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About The Falls City tribune. (Falls City, Neb.) 1904-191? | View Entire Issue (June 25, 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 THK t'L.1 FFOKI) MflfOKR In a tormer paper l promised to relate t u* t.'liffurd tragedy that occurred in the winter of 1H59, on the Muddy, in tin* northwestern part of the court ly. It was my intention to tell the story of that double murder in my next, but in the mean time the announcement of my intention brought me several letters on the subject, among which was one from my excel lent friend, Mr, Francis Wither ol Stella, informing me that tire murder of McWhorter by Clifford was not as l said, com mitted in the night, rror that the wife of the murderer, forced or driven out of the house in Un freezing weather then prevail ing, was found frozen to death on the prairie; but the fact was ihat the murder was committed in ttie morning, and through tear Mrs. Clifford tied from the house very thinly clad and had taken shelter in au old deserted claim shanty, where she was found later in the day perfectly exhausted,if not in a dying con dition, and did die before she could be gotten to a house. This letter contained a request that the account be not pub lished till he (Mr. Witheejcould correspond with two or three ladies, residents in other states and parts of the country, who were acquainted with all the circumstances attending t h e discovery of the murder of Me Whorter, and the finding of Mrs. Clifford in the empty claim house, and her subsequent death from long exposure in a free/ mg Nebraska blizzard. In def erence to the wishes of Mr. Witliee the account was defer red until the present moment. A laminar psychological phe nomenon, well known to law yers, is made manifest in the many stories 1 have heard of that night o r morning o I horrors at the-Clifford house fifty years ago that very good people will carry in their minds the recollection ot some occur rence many years old, a n d while they all agree upon the principal fact, will remember the details surrounding it in as many different ways as there are witnesses. '1'his is true of the several historians of the Cospel, no two ot whom give the details of Christ’s three years ministry exactly alike, and this fact is urged by one of the greatest writers on tin: law of evidence that time and na tions have produced, as conclu sive of the truth of the control ing fundamentals of the Christ ian religion. It e\ inces an hon est desire to relate the great old story as each knew, or thought lie knew it. and nega tives all notion of collusive tix up. Personally, I had no knowl edge of the crime. What l knew of it was what l heard as common rumor in the first in stance, and by what was told in the trial by the witnesses in their evidence, llad 1 not been advised by Mr. Witliee, who was a resident of that part of the country at the time, 1 should have related the facts as l re membered them and have been slightly wrong in two particu lars. viz: the time the murder was committed and where Mrs. Clifford died, both unimportant. As it was, we only had Clifford’s word as to when he killed Mc Whorter, and it is far from cer tain that he told the exact truth about any of the details of that horrible affair. The story is substantially this: Thomas B. Clifford and Kobert McWhorter were early settlers in the valley of the Muddy at the point of conflu ence of the two creeks of that I name, tfie Hi_ and Little Mud l dy, a mile and a half or (southeast of the present siteoi Stella. Settlements in that part were made mostly by peo pie f r (i m Nemaha, formerly known as Forney county, and their trading point was Brown N ilU-, tliougli perhaps some was done at Nemaha City, which in was larger than it is now. There was considerable | timber in places along the Uig I Muddy and these lands were the first taken. The trees suggest j ed shelter from tlte winter winds sweeping over the country, and besides would yield fuel for tire wood and for other purposes of agriculture, and the reason for taking up claims of that kind is obvious. The uplands were nothing but a part of a boundless prairie plain, stretch ing away to the western moun tains in one vast bleak shelter less vacancy. I am indebted to my friend Withee for a plat showing the claims of those parties and others in the neighborhood, and also showing where Mrs. Clif ford was found and where she died, together with the location of the houses of the people in the vicinity. Clifford's claim lay on both sides of the Muddy proper and at the point where the Little Muddy flows into it. while the claim of Robert Mc Whorter was immediately east and adjoining Clifford's, the two being the south lialf of section i JO. (ieorge Rene