and comfort of the crowd that was expected to attend, but where it was to come from was a mystery to me. It-turned out. however, that tliere were more jjeople in the country that I thought for. They came from all o\er the county and we had a crowd of several hundred people. A band of Indians in full nati\e costume were secured to perform their traditional war-dance, under the auspices of their chief headsman. I'o-to-ko-mah. He was a fine specimen of physical manhood.

Another and (juite an unexpected one in that brand new community, was a kind of mixed band of music under the leadership of Jim Dye. consisting of five or six persons and as many horns and fiddles, who played all the staple patriotic tunes, and then some, and furnished music for the dance that night at Jesse Crook's new hotel building on the Richardson County Bank corner, lots 23-24, of block No. 70, then enclosed and nearing completion. They enlivened the scene greatly and added to the general festi\it\ in a way possible only through the instrumentality of music, that wizard of the soul, the soother of the sorrowful, parent of jxjetry and religion, the cliarm of which has lingered on earth since the dawn of the eternal morning when the stars sang together the "Te Deum of the spheres, in glad acclaim of creation finished.'"

And now a word about the people who came that da\ to hel]) us celel)rate the annual recurrence of the day dear to all Americans. They are before me n(nv as I saw them then, brave men and women, some of whom had crossed wide ri\ers and wider states, to come to tliis new and virgin land to subdue the wilderness, to work hard antl li\e harder, to Iniild comfortable homes f<ir themselves antl families, to ojien farms, to rear cinn-ches and school houses. They came in all shapes and manners of transportation: Some on horseback, some in wagons, drawn by horses; some by a single horse, and I remember one fa.nnly. consisting of paterfamihas. his wife and two daughters, in a wagon drawn 1)\- a voke of cattle, with a strapping young fellow on foot driving them.

'I'he old peojjle were seatetl on chairs smoking their pii)es. ;uid seemed to enjov themseKe?-, while the girls were smarted up in new calico frocks and riblions in profusion, witli Ininches of elderberries stuck in their hair as especial ornaments. The costumes of the ])eople were just as grotesque and \;iried as tlieir means of transportation. Nobody .seemed to have on any- thing new, except tlie dresses of the younger females (jf the party and ihey were in most part of cahco. No two men had coats, vests and pantalo(jns of the same cut, fashion or material, and all to have Ijeen in service a long time, nor were there any two hats of the same fashion or any fashion. .\'e\ertheless, their meeting with each other and their families were of the most friendly character. It is sufficient for the matter ip hand, that we executed the common intention and celebrated in the usual way. Someone read the old Declaration of Independence, and I made them a .sophon:oric speech, in which I liave little doubt, a great deal of spread-eagle nonsense alxnuided, but it was a boy's effort, delivered in jierfect recognition of the solemn occasion and, whether well or ill performed, did its office, and that was enough. The Indian war-dance followed, and then the public dinner consisting mo.stly of beef and bread: but the interesting part of it to me was to watch the Indians take their refreshment. Have any of the readers seen an Indian - 1 mean a regular blanket Indian, fresh from the wild - from the plains - eat? Well, if they have not, they have missed something. .\ native Indian, and they are all alike, as I know from actual observation, never eats but one thing at a time. Give him meat and bread, and he will eat the meat first, ;uid then perform the same office with the bread. They never -eat the.se two articles at tlie same time, ft was a new and amusing experience to me, anil I watched the process with close attention.

Our friends at the falls had their celebrations also, and Judge Dundy made a speech for them, and in that particular outshone ours on the bills; in all other particulars ours was the best and pleased the people most.

There have not been any other celebrations at Nemaha Falls, and for the following reason; .Mxmt three weeks afterwards there came upon the country one of those sudden rainstorms, with which the people of this region are familiar, and within twelve hours thereafter the whole Neiuaha valle\ , from bluff to bluff, had become an inland sea. 1 have seen many floods in the \alle\- since, but I have never seen one that I thought equalled that. In that case the settlers were all driven out, many of them running narrow risk of drowning along with their families. Much of their live stock was drowned, and all of their imjirovemcnts were destroyed.

Rut what (jf our rival tt)wn at the falls? When the flood had subsidcti the town was fnund to have gone with it, and the future manufacturing center of tile countrx had ceased to exist. Most of the people in the valley came to I'alls City, and never went back. Stumbo foreclosed his mortgage on the townsite, bought the land at sheriff's sale, along with the ghost of the departed village, and the story of the once-boasted municipality of the future was closed forever.

