My great grandfather, Jerry Matthew Freeman was born a slave in Joplin, Mo., March 11, 1857. His parents were Charles Freeman and Rose Fish. He married Nancy Jane Blair who was born in Covington, Kentucky, May 9, 1867. They were married in Ewing, Nebraska (which I cannot find on a map) September 5, 1887. Her parents were Henry Clay Blair and a woman only known to me as Sara. My great grandparents had eight children, Oscar, Claude, Stella, Irene, Vernon, Ellsworth, Helen and Cordelia. My grandmother was Irene Isabella Freeman, born February 13, 1893, in Holt County. I have heard stories of trading with the Souix, living in a sod house, and eventually having a range war with neighbors. I understand that the family moved to Wisconsin after deciding that the trouble was more than they wanted to tolerate. The move was in the early 1900's and the farm was sold to a family called Bertwhistle. I don't know if that is the correct spelling, but I do know that my grandmother visited one of the Bertwhistle's at the farm in the 1960's. Bertwhistle kids and Freeman kids attended the same school which I think may have been Ewing. My grandmother also tallked about a school friend by the name of John Dixon.

I had other relatives in Nebraska in the early days. Blair's in Grand Island, Murray's in Lincoln, and Freeman's in Wahoo. As a child I spent several summers in Wahoo with an old uncle, Howard Green. His step father was one of the Buffalo Soldiers who was with the 10th Calvary and survived the Little Big Horn. I cannot verify that. It is what my Uncle Howard told me as a child.