Descendants Clement Corbin » John Joshua Corbin (1844-1927)

Persoonlijke gegevens John Joshua Corbin 

Bronnen 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Gezin van John Joshua Corbin

Hij is getrouwd met Ida L Felkner.

Zij zijn getrouwd op 11 oktober 1877 te Otoe, Otoe, Nebraska, USA, hij was toen 33 jaar oud.Bron 5


Kind(eren):

  1. Minnie Grace Corbin  1880-1946
  2. Jennie Corbin  1878-????
  3. Nellie A. Corbin  1881-1950


Notities over John Joshua Corbin

Dear reader,
I will not try to give a full account of my life, but brief sketches in this volume, as my time will not permit me, but wish to give you an idea of some of the adventures pertaining to the settling of the country west of the Mississippi River, but wish to impress on the minds of the rising generation how the Indians were subdued, and an account of Indian warfare.

This book is not fiction, but honest facts connecting one more clearly with the idea of the life of a frontiersman who has actually encountered the incidents you will find in the following chapters.

Dear Readers
I will endeavor to give you a sketch of my early boyhood days in the old New England State of Massachusetts. My name is John J. CORBIN and I was born January 12, 1844 in the town of Dudley,
Worcester County, Massachusetts where I lived until I was seven years of age. As a boy I remember my old grandfather, who was a veteran of the Revolutionary War, telling me of his experiences as a soldier fighting for the freedom of this great country in which we reside. My early days in Massachusetts were not spent in living as the most of the present generation. A poor man was almost on an equal basis with the slaves of the South. My brothers and sisters had to work in the factories for very small wages. In the year 1850 one of my brothers caught the western fever, and he decided to make a trip out to Illinois, and on his arrival there, was very much fascinated by the beautiful plains of that state, and on his return gave my Father some very glowing accounts of that country, so my Father decided to be convinced of the country. In the following spring, in 1851, the family emigrated to the west. It was necessary for us to cross Lake Erie, and on the way over, I was on the deck and had climbed on top of a barrel filled with soft soap, and as it was very slippery, I almost slid overboard. But owing to the fact my father was close at hand and caught me just in time, otherwise I would not have been here to relate my experiences.

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After disembarking from the boat, we took a train for Elgin, Illinois. That was as far west as a railroad was built at that time. We remained in the town of Elgin for a few days, meanwhile my Father purchased a yoke of oxen. Then we set out for the state of Wisconsin. The spring of 1851 was very wet, having a great deal heavier rainfall than usual, and the low country in Illinois was almost impassible due to the water being so deep. When we arrived near Beloit, Wisconsin on the Rock River, the stream was a raging torrent overflowing the banks in most places and doing a great deal of damage, drowning considerable stock which we could see going down the river, also doing a great deal of damage to property, washing away houses from their foundations and taking them down the stream. But after two days the water came back to normal which permitted us to cross in safety to the state of Wisconsin. We went seven miles from Beloit, Wisconsin and my father purchased forty acres of land, where we remained three and a half years, as the family was growing and forty acres of land did not seem to satisfy the wants of a large family. There were four boys and my father and myself, making six in all, we decided to take in more land. At that time up in the Sauk County there were some government lands so my father decided to sell out and go up and purchase some of that land at a dollar and a quarter an acre, so we went there and he bought two hundred acres of timberland. Then the work commenced. All the land had to be grubbed and put in condition for farming. After three years of hard work at clearing the land and making fences, we farmed a little more each year until we had thirty acres in tillable condition. When we settled in this part of the country the Indians were still running at large, that being a good while before they were assigned reservations by the government. I remember how my father used to put the pork barrel against the door when the Indians would pass our house late at night returning from hunting trips, as we did not have any locks on our doors at that time. All the boards had to be hewn out with an axe as there were no saw mills like the present day. I could stand in the door of the house and
Count as high as fifty deer passing. The winter of 1856 and 1857 was one of very deep snow. In hunting deer we used to use snowshoes as it was impossible for hunters to secure any game unless they did use them. A crust formed on the snow and the deer would break through and become stalled and in this manner a great many were caught alive. The following spring one could find plenty of snowshoes in the corners of the rail fences and an abundance of deer hanging in the trees where hunters had shot them and hung them in the trees to keep the wolves from getting them, and in a great many cases the hunters did not return to take them down. The snow was above nine rail fences, we couldn’t take out the oxen to haul any wood for two months.