The flood in the Xemaha valley was a revelation to the people. No one appeared to hav(? any idea that the stream was subject to such freshets and tlie prestige of the bottom land over those on the high ground, suffered materially. There has never been any considerable farming in the valley of the Nemaha east of Salem. .Mxmt tlie time this flood occurred, some lawless persons, either the same night, or the night before, relieved several of the people of their horses, and fled with them into Kansas. As soon as the word got about and a party could be organized for pursuit, Wilson M. .Maddox, young ^^'illiam Goolsby, son of William G. Goolsby on the Muddy, and some others constructed a raft of some kind, crossed over to the south bank of the Nemaha, and pursued the thieves until they captured four persons, they believed to have been engaged in the depredations and returnetl with them to Archer. No attention was paid to territorial lines or the law of L'ongress regulating extradition of fugitives from justice, escaping fro: , one territory or state into another, but regardless of all of these the pursuing party I have mentioned captured their men and brought then^ into Nebraska for punishment. To that end word was passed through the neighborhood, and nearly all, if not all, the leading citizens in the vicinity assembled at Archer to consider what .should be done in the way of ascertaining the guilt of the jiersons accused and also to take order in the matter of their ])iinisliment. Tliere was no criminal code in the Territory at the time.

Two of those parties hearing that there was a lawyer at Falls City sent word to me to come over to Archer. I did so, and listened to their story and became convinced that at least twf) of the parties were not guilty and so informed Mr. ]\laddox. and those he had called to his assistance in the neighborhood. It is a fact everywhere true in the West at that time, that the ])eoi>]e held in greater detestation the offence of horse stealing than they did ;in\ other of the whole calendar of crime. I shall give the name of but one of the [larties .ucused. as it is possi])le the others may have some friends in tlie country and I h;ive no (lisiK)sition to wound their feelings by what I here relate of the disagreeable incident in which they were in no way involved. anil wliicii may have been a mistake from the beginning. The man whom

I thought to be guilty, without any doubt, was nanied Sam Thomas. He was a young man of bad repute and had been in the Kansas troubles from their inception, and it seems had graduated in the art of horse stealing. He was certainly an adept. There was no particular organization of a court such as is known to be presided over by his honor, Judge Lynch, or requiring a committee of inquiry like a trial by jury, but the people consulted and talked among themselves and with me very freely, very candidly, and they finally l^ecame satisfied that I was right as to two of the party, let them ofif, but the other two, the one besides Thomas, were condemned to be whipped - fifty lashes for Thomas and twenty lashes for the other one. This was my first appearance in any court in Nebraska, and it was about as revolting an experience as anybody could care to undergo.

I had heard and read of Judge Lynch's court, but had never seen it in operation. I had also heard and read much of the mobs, disorders and unlawful assenil>lage, the ostensible objects of which were to administer summary punishment for infractions of the law, without waiting for the regularly constituted authorities to take action in the premises; but this was the first of the kind that had come under my observation, and in fact, it was the last of the kind.

There was nothing violent in the conduct of tlie men assembled on this occasion, and those of the men present whom I remember, I knew to be then and for the rest of their lives afterwards, as good citizens as any orderly members of the community to be found anywhere. They talked the matter over very seriously and in the light of the circumstances surrounding them and their property. At that time there was no law or code, nor other public iJDjtection for life or property in the commonwealth of the Territory, and thev were left without any protection from depredations of this character. Up to that time there had never lx;en but one court held in the county, and there was not another one until in March, 1859. It looked like a cruel piece of business, and it was dissociated from the idea of punishment for lawlessness. The victims were bared from the waist up, their feet tied together, and their hands securely tied to the wheel of a wagon, with their bodies slightly bent over while receiving punishment. In the case of Thomas it was arranged for five men to give him ten lashes apiece, and in the administration of the punishment I had an excellent opportunity to judge of the nature of the men who inflicted the punishment. The instrument of torture was a green hickory withe, probably four feet in length and a half an inch in diameter at its thickest part. This terrible weapon, in the hands of a strong man, applied with his full force to the naked back of a human body, was a sight I hope iK'\er til >ce again whilt I remain in the world. 1 refrain from giving a particular description of tlie strokes as they were applied to those unfortunate men. Tlie remembrance is too horrible to put on paper.

.Some of the accounts I had read of man's inhumanity to man in the darker ages of the wOrld, came vividly before my imagination. The instruments of torture that man's cruelty to his fello\\s have in\'ented - the thuml)- screw, the boot, the breaking on the wheel, suggested themselves to me while this terrible ordeal was in progress of enactment before my eyes.

.Vmong the five who administered punishment to Thomas, one of them whose name I will not mention, touched the poor, writhing, quivering, tortured body .so lightly that a ily woukl not have been destroyed by any of the strokes. This man was not loud in his profession of religion, if, indeed, he made any profession of tlie kind at all, nor was he demonstrative in any way touching the comfort and well being of those about him, but the whole nature of the man was laid l)are to me in the mode in which he pretended to whip that outcast. The criminal was a lawless man and all that, but at the same time he was a human being with the image of his Creator stamjied upon him, and it was consideration for the Being Who bore that image, and not the horse thief, that controlled the strokes of the whip in the hands of the man 1 refer to. The next man to the fore and the last of the detail, was a certain Mr. Wright, whom I had seen about Falls Citj- during my brief residence there, and whom I liad frecjuently observed at public religious services, where he was prominent in all that went forward, and withal rather loud in his devotions, so loud, indeed, that I became possessed of some doubt of the sincerity of his professions. He was one of a specific "kingdom-come" class that are to l)e found wherever men are found on the earth, who arrogate to themselves the whole autiiority of reforming the world, without taking into account the probable unimportant fact that they themselves need about a> much reformation as anybody else.

