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.
■■■■■■■■■■■■■■MuuMnnraaeeeMaHBaaanBnawBaBaB
How Things Were Done "Out in The
Wilderness.’’
"A house that is building, does
not look like a house that is built.”
This old adage,maxim, or what not,
a little shelf-worn perhaps, homely as
everybody knows, is quite as apt by
way of illustration when applied to a
state, a community, a character, or
even to a human life, as to a house
in process of construction; and to
the same artificial creation, after the
finishing touches have been put up
on it. The debris, and the refuse,
with the scaffolding and remnants of
wood and stone, sand and dust-heaps,
mortar beds, and such like, that mar
the appearance of the workman's art,
must all be removed before the house,
in all its structural beauty, can be
seen and appreciated. Between his
birth in a log cabin, in poverty and
in the deepest obscurity of western
p, pioneer life, to his election to the
office of chief magistrate of the
greatest nation on earth, fifty years
later, lay\ all those concomitant, back
woods experiences for character build-1
ing, of farm hand, flat boat man, rail
splitter, store clerk, deputy surveyor
and country law student;—thence to
a wider field of invincible advocate
and leader of the bar,and finally to the
acknowledged leadership of a great
party, then to the house of power.de
vestating war, victory, death by as
sassination, and eternal fame. And
thus, tlie house of Lincoln in the
building, did not look like the house
of Lincoln, that was built.
The narrow strip of country be
tween the Alleghanys and the Atlan
tic sea-board, occupied by the col
onies that had achieved their inde
pendence from English rule, and had
formed themselves into the United
States, did not look in 1789, when
Washington was inaugurated its first
president, like the wide spreading na
tion of forty-six states, reaching from
the lakes to the Gulf and from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, and thence to
the Sandwich Islands and the far
away sunset land of the Philippines I
in the China seas, as it did on the |
4th of March, 1909, when William II. j
t Taft was inaugurated as its twenty-J
sixth president. But the house is
still a-building and what it .will ulti-!
mately look like, when it, has gird
led the earth with a cordon of free
republics, some other generation in
some other day will be privileged to
look upon. And so with everything
that grows in the wide expanse of|
the universe, for growth is history, i
\ whether written in hooks, in the j
rocks, the rivers, mountains or seas, |
and history in its most comprehen
sive sense, is God’s Divine Revela
tion.
The old threadbare, out-at-elbows
saw, lias peculiar application to Ne
braska, as I, and a few others have
seen-it. from the day of its swad
dling clothes, a sparse settlement
along a narrow strip of country on
the right bank of the Missouri to its
emergence into a strong command
ing position as a leading state in tlie
middle west, and all within, and less
than the ordinary space of a human
life. The building of the moral house
of a community or a state, is of
quite as much importance,' if not a
great deal more, as the building of
the physical or national structure. In
CPs and succeeding papets I pro
pose to givA some attention to the
civilizing processes, forces if you
please, that enter into the mechanism
of the social fabric of every modern
state, for they are much alike, es
^ pecially those constructed by Anglo
ociAou uuuuuo. a American
states for three hundred years have
been the thretre of the world’s
frontier in the steady march of civili
zation westward, from the birth place
of tiie human race on the table lands
of Eastern Asia—the land of the Par
see—till it made the circuit of the
globe on the east coast of that con
tinent in the closing years of the
nineteenth Century. The pioneer
» therefore, in all times, lias been the
missionary and standard bearer of
the world’s redemption from barbar
ism and savagry. They were the out
posts of the coming millions, and as
they laid the architrave, the building
was fashioned.