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One of my brothers and myself had to haul it on our hand sled. The next spring you could see trees cut off ten or twelve feet from the ground, where we had to cut them off as we had to walk on top of the snow and cut the trees on level with the snow.
At the end of three years we became tired of clearing and grubbing, trying to clear up a farm in such heavy timber, that my Father decided to make a change. We had heard so much about the prairies of Kansas and Nebraska that in the year 1856 my oldest brother and his wife started for Kansas. He went down the Missouri River by boat. It was when the Kansas trouble had started. John Brown was there and Jas Lane and what was called the border ruffians from Missouri. The trouble being over the slavery question, so it was impossible for my brother to settle in Kansas, so he went to Nebraska. At that time the idea was to keep all Northern people out of Kansas. The boat he made the trip on was the property of Southern sympathizers. In the fall of 1857 my Father sold his two hundred acres of timberland in Wisconsin, and we started for Nebraska, crossing the Mississippi River at Dubuque, Iowa, using our oxen for transportation, going about fifteen miles from Dubuque to a small village called Epworth, Iowa, where I attended school which was in the town. All the pupils went to town school as there were not enough in a district to afford them to have school in the country.
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In the spring of 1858 in March I was taken down with whooping cough and pneumonia. We started in April for Nebraska. I was very weak from my previous illness, that it was almost impossible for me to sit on my horse, as I was obliged to help drive the cattle. We reached Nebraska in May and crossed the Missouri River at Nebraska City. We then went out thirteen miles and my Father bought one hundred and twenty acres, and he built a house and went to breaking prairie land. He continued breaking land until September, then the Pike’s Peak gold mines were discovered and two of my brothers left their breaking plows in the field and started to the gold mines of the South Platte. They were in the first wagon train to reach the mines. One train from Brownville, Nebraska arrived there shortly afterwards.
The two companies wintered there that year. They built log cabins and had port holes to shoot from in case the Indians attacked them. Also the mountain lions and grizzly bears, which were plentiful and troublesome at that time. Having no doors on their cabins it was necessary to hang blankets in their place and the mountain lions came very often during the night and tried to force an entrance. They had very hard times that winter, as the gold fever had become at such a state that emigrants came thick, but were turned back by saying so many had starved to death. My cousin from Massachusetts came west in the spring of 1859, to go to the mines, but on account of the starvation and hardship was forced to return home.
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My brothers did not mine much, but made almost as much hauling hay for the cattle, hay selling as high as two hundred dollars a ton. In the meantime the cattle became infected with a disease called soremouth which was a great loss as a great many of them died.
My brothers ran a butcher shop part of the time. My father died August 22, 1859. In December one of my brothers came back from the mountains, and in the spring of 1860 the big emigration started for Pike’s Peak, and so we started along with the rest on April 17 for the gold fields. We were six weeks crossing the plains that were termed The Great American Desert. All along the way from the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains a distance of six hundred miles was lined with ox teams from almost every state in the union. There were an abundance of game, buffalo and anteloupe. Sometimes there would be three ox teams abreast trying to pass one another so anxious were they to reach the mines first. After we got out two hundred miles from Fort Kearney the plains were covered with Indians to the Rocky Mountains.
We reached Boulder City the first week in June. My Mother settled on a ranch fifteen miles below Boulder City. At that time the city had one store of general merchandise about the size of a dry goods box. A very old man kept it, by the name of Pound, who had emigrated from Iowa. There was also a blacksmith shop and a post office. That about took up the city of Boulder.
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My brothers and I spent a night in the city in a log cabin and threw a buffalo robe over a hole in the ground and in the night it rained and the hole filled up with water and we got very wet as we woke up partly covered with water.
My brother went up in the mountains to a town called Blackhawk and started a butcher shop, then I was the oldest boy at home with my Mother on the ranch. I was sixteen years of age. There were two thousand Indians camped within a mile of our house and two thousand six miles away composed of four tribes: The Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Apaches who were getting ready for a battle with the Ute Indians. The Utes had the advantage of the mountains to fight in, besides being so much better armed with guns and revolvers. The people around Boulder City advised us to move, and in fact pleaded with us to move to the village for safety sake, thinking we would all be massacred by the Indians. Sometimes there would be twenty at our door at dinnertime, and almost any hour of the day begging for something to eat, but it was impossible for us to feed them owing to the fact that our provisions had to come six hundred miles from Nebraska City across The Great American Desert.