At the call of the master of the ceremonies he stepped forward, took the instrument of torture, and with his whole force laid it across the back of the already bleeding and maimeil victim, each stroke being harder, if possible, than the one preceding, until I'ncle W illiam (ioolsby, his eyes flashing with uncontrollable anger and indignation, caught the hand of the miirderous monster and wrenched the whip from his grasp, saving, ".Stop, you brute, there is enough of this," ;ind throwing it on the ground ordered the man untied. In the hush that fell upon the infuriated company, concerned for the safety of their property rights, and for the good order and well being of the communitv .at large, at tin's >u(lden as>ertion of that feeling of mercv that distiiit,aiishes the civilized from the savage, that one "touch of nature that inakes the whole world kin," there was produced among them a strange commotion, confused and nndelinable, but as potent as though each had heard the voice that once declared and is always declaring, "Blessed are the merciful, for tliey shall obtain merc)." The feeling produced in me has ne\er passed away. The balance of that gruesome function was i)er formed in a kind of a perfunctory way, and all departed feeling, I little doubt as I felt, that the less of such exhibitions among the people the better it would be for the general public morality. ]^>om that day to this, mob law has but once been resorted to in this county.

One man liad !)een hung but a few days l>efore at St. Stephens for the same offense, but it was the last. Some years later some three or four road agents of the kind I lia\ e describetl were hanged by a mob at Table Rock in Pawnee county.

Before the summer waned and the wcjods along the river to the soutii took on the russet and golden hues peculiar to the autumnal season, something happened in our little out-of-the-way community - something that always occurs in the haunts of men all over the world - one of our people died. It was the first visitation of the grim mon.ster, death, to the new town, ami it was all the more sad because of the fact that the one to go was a little girl of ten (»r twelve years af age. who had through all the long summer weather. l)een a patient sufferer from some lingering disease, which, with n(3 medical assistance at hand - there was no doctor in town nor in the county for that matter - had liaffled ever\- effort of loving parents and the kindness of humane neighbors to stay its slow but deadly work of destruction of the frail life in a frailer and wasting lx)d\-. and on a quiet Sunday morning, when far-off' church bells in other lands were calling the people to hear the oft-told story of another life, another death, and triumphant resurrection, the little one ceased from ann)ng the living, and the mysterious purpose of her existence on earth was accomplished.

Death under any circumstances, and at all times, is a very sad and sorrowful aff'air. but when we reflect that it is just as natural for persons to die. as it is for them to be born and live, we must conclude that it is quite as necessary in the eternal economy as any other inevitable condition. .\11 the other persons besides myself, William I-^. Dorrington, then a lad of but ele\en years, and John Mdvvard Burbank, who lived in the town or assistetl in those humble obse(|uies of that little child of the wilderness, have them- selves gone the way whence they, too, will not return. She was the daughter of Isaac L. Hamby, a gentleman whom I have mentioned several times in these memories and who lived in a cheap and illy-constructed house, or rather a shanty, that stood on lots 13 and 14, of block No. 134, at the corner of Ninth and Stone streets, on the corner south of the National hotel. The house was no better, nor for that matter very little worse, than the dwellings of most of the people in the town, but it was anything but a comfortable hal>itation for people in good health, and certainly no place for a person with a lingering disease, where every hour was an eternity of suffering. It was a mere shell, with no foundation under it and no plastering, or partitions, except some brown sheeting stretched across, dividing the inside space into two compartments or rooms, and that was all the privacy for the family, afforded by it. The winds, and they were sometimes a gale, and the rain, ran riot about and through the rude structure, with its thin coating of cottonwood boards that the sun had warped out of shape in many places, leaving ample space for the elements to enter without hindrance. There was no tree or shrub, no front yard, or garden; nothing but the boundless sea of prairie, stretching away in all directions, the distant horizon and the blue arch of lieaven overhead. The furniture was in keeping with the poor appointments everywhere, only the commonest for the necessary use and notliing for ornament or c<;)mfort. for the occupants.

This was poverty, but not the kind of poverty that accompanies squalor, liith, drunkenness, destitution, hunger and dirt, to be seen in the slums of the overcrowded tenement districts of the great cities, but poverty of means 10 utilize the superabundance of nature, that was everywhere going to waste because of the want of such means. This has been characteristic of the frontier on this continent for three hundred years. The pioneers have always l)een poor in diat sense, but in .sober truth, they were the richest people on the globe - teeming with a wealth of courage and hope, stalwart empire l)uilders, who made present conditions possible, including that splendid spirit of intellectual emulation now rife among good people, many of whom can sport a good automobile.

