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About The Falls City tribune. (Falls City, Neb.) 1904-191? | View Entire Issue (March 26, 1909)
Reminiscences of a. Wayfarer Some of the Important Events of the Pioneer Days of Richardson County and Southeast Nebraska, as remembered by the writer who has spent fifty one years here. A I.ITTI.K Allot T KVKKYIlOllY. “Say not thou, what is the cause that the former days were ftetter than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning 1 his.” The preacher, as the author of the above is styled in the sac fed volume, was right in his conclusion that it was unwise to say that former days 'were better than these, the present, as all days and times, whether old or new, are just the same, j and wei'i- intended to be. Yet, all the world likes the old days, live very much in them, and take an especial pleasure in their recall to be lived over again in memory as they passed in actual presence in another and a lost time. Nevertheless, all times are said to he good ■when they are old. Whether this is true or not as mailer of fact, it is certain that most peo pic act upon the hypothesis that ' it is, ami in all the departments, railings, and ramifications of this variegated life of ours, we are constantly seeking in the past acts of men and nations lor precedents for doing some Hiing that otherwise might not l>e done, notwithstanding these •lays are assumed to be better than the former. The living, acting generation in any age and in all times, is forever con trolled whether knowing the fact or not, by two nonentities the dead of Jthe past and the unborn of the future the one historic, the other prophetic, but whose invisible hands lie heavy on .ill that is done by those active toilers at the cease less, never ending loom of life, ignorantly but surely weaving the garment of (Jod we know him by history. The poet speaks of a day that is dead. There is no such day, any more than there c.tii be a void time. All days, past or to come, in the councils of the eternal, make up the everlasting now, the only division of time or duration pos sible in the economy oi the in finite. In these desultory papers 1 use the word “history” in its comprehensive and g e neri c sense. As applied to a person, a community, a state or to any thing else of an organic nature, it include^, all tin* processes of integration or growth from their emergence from a state of non existence till they disappear again in the imperceplablt* or non-being. In the synthesis of organic lile flu* aggregates par take of the nature and charac teristics of their units. A good house cannot be built of bad material, nor can a good com mum tv <>! people Ik* produced from a bad or immoral popula tion. The family is the living prototype and model of that larger family, the state, and from the output of the aggre gate of all such miniature com munities, the political edifice is constructed. The moral fiber in the one, determines it in the other, and hence, it has been the effort of the controlling civiliz ing forces in organized society to reach down to the fountain, the masses, and purify that, or do what may be done to that end, and the stream will take care of itself. 1 have heretofore spoken of individuals only, but now it comes in my way to speak more generally of the people who .aid the foundations of the great and growing state of Nebraska. When I became one of its citi zens in the day of its pupilage for statehood, there were, all told, about twelve thousand people living within its con fines, of which, proximately, one of those thousands inhabited Richardson County. It is inter - --- esting to me to pass in review the leading people, both men and women, of which that pio neer community consisted, and to take note of the many chan ges the coming and going of tin years has brought about. It is, of course, common to all com munities, but as L have not lived in all of them, I know of only one in my world (we all live in one of our own), and of that alone am I competent to speak, if indeed 1 am competent to do that, which 1, think myself, )s doubtful. It was Voltaire, I believe, who taught the true mode of writing history, though it is not certain that historiographer-, have een erally followed his suggestions. lie believed that Instur y should deal with the peoph of a nation, as well as with its ru lers, statesmen, battles and great events: should tell how the people were housed, clothed, fed and treated by the laws with which, iy their enactment in most cases, they had no voice; what they were taught, what they believed in or hoped for: their fireside traditions, their prevailing religion and their folk lore, which may be said to comprehend all, or nearly all the others. The trend