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Myself and a man working for my brothers were sent over on the Cashapoo (Cache La Poudre) River, thirty miles North at the present site of Greeley, to put up hay. We did not see any white people for six weeks, we mowed hay with a scythe and baled it and hauled it up in the mountains to Blackhawk and Central, two towns close by. We got from sixty to eighty dollars a ton and in the winter would get two hundred dollars a ton. In the fall of 1860 my brothers concluded to send a man back to the Missouri River to Nebraska City with two yoke of oxen and a wagon to get a load of provisions, but never heard from him again. My idea was that he reached Nebraska City and sold the team and disappeared. And just as winter was setting in they decided to go to Nebraska City with a hundred head of oxen and eight wagons to load up in the spring and return. The winter became so severe when they reached Grand Island on the Platte River, they camped for the rest of the winter. They lost a great many of the oxen and in the spring of 1861 what was left of their outfit they took to the Missouri River and sold them. It being the year of 1861 the great Civil War was just beginning and in July one of my brothers enlisted in the First Nebraska Cavalry. The other was killed by bush whackers at White Cloud, Kansas on the Missouri River. After one of my brothers had served three years in the First Nebraska Cavalry he re-enlisted in the Fifth Iowa Cavalry and took part in Sherman’s famous march to the sea. He was killed in the march near Macon, Georgia.
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Now I will return to our home on the ranch in Colorado on the Boulder River. In the spring of 1862 flour was very scarce, selling for a dollar a pound. There was none to be had, all the bakeries were cleaned out, everybody had to live on anteloupe and beef. Mostly anteloupe, as they were plenty at that time. I could stand in the door of our house and see a thousand at anytime in any direction. Everybody had sufficient funds, but no bread, and the money was in gold dust. We had hard times for a while but after some little time flour started to come in from Mexico. After a time mule teams started to come in from the States.
Colorado had not been admitted to the Union yet, therefore it was a territory. When the first flour came in it was sold from thirty to forty dollars a hundred. I walked out to the road one day and offered a man thirty dollars for a hundred pound bag, and he refused to sell it to me but would rather take it sixty miles farther and did not get but sixteen and eighteen dollars per hundred and in a short time ox teams came in from Nebraska City, and Brownville and flour started to come back to reasonable prices. It got still lower in September as I made a trip to Denver, Colorado and bought four one hundred pound sacks for eight dollars and twenty five cents a hundred.
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When the Colorado Third Cavalry started South, I wanted to go with them. One of our neighbors was in it and he wanted me to go with him. I being the oldest boy at home , my Mother did not want me to go six hundred miles from civilization with so many Indians between them and the states. The Indians broke about thirty miles from us on the Cashlapoo (Cache La Poudre?) River, where Greely now stands and massacred a great many people including some of our neighbors. After that they were troublesome all over the western plains. A very near neighbor by the name of Brush whom I had worked for was killed in this massacre.
The next spring my Mother sold her ranch and when we started across the plains by ox team for the States, (the reason I say States is that the middle western states were all territories). The Indians did not bother us much on that trip. We got through safe, and went to farming in Otoe County, Nebraska. Not much happened that summer and fall. On Dec. 30, 1863 my brother and I started for Nebraska City with two yoke of oxen to take some corn and wheat to the mill. The snow was very deep and drifted very bad in some places. There were no roads broke and our passage to the city was very much obstructed. I had on a pair of cowhide boots and I froze my feet solid up to my ankles owing to the fact that it was very cold. On account of my feet being frozen, was detained in Nebraska City for several days.
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Jan 1, 1864 was considered the coldest day there was known in the United States. A man froze his ears and nose in crossing the street in Nebraska City. On January 2, I was loaded on a wagon and we started home, my feet were healed enough to afford travel. We got part way home that day, There were no roads broke a great deal of the way. We reached home about noon the next day. I could not wear my boots for a long time as my feet were swollen yet from being frozen. It was impossible for me to do any work that winter. I thought for a long time it would be necessary to amputate them. One man who was a neighbor of mine came in to look at them, and they were in such a condition that he almost fainted.
