4

F. L. WOODWARD TELLS OF ASPINWALL AND NEMAHA CITY

    My father was Manson J. Woodward, and my mother's maiden name was Fannie D. Abel. They lived at Concord. Massachusetts, where father was a carriage and coach trimmer. They came to Galena, Ill., then to Des Moines and finally to Aspinwall in 1864, when I was seven years old. A relative had come there first, and my parents talked it over and decided to come. Father opened up a harness shop.
    Aspinwall at that time was a town of about five hundred people. The town site was owned by a company, General James W. Denver, Louie Neal, and Rumback and Ballard being members. During 1864 there was a good deal of trouble over titles. The town was on a boom. One of the best stores was run by Ed Weisenreder, who had as many as seven clerks. He not only sold goods, but he bought grain and was quite a shipper. Aspinwall had the best steamboat landing on the river. An eddy cut into the bank and made deep water right up to the wharf. There was a big trade from inland.
    Other business men at that time, as I remember, were J. S. Minick, general store; Burl Hoover, general store;. J. W. Thurman, general store; J. W. Worthing, wagon maker; J. W. Mitchell, hotel; Dr. Baker, physician; and there were three or four saloons. One saloon was run by Adolph Herman and another by George McGathney. There was also a distillery near town.
    Henry Hart, a homesteader, took charge of the lands belonging to Ben Holladay, of Denver. General Denver had a large amount of land near Aspinwall, and the Denver estate still has it. Rumback was Denver's father-in- law.
    In the matter of shipping Aspinwall overshadowed Brownville and Nemaha. Much trade came from over in Pawnee. I have seen in town sacks of corn piled the length of three blocks. and three sacks high.
    A railroad finally went down the other side of the river and crippled Aspinwall, and the Atchison and Nebraska came up the Nemaha to the south and took off a lot more trade. There was much agitation for a road running down the river to Aspinwall, but it came to Nemaha, which was only four miles away, and that was the finish of Aspinwall. Some of the buildings were moved to Nemaha, and many were torn down or moved out onto farms. There are only two houses on the site of the boom town now. The Denver estate and Dr. Gandy now own the town site.
    There were In the early days several attempts to run newspapers at Aspinwall. Dr. Holladay moved the Nebraska Herald down from Nemaha about 1860, and others tried it.
    Aspinwall was not a Sunday school sort of a town. Even at its most prosperous time it never built a church. The saloons furnished the excitement. Sometimes there were efforts to divert trade to other nearby towns. San Francisco started up right in sight, and Hillsdale was only a small distance away. St. Deroin was eight miles South and Nemaha was in plain view four miles north. It was a great time to boom new towns, in the sixties.
    Once in about 1867 we went to Rulo by way of Arago. I was ten years old, and I thought Arago was a fine big town. Rulo was quite a shipping point, and there were a good many Indians around there.
    Father continued in business at Aspinwall until the town died, in the seventies. Then he moved to Kansas City.
    In 1875. when I was eighteen, I married Martha Tidrow, daughter of a storekeeper. I had quite a time getting the license. When I went to Brownville after it the county Judge, Dr. McComas, looked me over and told me I was in the wrong place. Said I was too young to get married. That worried me. but I talked politics with the judge and told him politics at Aspinwall was all his way, so he concluded I was all right to get a license.
    I worked in the store three years and then took up the real estate business in which I have continued to the present time. John L. Carson had bought the Holladay land and I took charge of it
    About 1888 I moved up to Nemaha. It was a poor town then, not. so good as it in now. There were three saloons, but legitimate trade was light. There were no decent sidewalks. I came up here because of the schools, as I had two boys.
    In the old days the liquor element was mighty strong in Aspinwall. Dr. J. N. McCasland of Pawnee came down here to organize a Good Templars lodge, and they threatened to throw him in the river. When I moved to Nemaha the fight against the saloons was going on . I foolishly believed in the saloon system at that time. On the streets I had argued that, inasmuch as we were only getting ten cents a bushel for corn, if the country went dry we wouldn't get anything for it. But I got tired of liquor domination and helped to put it out of Nemaha after all. At that time the school district was $4,000 in debt. Without saloons it has built a good school building and has money in the treasury.
    At Aspinwall, before the town died. I was on the school board. Weisenreder and another older man, Jerry Marlatt, were the other members. One day a young fellow came along and applied for the school. The two old members did not take to him because he was so young, but, I liked him, and talked them into the notion of hiring him. The new teacher and I became great friends and have kept up that friendship ever since. His name is John H. Morehead, recently governor of Nebraska.
    Morehead taught school in town a few months and boarded at Weisenreder's. It was noticed that one of the Weisenreder girls was his favorite. Next he taught a term out in the country and then came to town and married Miss Weisenreder. The parents of the Weisenreder girls were Catholics and objected to taking Protestants into the family. But the girls did not want to be Catholics. and they had their way when it came to marrying.
    Weisenreder had made money and went out of the store business

