Extracted from
THE LINCOLN STAR
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 26, 1915

TELLS HER OWN STORY of PIONEERING
NEAR NEBRASKA CITY

Mrs. Knox Writes The Star of Late '50's, When Indians Abounded - Of Hard Times, When Women Went to Church Without Stockings, Came to Lincoln for Salt.

With a firm steady hand for a woman 90 years old, Mrs. Anna Knox writes to The Star of her early pioneer experiences in Nebraska. She now lives with her daughter in Hastings. Her pioneer days were spent near Nebraska City.

Mrs. Knox recalls the minutest details of incidents back to the time when she and her husband were ferried across the Missouri river to Nebraska City fifty-nine years ago. She has a host of tales of the early day stored in her mind - tales of Indians, of starvation and the grasshoppers and of hard times, with a fine stream of optimism and trust in the Almighty running through it all.

She tells of the trails when her best dress was a brown denim, and her children had only one garment, which she had to wash while they were in bed, or put them to bed expressly for the washing. During those times women came to church in their bare feet, and one man brought his baby wrapped in a sheet to divine services.

There were Indians those days, and rumors of Indians, and crop failures, and railroads, but here is Mrs. Knox's own story.

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Copyright 2001, Virginia A. Cisewski