When spring came General Sully was going on an expedition up the Missouri River to North Dakota and towards Devil’s Lake after the Sioux Indians. He was wanting to enlist a company of scouts. A company was raised in and around Nebraska City. Some came from North Missouri and others from Western Iowa and offered their service, and I was one to enlist. We started up the Missouri in the month of May. We were stationed in an old empty store building on our arrival at Omaha. The building was six miles above the town. It was used at one time by the Mormans who kept store there. We were stationed
there for two weeks. From there we went to Sioux City where we were mustered in. We went out six miles from Sioux City and camped on the Sioux River for two weeks more.
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Then we started on that long tedious march up the Missouri River. My feet bothered me a great deal the spring and summer of 1864. All the toenails and skin came off of them and during the long hours in the saddle I suffered extreme pain. The skin came off to the ankle and they became as tender as a baby’s feet as it was necessary to wear heavy government shoes which were very hard on them and the summer heat irritated them badly.
When we arrived at the edge of the Indian country our interpreter advanced a few miles and three Indians came up on him and shot him and he died from the wounds when we came up to where he lay. We camped and put up a tent and hoisted the sides of the tent to give him plenty of air, but in two hours he died. Then General Sully ordered a detail of men to go out and find the Indians, which they did. The Indians were discovered and all killed. The detail returned and reported it, then the General ordered the detail back to cut their heads off and bring the heads into camp. The next morning we put them on the top of some tall poles and stuck them up in the ground and left them there. The reason for doing was for revenge. The General was so mad at thinking he had lost his main scout and interpreter. Then we broke camp and went up the Missouri River.
At that time there were a few ranchers in South Dakota
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When they would see us coming they would come out and cheer us, and the boys would beat their little drums and raise the stars and stripes. They were so glad to see us coming to drive the Indians back as the Sioux Indians were committing so many depredations above there. There was whiskey kept at most all the ranch houses, and some of our company would become intoxicated at times, also the captain would indulge at times along with the rest. Whenever I heard of a ranch that kept whiskey, I would inform our first lieutenant and he would detail men to close the doors to our men until we passed.
In our company we had eighty-five scouts. In all of the Scouts there were twenty-five hundred men in the two brigades. When we got up farther on the Cheyenne River, a brigade, some of which had served in the South under General Sibley who were brought there after the Minnesota Massacre, came and camped on the Cheyenne River and set up rockets to notify us of their position and the next day we came together. Our brigade was called The First Brigade, and the other was called the Second, and we would alternate in marching from day to day.
Then we marched up the Missouri River about a thousand miles and on July 7, 1864 we crossed over the Missouri River and located a fort and named it Fort Rice. We camped there a few days and left all the sick and the wagons and drew three days rations and started on a northwesterly course. After a few days marching we camped and next morning there were fifty men sent out before daylight to see if we
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Could find any traces of the Indians and we came to a ravine where there were a lot of ripe cherries. We stayed there that day. About three o’clock that afternoon we discovered Indians on top of the hill and the Captain ordered the men to their horses. We rushed to the top of the hill and met the Indians. Some of the men were so excited they threw away their rations and did not know what to do, so great was their excitement as this was their first experience at Indian fighting. Our captain, being under the influence of liquor did not want to fight the Indians and claimed that he had no orders to make an attack on them and at the same time the Indians were firing on us. He tried to induce the men to follow him back to the Brigade headquarters which was several miles back. He got all of us but nine to follow him, of which I was one of the nine. So nine of us follows the Indians and gave them a battle against the captain’s orders. There were about thirty Indians. We followed them five miles, and a great many shots were exchanged on both sides. Finally we decided they were trying to draw us into a trap by leading us to the main camp and cut us off, so we turned back. During this time our orderly sergeant stopped on a butte with eight men and himself making nine in all and watched our movements. He was afraid they would cut us off from the Brigade. They picked up the plunder the Indians had dropped in their fight.
