i The Frontier V0L J IX O’NEILL, NEBRASKA, THURSDAY, JANUARY 19, 1939. No. 36. HISTORY OF THE DAYS THAT ARE GONE, WRITTEN BY THOSE WHO LIVED AT THAT TIME First Installment ^ . For the past year or more Tom Hannaberry and Dean Selah have been collecting data from the files of the county, under the WPA for the purpose of writing a history of Holt county. In their research they have secured many valuable manuscripts of former residents, in which the real history of this city and the county is written. These stories were written by M. D. Long, one of the pioneer resi dents of the county and a former county clerk and leading demo cratic war horse of this section of the state; Monsignor M. F. Cas sidy, long the beloved pastor of St. Patrick’s parish in this city and a resident of this city and county for many years; Bartley Blain, one of the pioneer ministers of the county and John P. Prouty, who lived on the corner where the Burlington Roundhouse now stands, when we f came here in 1877. All of the * characters in the story have passed to the great beyond, but they made history while here. The following story was written by Mr. Selah, who copied the diaries and histori cal sketches of the authors.— Editor. It is extremely difficult for one to write any sort of history fifty or sixty years after the events have occured and get it as true as at the time they actually happened. There are always many unauthenticated stories, many of them passed on from one generation to another be coming garbled at each telling un til unrecognizable. They are true tales and believed even yet, though many of them ai-e viewpoints of different individuals who don’t see ^ the same occurence the same way and ai’e confusing. Therefore, when men who lived in that day, when the stirring events took place and wrote of them or noted them in their own personal diary, one is able to get a more accurate picture. It is with great pleasure that in the following article I am able to give you words from the diary of John T. Prouty, and from the pens of M. D. Long, Monsignor Cas sidy and Bartley Blaine. Therefoi’e may I submit first the woxds of M. D. Long, in his “His tory of Northwest Nebraska and Holt county,” written in O’Neill, Nebraska and dated December 6, 1901: From a historical view point tiolt county and all that poriton of Ne braska lying between the counties west and north boundaries and the west and north boundary lines of f the state, and embracing all that territory comprised in the present counties of Boyd, Keya Paha, Rock, Brown, Cherry, Sheridan, Dawes and Box Butte and Sioux—aggre gating 16000 square miles of coun try was primarily identified in its evolution as a howling wilderness. It was the home of the bufflalo, elk, antelope, deer, festive jack rabbit and their preying enemies, the lean and hungry coyote, wolf and wildcat who barked and mewed to the majectic silence of the lone ly and unpeopled prairies, together with the fantastic painted and pic turesque aborigine who wandered unmolested by the pale face, before the companionship of the “sooner and settler,” who had not yet ar rived. It was gn arid region where in it was supposed rains were as ^ .scarce as the proverbial hen’s teeth and as far between as angels visits and water more precious than dia monds. It is a fact, however, that in a few isolated instances Holt county had been penetrated a few miles along its eastern boundary by some hardy and invincible pioneers, for by research it is found that an old man a Mr. Ford settled upon land in the spring of 1870 followed in May of the same year by James Ewing, C. Gunter, J. M. David son and S. Clemmens. Then in March 12, 1872, John Ryan, May 1, 1872, Geo. W. and Mary Howe, Sept. 1, 1872, Thomas Kieley and Dec. 1, F. S. Wentworth. In the spring of 1873, July 13, II. H. Mc Evory, Frank Bitney, John T. Prouty, Eli Sanford, John Sanford t and Eli H. Thompson "beached the Elkhorn about a half mile below the present site of O’Neill.” J. T. Prouty writes that on the 13 day of July, 1873, we found our selves after forty-three of travel ing, settled on a squatter’s right, housed in a covered wagon in the beautiful Elkhorn Valley in its wild and uninhabited state. The price of government land was $1.25 and you could take all you wanted. The Elkhorn river at that time was very low. One could step ac ; ross it in places and not get one’s I feet wet. The water was clear and j pure like the spring brook at its fountain head. The fish were free, from mud or foul taste, some so large that they could be thrown out of the shallow water with pitchforks. In the fall and early ■ spring ducks and wild geese were | plentiful as were antelopes, coy [ otes, prairie wolves, deer and elk. Plenty of Buffalo horns were scat tered about, but no Buffalo. Ow ing to lack of rain and sweeping prairie fires the landscape repre sented a barren waste of the old American desert. Mirages were frequent when towns at a dis tance of a hundred miles could be seen at a delightful advantage, Prairie fires, with clouds of smoke in advance of the fire were so real that no difference could be told from the original. 