BY L . H. SUTER OF NELIGH

     (208) IN 1871 while in Iowa I conceived the idea of going west to get a homestead. As I have no time or space to go into details, I will say that I landed in Norfolk, which was then thirty miles beyond the terminus of the railroad. Here I formed the acquaintance of Allen Hopkins, who told me that there were good opportunities in Antelope County, and I came with him and shared the hospitality of his home for the first night in the county. The next morning I started out on foot. The valley was very sparsely settled and there was no house between the John Nies farm on section 35 and the Trubadour Reynolds farm on section 7, in Neligh township. After passing the cabin of John Cowin, on section 5, Burnett township, I noticed a cow that had become entangled in a picket rope and had fallen on her back in a helpless condition. I retraced my steps to inform Mr. Cowin and helped him to extricate the animal, and then passed on. I came to where P. D. Thompson now lives, on section 22, in Neligh township. Here a dim road ran north over the hill. Through curiosity I followed this trail and found the residence of Alexander Belmer, on section 15, in Neligh township. He told me that there was some fine land up the creek and if I would stay to dinner he would take me up to see it, and of course I acquiesced. He made the trip on a pony while I walked by his side, and being suited on section 10, in Neligh township, I retraced my steps for the land office at Dakota City.

     About where John Malzacher now lives on section 31, in Elm township, I met two covered immigrant wagons. They stopped and plied me with all manner of questions, and when they could think of nothing more we passed on, (209) and after going some distance I chanced to look back and the men were leaning from their seats looking after me. This was renewed several times with the same result and after my return to Antelope County I recognized Lewis Potter and W. Nunnaly as the persons whom I had met. They had been here and homesteaded the northeast quarter of section 14 and the north half of the north half of section 22, Neligh township, and had just returned with their families. They informed me that when passing Mr. Cowin's he hailed them with a warning to watch their horses that night, as a young man had passed by that forenoon on foot, on a pretense of hunting land, that he had stopped to help get up a cow that was cast and he was a very suspicious looking character, and of course they recognized me by the description when we met. They camped the ensuing night in Salnave's grove on section 36, in Neligh township, and took turns to sit in the brush all night with their guns to watch their horses while the writer was sound asleep at the log cabin of Mr. Rollins, on section 1 in Burnett township.

     Well, I went to Cuming County and worked through the summer at fourteen dollars per month and taught school in the winter, but had taken pity on others who had families to support and let them have money, and in spite of blizzards, storms, grasshoppers, and other calamities I found at the end of four years that I had held my own financially that I had had nothing to begin with, and was still in the same boat. Well, I went to Iowa in the summer of 1875 and worked for a time and then concluded that what I lacked was a wife, and I got married, and then found that I lacked everything but a wife and upon our return to Antelope County in December I had two dollars and a half in money, no house except the little dugout unfit for habitation, no team, nothing with which to go to housekeeping, and the hoppers having taken the crop that season, the parties whom I had accommodated had left the county and moved to their wive's folks. I felt as though we should follow suit. Well, Samuel Lewis was batching on Samuel (210) Lee's claim on section 14, in Neligh township, and he allowed us to move in with him. Early next morning as I went to Neligh to get the mail W. C. Gallaway asked me if I wanted to help to fan wheat in the mill that day, saying that he would give me a dollar and board or a dollar and a half and board myself. I had had my breakfast, a nickel's worth of crackers would suffice for dinner, and think what a joyful supper I would eat with my wife, but imagine her thoughts, newly married, and in a strange country, out on the frontier, husband promised to be back in two hours. Well, that dollar and a half pacified matters, and when I said that I had the promise of another day's work happiness reigned supreme. Such enormous wages at a time when there was a dearth of money, and cottonwood lumber and breaking were the medium of exchange, it really seemed that providence had come to our rescue. Well, one dollar was invested in sugar, and we used the last of that sugar the next fourth of July.

     The settlers were poor but very kind, and helped us build a log cabin twelve by fourteen feet in which we lived for many years, and one neighbor offered us the use of a pair of steers and a wagon, providing I would break the steers to work. The offer was gladly accepted and we managed to get in fifty acres of crop, worked two days for one to get my corn cultivated, and between times I cut cord and stove wood for J. W. Getchell in Neligh, making from fifty to sixty cents per day, and just as the small grain was ripening the grasshoppers came so thick that they obscured the sun, and in less than an hour there was neither silk, tassel, nor blade left in our twenty-acre field of corn.

     We smudged the small grain as best we could, and borrowed an old-fashioned cradle and worked day and night until we had the thirty acres harvested. I did the cutting and Mrs. Suter the raking, and between us we bound it and took turns stacking. I stacked it first but the hoppers had trimmed off the blades which made it slippery and I put it all in one stack and then had it half way up, and (211) larger at the top than the bottom, and the succeeding night a heavy rain fell and wet it to the ground. We then hauled it out and dried it, and my wife built four splendid stacks, and while we had lost our corn, potatoes, and vegetables we felt extremely grateful to think that we had flour. I have hauled wheat to Columbus and sold it for thirty-five cents a bushel, hauled hogs and sold them for one dollar and fifty cents per hundred, but in spite of all the disadvantages and hard times my early days in Antelope County were the happiest of my life. There was sociability on all sides. Everybody was on an equality. They were all neighbors and ever ready to assist each other. I could come to Neligh barefooted, with patched trousers, driving a yoke of oxen, and not feel embarrassed. I also recall going with a crowd of young folks to a dance at Frenchtown, fifteen miles northwest of Neligh, in a lumber wagon drawn by a yoke of oxen.