when the town declined, and later went to California. I think he lost most of his wealth in unfortunate speculations.
    We had two boys and one girl. Both boys are at Kansas city. Charles M. is on the board of trade and Leslie a druggist. Marie is now attending school at Kansas City. My wife died in 1910.
    I am loaning you some old pictures. One is of Ben Neal, part Indian, who first owned the land where Aspinwall was built. Another is of John S. Minick, who was very prominent in eastern Nebraska fifty years ago. Also pictures of Mr. and Mrs. Weisenreder taken in 1869, and Mrs. John L. Carson, taken in 1875.

5

night drive. On the way to Kennedy's he had lost his way and stopped at the wrong house at about two o'clock. When he made himself known, the man of the house said: "I guess it is Kennedy's you want. We are on the other side. We are Tennesseeans." The man,. whose name was Skeen, directed Brown how to get back to the road to Kennedy's. Brown was a little worried at having made his errand known to southerners, but nothing came of it. Skeen minded his own business and never said a word. All through the county it was well known that Kennedy was active in the underground railroad.
    So that is how I happened to have a talk with John Brown. It was his last visit north. Soon afterward he was killed at Harper's ferry. When I saw him at Kennedy's he and his runaway slaves had just finished eating a breakfast which Mrs. Kennedy had got for them.
    Squire Kennedy was a Missourian. but he came away from there because he was an abolitionist. He died here a good many years ago. His son, George, lives in the neighborhood now. The old Kennedy farm was later lived on by Judge McInnich, a brother-in-law of Kennedy's.
    S. F. Nuckolls built the first store here at Peru. It burned down just before it was finished. That was in 1856 or 1857. The fire caused Nuckolls to change his plans and go to Nebraska City. The store was down on the bottom at the steamboat landing. There was a lot of bottom land here then. The river has since cut it away. Between here and Nebraska City the river swallowed two or three thousand acres. Now the river has gone over the other way. It has a mortgage on the land on both sides.
    I kept on carpentering. I was married in 1860 to Elizabeth A. Swan, whose folks had come to this county from Peru, Ill., in 1867. We have ten children living. Three others died in infancy. We have twelve great-grandchildren.
    In 1864 I was appointed postmaster, and also sold goods. There was one other store, and perhaps forty houses. There were two towns here. Mount Vernon was up on the hill where the cemetery is now. The post office was there, but I changed it to Peru, and started the store on what is now main street. The building was 16x24, and I built on a room 10 x 16 and lived there.
    The Independent Order of Good Templars was organized here before I came in 1856, by John W. Hall and W. S. Horn, two Methodist ministers. It was started out on Honey Creek, south of here. I joined it soon after I came. Hall and Horn started a church here, too.
    I have belonged to the Masonic lodge since 1867. I joined here at Peru. R. W. Furnas instituted the lodge, and it was No. 14. 1 was worshipful master ten or eleven times.
    The Methodists established a school here in 1866. Hiram Burch was a minister here and his brother-in-law, John McKenzie, was at the head of a school at Pawnee City. He wanted to move to Peru and establish a Methodist school. So they got a charter from the legislature (Eleventh Legislative Assembly, 1866) for the Peru Seminary and College. The Methodist conference appointed the trustees. The people subscribed $10,000. Dr. John F. Neal gave 72 acres of land. Burch, McKenzie and William Daily also gave land. McKenzie came here in 1866 and opened the school in a shack in town that had formerly been a saloon. In the fall they had a college building ready. The failure of the school at Oreapolis helped to turn attention here.
    A. B. Fuller, of Cass county, who had once operated a normal school in Illinois, and William Dally, were members of the House of Representatives of the second legislature, which convened May 16, 1867. Daily and Tom Majors had a good deal of a pull. They wanted a state institution, and when they could get nothing else Fuller suggested a normal school. I guess they didn't know what a normal school was but they took the chance. The state gave $3,000 for starting the school and 20 sections of saline land, which has all since been sold. Seventy-two acres and the unfinished building of the Peru Seminary and College were given to the normal school. Brownville had a much better school and a building that cost $20,000, and would have been glad to get the normal school, but Majors and Daily were on the ground and secured the plum for Peru.
    I was one of those who subscribed for the original building. I agreed to give $300, when I was not worth $250. I was a member of the board of the Methodist school, and a member of the state board for eight years following. Our incidental expenses for one term were $16. George E. Howard and Miss Morehead were the first graduates, in 1870. Howard, I think, worked his way through.
    From that small start our Normal school grew up. The plant has cost now probably $800,000. It still owns sixty acres of the original donation for a site.
    Early preachers in the conference here were T. B. Lemon, John M. Chivington, and D. R. Slaughter, father of Brad Slaughter.
    (Mr. Cole, although in his eighty-second year, still lives in Peru, in a house he built over forty years ago. He retains his faculties, and is physically active. He goes out in the country two or three miles to superintend the cultivation of his farm.)