owned the (claim west, and Hays the one north of Clifford's. A man of : the name of McLaughlin owned j the claim west of Rene (this name was pronounced as though (spelled Ranee) and it was in an (empty claim shanty on the I M e L a u g li 1 i n quarter Mrs. Clifford was found about mid day after the murder of Mc Whorter. The neighborhood about there was known as the Hays settlement, though there were many others besides, among them several families of the Rhiinlaiis, and some others whose names l do not remem bar. < »ver tin* <tivme on tne inline Nemaha, all the way up into j Otoe county, tin1 lands in its I valley were taken up as on the Muddy, and in fact tin all the | streams large and small in the ! whole country. Mr. Francis Withee first settled in Nemaha I county, l think in the year lhas, or thereabouts, and had per sonal knowledge of the facts related herein. McWhorter was untnaried. j and was -aid to be like Peg goty -aid Barkis was. ”a little near" by which was meant that he was very careful with his money, and not free in its use. That i- what most people call close. lie had a claim ; house and a stove, which was .rare in those clays, but other wise he was a- poorly provided with the comforts of life a Clifford, or any of his neigh bor-. Clifford had a rude -true | ture or excuse ^for a house . which barely afforded shelter from the pittiless storms that ! were frequent that winter. Per haps the winters then were no more severe than they have been since, but they appeared to be so because of the destitution of the people, their poor hous ings, clothing and furnishings, j I have many a time in many a house in this county in those days, waked up in the morning to find a covering of snow on the bed from a half to j an inch or more deep, that the winds of a blizzard had forced through the cracks and crannies of the house the set tler had been able to put up for the shelter of himself and fam 1 jtlunys in that Muddy settlement j in January. ,1 It appears that Clifford McWhorter beiny close neigh bors and differently situated, ayreed to combine their house holds. McWhorter to briny his stove and other traps to Clif ford'~ house, they to furnish the yrub between them for Mrs. t Milford to coon. In other words, McWhorter haviny no wife, be came a member of the Clifford family on the terms indicated, to last, I suppose, while the ar ranyeinent was ayreeable t<> all parties. I Jiave no information as to when this joint occupa tion be y an, but it is probable that it commenced in the fall or early in the winter. There is also some uncertainty as to the time in the winter the murder1 was committed, i had it in mind that it Was in February, but Mr. Witltee is sure it oc curred in January, and he may be riyht. I tried to fix the time from the record of Clifford’s trial, but the indictment has been lost from the files and there was no other record that would show the date of the crime. It would not appear and does not appear in the journal in the clerk's office. 1 lie testimony in ( litToru s trial tor the murder of McWlior ter showed that there was no person in the Clifford house at the time except the three, Clif ford and his wife, and Mc Whorter. As two of them were dead in the affray, none lived to tell the story of that savage crime but Clifford himself. He must have been as much as fifty years old, at least his appear ance so indicated to me, and it was agreed by those who knew his wife that there was very lit tie difference between their ages. 1 never saw the woman and have no personal knowl - edge on the subject. Clifford was a man below the medium height, stocky built, and not in any sense companionable or pleasant in his social relations with his neighbors. I knew Clifford in Falls City after his trial, but 1 never saw McWhor ter. The crime was discovered by lienc early in in the morning. Everything in the house was in confusion, with evidence on every hand of a terrible and murderous struggle. McWhor ter lay on the floor chopped to death with an ax, while Clif ford was in bed complaining of wounds he said McWhorter had inflicted upon him with va gun clubbed for the purpose, and the wife gone from the house. It was freezing cold, with a blizzard still raging as it had been all night. Clifford said McWhorter had attacked him with -the gun and he had to use the axe in self defense. Later he set afloat a story that no body believed, lowit. criminal intimacy of McWhorter with his wife. Nothing of that kind was metioned at the trial. It was a lie, pure and simple. What they fought about is mere con jecture. It was probably the result of a dispute about their relative shares of their joint ex pense, but nobody ever cer tainly knew the real truth. Clifford asked Rene to follow his wife