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There were dried buffalo meat and buffalo robes, moccasins and several other things. We returned to the butte where the orderly sergeant was, then we started back to meet the Brigade, a half-breed guide begged us to return, as he stated that the whole country was filled with Indians, and it was only a question of time that we would all be surrounded. In a little while after that it seemed there were only two of us left on the field. I do not know really to this day how it happened, a man named Mart Ayers and myself were all the white men I could see. The prairies were covered with Indians in that short space of time. I told my lone partner that I thought there were two men asleep in that ravine, but soon discovered them and they returned to the Brigade. I soon looked up in the direction of the valley. I saw two objects that I surmised to be two men on horseback, being chased by Indians. I said “look there Mart”, and we both put spurs to our horses neither of us speaking a word and hurried to their assistance. The Indians turned on our arrival and went back. As we arrived there it happened as I thought, two of our men were being chased by the Indians. They were shooting arrows and throwing spears. One of our horses got an arrow in his throat and the blood was spurting out and they passed us like the wind and proceeded as fast as their horses could carry them, never looking back. The two men that I mention were the men that were left in the valley asleep. They went on back to the brigade,
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And I don’t suppose they know till this day who saved their scalps. We chased the Indians about two miles, then returned to the brigade.
Our Captain was thrown out of command for a month for the move he made that day. This happened July 26, 1864. We broke camp the next morning, July 27 and proceeded in a northwesterly direction and on July 28 we ran into the main body of Indians. The scouts returned and reported that they had found them. There were a company of mounted infantry from Iowa and they were dismounted, making a line of battle formation extending several miles. Brackett’s Batallion was on our left with four companies, we were marching in the center guarding the artillery. Whenever an Indian would fall, one of our men would make a break to get his scalp and plunder. During the battle a boy about 17 years old got lost from his company. He was wounded in the side as a bullet had scraped along his ribs near his breast, so we sent him back to the ambulance. There was a valley with some timber in it and we were ordered to march single file past there, and the Indians shot from the brush and broke a big grey pony’s leg that was following me and the rider had to jump off, and as he did so, another man shot the pony to keep it from falling into the hands of the Indians. We sent a few shots into the brush but only found one Indian dead after we had investigated the bushes as we did not receive any more shots from that direction.
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One supposed to be an Indian came running on a black horse toward the front line with a white flag. He came within two hundred yards of us and fired at us then turned and whirled himself on the side of his horse in Indian style and went like the wind. It was supposed afterwards that he was a white man, that horse he rode was seen the following summer on the Platte River during the Indian trouble in Eastern Colorado. A thousand dollars was offered for the capture of him as it proved to be a white man that was riding it. Several white men were seen with the Indians during the fight. About five o’clock that evening the battle was about over, we camped on the battlefield that night. After darkness the big dogs were running over the battlefield with short teepee poles fastened to them with papooses strapped to them and yelping. The boys shot at them quite a while until the officers ordered them to stop. The dogs were part wolf and were very large. During the early part of the night the Indians were charging us pretty close and firing for some time. We put a cannon out for awhile and guarded it. After a time we put out our pickets and camp guards, then some of us tried to sleep. About midnight a young corporal came past my bed and said “every man to arms”. We were lying out on the ground as we did not put up our tents that night. Most of us jumped up and after I got my gun and revolver from under my head, my next thought was my pony. Some of the officers tried to get us in line of battle but some of the boys were so sleepy that they would not get up.
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What made the excitement was he had heard a yell from the inside pickets. After awhile things became quiet again and we went back to bed. I tied my pony to me and turned in. Things were pretty quiet until morning. The General tried to find out the next morning who it was who had yelled so, but we would not report him. He said if he could find out who it was he would make him walk the rest of the trip instead of riding.
The Indians picked up all the dead braves and buried them but never bothered with the squaws. The next day all we could see dead on the field was a few squaws that did not have time to escape when we attacked the camp.
The next day we had two companies burning and destroying stuff that had been Indian property, teepees, buffalo robes, moccasins, dried buffalo and other things which was an immense sight, taking about two days to destroy it. Then we proceeded to round up our horses as the Indians were trying to break in and the General did not want them to get any of them.
There was one man in the brigade who had all his relatives killed in the Minnesota massacre two years before and seemed anxious to get revenge and would start out by himself on foot to try to kill the Indians.
On the morning of July 29 we started on the march toward the Badlands on the little Missouri, the home of the Sioux Indians. We reached there the first week in August.