JOHN Q GOSS
(handwritten note on page: "See C 1633")

JOHN Q. GOSS PASSES ON
    Another old pioneer who has passed on is Judge John Q. Goss, of Bellevue. who at the age of 91 died on March 20 of this year. Judge Goss was born in Somersetshire, England, March 8, 1827. came to America in 1844 and settled in Ohio, where he taught school for nine years, in the meantime reading law. He was admitted to the bar at Mansfield, Ohio, in 1857. In the spring of 1859 he came to Nebraska and located at Bellevue. He represented the counties of Burt, Washington and Sarpy in the Council of the seventh Legislative Assembly and held various county offices. He was quartermaster of the territorial militia, in 1862, enlisted in the Second Nebraska Cavalry October 15, 1862, and April 24, 1863, was appointed regimental commissary with the rank of first lieutenant. He was master of Nebraska, Masonic lodge No. 1 in 1862-4, was a member of the grand lodge of Knights of Pythias when it organized in Nebraska, and was the organizer of the first Pythian lodge in Missouri. His wife and one daughter, Mrs. Emma Thompson, of Washington, D. C., survive him.

6

THE OAK GROVE MONUMENT
    On June 14 there was an important celebration in Nuckolls county near the town of Oak, the occasion being the unveiling of the monument commemorating the Indian fight at Oak Grove station.
    Oak Grove was one of the stations on the old California trail, and was attacked by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians on the 7th of August, 1864. On the same day all of the stations between Fort Laramie and the Big Blue were raided and most of them burned.
    At Oak Grove station people and the travelers taking refuge there put up a spirited fight and drove the savages off. Two of the whites, J. H. Butler and M. C. Kelley, were killed. There was no way of knowing the losses among the Indians.
    An exciting incident on that day was the attempt of the stage coach from the east to reach safety at Oak Grove. There were ten passengers, and the driver was Robert Emery. with John Gilbert, another driver, on the box. They were intercepted by the Indians two miles east of Oak Grove and turned back. There was a running fight for several miles, but the appearance of a large wagon train saved the fugitives. The coach was hit many times by bullets and arrows, but none of the passengers were injured.
    At the recent celebration John Gilbert was present, also J. M. Comstock and Mrs. James Dudley (Ella Butler), who were with the party that took refuge in the station building during the fight. At that time Ella Butler was a little girl, and along with other noncombatants crouched behind a barricade of boxes and barrels during the siege. Comstock was old enough to do his share of the shooting and believes that he accounted for two of the Indians.
    The celebration was under the direction of the D. A. R., of Superior, and was attended by a good crowd of people. The monument is in a box elder grove, and is surrounded by an iron fence. It is on the location of the old stage station, and also on the spot where the first meeting was held to organize Nuckolls county. The county commissioners appropriated the money to pay for the monument, and their names appear at its base.
  The program of the celebration was as follows:
     Invocation - Rev. A. C. Bates.
     America - M. E. choir and assemblage.
     Unveiling of the monument - Miss Katherine Fullmer.
     Flag salute - Superior Chapter D. A. R.
     Presentation of the monument on behalf of the State
  Historical Society - A. E. Sheldon.
     Acceptance of the monument - Mrs. Harry Nelson.
     Music, solo - Miss Sylvia Acher.
     A Tribute to the Pioneers - Mrs. W. S. Young.
     Reminiscences - old settlers.
     Address - Charles H. Epperson.
     Benediction.