and bring her home. She was found as stated in the McLaughlin shanty and Rene and another tried to carry her to the house of James Quinlan, the nearest at hand, but the load was too great for their strength. One of them went for more as sistance, but before he returned the poor woman died. She lies buried in the Archer cemeterv. Clifford was indicted and tried for murder at the following September term of the district court. The trial was a travesty on justice and good sense. There was no theory in the de fense. It was a mere mass of contradictions, partly self de fense and partly excusable homi cide on the ground of insanity There never any falling off in the grand flavor of Ginger Snaps The nicest, spiciest, most tantalizing ginger snaps ever made. produced by an overdose of quinine forty grains, as sworn to by Clifford. He said lie killed McWhorter with the axe, to prevent McWhorter killing him with the gun used as a bludgeon. If that was true Clifford was not insane; and if he killed McWhorter in a tit of insanity no possible element of self de fense could exist in the case. Yet, the judge, who was incom petent for the place lie held, in structed the jury on both lines of that contradictory defense, telling them that if either one was established to their satis faction they should acquit the defendant. To establish the theory of self defense he told of the wounds given him in the assault by McWhorter, and to establish the theory of insanity, he told of taking forty grains of qui nine at a single dose. Had there been a lawyer o;i the bench lie would have told the jury that it was impossible for both of those contradictory stor ies of ( Mifford to be true,and they should disregard his whole tes timony. A more howling legal farce was never enacted in a so-called court of justice. I assisted at the preliminary examination on behalf of the prosecution, but 1 had nothing further to do with the case. I was present, however, at the trial and heard it with dose at tention. At this distant day it is out of the question forme, or any other, to reproduce the facts as they were detailed by the witnesses. 1 can only give the substance of the salient facts as l remember them. In this particular I have been ina t -rially assisted as above stated, and a general knowledge of the crime and what followed, can be gained in a way, from what is here related. w nen two or more people who are cognizant of the facts of any transaction in the past, if permit ted to confer, will, in talk ing them over in recall, refresh each other’s memory, and con jointly bring back in recollec tion much that neither separ ately remembered, This is the common experience, and will explain the delight with which old timers like to get together and talk over old days, people, and scenes in which they were actors and of which they were a part. Something like it was in the mind of Burns when he wrote that song of the ages “Auld Lang Syne,” and in Tennyson's, when he gave to the world his great poem, “In Days of Yore.” It was a double horrible mur der, for Clifford killed his wife as surely as he klled McWhorter. The ex act truth in detail will never be known, but the people in the neighborhood were never i n doubt as to the deep and damn ing guilt of that old savage monster. He lived for three or four years afterwards, in this city, solitary, shunt'd and de spised, and then disappeared and was heard of no more. DAY OF “FREE LAND” GONE. Uncle Sam Still Has Many Unoccupied Acres, But Settlers There Must Have Money. The original 13 states hulk rather small on the map of the United States. As respects population, notwithstand ing the enormous growth of the coun try since the revolution, the adding of state after state io the original united colonies and star after star to the American (lag, the old 13 still number about one-third of the entire 80,000, 000 people of the union. Another third, according to the bu reau of statistics of the department of commerce and labor, live in the states created from I lie territory ceded to the common union by the original states. This is the region known for half a century as the west, which lias always been a relative term according to the period in which it was used. The other third of the population live in what was originally known as the Louisiana purchase, the Gadsden pur chase and other areas added by pur chase or annexation. The center of population, following the star of em pire westward, has passed over Ohio and now halts in southern Indiana. It is interesting to learn from the statistics furnished by the bureau that in 1908 there were still 754,895,000 acres of unappropriated and unre served land. Of tilts nearly one-half is in Alaska, and its value is yet to be determined. In Nevada there