EARLY HISTORY OF CHERRY COUNTY, NEBRASKA

     (27) Following the fur traders, soldiers, circuit riders, missionaries, and cattlemen in their westward trek, came the homestead settlers. Until January 1, 1863, a settler in Nebraska, which was then a territory, could make his home on 160 acres of government land. At the end of six months he could pay the United States government $1.25 an acre for a clear title to the land and own a pre-emption. That amount of money for an acre of land seems very cheap to us now, but we must remember that these men who were trying to build up homes, had moved to perfectly bare land. In addition to the cost of the land it was necessary to buy farm machinery, wagons, and build some kind of a shelter, dig wells, build stables, etc. Then they had to pay a very high rate of interest for borrowed money. Hundreds of them could not do that, beside supporting their families, and therefore finally lost what improvements they made. The result was that a demand was made on the government to provide an easier way for people to carve homes out of the thousands of acres of idle land within the United States.

     Finally after several years of debating and working, congress passed an act known as the Free Homestead Law. It was signed by President Lincoln May 20, 1862, and this law went into effect January 1, 1863.

     Under that law any person twenty-one years of age or older could take 160 acres of any tract of vacant land in the United States for his own home if he paid the government fourteen dollars filing fees, and live on the place for five years.

     At that time there were thousands of vacant acres especially west of the Mississippi River, and many poor fathers and mothers who lived in the east were very glad to have an opportunity to go west and make good homes for themselves and their children. The first homestead selected in Cherry county was located on the Niobrara River about nine miles east of Valentine. It was filed upon by Charles Sears in 1880. Mr. Sears was the father of Ed Sears and Mrs. John Dambly of Valentine.

     The people moved westward with the construction of the railroad. However, many came in covered wagons. The first homesteaders who came to Cherry County in rather large numbers arrived between 1883 and 1890.

      To make final proof on his homestead, a settler would (28) take two of his neighbors to the land office in Valentine, and they would fill out papers testifying to the fact that he had made a home upon his land for five years, and that he had made such improvements that were needed for a home. These papers were then sent to the General Land Office in Washington, D. C. and in due time the settler received a patent for his land, and from that time on the land was his very own.

     In 1873 the Timber Claim Act was passed by congress. The way by which a person could obtain 160 acres of land under this act was to plant ten acres of trees upon the claim and care for them for eight years. He could then make final proof and get a patent for the land.

     The first settlers to arrive in Cherry County, located on tillable soil along the streams where they found timber and

One of the first log houses built in the county by C. P. Hamar in 1884. It is still in use by its present owner, John Smith.

water. They constructed their houses mostly of logs, but those settlers who located further from the streams, made dugouts or buildings of sod. The roof a sod house usually had a main ridge pole lengthwise across the center of the house with a smaller pole on either side of the ridgepole midway between it and the outer wall. Boards or poles were then placed across the lengthwise poles and covered with dirt, over which was spread a top coat of sod to keep the water from washing the dirt away. The house was plastered with a mixture of native lime, clay and sand. This mixture was called marl. Many of these houses consisted of one room only, which served as parlor, dining room, bedroom, and kitchen. (29) Curtains hanging from wires were drawn around the beds at night.

     While the building, whatever kind was being prepared, the family lived in the covered wagon or possibly with a neighbor. Most of the homesteaders brought their bedding, household goods, some farm implements, a few cattle, chickens, and horses or oxen. 

Sod homestead house of Mr. and Mrs. D. M. Sears near Kennedy. Mr. Sears now has a modern home on his ranch.

The next step was to add a hay or sod barn and corral to their equipment. Another first essential was a well of some kind. At some points in the county, water is very close to the surface and the drilling of a well meant digging only a few feet. At first the water was brought up by pail with a rope tied to the pail. Later the the old type wooden pump was installed. In other sections water was under ground to the depth of two or three hundred feet or more.

     The years of 1882, 1883, and 1884 were the years of most rapid settlement. All through the 80s the home seekers came. There was ample rainfall during that decade and the settlers (30) were blessed with good crops and gardens. As has been said, the open range cattle were moved out of the county in 1885, leaving room and opportunity for the settlers who wanted to engage in raising livestock.

     Students in future years will be interested in knowing how settlers lived on their trips from eastern homes to the new country in which they were making their permanent homes. Mr. and Mrs. Clarence Cutcomb of Cody, Cherry County, were among the first settlers to locate on a homestead south of Cody. We shall let Mrs. Cutcomb tell the story of their trip from near Muscatine, Iowa, to their Cherry County homestead.