The people were probably no dift'erent from what they are now. but in a way 1 can hardl>- explain, they sliowed their sympathy for the liereaved family liy little acts of kindness, so delicately administered, as to make them appear, when recalled at this distant day, totally unlike anything of the kind to come under my observation, before or since. The surroundings, no doubt, and the fact that it was the first death to occur in the town, coupled with the further fact that the Httle child had to be put away in a lonely grave by itself on the wide, silent prairie, had much to do with it, but the impression was produced just the same, and has never been removed. The arrangements for the funeral were very simple and of the most primitive and inexpensive character, as of necessity they had to be. Squire Dorrington, who was a skilled mechanic, made a coffin out of some green walnut boards - there was no seastmed lumlicr to he liad--an(l carried it on his shoulder to the house of nidurning.

The good wonion uf the town were there in force and among them they CI instructed an olil-fashiuned shroud of the best material to be had in the market, and it w as like e\erything else, of the rudest description ; and having clotlieil the worn and wasted little body with that last garment of all living, it was tenderl)- ])laced in the coffin upon which a few wild flowers, some friends had gatiiered on the prairie, were laid, and thus the bier of the iirst lit tin.' dead of this community stood confessed.

We buried the little one on the following afternoon, but with scant ceremonials. There was no minister of the gospel of any persuasion in the town at the time, and therefore, no services of a religious nature was had at the house, but it was decided liy some of the good ladies, Mrs. Van Lew and Mrs. Burbank, who were members of the Episcopal church, that the ser\ice for the dead prescribed in the prayer book of that denomination, should be read at tiie grace, and I was asked to perform that duty, which I f\\d as best I could. There was no cemetery, Init we started one that da}- on a school section, just west of town, a kind of no-man's land, or Tom Tidler's ijround, and it grew from year to year. The land was purchased from the state by authority of an act of the Legislature, and a regular cemetery association was formed, and for several years all the dead of our people were l;uried there. As neither soil nor the location was best suited for the purpose, another site was procured to the north of the old one, and on the highest ground in the neighborhood, which Joseph Steele, the owner, donated under certain conditions, and it has come to be the chief burial ground for the cit\ and one of the most beautiful of all the resting places for the dead in the whole state.

During the half century that has elapsed since that day, I have attended many funerals and witnessed many sorrowful scenes in connection with them, but I have seen none that impressed me as that did. It seemed to me a cruel thing to bury her in the solitary waste, alone in the brooding silence of iiiighty nature, llicre tu remain forever, to be tirst neglected, and then forgotten. I was \ounger then and more impressionable, perhaps, on that account, but be that as it may. 1 shall never live long enough to get away, in thought at least, from that humble funeral procession, formed on foot, following the two-horse lumlier wagon in which reposed all that was mortal nf ijue t)f those little ones, whom the Master said was typical of the Kingdom; nor will I ever get away from that strange feeling of sadness, witli which 1 scattered a handful of cold earth on the cofHn below, and pronounced the words nf the ritual: "Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust."

Tiik Col'Xty Seat Fight

The summer of 1858 came to an end as all terrestrial things do, shading itself into the autumn and the autumn into winter, and then the snow antl the blizzard, and the storm of a heated - yes. red-hot county-seat fight that lasted for man\' a \ear after.

As remarked in a former paper, the renunal of the seat of county .government. b\ act <>i tile Legislature, from Archer to Salem, was not at all .satisfactory tu the ])eople, and the demand that the Legislature provide fur the submission of the (juestion to a vote of the people, was general throughout the county. It would doubtless have been attended to b\- the preceding Legislature which met at Omaha in the winter before, viz., 1857 and 1858, but for the fact of the split that occurred in that body, by which one faction mo\ ed up to Florence, an old Mormon town, while the other remained in Omaha. 1 b;i\e heretofore mentioned this circumstance, and it is sufticient to sa}' that neither faction was the legal lawmaking power, and no law was made. The one. however, that we elected in 1858. and convened in October following, l)y proclamation of the governor, passed an act empowering the commissioners of the county to call an election for the purpose of choosing a ]iermanent seat of government, by the vote of the people.

The law pro\ided that in the first election every town in the county could be a candid.-ite for that honor, but if no one of them should receive a inajority of all the votes cast, the commissioners should call another election, and only the four towns receixing the highest number of \otes at the first election la.s'Uiiiing that tliere should be more than four contestants for the place), could be voted for at the next, and if none of them should receive a majority, then the two highest wa> to l)e .selected as candidates in the third and last election, which would, of necessity, end the contest. By the terms of the act, the elections were t'l lie called in (|uick succession, anil were, in fact, held in the tnonth of Decemljer. Tliere were several candidates. Rtilo. Wimieljago, \'aiikton, St. Stepliens. Archer. I'alls City. Salem. Geneva, Middleburg. and inavhe some other ])oints. hut as only the four highest could be voted on at the second election, the others are unimportant. The first battle was to be one of the four, and to win out must be one of the two in the last heat and the highest, in the nutnber of votes: in other words, the winner must take all the tricks. It was l''alis litv's hour of trial, and though she took all the tricks ,uk1 came out ahead in the final and last election, she was later deprived of tlic fruits of her \ ictorv In- a so-called contest of the election, which by statute, was heard and decided In the county clerk, who proved to be an unfair and dishonest ofticial. who held against Falls (^ity and gave the county seat to Salem, notwithstanding die proofs sliowed that a clear majority of the votes had been c;ist for Falls City.