    In presenting the monument on behalf of the State Historical Society, Mr. Sheldon said:
    "Mine is a brief message here this afternoon. Monuments are made to mark heroic deeds and great achievements. This monument meets both demands. It marks tile deeds of heroic Nebraska men and women who met a savage foe with high courage, resourceful minds and unflinching fortitude. It marks a resting place upon it great national highway which united the Mississippi valley to the land beyond the mountains and made the Pacific coast a part of the United States of America.
    "The Nebraska State Historical Society welcomes the spirit which gives visible form to the memories of these mighty achievements and these heroic deeds. The first historical monument raised in Nebraska was by the Nebraska State Historical Society on May 25, 1905, upon the high bluff which faces Fremont across the Platte river. Upon that bluff fifty years before General John M. Thayer met the Pawnee chief, Petalesharu, in his great council lodge in the midst of his people who occupied those heights with their village. General Thayer survived fifty years of frontier fortune, of Civil War service, and of a subsequent career in the highest places within the gift of this commonwealth to share in the dedication of this monument a half century later.
    "The movement to mark the Oregon Trail across Nebraska was largely the work of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The legislature of 1911 voted $2.000 for this purpose. This was supplemented by many local gifts and a chain of Oregon Trail monuments now stretches at intervals from Lanham, where the trail crosses the Nebraska line, to a point near Henry where Nebraska and Wyoming meet.
    "Two years ago this summer I drove along this trail from Fort Kearny to Fort Laramie, placing upon photographic glass and upon motion picture film historical persons and places upon the route and these granite monuments which now mark at intervals the great Oregon highway.
    "There yet remains much more to be done before the. worthy deeds and achievements upon Nebraska soil are fitly witnessed in these memorial monuments.
    "The one we unveil this afternoon marks a site worthy of recognition. Here on August 7, 1864, a little handful of pioneer men and women held the log fort against an outnumbering enemy. Here also the first civil government of Nuckolls county was instituted and the first election held which made this a civil unit in our state. The fight for life and property and for the blessings of free political institutions went hand in hand across this continent.
    "This monument we owe to the patriotic spirit of the Daughters of the American Revolution, to the organized energy of Mr. George D. Follmer and others of this community, and to the county government of Nuckolls county which so fittingly gave the money for the marking of this memorial stone.
    "In the name of the Nebraska State Historical Society I present this monument to the community which has built it to be preserved, visited and remembered throughout all the coming years. May the memories which cluster about this monument be an inspiration in the lives of those who shall live after us on these plains through all the millenniums of time."