1 ne settlers were mustiy muuc [ up of large families with a view of getting homes for one and all. The i nearest trading point was Norfolk, ninety miles distant, or Yankton, about the same distance. The nearest railroads were Wisner and Columbus and the nearest postoffice Frenchtown, in Antelope county thirty five miles distant. Doctors, preachers and lawyers were booked in advance. Houses were of sod and logs with sod roofs, half doug outs, hay stables and pole and brush sheds covered with hay. The dread of severe blizzards, like the spring of 1873, which swept the entire west and held for three days and nights, klling nearly all the stock and in which many lives were lost, was always with them. The army grasshoppers contin ued their raids through the years 1874-5-6, devouring nearly every thing green within their reach. One year they flew over in great swarms for nearly three weeks, dropping down just long enough to devour crops, appearing like thunder clouds and obscuring the sun. The boundary lines of the county were established by the legislature in 1873, the act going into effecl March 3, and it was designated Elkhorn county. In 1874 Post master General J. W. Marshal ap pointed Mr. Prouty as postmaster at Rockford, Elkhorn county These names were afterwards changed to ONeill, Holt county. The postmasters salary for one year was $12.00 The distance the mail had to be carried was thirty ; five miles and back, or seventy miles once a week, which was also the duty of the postmaster. To gel roads established from one settle ment to another, mounds of earth were thrown up within seeing dis tance. Mr. Prouty says my residence built after my arrival at Rockford in 1873, was a large 14x18 foot long with a peeled log over the centei named the “ridge pole” to give the desired pitch to the roof, thus the inside was 12x16 feet. During a heavy thunderstorm the beddiing and clothing was put under the the bed and covered with oil cloth Then they would stand under the ridge pole sidewise to keep dry. The first Fourth of July cel ebration was held at Mr. Prouty’? at Rockford in 1876. The women of the colony made the flag from bed quilts, the clothing they wore and any piecese of cloth they ' could find, while the men found and selected the flag pole and Old Glory floated to the breeze for the first time in trie new county. In the meantime Monsignor Cas siday says in his “History of St. Patrick’s Parish, Holt county Ne braska,” that in the early seven ties General John O'Neill, of Irish j and American national fame as a j military hero and benefactor of his race, conceived the idea of lo cating one hundred or more Irish j Catholic colonies on the fertile prairies of the west. With that laudable end in view, he at once commenced the agitation of Irish immigration throughout the east | ern and northern states. M. D. Long writes tha., as early as the year 1871 he, General O’Neill, had taken to the lecture platform advocating the immigration of his countrymen from the mines of Pennsylvannia to the beautiful prairies of Holt county, Nebraska. Father Cassidy goes further and says that “Imbued with that spirit General O’Neill, in the year 1874 collected together in the east twen ty-five families and proceeded with them in person to the west, crossed the Missouri river at Omaha and thence to the northwest up the beautiful valley of the Elkhorn, es tablishing them on the govern ment domain at O’Neill City, Holt j county. This community pros pered and continued to grow until in the year 1888 it contained no less than two hundred Catholic families. He continues that St. Patrick’s Parish comprised nearly all of Holt County and that the early history of the colony is prac tically the history of the Parish.” First Catholic service was held by Father Redard at the residence of John Hannigan in the O’Neill Colony in the summer of 1875. | Father Bedard was pastor of a French-Canadian Colony at Frenchtown, Antelope county, Ne I braska. He located at that place aboue two years before Gen. O’Neill’s first colony at O’Neill