Seward County, Nebraska - Chapter 29, 1916

Chapter 29

During the early years of the pioneer period, fiom i860 to 1870, there were many deprivations and trials difficult to endure. Obtaining the necessaries of life was many times a problem solved with a puzzled brain and an empty stomach. The country offorded many natural additions to what the settlers produced on their homesteads, to eat, but the important items that make up the main staff of life were the ones that tried the nerves and rilled life with worry. Mills to grind bread material were so remote as to be almost out of reach. To reach them and get a few bushels of corn ground requiring days of journeying, crossing bridgless streams, camping on the great boundless prairie nights and keeping one eye open in a vigilant watch with fear for the possible onslaught of the red skins. Salt and other staple necessities from the cities and towns were fully as difficult to obtain. Crops and live stock were subject to confiscation by the Indians or wild animals. But the earliest settlers came to stay and struggled along, looking forward for brighter and better times in the future. The spirit of progress was an early harbinger of good and mills soon began to answer its call and appear in different localities, the first one being the mill of Thomas West, known as West Mill, built in 1864. And the mills were followed in a few years by stores and postoffices. Although the capacity of the mills was small and the store supplies limited they were blessings that made home seem homelike to the discouraged settlers and gave them a new impulse for improving their opportunities which marked the beginning of an unparaleled advancement that

The years from 1870 to 1880 were fraught with many trials and disappointments for the homesteaders. Crop failures, sand and dirt storms, hot winds, drouths, grasshoppers, chintz bugs, living in sod houses and dugouts, poverty, privation and want made up the problem of frontier life. Yet the footsteps of approaching prosperity by which the dark days were growing brighter were still advancing. During those most trying years of the pioneer period there was but one year that a decrease in population was shown by census returns. In 1875, the year following the great grasshopper raid there was a decrease of eight hundred and twenty-eight in population, a result of some people being worse scared than hurt and without waiting for further warning left, some of them being glad of an oppotunity to get scared away from their debts, left unpaid for farm implements and machinery half worn out and eaten up with rust, standing in the fields as mementos for the implement dealers who trusted them to remember them by. And so far as this class of inhabitants went the decrease in population was not lamentable. However many excellent people become alarmed and left, many returning later on. But in 1876, the year after the scare, there was an increae of two hundred and seventy-four in population, and in 1878, two years later there was an average increase of five hundred and fifty-six for each year, or one thousand, one hundred and sixteen for the two years. The following two years, 1879 and 1880, after the grasshopper excetement had subsided and conditions had become settled to a normal state, the average increase for each year was one thousand, five hundred and fifty-two, the total increase for the two years being three thousand, one hundred and four.

becoming more fully understood every year, while the facilities for transportation of farm produce were improving and thereby increasing the profits from productions. And those productions were being more fully developed every year by introductions of advanced labor saving farm implements, by a better knowledge of the most profitable crops, suitable to the climate and soil and by the use of cheaper and grain saving methods of harvisting. The dismal and dull days of the pioneer period were gradually passing away from about the date of the last homestead entries in 1870, and terminated during the period from 1880 to 1890. Land that seemed so cheap or valuless, many acres of which were laying idle and growing up to weeds, or let out to tenants in consideration of their keeping down the weeds, took an incline upwards and some idea of its approaching value appears to have been entertained by the homesteaders. They cut off all waste of valuable land by fencing and crowding the highways from their fields to the section lines. Sod houses and dugouts crumbled, decayed and shortly passed out of use and existance, being replaced by fine modern homes. The remembrance of the sod houses and dugouts of Seward county, with all of their pioneer time blessings passed to history when the changes from pioneer to modern coditions were ushered in. And while this marks one of the advancing steps of prosperity, it will be remembered by many with deep and heartfelt regrets. Surrounding those homely places of abode, now characterised as disagreable places of refuge, are entwined the sweetest memories of childhood, youth and the familey's home. "Be it ever so humble there's no place like home." And a great majority of the early settlers will remember those homes in all of their ugliness as "friends in need and friends in deed." It is well understood that in the closing days of the pioneer period Seward county had a wave of increasing prosperity which was shown no where more evi-

Advancement As Shown By Assessments

A glance at the assessed valuation of property in Seward county from the first assessment in the county in 1866 to 1885 will disclose the gradual advancement in prosperity. There was a small amount of deeded land in the county in 1866 that was taxable and that property increased at a great rate as soon as the homesteaded land began to change to the personal real estate of those who homesteaded it, but that could not be considered an advancement in prosperity. The most reliable way of computing the amount of inc'rease in prosperity would be from the, increase in the assessed value of town and personal property. The amount of deeded land assessed in 1866 was 4,728 acres, the tax valuation being $18,667. Personal property assessments amounted to $10,- 880, the total personal and real estate assessments amounting to #29,547. There was no town property assessments that year. The levy on personal property and real estate brought the county $423.00.

Four years later, the 1870 combined real estate and personal property assessments amounted to $120,160, an increase of $90,513 in four years. But this increase was almost entirely due to the fact that many of the early homesteads had been "proven up on," as it was termed at that time, and turned over by the government to the homesteaders and thereby become taxable real estate. The number of acres of real estate assessed at this time was 33,670, an increase of 28,842 acres. And still there was practicially no town property assessed.

During the next five years the 1866, 1867, 1868, 1869 and 1870 homesteads, which amounts to nearly the entire homestead entries, become taxable real estate and there were 275,204 acres assessed in 1875, the tax valuation being placed at $1,025,439. Up to this assessment town prop- had not been mentioned, but the increase during the five years from 1870 to 1875 gave town property an assessment showing of $92,091 which, with the assessment of personal property at $412,335 and the rail road $67,480, was the first indication of real advancement in the county. And it was a great showing. In nine years - 1866 to 1875 town property had increased in value from nothing to a little over three times the assessed value of the real estate and personal property at the county's first assessment.

During the next five years, from 1875 to 1880, there was a great advancement along the whole line. The real estate of the county increased 63,595 acres, the assessed number of acres being 338,799, amounting to $1,216,669, tne valuation being fixed at 16 cents less per acre than in 1875. Assessments on town property reaches $130,906, personal property $506,316, and rail road which has an increased number of miles from eleven to fifty-four, is assessed at the value of $183,447, amounting to a total of $2,037,337, an increase of $540,002 in five year. In estimating the gain in property at this time it must be remembered that the tax levy was reduced considerably during the last five years. The increase in acres of real estate was due more than it had previously been to the fact that more rail road land had become taxable real estate.

In 1885 land assessments amounted to 1,391,385 dollars; town property, personal property and rail road assessments made almost an equal showing, amounting to 1,273,222 dollars, which indicate the county's prosperity advancement in the five years from 1880.

It might be a difficult problem to figure out the gradual increase in all kinds of property from the first of the pioneer period in 1865 to its close in 1885 by the assessments, yet those assessments point directly to a certain progress which will clearly be recognized by all careful, observing pioneers.