of mo deni thought has not been in accord with the teachings gen erally of that intellectual giant of the eighteenth century, but in that one particular at least, lie is believed to ha ve been right, let me imitate the great writer in a small way, and tell of a past order of things in a day that is old, and of a people who have largely passed away, but who in their day and opportun ity did their whole duty as citi zens, and that is the best epi taph that can be written for anybody. The first family to locate in Falls City was that of David Dorrington. lie and his good wife were natives of old Eng land, from which, with their two little boys they emigrated to the United States in 1"4if. lo cating at Whitesboro. a little village near Utica, New York, where they remained till the troubles in the territory of Kan sas were settled and in the spring of Is57 they removed to it settling in Doniphan County, where they fell in with the Hur banks and Cent ral Lane, and at their instance came to Nebraska and helped to found Falls City, and where they passed the re mainder of their lives. In the troublous days during the many contests over the permanent lo cation of the county seat, the town acquired a hard name, hut the moral integrity of those people from over the sea, and others of like character, went far to mitigate it* effect with the general public, like the min itnum ten, for which, if the old patriarch could have produced them, the cities of the plain would not have been destroyed. They sleep side by side, along with their two oldest sons, in the family vault in the beautiful city of the dead over to the west, and forty two descendants rise up and calj them blessed. The family of.lesse Crook and his venerable widow, one of the pioneer mothers of the country, is the only other, resident in Falls City in l*as, that has among its citizens today, mem bers and descendants in the di rect line. Those of Isaac Crook and Wilson M. Maddox.over by and in Arthur, are quite numer ous and are among our best citi zenship. Others came to us at a later date, and some of them are with us yet. Anderson Miller and his ex cellent wife with their two or three small children, came in 1859, purchased the Joe Baker | claim adjoining the town site an the west, and have made it their home ever since. The land was owned by a Mr. McMillan, when Miller pur ; chased it. They had the lies! j house in town and tin only one that had a plastered room in it, in the whole place. I remember this fact fora particular reason. Judge Miller of the territorial district court was in poor health in the spring of I "(id. and it was not thought prudent for him to be quartered while holding court in the poorly constructed and furnished hotel up town, and at the solicitation of K. S Dundv (afterwards Judge.) Mrs. Miller kindly placed at the dis posal of the invalid Judge her! best room for hits comfort and ac i commudatioii, for which lit- and! the members of the liar (I)undy and the writer,) were thankful | indeed. Judge Mi Her died short I ly afterwards at liis home in Ohio. Judye Dundy is dead with most of his family, with never a survivor left in the state. And so with numerous others who have been with us and yone away leaving no track or trace behind them. No family on earth has all its members on the same side of the river. Mr. Miller and his tfood wife are with us still, in the quiet enjoy ment of hale old atfe, with their children (except those »a»ne be fore.) and their grandchildren, about them, waiting like the balance of ns. for the ferryman on the Stygian pool. Winyate Kin;v and family came here early, but I don't know just when. Hewaselect and healthy children, served his people with honor and useful ness in tin* legislature and has grown old as gracefully as a seer Time has been good to him because he has been good to it, and as the shadows leng then to the east and the days of his active exertions recede in the past, he has given up the farm and come to town for a quiet rest. He has earned it, and besides, he deserves it. • hi the Nemaha was the Boyd family, consisting of several brandies, Joseph the elder and his two nephews, David and Ab ner. Some of their descendants are among our people, as well as those of Jacob Stumbo: but the Simpkins people, are all gone. On the Muddy was Jo seph Korney, yet in life, but far ii]i in the eighties, one of the real pioneers, and among the stroii”- men ol the early days Further up the Muddy were t ie Lambs, the Minchalls and tin- Nances, all of the heads of their families ”'one, but with many of their descendants still amony our people. Still fur ther up stream were John Har kendorf, Louis Misplais. Wil liam (i. < tools by, L. 15. Frouty, Zeddock Stephenson, Ed Swim, Sam