BY F. L. PUTNEY OF TILDEN

      (229) NOT unlike others who are contributing to the history of Antelope County, I have been disappointed in not getting information from sources that would make this narrative more interesting. In but few instances have attorneys responded to inquiry and I have no other resource than memory of both men and events. Writing the lives of men, if nothing else, is hazardous to the popularity of the writer, especially if the persons written about are yet alive. Legendary history, while often exaggerated, in most instances finds firm footing in some facts from which the legend sprung. In these memoirs I have attempted to write impartially. I became acquainted with most of the men of whom I write in the formative period of life, and what I say of them and contemporaneous events is fairly accurate. However, as amazing as it may seem to others, to discriminate between imagery and fact requires constant vigilance. In moments of abstraction there are conjured up by the brain many phantasies. To illustrate, in times of reverie and reflection the image of R. T. Maxwell, who once practiced law in Oakdale, appears and disappears like a phantom of delirium, until I am doubtful if he had an existence.

     Forty-one years intervenes between the past and the present in the general history of the county. Amidst desert wastes and a productive commonwealth lie the extremes; but what of the interim? Mr. Leach, who is a volume of fact and energetic in research, is putting the events of that interval into history with painstaking accuracy and detail. But I ruminate. Away back on the break-line of memory, shadows are coming and going. I (230) see men and women at not quite middle age, stumbling, struggling, advancing, beaten back, and again encouraged to a last effort to preserve the nucleus of a home. They are fighting, bravely fighting, -- builders of empire, fit objects for hero worship. I see boys making toward stalwart manhood, girls budding into womanhood, with no other thought but the simple life, innocent and pure as the wild nature about them. It may be fanciful, but I think of them as being as much a part of Antelope County as its streams and prairies. The Acadian life, the primitive habitat, the Johnny-cake like mother made, the lyceums, the school teachers and school mates, the wearing apparel so scanty at times that it approached the paradisical abbreviation, the ball games between Oakdale and Neligh, the protracted meetings in the old school-house, where that good old patriarch, Father Lawton, so often prayed for both spiritual and material blessings, and where Uncle Jesse Bennett, with tears streaming down his cheeks, asked for absolution from sin -- and I never heard of his committing any -- here in this hallowed atmosphere followed the dance, which in those days was as pure as any parlor social, and I hear even now strains of Mike Wolf's violin and the voice of Doc Snider as he calls out, "Salute your partners and all promenade."

     Yes, I see and hear all of this and more. I see seams of care, chiseled into the cheeks of parents in 1872 in a single day, when they witnessed, after a year of hope and expectancy, a bounteous crop consumed by unwelcome marauders from the skies. These and kindred thoughts are well in the foreground of memory as I write these lines, and I would like to span the intervening years and take by the hand at least all the pioneers of the first decade. Intermingled with these struggles a species of grim humor often would flame up to brighten the pathway of hope. I shall mention two incidents at the risk of becoming tiresome. In 1874, when the grasshoppers had eaten everything but the earth itself -- for they were not epicureans by nature -- there appeared a number of poems over the signature of Hans (231) Fritzer. It is related that the day following the visit of the hoppers, Hans went out where his growing corn had been, viewed the skeleton stalks that stood like grim sentries of his dead hopes, and epitomized the tragedy in the epigram published in the Oakdale "Journal," in its next issue:

     This humorous comment was so at variance with the general feeling of gloom that I was almost glad that the hoppers came. The Hans Fritzer poems were generally accredited to R. C. Eldridge, who was a member of the constitutional convention of 1875.

     In the winter of 1875-76 I attended school in district number one, Mr. A. J. Leach, teacher. I "batched it" with Charles Derry on Cedar Creek. The only reliable item on the bill of fare was pancakes -- a mixture of cornmeal and what the women of those days called "sourings" -- and the larder seldom afforded more fat than sufficient to grease the griddle. Charley had a cat that proved undesirable as a roomer and he killed it, rendered the fat, and preserved the oil in a can for boot grease. The following Sunday we were absent and Hyrum Smith, George Derry, and another party visited the dugout and with the spirit that was in accordance with the times, prepared their own dinner, washed the dishes, and went on their way. When Charley went to grease his boots that night the can was empty of oil and we could not account for it. The next day Charley mentioned it to Hyrum Smith, that is, how his cat oil had disappeared. At first the end of Hyrum's nose grew white, then the whiteness gradually traveled around his mouth and -- well, an attack of sea sickness would have been a pleasantry to Hyrum. The cat grease had been used by the visitors as griddle grease in frying pancakes. These were indeed halcyon days and to turn to them in memory is to discover the fountain of youth. 

     (232) Under the provisions of the organic act approved May 31, 1854, the judicial power of the territory was vested in a supreme court, district courts, and other inferior tribunals, and this provision was merged into the state constitution in 1866 and prevails until this time. The supreme court consisted of a chief justice and two associate justices, who served in the dual capacity of supreme and district court judges until the adoption of the present constitution in 1875. This constitution provided for the election of both supreme and district court judges. The organic act authorized the governor of the territory to define the boundaries of the three judicial districts and when appointed assign the judges.

     In 1854, under the provisions of the organic act, President Pierce appointed as judges of the territory of Nebraska James Bradley in June, Edward Randolph Harden in July and Fenner Ferguson, chief justice, in October. Governor Cuming, by proclamation, fixed the boundaries of the judicial districts and assigned the judges. The first district, embracing the entire south Platte region, fell to Chief Justice Ferguson; the second, comprising the counties of Douglas and Dodge, was assigned to Mr. Harden, and the counties of Burt and Washington comprised the third, with Mr. Bradley as judge. This of course was provisional and was only to endure until the territorial legislature defined the boundaries of the districts. I do not know how the first legislature apportioned the state, but I conclude from subsequent legislation that the territory now Antelope County was always in the third judicial district until 1883. In 1866 the third district comprised about one-third of the area of the state and included this territory, and in 1873 the district embraced nearly all of the north Platte country and was known as "The Big Third." In 1883 Antelope County was placed in the ninth district, in 1885 in the sixth, in 1887 the seventh, and in 1891 the ninth, where it yet remains.

     The first session of the Supreme Court in the territory was held in Omaha, February 19, 1855, and was the first court (233) of record held in the state. Morton's History is authority for the statement that the first term of court held in the third district was at Florence, on the third Monday in April, 1855, by James Bradley. If this is correct James Bradley was the first judge to preside over the territory now in the limits of Antelope County and the first term of court was held at a distance of about one hundred and ten miles from Neligh, the present county seat.