The march has not always been
uniform. It'has been slow in some
places and in certain times, and phen
ominally rapid in others. This has
often been the result of adverse cir
cumstances. All the European col
onies in North America, were set
tled in the early years of the Seven
^ teenth Century, but little progress
westward from the Atlantic seaboard
was made till the close of the Eigh
teenth Century. There were too many
hostile claimants to the territory, and
besides these western wilds were used
as a convenient battle field for those
warring nations in the old world up
on which to settle their disputes of
every kind, and the annoyauce and
hardships thus imposed upon the peo
ple who had braved the rigors of
the wilderness to make homes and
asylums for themselves, became irk
some in th*' extreme. Nothing of a
substantial character was accomplish
ed till after the successful revolt of
tlie English Colonies, and then be
gan the greatest movement since the
Aryan emigration.
In the space of one hundred and
twenty-five years, thirty-three new
states have been added to the family
of the original thirteen, each an
empire in Itself,and all together form
ing the strongest, freest, richest, hap
piest nation of people to be found any
where on the foot stool. When all this
was done, how it was done, and by
whom it was done, are matters of
familiar history, and may be known
by all.
I have been privileged to witness,
and in a humble way contribute to
the building of the moral and politi
cal house of one of those new states,
but only in this wise, that whoever
forms a unit in the aggregate of a
community, digs a post hole and sets
a post therein, nails a board to it. to
fence a garden, builds a shack or a
house, or in any way adds a dollar
to the material wealth of the common
wealth, has done something for the
common purpose, and to that extent,
infinitessimal though it be, like a
single drop of water in the uncount
able mass that make up the mighty i
seas, I have, like all my co-workers
in the past generation, had a part
in making the waste places of an un
inhabited region, to blossom as the
rose.
Whoever will look about him anil
take note of the conditions surround
ing, can, with little effort of the im
agination, determine from what small
and rude beginnings they all sprang;
and what he finds true of tilings and
persons in his immediate vicinity, he
can readily know were true of every
other subdivision of the state. And
especially is this true If he happened
to have helped to make the conditions
what they are.
With the opening of the Nineteen
th Century, the frontier in this coun
try had feached and taken possession
of the Mississippi Valiev. The sol
diers of the wilderness have always
been of the adventurous kind, and,
that it was fraught with dang'-r and
hardship at every step, >■> emed to
make the enterprise all the mon al
luring to them. There w, < a certain
unrestrained riotous fr • dem among
them, that set at dcfiiianc all con
ventional rules and refinements of
polite society, but in no sc a ry wre
the rights of persons and property
more rigorously safeguarded than in
those wild and appaientlv reckless
communities. They had brought
something with them besides their
guns and axes. In tie composition
of each, was a sprinkling of another
and ft better order, something of the
old home, not very well defined per
haps, nor often heeded, bv still there
to be one day brought to the surface
to do its office in the betterment of
the Individual, when ton. her) again
by that wizard influence that lips
sown the world anew with the frag
ranee of the garden.
In this same hoodlum aggregation
from Tennessee to northern Illinois,
one man became locally famous as a
preacher of the gospel. His name was
Peter Cortwright. Without otic r ed
ucaHon than that afforded by the
backwoods common school, he espous
ed the profession of theology and
preached it after his o' t fashion,
and according to his nndi standing of
the letter and spirit of tie gospel of
Christ, as its author had himself
preacheed it, in his hie t' sojourn on
earth. A giant in size and bodily
strength, coupled with a court.--.' that
knew no such thing as f . .-, be could
preach, and fight rowdies, with equal
facility and equal success, it was a
common practice in those rod- tine s
for the lawless element to g“t drunk
and break up a camp-meeting as a
mere matter of riotous pa-time.
But when Cartwright came upon the
scene, the experiment vas never
tried a second time. He was physi
cally able to thrash a dozen rioters,
either in detail or all at once,and hav
ing performed thatserviv- to the
satisfaction of everybody but the dis
turbers of the meeting themselves on
one or two occasions.the disturbances
ceased and (be man of the -hurch
militant was allowed to preach in
peace.