Allerton, Steve McElory and others whose names I can not recall. Some of these fami lies have disappeared entirely, w.file others have many repre sentatives in the county. The year following many oth ers settled in the same neigh borhood and further u]> the Mud dy, and to the Nemaha County line of whom [ will write la ter on. Davio Dorrington ed to the legislature in 1 and was in the row that took place th«' following winter at < hnaha, when a part of the mem hers of both legislative bod it s rebelled and went to Florence, a small hamlet four or live miles north of Omaha, and organized an independent legislature. < >f course it was an illegal body, but as there was no quorum left in the regular houses at (hnaha, no valid legislation could be had bv either, and the session for that year came to nothing. It was the result of an old tight against Omaha, and between the north and south Platte sections of the territory. Mr. King buried bis wife here at a later period, and sometime afterwards removed back to Missouri. A. J. Deshazo, his son-in-law, surveyed and platted Falls City, but he, at a subse quent time went to Missouri al so and the family ceased from among our people. lion. John R. Dowtv came to Palls City early in l*."<). He had lived for some time in Ne maha County, but liking things in Richardson better, came down and became one of us, and has been so ever since. After tak ing care of Uncle Sam's building interest on the Indian Reserva tions in the near vicinity under the regime of Major Burbank, for a few years, he did the sell able thing, got married, built him a splendid farm out on tin* Muchly in the Coolsby neighbor hood, reared a family of bright Iii Salem there remains but three families represented in our midst, who lived in that town in In'h. They are the Lin coln, the Holt and the Oliver families. .1. C. Lincoln, now dead, and John W. Holt, now a citizen of this city, were co partners in business, practically all the time from the spring of I".->7. till Mr. Lincoln's death in lHUJ. His wife died about the same time, leaving surviving them two daughters, one of whom, Mrs. Spurlock, still lives in Salem, the other, Mrs. Law ler, is located somewhere I think, in Colorado. The only representative of the Oliver family that I know of, is Mrs. John \Y. Holt, and of course, resides with her hus band in Falls City. If A. S. Russell was living in Salem in 1 Hart, 1 am mistaken to 111411 ex tent. but 1 don't think I am Mr. Lincoln was a blood rela tion of the great president, and resembled him very much both in his physical make-up, and in mental and temperamental pe culiarities. If there was a fun ny or ridiculous side to any thing, and there usually is. that came under their observation, they were sure to see it. Billy Mann there are not many left who remember him —was county clerk, and came to Falls City with the public records after the couuty seat was located here by act of the legislature in Feb ruary, I860, and when the first election was held afterwards, 10 permanently locate the seat of government, showed me a letter from Lincoln civiiur a re port of the vote at Salt in. It read: "One hundred anti six for Salem and six tights. ' Of course the six lights didn’t figure in the tally sheet of the poll, but they figured in the fun C’ass got out of the election, and he could no more refrain from associating the tights with the votes, than he could refrain from making the report itself. The firm of Lincoln A Holt was the main standby in com mercial business in the central and western parts of the county fora quarter of a century, though the town of Salem was badly situated in the matter of easy access, except from the west. It was surrounded on the north, east and south by the marshy valleys of the two Xe mahas, and by that of the great er river formed by the conllu ence of the two smaller streams, and for a considerable part of the year these valleys were al most impassable. These natur al disadvantages were not easily overcome, and the business of the town suffered in cons e quence. But Lincoln A Holt were Salem while they lived in it, and their families are the last of its old inhabitants. The Hares, the Roberts, the Walkers, and others I could name, have drifted away, or died out, and strangers have taken their places. This is the way of the world for it is al ways moving, whether we take note of it or not. John W. Holt has been a fix ture in Richardson County for more than half a century, and during all that time lias been intimately and prominently con nected with its business, social and political affairs. Thirty-one of those years were passed in this city, where official duty as county treasurer brought him in IhTh, after he had served a term as Senator from this county in