7

nished by the Great Western Light Guard Band of Chicago and Rosenblatt's Band, of St. Joseph.
    The party included men from every northern state, among them a considerable number of senators and congressmen. It is noted that Rutherford D. Hayes, of Ohio, was with the excursion. Ten years later he was elected president of the United States. The Earl of Airlie, of Scotland, Marquis Chambrun, of France, and M. Odilion Barrot, secretary of the French legation at Washington, gave the excursion an international flavor.
    At Chicago the party divided, some to go by rail across Illinois and Missouri to St. Joseph and then up the river by steamboats to Omaha, the others to go across Iowa to Council Bluffs. The account of the trip across to St. Joseph is very glowing. It tells that the railroad. had been so splendidly improved and rebuilt that at times "the flying train smoothly made its thirty miles an hour!"
    The excursionists left St. Joseph Friday night on the two steamboats Denver and Colorado, which had been sumptuously furnished for the occasion. The profusion of food, as shown by the bill of fare, was almost a crime. The boats did set a very swift pace up the river, being obliged to tie up part of each night. They arrived at Omaha Monday morning.
    In the meantime the other party left Chicago on the 20th of October in sleeping cars and arrived at Denison, Iowa, the western terminus of the Northwestern. There they boarded stages and went seventy miles to Council Bluffs. They reached there Sunday night and Monday morning crossed over and took up their quarters on the steamboat Elkhorn, in lieu of a hotel.
    The two parties joined at Omaha and were shown the town in early Omaha fashion. Speeches were made by Mayor Lorin Miller, Governor Alvin Saunders, the vice president of the board of trade and other citizens. Responses were made by C. T. Sherman, of Ohio, and J. W. Patterson of New Hampshire. The guests were loaded in carriages and taken to see the new shops, roundhouses and other railroad works. The compiler of the booklet here takes the opportunity to give a history of the railroad venture and its progress up to the time - much interesting and valuable data.
    Monday evening there was a grand ball at the Herndon House, after which the excursionists retired to their steamboat quarters to rest up for the trip across Nebraska the next day.
    The united party left Omaha on a special train consisting of the "sumptuous director's car," five coaches, and the "Lincoln" car, which the road had purchased. Governor Saunders, Senators Thayer and Tipton and local construction officials joined the party from Omaha. B. F. Bunker and N. A. Gesner, were in charge of the special train.
    The story describes the trip, gives technical measurements of bridges across the Papillion and Elkhorn and glows over the fine soil and crops, until "the valley of the Platte burst unheralded upen the sight." The statement is made that the Platte valley is fertile to a little way beyond Columbus.
    The train reached Columbus at nightfall, and the excursionists unloaded and went a quarter of a mile where tents had been set up for a camp. A freight train had ran out the day before with the tents, mattresses from the steamboats and provisions for the party. Supper was eaten in a big dining tent which bad been set up for the occasion. After supper the entertainment consisted of a big Indian war dance, a large party of Pawnee having been brought down from up on the Loup. The account of the war dance goes into minute detail. After the excursionists had retired to their tents some gay members arranged with the Indians to make a mock attack on the camp. This they did at two o'clock and kept up the noise until five. In the morning, after the tents had been struck and the tired visitors had boarded the cars, the Indians engaged in a sham battle.
    On Wednesday the train ran to Platte City, as it was called - the construction camp at the end of Brady's Island, two hundred and seventy miles from Omaha. The bridge was not completed across the North Platte at that time, and the rails were just being laid from Brady Island to the bridge.
    The train reached Platte City at night, and the tents were again pitched. After breakfast the next morning there were many speeches by the Nebraska officials and by eastern gentlemen. Resolutions were adopted praising Omaha and Nebraska and congratulating the officials of the road and everybody else.
    The day was spent in watching the laying of track, and in various performances. During the day a newspaper was printed on the special train, type, press and printers having been loaned by the Omaha Republican. The book gives two sample pages of the newspaper, which was called the Railway Pioneer. Besides much foolery the paper gave market reports from the east and from London, received by wire, gave the local prices of game, and printed some genuine news of the excursion. Game prices quoted for Platte City were, "Buffalo meat, per pound, 15¢; elk meat, 12¢ to 15¢; antelope, 16 to 18¢; prairie chickens, per pair, 50 to 60¢; wild ducks, pair, 75¢ to $1.00; wild

geese, each $1.25 to $1.50; sage hens, 50 to 65¢; snipe, each 25 to 30¢."
    The Railway Pioneer records the eastern newspapers that had representatives on the excursion as follows : New York Tribune, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Republican, New York Observer, Chicago Times, Springfield. Ill., State Journal, Philadelphia Enquirer, Cincinnati Gazette, Cincinnati Commercial, Cleveland Herald, Waltham (Mass.) Sentinel, Council Bluffs Nonpareil, Council Bluffs Bugle, Omaha Republican, Omaha Herald and G. F. Allen for the National Intelligencer.
    On Friday the party started back to Omaha, after having organized a mock municipal government for the excursion camp. In the election which was held the mayor conferred full suffrage on the ladies.
    On arrival at Omaha the tired travelers went back to their steamboat quarters and Saturday took stages for Denison, and proceeded thence by rail to Chicago, where they spent. several days before scattering to their homes