Efforts Renewed

It was easy to see thai the election had settled nothing, and that the whole contro\ers\- would have to be submitted to the arbitrament of the ballot again, and under circumstances controlled by safeguards that would IK it onlv evoke from the people their untrammeled expression on the subject, but would see to it, that that expression was not thwarted by trickery and dishonest officials. The battle had been a hard one. and though tricked out of Dur success, wc were bv no means subdued, and preparations for a renewal of the contest with greater vigor than ever, were at once set on foot.

There are n^t manv in life today who remember that first bout in our iMunty-seat figlit. I can call to mind less than half a dozen people who parlicijiated in it. and as some of them will probably see what I here say about ii. I will take it as a favor if they will intlicate any inaccuracy of .statement they may observe in my version of tiie facts, and rest assured that all proper corrections will be promptly made.

And now let me indulge in something of retrospection. To bring before nu mental vision tlie times, the scenes and the principal actors in that longl)ast struggle fur lucal ])olitical su])reniacy. i must bring back the vacant C'.iiutrv. aljnlisli tiie court hou.-^e. the prosi)erous towns, the railroads, the >lilcnili(l farms, with their comlortal)le dwellings, barns and rural improvements tliat mark the intervening years of progress; think away the fine church buildings and the school houses, public roads and bridges, of iron and stone: resurrect the dead and reinstate the wild waste and wilderness - things of a d.iy that is dead, for in no other way can I present what 1 have in memory.

lilurred and faded as they are. by the lliglit of so many years; that what I write may become intelHgible to others. Tlie conditions were very primitive and the surroundings e.xceedingly poor, but everybody was full of energy. \im and hope, and the coming county-seat scrimmage was something looked for. I'alls C ity, a little hamlet of six or eight hovels that looked like they had run away from sumewhere and got lost on the prairie, had some fifty or sixty ])ei)ple h\ing in it tliat spring, and had .something like one hundred and fift\' w lien tlie hght opened. When it became known that the act had passed authorizing the people of the comity to .settle the county-seat question in the mode I have mentioned, a council of war was held, noses counted and our general resources in the way of votes taken into account. We had many friends on the INIuddy and its affluents - the McElroy, Goolsby and Sardine l)ranchcs: (piite a good number on the north and south forks of the Neiuaha. and on L(jng Branch in the northwest part of the county. There was but one \oting place west of Salem: it was on the south fork of the Nemaha and not far from tlTt west bnundary of the county, at the house of David Speiser. Tliat \oting place had always retained the name and the country in the .southwest part of the county is now known as Speiser township. It was arranged that some of our people should attend that poll, and as it had no candidate - and as it was the only sulxlivision of the county that had not - we expected a good vote for Falls City, as all the people in the west end voted there and the field was a good one to labor in. William Simpkins, who lived cm tlie Xemalia just above the falls and who was the owner of a team of ll<|^^e.s and a wagon, Jesse Crook and myself, were detailed to .go to Speiser for work nil election da}".

Simpkins furnished tiie transportation and our election committee furnished all the rest. It was extremely cold weather and we were forced to make the trip In- easy stages, and t<i that eiul we left Falls City the day 1)efore. went by the wa\' of Salem, where we procured a supply of electioneering ammunitidii. which we carried in a jug, and thence by the way of North Fork, intending to i)ass the nio;ht at the house of John Rothenberger, a well-to-do (ierman settler and a warm friend of our town. Mr. Rothenberger lived on the niirth side of the river, at a point a few miles west of the present town (if Dawson, and 1 believe his son of the same name. John F-iothenberger. is now the owner of the old homestead, b'nim .Salem we traveled Ijetween the Xemahas. and to get lo ^[^. I'Jothenlierger's we had to cross the river, which we could not do with the team becau.se the river was hard frozen and the hanks were so steep as to make it dangerous to try to take the horses over.

an ((1(1 l'j,i4 stable on the south bank of the river, we put the horses in it and after feeding with corn we had in the wagon for the purpose, we prepared to cross over to Mr. Rothenberger's house, which stood not far from the river. Crook and Simpkins, lx)th much larger and heavier than myself, got 1 i\er all right, but when I made the attempt and had reached about the middle (if the stream the ice bn^ke under me, and I went down.

I threw out ni\ arms and caught the firm ice on each side and by a (juick muscular exertioii of my arms succeeded in throwing my body out of the water and on to the ice. I never could determine how I did it, but as I was \oung", acti\e and a light weight, my quick movements prevented any serious consequences. An\'how I got out of the river and over to the north side in double quick time, but my clothing was thoroughly soaked with water, and before I got to the house, short as the distance was, every rag on me was frozen as stifif as a board.

