(41) IN the early days, in settling a new country, the tide of immigration always followed up the valleys of the large streams, and afterwards the valleys of the tributary streams, leaving the intervening or adjacent high lands to be settled later. In more recent times this has not always been the case, for the reason that the railroad has now become the pioneer, and settlement now follows the railroad. When the first permanent settlement was made in Antelope County there was only one railroad in the state and that one, the Union Pacific, had only five hundred and forty miles completed on January 1, 1868, and had been running passenger trains as far west as Kearney only since the year 1866. Only one railroad at that time, the Chicago and North Western, had crossed the state of Iowa to Council Bluffs, it having been completed to that place in 1867. Immigrants had not yet become accustomed to travel by rail. They all, or nearly all, came by covered wagons, following the most generally traveled routes, which nearly always led up the valleys of the large streams. When Crandall Hopkins and family in 1868, and those who followed in 1868, 1869, and 1870, first stuck their stakes in the unorganized territory that afterwards became Antelope County, they passed by hundreds of thousands of acres of as fine unoccupied land as could be found in the state of Nebraska. This land, however, lay back from the streams and could not be seen from the traveled road. At that time there was still much vacant land in Cuming County, in the northwestern part of Dodge, in northern Platte, in the northern and southern parts of (42) Stanton, and at least three fourths of Madison County was still vacant. But the valleys had their attractions; they were easy of access, the streams afforded running water, and the groves along the banks and in the adjacent hills supplied timber for building purposes and for fuel. However, many of the first settlers in Antelope County, as in other places, took up inferior land for the purpose of securing water and timber, rather than go back a few miles for the finest of level or sloping prairie. An old settler once said to the writer, "I would rather settle twenty-five miles from timber, and have land to suit me, than to settle on a stream with timber and water and have inferior land." And he was right. Some of the farms along the streams of Antelope County, to-day, are of the very best quality, in every respect, but the great bulk of the finest farms of the county lie in the sloping upper valleys above the head-waters of the creeks, and on the fine, broad, undulating, and rolling divides between the streams. Some of the earliest settlers came from a timbered country, or from a country that was part timber and part prairie, where timber was plentiful, and these generally felt that they must have a patch of timber. It is true, therefore, that many of the settlers who came later secured better land for farms than some of the first settlers.

     The settlement of Antelope County had now commenced, and Crandall Hopkins and family were not to be long without neighbors. George St. Clair, as previously stated, had taken a preemption claim. This he changed to a homestead on October 22, 1868, and immediately thereafter abandoned it and left the country. Josiah McKerihan filed preemption papers on the northwest quarter of the northeast quarter, section 4, Burnett township, and on the southwest quarter of the southeast quarter and the east half of the southwest quarter, section 33, Elm township, lived on it thirty days, proved up November 2, and went down to the Yellow Banks, in Madison County, where he took up a homestead. This preemption claim of McKerihan was the first land proved up on in the county. (43) A year or two later he sold the land to Cyrus D. Buck, gave warranty deed, and this was the first real-estate sale and the first deed to be recorded in the county. On October 31 Thomas D. Mahan entered a homestead on land that cornered with the homestead of Crandall Hopkins, and on November 28 Albert Schlueter and August Liermann took homesteads about two miles farther up the valley. None of these settlers, however, occupied their lands until the next spring. Crandall Hopkins and family were the sole inhabitants of Antelope County from November, 1868, to about March, 1869. After this last date settlers began to come in rapidly, but an account of this will form the subject of another chapter.

     It is not the purpose, nor within the scope, of this work to present biographical sketches of the early settlers, for two reasons. First, it would require too much space and time, and make the work too lengthy; secondly, if there are ten or twenty early settlers whose biographies should be given, there are a hundred or more equally deserving of notice. This feature of the work, therefore, will not be taken up.

     Crandall Hopkins, the first settler, has been made an exception to this rule. He came nearly six hundred miles with teams and covered wagons, with a wife and twelve children, and without means except his teams, wagons, a few tools, and his household goods, to drive the first stake and plow the first furrow in an unsettled and untried country. He located twenty-five miles from the nearest permanent neighbor, thirty miles from the nearest store and post-office, over one hundred miles from the nearest railroad station by the traveled road, and seventy-five miles from the nearest mill. He located in the fall of the year, with no hope of raising a crop, excepting such as could be raised on sod ground, for two years. A brief biographical sketch will, therefore, be accorded the pioneer settler of Antelope County.

     Amos Crandall Hopkins, son of Gardiner Hopkins and of Freelove Parker Hopkins, was born in the town of Virgil, (44) Cortland County, New York, May 22, 1825. It is related that three brothers bearing the name of Hopkins crossed the Atlantic from England in the seventeenth century. One of these brothers settled in Rhode Island, one in New York, and one in Virginia. The subject of this sketch is descended from the one who settled in Rhode Island. It is family tradition that the great-great-grandfather of Amos Crandall Hopkins was a brother of Stephen Hopkins, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The parents of young Amos Crandall Hopkins had followed the occupation of farming in Cortland County, New York, for several years, but were poor, and were not getting on as well as they wished. They therefore determined to pull up and go west, with a view of bettering their condition. When Crandall was eight years old his parents sold out in Cortland County and moved to Ashtabula County, Ohio, settling near Conneaut, on the Western Reserve. Here the father opened up a farm, assisted to some extent by young Crandall. A part of Crandall's time, however, was spent in working out for the neighboring farmers. He had very little opportunity for an education. Such education as he did receive was obtained from the country schools of the time by attending only a few months in the winter. In 1840, when only fifteen years old, he engaged as sailor on Lake Erie and followed this occupation for five and one-half years, becoming mate of a vessel before he was twenty years old. On November 20, 1845, he was married to Miss Thankful Otesia Ames, at Girard, Erie County, Pennsylvania. Of this union there were born fourteen children. Two were born in Ohio, ten in Wisconsin, and two in Nebraska. In the fall of 1850 Mr. Hopkins left Ohio with his family, removing to the vicinity of Gratiot, Lafayette County, Wisconsin. Here he engaged in farming until February, 1868, when he removed about one hundred miles south to Whiteside County, Illinois. and located near Sterling. It was his intention to remain here and buy a farm, but becoming dissatisfied with the country he again pulled out for the west, and crossing the (45) greater part of Illinois and all of Iowa, with teams, he located in Antelope County, Nebraska, about August 31, 1868. Here he opened up a homestead of one hundred and sixty acres, and afterward bought adjoining lands. These were improved until he had one of the finest farms in the county. Mr. Hopkins also purchased a small stock of such goods as were most needed by the settlers and kept a store for three or four years, or until about 1875. He also went to Sioux City and purchased an outfit of blacksmith tools and ran a shop for a few years, or until there was no further necessity for it. For many years before his death he attended strictly to farming. He died November 5, 1904, having been in failing health for about a year. He was buried in Neligh cemetery. His departure was greatly regretted, especially by the old settlers, to whom he was well and favorably known. Crandall Hopkins, or "Uncle Cran," as he was familiarly known, was a man of sterling worth, somewhat rough and uncouth in speech and manner, firm and positive in his convictions, a good neighbor and a useful citizen. He was of the material that the best pioneers are made. He was a typical pioneer. His widow, who is two years his junior, still survives, comfortably surrounded by her children and grandchildren, with a good home, and with everything that one could wish for that this world can provide to make her last days happy.