     "We left our home near Muscatine, Iowa in the spring of 1887. We came by train to Norfolk, Nebraska and from there in a prairie schooner, (covered wagon) drawn by two horses. We camped along the way and slept in the wagon. It took us two weeks to get to Cody from Norfolk. Mr. Cutcomb filed

Gathering cow chips in 1892. The boys are Ted and Jack Dew. This picture was taken on the Woodruff Ball ranch near Kennedy.

on a homestead and tree claim twenty-five miles south of Cody. At that time Cody had one store operated by L. D. Barns, and one blacksmith shop operated by Al Rheinmensnider, and two section houses. A woman served meals in the depot where the agent lived. We stayed at Cody for three (31) days, and picketed our horses out as there was plenty of grass for them. We then went to the Niobrara River, ten miles south of Cody and stayed one week with a family named Foss. Leaving there we drove to our homestead where we had a small sod house, six feet by ten feet. We dug a hole eight feet deep for a well, which supplied us with plenty of water. We brought a pig and six chickens with us from Norfolk, and we bought a cow and calf for twenty dollars. Our fuel consisted of cowchips until a prairie fire burned all of our supply. We then went to the Niobrara River for pitch pine wood which was plentiful. As a protection against prairie fires, we plowed a number of furrows around our sod house. Our home was near Cutcomb Lake which was named for us. Mr. Cutcomb was twenty years old, and I was sixteen at that time."

     Just how homesteads were selected may be interesting. Each settler went about his work in his own way, but Mr. Ulrich Fuchser of Irwin, Nebraska, selected his homestead in the following way:

     During the spring and summer of 1884 he was employed by the railroad as a track walker, and was stationed at Ainsworth. It was necessary for him to go over the track after each train had passed over it, as the rails were light, and it was necessary to check for broken rails. This gave him much practice in walking. In the fall of 1884 he went to Gordon to find a location for homesteads for himself, each of his three brothers, his father, and also three friends. He spent ten days walking over two townships looking at the various quarter sections of land, as described on the stakes marking their boundaries, and he copied the numbers of the parcels of land he thought suitable for their needs, in a book, and then returned to Ainsworth.

     At that time there was no railroad from Gordon to Valentine, so he and five other men took passage on a coach from Gordon bound for Valentine. About thirty miles out of Cordon the coach team became very tired so the driver camped for the night on the prairie. Mr. Fuscher and two of the men decided they could make better time walking than they could if they stayed with the coach, so at 4:30 a.m. they started for Valentine, 57 miles away, where they arrived at 11:30 p.m. Mr. Fuchser stated that the only thing that kept him from giving up during the last twelve miles of the journey (32) was his determination to keep up with the man just ahead of him.

     In Valentine they found no available accommodations, hence they slept on the hay in the haymow of the livery barn. When he awakened the next morning he discovered that the book in which he had written the number of the land selected for the homesteads, had been stolen. Fortunately he had made a copy of the numbers, and placed them in his shoe, and these he still had. This enabled him to file on the land, and in the spring of 1885 Mr. Fuchser and five other men returned in three covered wagons, one drawn by a team of mules, another by a team of horses, and the third by a yoke of oxen. They settled on their homesteads, and when Mr. Fuchser passed away January 24, 1945, he still owned his homestead, to which other land had been added until it was one of the substantial ranches in the county.

     From this meager beginning, by self denial and rigid economy, the settlers of Cherry County developed this county as you know it today, and the pioneers may be proud of the part they played in its development. They are passing the results of their labor, improved homes, herds, equipment, favorable living conditions, good schools, pastures, meadows, and better means of travel, on to the younger generation, glad in the knowledge that much of the hardship, privation and inconveniences of frontier life have been removed.

     The average settler, whether farmer or rancher had but little capital, and by the time they provided the necessary buildings for the home and stock, their capital was exhausted. They had but little to sell during those first years, hence cash was very scarce.

     Trips to town were made by those who lived a distance away, only when absolutely necessary. If the trip required two or more days they took their bedding and food with them, and spent the night in the haymow of a livery barn and cooked their meals on the stove in the barn office. Some of the accommodating liverymen were Theodore Tillson, Hitt and Kneeland, and George Lang in Valentine, and Ely Valentine in Wood Lake.

     Those settlers who lived near a stream or canyon usually had wood for fuel, but those who lived out on the prairie used hay or cow chips. They gathered large loads of the cow chips during the dry fall weather and piled them in large ricks where they would be preserved for winter use. The (33) writer lived in a sod house during the first winter in Nebraska, 1888-89 and burned twisted hay for fuel.

     The different wild fruits enumerated in this book, when ripe, were gathered and prepared for winter use. The many kinds of game which were not protected by law, added much

A rick of cow chips for winter use in southwest Cherry County. This was the only fuel used by many settlers in the 80s and 90s.

in the way of substantial food. The women of those early days were adept at making the most of their meager supplies. They used pie-melons instead of apples and rabbit in lieu of beef, in their mince meat. They made citron preserves and pumpkin and muskmelon butter.