Mr. Rothenberger and his excellent family welcomed us to his hospitable roof and, ascertaining my predicament from the cold bath I had just been treated to, a suit of Joe Watton's clothes was furnished me and a room l)ro\ ided in which to make the change, when the young ladies, and I think there were tliree of them, took mine to the kitchen fire, where they were dried and ready for use in the morning. I have never been more kindly treated, and 1 don't remeniljer of a time when I needed it more. But I have a sequel t(T relate in connection with that fall in the river which I will attend to l)resently.

We passed an agreeable night with our friends and after a hearty breakfast in the morning we went over to Speiser precinct and put in an actixe day among the voters, assisted by Mr. Rothenljerger, Joseph Watton and some others from Ixith forks of the river. Long Branch, Easley creek and other points, and when the votes were counted Falls City had received a ver\- comfortable majority. When the votes of the county were canvassed, Falls City was found to be not only one of the four for the next race, but had received the highest number of any of them, though short of a majority of the whole. The high towns were Falls City, Salem, Rulo and St. Stephens, and about two weeks later another election was held with those named as candidates. In that election Rulo and St. Stephens fell out, and the final tilt occurred l)etween Salem and Falls City, with the result about stated. What followed as a consequence of that election contest and the unfair decision lit the county clerk who heard it. will be detailed in my next paper, but just now I have something- to record as a l<ind nf addendum to the ludicrous circumstances of my falling; through the ice on that freezing December night, tift\- years ago.

It was, I think. al)out twenty years afterwards, and when the episode had passed from my recollection - 1 was engaged hi the trial of a cause in our district court. .\ly client was defendant in a suit for damages comnn'tted by trespassing animals on the growing crops of the plaintiff. Among the witnesses for the plaintiff (who was Herman Tiehen, an extensive landowner, west of Salem, and, until his decease, one of our most valuable citizens), was a lady whom I learned was Mrs. Tiehen, but whom I did not recognize as an} one whom I had ever seen. I was given an opportunity to cross-examine the witness and did it something like this:

The witness said "Yes," but the manner of saying it accompanied with tile amused and quizzical way she looked at me, was somewhat puzzling. I |)ut another (|uestion, when she broke into a pleasant laugh, saying, "You know me." .She e\idently thought T was pretending not to know her, which was an error, for at the moment 1 had not the slightest notion that I had ever seen her anxwbere. Then, \\ith a still more amu.sed manner. "You haven't forgotten the night you fell through the ice on the Xemaha, and I and my sisters dried your wet clothes by the kitchen fire? You know me." The old experience came back to me in a flash. I was back in the infernal river again, ;ind what was more, I was in a consideral)ly worse t'l.x, for I was being laughed at by everybocly in the court house. The crowd had got on to the ridiculous figure 1 cut scrambling out of the river, wet to the skin, my clothes freezing on nic. and I making a bee line for the house and a fire. Entering into the spirit of the fun that was then rampant around me I said, "Yes, I rememl)er, and you arc a daughter of Mr. Rothenberger. It has been a long time since 1 saw vou. and I certainlv did not know you as ]\Irs. Tiehen."

A\'ell. the incident passed off' very pleasantly, but I must say in all candor that I was never so liadl\- sold in the whole course of my life.

With the close of the year 1858, our first Ixittlc for the county seat came to an entl, that is. so f.ir as the three elections I have heretofore described, were concerned. I'>ut we were not entirely through with the struggle.

Kriiakdson Colxtv. N' Klskaska

to institute pruceediiigs to contest our right to the majority that the final poll gave Falls City. In the above I stated that the proceedings were held liefore the county clerk.

In that I was in error: it was before the probate judge of the county, w ho resided at Rulo, where he transacted most of his official business, but he sat at Salem, the county seat, to hear the election contest. I have before said that a very bitter {>olitical prejudice was entertained against Falls City by the people of lx:ith Rulo and Salem, and it was a fact pretty generally recognized at the time, that the probate judge as an individual, shared in that prejudice to a very great extent. So much, indeed, as to render him unht to hear the case, as it was out of the question for him to do so and render an impartial judgment. But we were powerless to help ourselves and the show had to go on.

Dan McGary, the leading lawyer of Brownville, was employed on behalf of Salem, while Falls City was represented by Elmer S. Dundy, who became a permanent resident of Falls City on his return from the Legislature, and myself. The trial lasted the greater part of the month of January, much delay being caused by Dundy having the ague, and an adjournment was necessary about the same time every clay to allow him to undergo his usual shake and spell of fever. It was not a comfortable experience, but he stood it like a hero, and when not freezing with a malarial chill, or burning up with the resultant fever, he put in his best licks for Falls City and fought manfully for the right of his client. But who can fight blind, unreasoning prejudice? Nobody that anybody has ever heard of.

Well, we fought it out as best we could, and lost, of course. A considerai)le number of our people attended the trial from time to time, and as the town was not well supplied with a public hotel, and most of Nebraska towns at the time were in tlie same fix, we were generously and comfortably entertained at the home of IVIrs. Oliver, a widow lady, and the mother of Mrs. Joiin \y. Holt, presently residing in this city. T remember Mrs. Holt as a spriglitly little miss in those days.