and continued his visits, celebrating mass in log houses and dugouts, until the year 1877. Then a small frame building 18x36 was built at a cost of $1200.00, material being i very high owing to the long haul by ox team of 125 miles. General John O Neill contracted a latai disease in the winter of 1877-78 and died at Omaha, Nebraska. Father Cassidy says of him that, “In the death of Gen. O’Neill the Irish race lost a true, valiant, and j noble hearted champion of the freedom of the Irish people from i English domination. He was a counseler and benefactor, who ever held in view, the broadening and elevating of the national character and aspirations toward the better ment of the social and religious condition and welfare of his countryment.” Again Mr. Long writes that, about the time of the arrival of , Gen. O’Neill’s first colony and for some years thereafter, trails lead ing to the Black Hills were estab lished from some of the towns along the Missouri river, notably Omaha and Sioux City, which passed through the little villiage of O’Neill City. Many picturesque caravans traveled over those high ways of commerce, heading for the land of gold and fabulous wealth and rivaling in grotesque equip ment the historic caravanasaries of the Orient, read of in ancient i • aniuuo, Even our own loved and famous Gen. Custer passed through here with a part of his command in 1876 on his way to his last and fatal campaign against old Sitting Bull in the Big Horn and Yellow Stone country. Reaching O’Neill City he called upon Gen. O’Neill, whose 1 guest he was for a short ftne at the O’Neill homestead. General Custer entertained a very high regard for ; the soldierly, brave and intrepid General O’Neill. After Governor Silas Garber and Secretary of State Bruno Tzs chuck had declared this a county l by proclamation on June 29, 1876 and named the acting county of ficials, Mr. Long says, the first meeting of that body was held on | October 21st, and that the tempor j ary county seat remained at Twin i Lakes near the present town of Inman until Febr. 6, 1877, when it was removed to Paddrock, remain ing there, under many vicissitudes until August 1, 1879, then being moved to O’Neill City. The first meeting of the county board at O’Neill City occurred on August 4, 1879. Previous to the organization of the county and while it was yet unorganized territory it was at tached to th counties of Knox and (Continued to Page 5.) SOUTHEAST BREEZES By Romaine Saunders — Remember when they threw in a pair of “galluses” with the new suit you bought.? It is said the radio will not be quite perfected until you can hurl an egg instead of turning a knob. With over six and a half million families classed as indigent, Amer ica seems to be moving in a body “over the hill to the poor house.” Holt county at one time was good for a front page half or full column most any day in the big papers, whereas now the only mention it gets is of a measily basket ball match or a line about the weather. The Frontier Editor probably had a Waterbury watch on him the morning that Jan. 12 blizzard struck as he states it was 11:30. It was just after 10 at our house. Of course, after 51 years, hours and minutes are not important. Sniffling noses and sore throats again reminds us that medical science is still helpless in the treat ment of a “common cold.” As Doc. Eiseman, an early day O'Neill physician, used to say a woolen sock soaked with kerosene around your neck was as good as anything. One Nebraska county is said to have 95 per cent of its rural fami lies on some form of federal relief. If the present mood for curtail ment of spending prevails in Con gress we are going to have to again learn the priciples of the pioneers —root hog or die. The proposal of northwest Ne braska’s Congressman Coffee for increased tariff rates is a retreat from the traditional free trade ideas of his party. But the presi dent has not retreated but repudi ated his platform A and election pledges of ’32 and ’36, introducing that new thing in federal spending known as pump priming. Mr. Cof fee favors a stiff tariff on farm products. Since the story of the wild cats got into the papers I have been asked if Holt county is a frontier region infested with beasts of prey. It is astonishing how you can “get away with it,” when you say we have grey wolves, grizzly hear, now and then a cougar and deer and elk abound. Notwith standing it is the age of the auto mobile and trailer, many are in blissful ignorance of anything be yond the street they live on. A barber on east 0 says he has been trying for seven years to