the state legislature. After the close of his second term as treasurer, he, with Mr. S. B. Miles, a man well known to all the people of the country and of great wealth, together with his life long associate .1. C. Lin coln, and perhaps one or two others, established the First National Bank in Falls City, and for twenty-five years, he was practically the head and controler of the institution. Whatever it is. he'made it. Mr. Holt is peculiarly a pro duct of the frontier. His father, Dr. Holt, was the first repre sentative in the Missouri legis lature from that district of coun try in the northwestern part of j the state, known as the Platte Purchase, away back in lsll; and Holt County, over the river, was so named in his honor. He has seen the country, on both sides oj the Missouri, grow up from a wilderness and a waste to be as tine agricultural dis tricts as can be found anywhere in all the great Northwest, and no one contributed to that result more than he. He is now in re tirement, but is just as much the good citizen he has always been. it is something ot a rebel to have a live man to talk about, for I feel lonesome groping among the shadows of things that have been, and calling up in memory the faces of men and women I knew in the long ago, but whom I shall see nevermore, while the world stands. The fact is, I seem to have broken into some vast graveyard where only phantom memories lie buried, whose uneasy ghosts are doomed to continuous and perpetual resurrection, for they haunt me at every step. I am not doing exactly what “Old Mortality" did with his chizle and mallet, for the dead covenanters in the 1 a n d of cakes: nor singing peans as Coleridge did, in memory of tin* ht?roes of the chivalric ages The Knights are dust Their good swords are rust Their souls are with the Saints! I trust. but, I am trying to do some thing that partakes a little of the nature of both, and af I succeed only partially, I shall feel amply repaid for the labor j expended in the doing. GEHLING THEATRE ONE NIGHT Saturday, March 27th Joseph Kings NEW Version East Lynne with Gertrude Arden A play that will live forever. A stort of a woman's wrongs. It touche i the hearts of ail. Without a questio ’ the greatest emotional drama of th : present generation. Prices, 50c and 35c Wallpaper Bargains Our new line for Spring is now in and ready for you tc make your selection. Don't fail to see our Last Year's Remnants, which are selling at a very low figure. The PRICE sells our Wall paper. Our Paint stock is larger than ever before. We carry all the best brands of Hard Oils, Varnishes, Floor | and Linoleum Varnish and Varnish Stains. Come in and see our line before you buy. It costs ■ nothing to look and it's a pleasure to show goods. M Mi I Ian’s ! •I Pharmacy Opposite I'ostoffice Falls City. Neb. [ i VINOLCURES CHRONIC COUGHS. COLDS AND BRONCHITIS After Other Remedies Fail "I have been troubled with a chronhi cold and bronchitis for a long tim« and have tried many remedies without finding relief. Through the kind sug gestion of a friend 1 tried Vinol, and after taking four bottles, am entirely cured.” A. H. Wilde, 733-Sth Avenue. Minneapolis, Minn. S. McDonald, 147 W. Congress St. Paul, Minn., writes: “I con tracted a severe cold last winter and thought I would never get rid of it. f tried Vinol as a last resort, and it hau completely cured me.” Vinol combines two world-famed tonics, the healing, medicinal proper ties of cod liver oil and tonic iron, de liciously palatable and agreeable to the weakest stomach. For this reason. Vinol is unexcelled as a strength builder for old people, delicate chi) - dren, weak and run-down persons, af ter sickness and for Chronic Coughs, Colds and Bronchitis. A. G. WANNER. Falls City, Net. Nervous Break-Down Nerve energy is the force that controls the or gans of respiration, cir culation, digestion and elimination. When yon feel weak, nervous, irri table, sick, it is often be cause you lack nerve energy, and the process of rebuilding and sustain ing life is interfered with. Dr. Miles’ Nervine has cured thousands of such cases, and will we believe benefit if not entirely cure you. Try it. ■'My nervous system gave away completely, and left me on the verge of the grave. 1 tried skilled physi cians but got no permanent relief. 1 got so hi d I had to give up my business, i began taking iJr. Miles' Restorative Nervine. In a few days 1 was much better, and X continued to improve until entirely cured. I am In business again, and never miss an opportunity to recommend this remedy." MRS. W. L. BURKE, Myrtle Creek, Oregon. Your druggist sells Dr. Miles’ Nerv ine, and we authorize him to return price of first bottle (only) if it falls to benefit you. Miles Medical Co., Elkhart, Ind