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The business commenced as the Badlands were alive with Indians. Forty miles through the Badlands! It was necessary for us to make three roads through them. The General and the artillery and the scouts marching in the center column. We had to make roads and fight Indians at the same time, and guard two emigrant trains through that were on their way to Montana. The Indians would try hard to cut the trains off from us, every little while it was necessary for us to charge back to check them. When we reached the little Missouri we struck camp. While in camp a comrade and myself went out a piece from camp in order to let our horses graze, and while we were there the Indians came up close to us and ran off three of our horses. In a few minutes we heard of it. We had our revolvers with us, but went into camp and secured our guns and started in pursuit. There were some of the boys in swimming that heard about it and ran toward camp. Others became scared at seeing them running without any clothes on, thinking they were Indians. So my comrade and I started after the Indians who had run the horses off. Some places were so steep that we had to help our horses up the cliffs. We got on a few miles and found where they had to leave one horse, then proceeded a little farther and found another horse. A little further on we met a boy who had been chasing them and he said it was no use following them any farther. So they got away with one horse. This boy was bare-headed.
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About eighteen years of age. He belonged to the Iowa Sixth and had been following them alone. So my comrade and I dropped our feather, for we were nearly always the first to be out on such a raid out of twenty-four hundred. But we let that daring boy beat us that time
We were three days and three nights in the Badlands and fighting all the time. It kept us pretty busy fighting and making roads, the night was almost as light as daytime the artillery was used so often. We of the scouts came back to headquarters, and had to be ready to assist the pickets in case the Indians drove them in. Whenever they drove the outside pickets into the inside ones we would hear their sabers rattle. Then we would have to jump out of bed, be ready to assist. The Indians were very troublesome every night. Out there in the Badlands on night it got so hot our Captain got very uneasy. He crept around to see if any of the camp guards were asleep. I happened to be on guard that night and two boys that were on guard near me, and who were cousins, were caught asleep, so he made them walk instead of riding the next day for punishment. I was detailed to guard them on the march, and he said if he reported them to the General it would go hard with them.
Once during the daytime the Indians made a bold break to cut off the train. The trains being in the rear with a guard of one company. The Indians got too strong for the guards.
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Then we had to rush back with the artillery. Another time we were ordered to dismount and every fourth man held the horses, and the rest of our company rushed to the top of the mountain. Just as we got to the top a ball struck at our feet from a long range gun. It was a long way across the range, across a valley. They did not have many guns and they were very desperate during those days and nights while we were in the Badlands. They did not want us to go through their main strong-hold. We went on through and started for the mouth of the Yellowstone River and crossed it about six miles from the mouth. We swam our horses across it. The current was very swift, and two of our men were washed off their horses. One of them lost his horse as it washed downstream. Both men taking hold of the other horse’s tail managed to get ashore. Being a mountain stream made it very swift. When we started across we handed our pocket-books to a sergeant. We had to cross the teams on a boat. One boat sunk just below the mouth of the river with provisions and horse feed for the army. After that for quite a while we were put on half rations. After all the troops were safely across we started to Fort Union on the Missouri River.
At the fort they had a sod house filled with dried buffalo meat. We forded the river there. A good deal of quicksand made it bad crossing, but it was not as swift as The Yellowstone and we crossed it without many accidents, and started a Northeast course towards Devil’s Lake.
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We ran into country where the prairies were covered with buffalo. We had plenty of buffalo meat for some time and it helped us out very much as we were still on half-rations. Sometimes in the morning when we started out there would not be a buffalo to be seen, but in a short time we could see buffalo in any direction. The prairie would be covered. We had to keep men ahead to keep them out of the way so they wouldn’t interfere with the troops marching. They kept pawing the ground as we passed. The General gave orders not to shoot any. But we had plenty of buffalo meat while in the buffalo country. The boys were determined to have it because of our half-rations. Our orderly went out hunting one evening after we had camped, and wounded a buffalo. It chased him, and in order to save himself he got behind a big rock and stayed there until the buffalo left, then came from behind the rock and returned to camp.
My mess had from sixteen to eighteen men in it most of the time. It kept me busy cooking buffalo meat at night in the Buffalo country. I was cook four months out of six for our mess.
Out towards Devil’s Lake we did not find many Indians, then we marched South again and struck the Missouri River and followed the river down to Fort Rice and camped on the opposite side of the river from the fort, the fort being on the west bank of the river. The boys we had left there sick in July were well and hearty when we returned.
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We camped there twenty days.
