CEDAR COUNTY, NEBRASKA - DICKINSON, Mary Ziegler

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MRS. MARY A. DICKINSON

Mary Angeline Ziegler was born at Snow Creek, Franklin
County, Virginia, August 10, 1840. She grew to young womanhood
there and was there united in marriage to Wm. L. Dickinson February
23, 1860. They lived in Virginia until 1868 when Mr. and Mrs.
Dickinson and their four small children, the youngest a baby in arms,
moved to the then new country of Elk Point S.D. In making the
journey to Elk Point, where Mrs. Dickinson's sister, the late Mrs. 
Byron Townsend, had moved the year before. They came by train to Ft.
Dodge, Iowa, where the railway ended and by stage to Sioux City.
From Elk Point they went by ox team, driven by the late Byron Townsend, 
to a point on the river opposite old St. James (now Wynot), and crossed 
in a skiff. That was in October 1869, or 67 years ago. 

An incident of the river crossing illustrates the hardships and the 
courage of those early pioneers. Mr. Dickinson had gone to St. James 
the previous year, and Mrs. Dickinson and her four small children made 
the hazardous crossing of the turbulent Missouri in a skiff. Before the 
passage a storm of rain and high wind came up and the boatman and his 
passengers spent the night on a sand bar on the north shore. Their only 
protection from the elements being what baggage they had with them. The 
next day the passage across the river to Cedar County was made. 

Mr. Dickinson helped build the old Jones grist mill, the first
mill in North Cedar County and later built the old Hoese mill on
Bow Creek, destroyed by fire about 15 years ago. Both mills were
factors in the early pioneer life and welfare of the settlers.

The Dickinson family first lived in the old court house at St. James, 
which was after the county seat had been moved to St. Helena. Later 
they lived in a log house and still later, in 1811, built the old
Northwestern Hotel at St. James, a hostelry known over this section
of the country for its early day hospitality and good food.  Mrs.
Dickinson and her daughters assisted greatly in conducting this hotel,
which was the haven of travelers in those ear1y days of North Cedar
County. The old hotel was torn down in 1915 after more than 50 years of 
usefulness.