I have seen and h»nrc him preach
many times when 1 was u ■ - ry young
man, but he was old then, and very
near the end of his labors in lb-'
vinyard. His home- v „s about twen
ty miles from where I wa.- born and
brought up, and about ter: mib-s west
of Springfield, the hoi:.• if Abraham
Lincoln,against wi! .' . - .--It'.be was
a candidate for ■ Lincoln
was elected, and it was probably just
as well, for Courtwright was certain
ly a force as a preacher, ami il was
not entirely certain that he would
have done the people, or himself any
good in congress, and it might have
interfered with the great career that
fate had in store for his opponent, in
the years to come. They were two
originals of the first class diamonds
in the rough, and though dissimilar
as antitheses possibly can be, physi
cally and mentally, they were both
nevertheless eminently representa
tive of those moral and political forc
es, that in a later time enabled our
nation to throw off the slough of a
darker age, and become what its
projectors intended it to be,—a re
public in which all power resides in
its people, and all rule the emanation
of an enlightened Christian public
sentiment. The eminent German phy
losopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, was
never so right than when lie said—
“You will not be surprised if here
again we revert to Christianity as
the principle of all public morality in
modern times." I use the word
Christianity in precisely the same
sense—that strong sinuous, unbreak
able thread, that runs all through the
warp and woof of nineteen hundred
years of world history, the miracle
of all the miracles.
Iii llic> course of iuy life it lias fall
en to inj* lot to witness the acts of
others of the Cortwright order, that
is, in his and their missionary capaci
ties on tile out-skirts of civilization.
Right here In Richardson county, fif
ty years ago, was to - be seen a re-en
actment of similar scenes tlint, obtain
ed in the vanguard of that break
over the Alleghanios at the close of
the eighteenth, and the beginning of
the Nineteenth centuries, and thence
has spread itself onward to the
shores of the far Pacific in I lie west.
Our pioneers were no worse, and
probably no better, than others sim
ilarly situated, hut that they needed
tlie help of tin' missionary goes with
out saying. 1 have already said
something of the general moral status
of the several towns in the county, I
and hf our Indian neighbors to the
south, and 1 need not enlarge on the j
facts, but it comes in my way now to
say something of the ways and means
employed to better their conditions in
that respect.
In those days we had two object I
lessons sharply defined before us,
whether they were understood and ap
preciated or not, and it is safe to
say they were not, from which prob-j
able results might have been easily
deduced. Over the river was a peo
ple who belonged to the prehistoric
ages. They, ami their kind had in
habited the wilds of this continent for
thousaauds and thousands of years,
but had made no more progress to
wards civilization, than the birds and
squirrels in the trees, or the heav
ers or the otters in the streams. As
tin* morning of creation beheld them,
we saw them then. Contact of tin
whites with such a race was beuefi
•eial to neither, but meant distinction
for one of them, speedy, sure,*and
certain'. Where they mingled to any
extent, tin' standard of morality of
the one was not elevated, while the
standard of the other was appreciab
ly lowered. This we saw in the ear
ly days in the ease of Rulo. In point
of moral citizenship, it will now com
pare favorably with other towns in
the county, but it was far otherwise
in the time of its first settlement.
From the day 1 first saw it in 1858,
when its population was largely made
up of mixed blood Indians, male and
female, and the consequent nondes
cript riff-raff which that order of so
ciety almost universally collects about
it, to the autumn of 18<if, there was
little evidence of that Christian civil
ization which had been the distingu
ishing feature of the great army of
the pioneers in this country, in its
r
Means
Much
To the level-headed young man,
a bank account, added to the de
termination to make it larger,
means much. The names of
many such are on our books
Young man, young woman, if
your name is not on the list
would it not be wise to open an
account at once and keep adding
to it? It's the right thing to do.
The amount may be small at first
—but all things must have a be
ginning,
t
THE
Falls City State
Bank
And commence the saving habit now
onward inarch through the wilds of
the west. •
Of course, there were many good
people among them, as thee always
is in sueli eases, but they were in
the minority, and yet it was to those
few the town owed its redenunption.