are 61,* 177.000 acres of this unappropriated land, in Montana 46,532,000 acres, in New Mexico 44,778,000 acres, and 42, 769.000 acres are in Arizona. But these figures are more imposing on paper than the land will justify as the possible home of a large popula tion. By irrigation many thousands of those acres, now practically a desert, will vet be made fertile; by drying up or drainage the immense swamp areas ill some of the older states an other large area will be eventually made available. The day of "free land," however, in the golden west, a cry once so attractive to the immi grant or to the settler from the older states, has practically passed. Much of the land yet unappropriated may be free enough, but it will require wealth to make it productive. The United States, as far as regards the opportunities it offers the landless, is at the close of its first great era. The areas to come may be better in some respects, but they will be differ ent. There are no more boundless areas of fertile, well-watered soil awaiting the settler. The day of free land is over. Go from Home to Meet People. A postcard received from Paris a few days ago, says the New York Trib une, bears a picture of the Hotel de Ville and the Pont d’Areole and this message: "I have been here an hour at a time for three days, but never saw a soul I knew—no met-by chance adventure.” In the summer of 1905 the man who sent the card was also in Paris, and one day, when near the entrance to the Hotel de Ville, he saw a child stumble and fall. He hastened to pick the little boy up, but before he could do so another man rushed from an opposite direc tion and performed the service. The child had sustained a slight bruise. The man who had picked him up tried tfi soothe him and said: "You are i all right; don't cry.” The other man asked: "Is lie hurt?” This was ail in English. After mutual introductions it was discovered that both men lived in the same block in New York and had never met before. The next day the story was told at the office of John K. Gowdy, who was then the American consul general, and it. be came a stock yarn, the moral of which was: “If von want to meet people walk on the Pont d' Arcole.” Most Unkind. The Boston Transcript tells the' story of “a very sinful wag” who was lunching with 1 Jr. Abbott and referred repeatedly to his connection with Outing. At last Dr. Abbott could stand it no longer and protested: “But, my dear sir, I am not the editor of Outing [ have never had anything to do wtth Outing. I am the editor of the Out look.” “Why, bless me, so you are!” cried his vis-a-vis. “Funny 1 should have made that mistake. Really, couldn’t have confused two periodicals more strikingly different. Whereas, lut ing makes a religion of sport, the Out look—” Domestic Science Teaching. Chicago lias about decided that a girl’s education is not complete unless she has some knowledge of the sci ence of cookery and kindred accom plishments and will pay the super visor of the department $1,000 a year Miss Mary Snow of Pratt institute has been elected to fill the position, she being one of the 75 applicants for the place. Mistake in Sickroom. Mrs. Jones—1 hear your husband is suffering from a nervous breakdown. How is he today? Mrs. Smith—Worse. The doctor said we must keep him in an atmosphere at good humor, and we had him al most well, when somebody showed lim a Sunday comic supplement — fudge. It Didn't Work. “I haven't anything fit to wear," shs said. “Neither have I,” he replied: “let's stay at home.” Taken up thus, there was nothing (or her to do hut hurry and get ready. To Err Is Human. "I am going to tel) you the truth about yourself,” he said. ‘‘Go on,” said the young and ambi tious actress. “I have in my time had rare oppor tunities to observe beautiful, graceful and talented women, and I violate no confidence in saying that you are the queen of them all. You unite in your lovely person that peculiar magnet ism which lays audiences at your feet. Y’otir genius, shining through all the deficiencies of stagecraft, enables you to triumph over every obstacle So supreme are you that you have the right to rise above all conventionali ties, to marry, to love, to discard whom yon please, and no one will dare to criticise. YTour work will live. You are the very personification of the highest art. United with this, your perfection of beauty gives you the just title to a lasting fame.” “Is all that true?” she asked, softly. Absolutely. Would you have me say more? What more could 1 say?" She sighed. “You might,” she answered, ‘have mentioned my clothes and my figure!" —Puck. STR DOLLAR tack tc ycu if you spend It at £ pone forever if you send it to rder Hoj- p. A glance through king columns w 11 give you an it win bay the most.