The Morrills and Reminiscences - C. H. Morrill

     When Governor Nance's term of office expired, S. F. Fleharty, his secretary, went to Tampa, Florida. He was in poor health and the warm southern climate seemed to agree with him. In 1885 he wrote that it would be a wise and profitable investment for me to purchase an orange grove. I had never visited Florida, so I immediately began to have dreams of living among the flowers and orange blossoms, of fixing up a place where I could spend the winter months, and of being able, in my old age, to live in a land where snowdrifts and blizzards would never come.
     After some correspondence, I authorized Mr. Fleharty to purchase for the sum of five thousand dollars, twenty-seven acres, of which, seven acres were planted to oranges. The tract was located about three miles from Tampa on the banks of the Hillsboro River, with a fine river frontage. In the winter of 1886, I took my. family to Tampa for a few weeks' stay. We stopped at the Orange Grove hotel. At that time Tampa had less than two thousand inhabitants while at the present time there are about thirty-five thousand. I was in poor health and decided to rest before going out to look at my orange grove.
     The day after our arrival two young men from Boston, came to the hotel. They had guns and fishing rods and informed us they were out for a hunt. After resting a day and fixing for the hunt they said they

¹ Published in the Nebraska State Journal, Fall of 1915.

would leave early the next morning, and if as successful as they had been on former trips, we would all have venison for dinner the next evening. About eleven A. M. of that day one of them returned with the dead body of his companion. He told us that about eight o'clock they had sighted a small herd of deer. To get nearer to them they were creeping in the grass and saw palmettoes, when a big rattlesnake struck his partner who survived but fifteen minutes.
The following day, Fleharty hired a darkey to row us up the river to the orange grove. On the way we saw several alligators and water snakes along the river banks. The tract I had purchased, was fenced in, and in one corner was a small shack in which a negro family, that cared for the property, lived. There was a big fat wench who answered my questions about the land and the grove. I also asked her if she had seen any rattlesnakes about. She answered, "Why, good Lord, sah, las' week I seed a rattler out in dat year grove bigger'n dat stove pipe, sure I did, sah." I told Fleharty I had always been afraid of snakes and that we had better return to Tampa. He insisted that there was no danger and that we walk over the land and look at the grove. While we were going over the property I was not looking up to see the orange crop: my eyes were riveted on the ground, looking for snakes. The next day Fleharty proposed that we go out again. I told him that I was perfectly satisfied with the purchase and that I wanted to rest for a while.

There was fine fishing in Tampa bay. The best bait was minnows. I was always proud of my record as a fisherman and was very anxious to show the Florida "crackers" what a real live fisherman could do. The landlord at the hotel told me to engage a skipper to take me out to the fishing ground. About half a mile from the hotel there was a small brook. This brook, the landlord said, was full of minnows. He furnished me with a minnow pail, fish pole, bait, and a small box covered with woven wire. He told me to sink the box in the brook and put the minnows in it as I caught them, so they would keep alive until the next morning. The grass and palmettos were knee-high along the brook. I fished back and forth a number of times and soon had plenty of bait. In the morning when I went down to get the minnows there was a big snake lying on the edge of the brook, close by my minnow box. I returned to the hotel for the landlord. He took a long pole and soon finished the snake. He said it was a moccasin, and that if I had been bitten I would have died before I could have reached the hotel. I lost all interest in orange groves and determined that sailing on Tampa bay or walking in the middle of the road was good enough for me.
During the winter I formed the acquaintance of a Mr. Brown, the owner of a department store in Rockford, Illinois. He was a fine fisherman, and together we caught many a good string of red snapper, sea bass, and Spanish mackerel. One day I inquired of Fleharty what he had in Nebraska that he would trade for my

orange grove. 1 told him I would trade for anything. When he saw that I was determined to trade the land off, he offered me some leases on school lands in Red Willow County, and said he would throw in a big alligator, eleven feet in length, and a fine skeleton of a very large alligator. These he had gotten from a taxidermist in a trade. We soon came to an agreement. The school land leases proved to be of very little value. Afterwards I sent the alligator collection to Professor Barbour for the University Museum, where they are now properly installed. Whenever I am on the University campus, I try to look at this collection. It brings back many pleasant recollections of my younger days, my dreams of the happy years I was to spend among the orange blossoms, the fate of the hunter from Boston, what I saw on the banks of the Hillsboro River, the story of the negro wench about the big rattler in my orange grove, the moccasin that was faithfully guarding my box of minnows, and last, but not least, my fine ability as an all-round trader

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In the year 1886, in company with Lewis Headstrom, we purchased from the Union Pacific railroad, twenty-five thousand acres of land lying south of the Platte River and south of Big Springs, in Keith County, Nebraska. This tract ran south from the river for several miles and was just east of the notch in the Nebraska state line. The purchase price was two dollars and seventy-five cents per acre. The land was


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