In the month of December, 1858, or somewhere about that time, J. E. Hurbank and Sewel R. Jameson started a newspaper at Falls City. It was called The Broad Axe, and was a .sort of a continuation of one they had operated at Centerville, Indiana, the former residence of tiie Burbanks and tlie Jamesons. They had a small hand press and some type, and Jameson being- a practical printer, the enterprise was set on foot to help Falls City, and to amuse, if not instruct, the people in this part of the new political community of Xebra.ska. At the same time A. D. Kirk started one at Rulo, which he called The Rulo Western Gnufc, and it was not long before a fierce newspaper war broke out between them of a grossly personal character.

From a dog tight to a newspaper war, or any other conflict, great or small, in which prowess, valor, grit and gallantry may l)e displayed, the .sympathies of the partisan zeal oi the Anglo-Saxon are sure to be enlisted, and if he can in any way get into die row himself, lie will Ije all the better ])leased. The newspaper controversy - principally alxnit nothing - between those papers, ultimately drew the people i)f the two towns into it, and the sentiment of place hatred between them, became intensely bitter and remained so for manv vears afterwards. The ancient wars between the old Scottish clans were no more vengeful in the hearts of their people, than it. was among the inhabitants of these two hamlets, whose rivalry had an immediate respect only to which could show the greater population, and in time to come be selected as the seat of government of the county.

I have already told in another paper in this series what followed the election in April, i860, which finally resulted in giving the county seat to Falls City, and I need say no more under that head.

The row between the Broad Axe and the Rulo ll'estcrn Guide was like most other shindies of the frontier, ridiculously absurd, senseless in its conduct and superbly indecent, not to say tlownright obscene, in the general matter contained in both. The public taste being in keeping with the low vulgarity indulged in b}- those paper-wad champions, rather relished the weekly showers <if mud and filth tliey threw at each odier. as in the public estimate the battle of the rival towns was supposed to hn involved in the issue - and. besides, they liked the fun. In all essential respects the contest was not unlike a similar one recorded by the inimitable caricaturist, Charles Dickens, in the "Pickwick Papers." over an election at Fatanswill. between Pott, of the Eatunszi'ill Ga::ette. and Shirk, of the Eataiunvill ludepeiideiit, but I lack the powers of description in a sufiicient degree to present these Nebraska inky belligerents and their tem])est in a teapot, as the great Englishman pictured the two Fatanswill social scabs, and clothed them with his own mantle of deathless fame.

The wrangle l)elween the pioneer newspapers of this county was, however, a verv liainilc^s ;ittair, l)ut l)eing the first, is endtlcd to mention in these

])ai)ei"s. llie editors tlieiiiselves were not bad fellows, but were very different in tenii)eranient, tastes and mental makeup. Of course, nothing in this world can last forever, and the storm of paper pellets spent itself in the course of a few months, i)rincipally for the reason that both editors retired from their posts, and the war-cry died out for a time, to be renewed by others on the tripods, more fierce than ever, till the county-seat question was settled, when the Guide faded out of existence and was heard of no more.

The Broad Axe, however, lingered along for ten years or more, and like a river I have seen in the mountain districts of the Pacific slopes, would sink out of sight in spots, to reappear further on, and continued that desultory, intermittent sort of existence, until by some process of newspaper metempsychosis, it passed into another under a different name, and this, the first of its kind, of long-time liappy memory, followed the Guide to the shadowy land of dead newspapers.

The -roll of its editors brings before me many faces familiar in recollections; faces of men who in another time, were co-pioneers on the Western border, and j)articipants in laying the foundations of the present great and prosperous state of Nebraska. Sewell \i. Jameson, its first, retired soon after its establishment, to take the office of receiver of public moneys in the land office at Brownville, which place he held for a time, with no particular credit to himself or an3'1x)dy else. T shall not attempt to write his biographv. It is rdready written in the lost li\es of th;it mighty liDst of tiie dead from a social custom, sanctioned, or at least permitted liy tiie laws of socalled Christian men, and the story of one of those is, in all essential respects, an exact duphcate of all i)i the others. In a lonely grave on the hillside near Hrownville and overlooking the broad sweep of the Missouri, as it rolls its unsightly, muddy floods steadily down to the sea, rests all that was mortal of that young man, once of high hope, of good intellect and good intentions, but of no more account now to the busy throngs of the living, than the senseless clods that cover the frail, wasting body, beneath them. "What is man, that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man, that thou \isitest him," when man himself is neither nnndful of his kind nnr merciful to it. but is even cruel in liis disposition to forgetfulness and neglect. .\lr. Jameson was succeeded in tlie Broad .-l.ve 1)\- a tramp printer named Ir\ing, a xoung man with some aljility and :i fair cducalion. l)ut the social custom mentioned had laid its withering hand nn him early in the race. ;uiil failure was written against the enterprise from the st.irt. However.