About Unit time a .voting taut from
Pennsylvania drifted into town, lit'
was looking for a location in the
new territory, and in liis wandering
laid struck the one town in the coun
ty Unit most needed his assistance
it was a new experience in his life
to find himself in a town of several
hundred Inhabitants in which there
was neither a church building, nor a
school house; and in which no re
Ilglous sermon hail ever been preach
ed. It was truly missionary ground,
and lie so regarded It from that day
forth. The name of that young man
was P. It. Huch, a Methodist minister,
sent into the wilderness,like Ids great
prototype of a long past age, to pro
claim the message of the Master lit
the waste places,and to help make his
paths straight through the world. It
was one earnest man, against the
hosts of Ignorance and a vitiated pub
lic opinion, and being young, ardent
and able, he looked about him, and (
his course was soon determined.The
I
people h<> met were not really wicked
in the worst sense of that term, they
hud simply drifted from the moorings
of their early home lives, and by as
sedation with the careless and the in
different. in a wild and unrestrained
environment, had lost the talisman of
the faith, and were floating with the
tide th*it sets always to the breakers
and shoals of ultimate ruin and mis
ery. In his opinion they could he
rescued by one touch of that magic
influence, which, in the course of
the centuries, lias changed the face
of the world and recreated the human
race. . ' I
The (ask was before him and lie
addressed himself to its performance,
lie organized the first church Rule
ever had, and he established Its first
school. In that work he was assisted
by such earnest workers as Mr. Jac-|
oli Shaff, who located in the town
with his family about the time ,\lr.
Riicli did, and by many other excel
lent people who had cast their lot
In the same place. Many of them have
gone to their reward, hut the young
preacher, now old and venerable,still
lingers with us, and though no long
er in the active ministry, sometimes
occupies the pulpit, which he loves to
do, and repeats the old story of the
resurrection and the life with some
thing of his wonted vigor. Tie* church
and lie* school he established still
remain, but the house ho wrought up
on Is yet n building, find . even it
this shall hereafter prove a mere
airy illusion, an unsubstantial lig
ment of tin* Imagination, it is never
theless pleasant to reflect upon that
splendid mythical structure, seen
through the perspective of the Chris
tian's faith, when It shall heroine, in
ti.I, “a house that is built."
Falls City Roller Mills
A Christmas Announcement
is hardly necessary for us to make, as the public a I reads
know where they can get high-grade, well-screened
Christmas Coal
with which to give Santa Claus a warm welcome with
when he arrives. The Yuletide will be made comfort
C op V RlGht
able and cheery in your home WHEN YOUR SIOYE AND FURNACE IS
SUPPLIED WITH COAL FROM
P. S. Heacock & Son
*
FALLS CITY, NEBRASKA
Xmas Headquarters
Established
It is not long now until Christmas, and we are get
ting our Christmas goods out every day. We are
confident our toy line cannot be equaled in the
county. We have more goods than ever before.
Toys ai\d Dolls
We have a large and com
plete line of leys, Dolls,
1 11 I I 1 ■' ■ n 4t- «•
Dun t i uctuo, m luwi. D.
erything for children
Our prices are very low,
and we want you to call
and look at our line and
get our prices.
Books, Postcards
Our line of Hooks, Post
card Albums and Christ-,
mas Cards are all new.
the largest assortment in
the city. We have books
for old and young. Our
prices are right.
Your patronage solicited.
Novelties, Etc.
Leather Hand Bags, Card
Cases and Wallets, Col
lar and Cull Holders, Ci
gar Holders, in Leather;
Brass Ware, Military Sets
Stationery, Toilet Sets,
Fancy Goods.
Come and look.
We are so sure that we have the largest line and the <jualitv of goods, and we
hope to be able to show YOU our assortment. We have plenty of clerks, so
that you won't have to wait, and they are always ready to show our goods. Our
line is so extensive that you can get about anything you want.
We Sincerely Trust We Will Have
a Share of Your Patronage
♦
Mcflilian’s Pharmacy
THE SANTA CLAUS DRUG STORE
Opposite Postoffice Falls City, Nebraska