An emigrant train started through the Badlands late in the summer by another route and was attacked by the Indians so that travel became impossible for the time being. But they could hold the Indians back, and they sent a man back to us for help. He was forced to travel at night and conceal himself during the day-time, because of the Indians.
Some were picked from several different companies, and put under the command of a Captain and sent to their relief. The emigrants were forced to return to their homes and were guarded by the company as far as the East side of the Missouri River. We had to stay in our camp twenty days awaiting their return. While in camp there, some Indians came in and stole some horses from the company of scouts to which I belonged, and three men started out in pursuit and followed them up the Missouri River a distance. But when they got in the timber the Indians turned and charged on our men, killing one of them and scalped him, and took his arms and horse. One of our men escaped by swimming the Missouri River but lost his horse and saddle and arms and clothing. He swam over to Fort Rice. The ambulance went up and got the man who had been scalped and brought him into camp. His head was very much mutilated on account of them taking the greater portion of it off in scalping him.
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We buried him with military honor, a very solemn burial in such a desolate country so far from civilization.
We had a snow storm while camped there. And while there received word that the mail carrier who was carrying the mail from Fort Sully to Fort Rice had been captured by the Indians. The same Indians that we had been fighting in the Badlands who had taken a short cut and crossed the Missouri River and captured him. The next morning they were released.
Now we were ready to take up our march down the river. As we got farther down, my mess thought they would have some fun at the expense of the First Lieutenant. One of the boys in the company shaved his horse’s tail, and the next night we had a war dance, built a big campfire and formed a ring around it, and tied some of the horses tails to sticks and put something on the sticks to make a racket, something similar to what the Indians had. We ran around the campfire shaking those sticks and yelling and whooping like Indians. The next day the Lieutenant had one of the boys arrested and held him under arrest for several days.
One day in camp at noon the Lieutenant’s son and another man had a fuss. I was down on my knees washing dishes.
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The Lieutenant’s son stood out in front of me and the other man stood behind me as the boy drew a revolver and pointed it over my head, the other man wanted my revolver. It was on my left side so I reached around and dropped it on the ground behind me. The man picked it up, then they stood holding their revolvers over my head. They talked awhile then cooled down and it was all over.
Very often the boys would have a fist fight. In the morning while eating breakfast they would tumble around and kick over the coffee. On one occasion two Indians who belonged to our company, as we got down into South Dakota where they could get whiskey, started to drinking and one of them drew a revolver and the other a big knife. They stood close together threatening to kill each other and telling each other how brave they were. A man by the name of Jim Sarners went to them and took a head in each hand and knocked them together and said “You are brave, aren’t you?” That settled the trouble. He was a big raw-boned man weighing about one hundred and seventy-five pounds. There were thirty Indians in our company of the Omaha and Otoe tribes of Nebraska.
We marched on down through South Dakota to the mouth of the Big Sioux River and camped. The next day it snowed all day. We were camped in a heavy body of timber and had big log campfires Our quartermaster Sergeant got pretty well filled up on whiskey, and kept shooting into the campfire during the early part of the day.
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I told some of the boys if that was allowed to continue some of us would be shot before night. The Captain had gone down to Sioux City six miles below to see when we would be mustered out. He came back about two o’clock in the afternoon and told the boys to get ready to go to Sioux City and be mustered out. He stopped down to pull up his tent stakes, the Quartermaster Sergeant got on his horse and rode up behind him while he was still stooping, drew his revolver and shot the Captain in the back. I stood a few feet from him. He, the Captain, rose up and commenced pulling off his overcoat and said “oh, Jesus”. The Quartermaster Sergeant put away his gun and rode off toward the Missouri River bottom. The two lieutenants came out of a house that they were staying in and carried the Captain in, Then there was a scramble to get someone to go after the Quartermaster Sergeant. They could not get but four men out of eighty-five to go after him. Myself and three others started after him. One of the men and myself went one road and the other two another road. The other two found him. He had got off his horse and did not offer any resistance. They brought him into camp without any trouble. Most of the boys were afraid of him. He was a good fellow when sober. He was taken to Sioux City and tried and court-martialed, and given a dishonorable discharge and deprived of four months pay, then turned loose. He went up to the hotel where the Captain was taken and told him that he would pay all expenses.
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The ball had passed through the lower end of the Captain’s lung. He lived a great many years afterwards, and was a heavy drinker. He must have had a good constitution to stand so much.