he ran the paper at inter\als for a \car or two. and then tlirew it up and left the country. The next to take hold of the A.vc, was a farmer named L. I J. I'routv. who li\ed out on the Muddy near Joiin R. Dowty's present farm. .Mr. I'routy had learned the printer's trade when a boy, and was well ecjuipped for the l)usiness of a country editor. Anyway, lie took up the job some time in 1861 and held it down until 1865. or thereabouts, and was succeeded by Norman J'ierce, from somewhere in Kansas, who was a better printer and a Ijetter editor than an\ of his predecessors. About the time that Arago was assuming great importance as a growing town, and its leading citizens induced I'ierce to move the Axe down there to help boom the then metropolis on the river. He did so, and operated the paper there for several months, but with little profit to himself or the town. Norman liked beer too well, and there was an unlimited quantity constantly on tap and within reach, and as much of his ads and subscription were paid in that kind of currency, the editor did what he could with getting away with at least what he considered his share, and it finally got away witli tlie ne\\spa])er business itself, and the office was brought back to I'ails L'ity. Tiie i)ress and material belonged to Jameson and Burbank. and t]ie\- allowed any i)erson who would unflertake the job of ]>rinting a pajier. lo use them without cost, hoping someone would make a success of it and l)uy them out. This 1 think, took place, but it was tiear the decade of i860, but as I am not writing of that time, the fact is not important at this moment. The next and the last of the Broad A.vc editors, was Judge Jonathan Janits Marvin. I have it in my mind that he took charge of the office about the \ear 1866. but I cannot be accurate as to the time, as I have no data at hand b\- which to fix it. liiU it was somewhere thereabouts. .\s run l)y him it was a different paper to any ])reviously published in the town. I'irst. liecause it was free from all personalities, and was devoted to tlie ])ul)lication of the cm-rent news of the day, interspersed with articles on literar\' subjects at interv;ds. that lo\ ers of the higher order of literiiiure would be delighted with, in a new country as this was then: books of th.' belles-lettres kind were scarce indeed. Second, because Judge Marvin was the most ;iccomplishcd classical scholar then in Nebraska, or that has e\er been in it since for that matter, and the products of his pen were marvels of style and elegance, such as are never met with in the ordinary roug'! and tumble country publications.

Me had been educated in one of the Canadian colleges, l)Ut himself was a native of the state uf Vermont, and chose the law as his profession in life, studyino- in the otitice of his grandfather. Judge Janes, who had been chief justice of tile supreme court of that state. He came of a great race <,f lawxers, but 1 was alwaxs of the opinion that he made ;i nnstake in trying to be <ine himself. 1 suppose there is some place in the world for every nian who has tiie mfsfortune to t)e born into it, but sometimes, and generall}' a good many times, the wrong man gets into the \\ rong place, and failure, or at least, incomplete success follows, for which the man himself is held responsible and unjustly so. To me it appeared that Judge ^lavvin with his great attainments and splendid poetic fancy, for he vvas a p(>et in every fibre of his nature, should have been on the editorial staff of some literary magazine of the higher order, where his powers of critical analysis, equal in grasp to Poe or VVillis, could have had full play and the world of letters would have been enriched by the circumstance.

Untoward fate ordered his life otherwise, and it may be that I am mistaken, though I hardly think so, but I am ver\- certain that he was out r,f his rightful element trying to practice law in a rude frontier communit\-. or indeed in any other, as his tastes and natural instincts fitted hnr. for a field of operation widely different from the ]nigilistic contentions of a legal forum.

1 have no ai)ology to offer for what I have said of ;i m.-i:^ ivhoni in life 1 a.lmired and respected, and in whom I .saw wh.-it I know many others did not see - an intellectual giant that fate had enabled pigmies to bind, as the l.illiputs bound a < nillixer. with fetters woven of their ignorance and narrow ])rcjudices. mere threads of gossamer, but in combination of a social order as foreign to his nature as he was foreign to it. was sufificiently powerful to iireak his spirit and hold him in its Iirutal clutch with a tenacity of death itself. He was among them but not of them, and they killed the aspirations of a spirit too lofty for vulgar appreciation, and the pearl he cast before the human swine of his environment, shared the fate predicted for all such.

Such was the man who had editorial charge of that first newspaper enterprise in our city, during the last year of its existence, until it was swallowed up by one on a larger scale, but not of superior character. Inoffensive, modest, and retiring, its editor quietly went about his duties harming no man, but doing the best he could for the town and its ]ieople, and whether that was much ur little, it was done in kindness, and with a view only to the betterment <if his fellows, and the community in which he lived. He was a citizen of Xehraska for thirty-two years, most of which time he lived in Falls City, and if he ever by word or deed placed a thorn in any man's breast I never knew it, and I think I knew him as well as any other. He gathered little gear in the shape of this world's goods, but he accumulated something better, something he could take with him out of the wilderness - ideas, the only commodity man can possess that has real value. From 1865, when he came h(jme from ser\ ing his country in the army during the Southern \\'ar, until 1891, he went out and came in with his neighbors hereabouts, in peace and harmony: grew old on these streets, and died, regretted by all.