     The first crops of those earliest settlers were, of course, sod crops. The farmer had an implement known as a hand planter with which he planted corn. A spade was used to dig holes of proper sizes for potatoes, beans, melons, squash, pumpkins, etc. The earliest wheat crop we have heard about, was planted by J. A. Hornback, father of Mrs. Minnie Lewis of Valentine, and was planted on his claim fifteen miles east of Valentine, on the south side of the Niobrara River. This crop of four acres was sown in the spring of 1884, and he cut the crop with a "cradle," bound it by hand, and stacked it. During the winter he threshed it with a flail.

     Mr. A. T. Brackett of the "German Settlement" cut thirty acres of oats with cradles in 1888 and bound them by hand. Captain D. A. Piercy of Kennedy had a small field of wheat cut with a cradle in 1884 and threshed it in a wagon box. The (34) wheat was then taken to a mill in Brown County and made into flour.

     The wagons brought into the county by the early settlers had narrow tires. These were not suited to the sandy sections of the county, and made hauling of heavy loads very laborious. For example, a load of hay on one of these wagons sometimes forced the wheels on one side into the sand so far that the load would upset on level ground. In 1896 a wagon with four-inch tires was placed on sale by dealers in the county, to correct this handicap. That year, Reece Brothers of Simeon, purchased one of these wagons for forty-eight dollars from Dan Ludwig, and it was the first wagon of this type in the Simeon locality. Dan Ludwig, a Valentine dealer, was an uncle of Joe and Dan Sparks, Helen Sparks, and Mrs. Margaret Sparks Smith. These wagons soon became general throughout the county and remained in use until replaced by the rubber tired trucks, thirty years later.

     When the nineties arrived, a change came over the country. A severe drought in 1890 ruined the crops, causing many people to become destitute. The session of the legislature which met in 1891 appropriated $200,000.00 for relief of the people. This drought was followed by a depression which created a panic in 1893, which also was the driest year on record in Cherry County. It even exceeded the great drought years of 1934 and 1936. To add to the misfortune of the settlers, a hot wind on July 26, 1894 made an almost total failure of the corn crops.

     Interest on borrowed money was high, and lending agencies charged from ten per cent per annum to two per cent a month for short time loans. In 1895 the legislature appropriated $250,000.00 for relief, and in addition to help given by the state, the G. A. A. sent special relief to the Civil War Veterans. Many settlers who had made or could make final proof on their claims secured loans on them and left the country.

     By 1896 the tide of fortune began to turn, and that year Nebraska produced a corn crop which was a record breaker. The yield per acre that year has never been excelled and is only equaled by the crop of 1944. Corn was then only ten cents a bushel, and many people used it for fuel. Wheat was only twenty-five cents a bushel. All through the nineties, prices for stock and farm products were low. Calves sold for (35) six dollars a head at weaning time, yearlings for ten dollars and cows from twelve to seventeen dollars per head.

     As the nineties drew to a close, rainfall became more abundant and crops were normal again. Population of the county in 1900 was less than 100 more than it was in 1890. The turn of the century found business reviving. In the livestock section of the county, stockmen who had survived the nineties began to buy up claims that had been abandoned, to enlarge their ranches and herds.

     A great event in the history of Cherry County, as with other counties in the sandhill region of Nebraska, was the passage of the Kinkaid Amendment, to the Homestead Act, which went into effect June 28, 1904. It provided that a person who had never taken a homestead could file on 640 acres of land. If he already had a homestead of less than 640 acres, he could take additional land to make a total of 640 acres. All present settlers had first right to file on land which adjoined their original homesteads.   

     This Act of Congress was introduced by Moses P. Kinkaid of O'Neill, Nebraska, who represented the Sixth Congressional District of Nebraska, of which Cherry County is a part.

     In order to make final proof on a Kinkaid homestead and obtain a patent for his land, a person had to live on the land for five years, and place improvements to the value of $800.00 on it. The day the law went into effect, was red letter day for Valentine. All during the day of June 27, 1904, people arrived in town to be on hand when the land office opened at 9:00 a.m. June 28th.

     Late in the afternoon of the 27th, Rev. Samuel Holsclaw of Valentine took a position at the door of the land office, in order to be the first to enter in the morning when the door opened. Soon he was joined by William H. Wilkinson of Kennedy. Thus a line began forming that by nightfall extended more than two blocks. Quite a number of women took their places in the line also. As the hours wore away, the men suggested to the women that they retire for the night and that they would hold their places for them until morning, and this they were glad to do. In the morning the ladies returned to take their places which was just as it was when they retired for the night. During the night friends brought food to those standing in line.

     Within a few years practically all of the government land (36) had been filed upon, and this brought many new settlers into the county. Also many new school districts were organized. These settlers broke up the better land on their claims for farming. However, they soon discovered that their land was not suitable for farming and there was not sufficient hay for live stock raising. When the time arrived for them to make final proof, they were willing to sell their holdings to neighboring ranchmen. The money received for their land enabled many of them to go into some business of their own, and the additional land enabled the ranchmen to enlarge their herds. Thus the law worked to the advantage of all concerned. When this history is being written, there are very few of the Kinkaid homesteaders living in Cherry County.

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