make enough money to get back to Keya Paha county. I haven’t taken the trouble to investigate whether his estimate of the finan cial outlook of the trade is repre sentative of the profession throughout the city, but he makes it definite, unmistakeable and un derstandable by saying “fifty cents is lots of money to a barber.” At any rate, barbering is not what it once was, when a rack covered half the side of the room with such sen timent as “Forget-me-not” in fancy lettering engulfed in floral decora tion. You might have to sit from half an hour to an hour awaiting the call “next,” but there was the Police Gazette and other similar publications to hold the interest of customers. All these are absent from the present day barber shop and may have something to do with the cash receipts. Continental Oil Company Favors Newspaper Adv. Newspaper advertising will again be the backbone of Contin ental Oil Company’s 1939 adver tising program, the largest in the company’s history, it was an nounced at Ponca City, Okla., last Monday by A. J. Rabe, advertising manager. “While we feel that we have a well-rounded program for the year,” said Rabe, “assigning a fair appropriation to every important advertising medium, by far the largest share of our 1939 budget will be spent for newspaper space.” Continental’s current newspaper advertising presents the new form of “Zig-zag” reading. In this pro posed reform for relieving eye strain, the type of each second line of copy is arranged with the words in reverse order—so that the eye can read from left to right on the first line and from right to left on the second line—avoiding the strain of long eye sweeps between lines. This “Zig-zag” advertising is not intended as a reform, but is 1 presented merely as an interesting game or contest for readers. Almost a Unit in Protest Against City Spending Petitions have been circulated in the city the past week protesting against the proposed improvements in the northern part of the city advocated by the city council and most of the property owners affect ed have signed the protest. It is proposed to gravel the streets and put in a curb and gutter of cement. Some say that the cost for both the curb and guter would be 35 cents per running foot. We do not know where they get their information. We had a curb and gutter put in front of our building when the street was paved a couple of years ago and it cost us $40.00 for 28 feet, which amounts to considerable more than 36 cents per foot, in fact over four times that amount. If they get their new' curb and gut ter for thirty-five cents per foot those of us who were stung for four times that amount should have a rebate coming. The Alpha Club The Alpha Club met with Mrs. George Robertson on Wednesday, June 11 with all members present and one guest, Mrs. Clarence Wrede. This meeting was for the election of officers and the following were elected: Mrs. Lillian Drayton, president; Mrs. Laverne Robertson, vice president; Mrs. Ruby Morton, treasurer; Mrs. Louise Robertson, secretary. Mrs. James McNoulty was taken in as a new member. jThe hostess served a delicious lunch. Mr. and Mrs. Herman Widtfeldt entertained the Alpha Club memb ers and their husbands also at a large number of their friends to an oyster supper Friday evening at their home. St. Mary’s Cage Team Has A Busy Week St. Mary’s basket ball team play ed five games in the last four days 1 of last week with rather indifferent success. On Thursday they play ed Orchard and lost 26-22. Friday and Saturday they were at the Holt County Tournament, where they won two out of three. They defeat ed Chambers 25-16, lost a 21-20 decision to O’Neill and beat Page 31-24. On Sunday they played Spalding Academy and Spalding kept its winning streak unbroken by carrying off a 23-17 decision.. [Let Us Have A Couple Of More Whistles O’Neill is nothing if not up to date. We now have two fire whistles, but they are both in the Second ward. What is the matter with the other wards in the city? The first ward should have a couple and the Third ward, where most of the firemen reside, should have at least two. How about it? O’Neill Woman’s Club Woman’s club met at the home of Mrs. C. J. Malone Wednesday afternoon with a large member ship present. Mrs. Elmer Stolte gave two very fine musical selec tions, “He was a Cinderella” and “He Stoops to Conquer.” Mrs. Ira George reviewed “Dark River.” It was a splendid review. Discussion was general. The next meeting in February will be at the home of Mrs. E. E. Parkins. The Weather This section of the state has en ' joyed nice weather the past we