    An overland trip to western Nebraska in an automobile with Amos H. Haile proved instructive in the matter of a general knowledge of the country traversed. We made inquiry in relation to historical material available in each of the localities visited and interviewed a. few of the early settlers.
    At Doniphan I visited the brick yard, where the ash heap was discovered twenty feet under the soil some years ago. The present excavation is not being carried deep enough to reveal new light, but the man in charge will keep it close watch for any interesting feature.
    We visited our president, Mr. S. C. Bassett, at his home near Gibbon.
    At the site of Fort McPherson we paused long enough to take some photographs and get some measurements. We gathered a number of interesting relics from the site of the old fort at the entrance to Cottonwood Canyon, and viewed the outline of the ruins, where once stood the McDonald trading post. At North Platte we interviewed Mr. Charles McDonald, who came to Cottonwood Springs from Pawnee county in 1859 and established the famous McDonald Ranch. Dick Darling, a relation of John Experience Estabrook, of Omaha, had begun the erection of the storehouse. Mr. McDonald bought it from him. He completed it and other buildings of the trading post, which he conducted until 1872.
    The first building for Fort McPherson was erected in October, 1863. The buildings were mostly one story log structures with sod roofs, but some of the officers' quarters were a story and a half with shingle roofs.
    Mr. Burke, father of Peter Burke, who now lives on the site of Fort McPherson had formerly lived twenty-six miles southeast of Tecumseh, Nebraska. He started to Pike's Peak in 1862 with his family. He stopped at the place where Fort McPherson was being built and helped to get out logs for the houses. It is strewn with relics, and the stump of the old cedar flagstaff set by Eugene Ware in 1863 is said to be still in existence. The spot where the flagstaff stood is marked by a marble slab.
    I suggested that a suitable sign should be painted and placed near the site of the fort on the main road, which passes this spot. Mr. Peter Burke has agreed to gather a collection of relics from the site for the Historical Society. John Burke, an older brother, lives in North Platte.
    We met a number of interesting historical characters who still bear an active part of the world's work, but we failed to locate any ancient Indian habitat worthy of being explored on the trip.

E. E. BLACKMAN,
Curator Historical Society Museum.

    One of the interesting pioneers of Nebraska is E. M. Searle, Sr., of Ogallala. While yet a mere boy he went to the war from Indiana. As a telegraph messenger at the front he learned telegraphy. After the war he worked a year for an Indiana railroad. Then the lure of the new Pacific railroad brought him west. He sought at job at Omaha, but was advised to go out along the railroad line. He was offered one of the advance stations in Wyoming, but declined when he found the former agent had been killed in an Indian raid. He went to North Platte, which was then the end of the line of road, and was assigned to Alkali, thirty-one miles west, where the station was a tent. He saw the road build on past toward the Pacific, and after about twenty years' service as agent at Alkali, later named Paxton, he was transferred to Ogallala, where he had taken a homestead. He has long since given up railroad work, but has remained active as a builder, of western Nebraska.

8

NEBRASKA'S FIRST EDUCATOR
    Dr. John M. McKenzie died at his home in California, May 19, 1918. He is remembered by the early pioneers as a Methodist preacher and all earnest promoter of education. In the sixties he helped to establish an academy at Pawnee City. The fact that the new institution was to be under the Christian church did not lessen his zeal. When the hard times of the then border county caused the new academy to lapse and die, McKenzie transferred the idea to Peru. and through his work the Methodist academy was established there, to be soon merged into a state normal school.
    Dr. McKenzie was the second state superintendent of Nebraska, wrote most of our school laws, promoted the organization of the state teachers and left his impress on every branch of education in Nebraska. In his later days he sought a milder climate, but he never lost his interest in the state where he had done so much work. The newspaper at the old school town fittingly says: "He and Mrs. McKenzie witnessed the crowning glory of their lives, the semicentennial celebration held at Peru last summer."

she grew to womanhood, graduating with honor from the Peru State Normal school in July, 1883.
    After graduating she taught successfully in the schools of Syracuse, Harvard and York. The family moved to Oakdale. Cal., in 1888. Here Mary proved an able assistant to her father in the Seminary and Normal school, which was afterwards merged into the Oakdale high school. She taught several terms at Langworth and in the Oakdale grammar school. In the fall of '98 she accepted a position in the Excelsior school near Byron. Here she met her future husband, H. T. Keyser. They were married at Oakdale, September 26, 1900, and lived together happily for nearly eighteen years.

F. A. HARRISON