We were mustered out that evening, October 30, 1864, and then started for home. I lived one hundred and sixty miles away, fifty miles from Omaha. We stopped at a house by the road-side that night, the next night we stayed at Council Bluffs, Iowa.
There was great excitement there that night. It was election time. Running Old Abe and McClellen, the time Lincoln was elected the last time. I reached Nebraska City the next day and on the following day I reached home.
Awhile before that, during the month of September, 1864, they had an Indian scare. The Indians had gotten on the Republican River and they thought they would come on to the Missouri River all around the settlement where I lived. People picked up their best belongings and went to Nebraska City, all but one family, who did not know what to do with their hogs and cows. My two younger brothers who had stayed with my Mother, picked up and moved to the city. Some crossed the Missouri River.
My youngest brother started with men on that trip and got as far as Sioux City at the general muster-in.
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They would not take him on account of his age, he stayed with us a month then went home.
The Indians did not come as far as the settlement where I had lived, did not come any further than the Republican River about sixty miles away, but committed all kinds of depredations there on the Republican River and on the Platte River so that a company was sent out that fall.
One of my older brothers was First Lieutenant. They started quite late in the fall, not much transpired the remainder of that fall and winter.
The next spring in April the glad news came that General Robert E. Lee had surrendered to U. S. Grant and the war between the states was at an end. General Lee was surprised that General Grant was so liberal in the surrender that he allowed his men to keep their horses and side arms. It was more than they had expected.
In a few days the news came that Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, and put the whole nation in mourning, but his mission was completed, his work was done. His name and deeds were stamped in the hearts of every true American.
That summer I followed farming, and not much transpired of note. In September the government was offering a big price for freighting food from the Missouri River to Julesberg. The Indians were so troublesome up the Platte River that not many wanted to haul freight there. That is why they paid
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Such big freight rates for hauling. I rigged up six yoke of oxen and two wagons and trailing one behind the other, I loaded up in Nebraska City the last of September, struck the Platte bottom about sixty miles out, traveling on the old California Trail. Followed the Platte River until the mouth of the North Platte. Another young man, a neighbor boy, went along. He had five yoke of oxen and two wagons. After we got up the Platte several days travel, one night we turned out our cattle as usual, so I was going out to herd them and stand guard. That night the young man that was with me on that trip was having the chills, and so I was forced to herd and stand guard most of the time. We were traveling alone, that one night I thought I would eat supper before I went around the cattle, after supper I started out after them but could not find them. I came to where there was a small train camped and went around the camp to try to find someone that was standing guard, but could see no one. I kept yelling, but they could not hear me as the wind was blowing. After awhile a man came around as the moon came out of the clouds he could see me, and thought I was an Indian and drew up his revolver to shoot me, and it snapped several times, but it would not go off. The moon came out again, I noticed he would put up his revolver and make an examination to see what was the trouble with it. I got a little closer to him and yelled a little louder and he saw I was no Indian and he dropped his revolver and came to me.
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He was so scared he could hardly talk, to think he had come so close to killing me. I started for camp and let my cattle go for that night. He accompanied me almost to camp and talked about it. I was not scared yet, but after I went to bed I got to thinking about it. I did not sleep much that night. The next morning the man who nearly shot me came past our camp and talked a while. He felt so bad about nearly killing me. He was taking some cattle from Missouri out to the mountains. I found our cattle alright. The reason it was necessary to guard the cattle so close was on account of the Indians running them off.
We broke camp that morning and started on up the Platte. We were not bothered much with Indians between there and Julesberg. We kept a good lookout and reached Julesberg in safety and unloaded our freight. It was corn for government horses. They had great piles of sack corn about as high as a house.
The next day we started back. Around Julesberg was a bad place for Indians. There were several companies of soldiers stationed there. At Boveas Ranch was another bad place, and Jack Morrows was another bad place. We had to drive our cattle across on the North side of the Platte at night to find good grass for them. So much freighting was being done on the South side it made the grass short.
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For one-hundred and fifty miles we had to drive them across the river every night. One night it fell to the lot of a tall man from Missouri to go across with a boy about fifteen years old to herd them and stand guard. He weakened and shirked from the task, so I told him I would take his place. I told him I would return before daylight with the cattle and yell “chain up. ” I told the boy to lay low and only move when he had to go around the cattle. Every object we saw that night we imagined was an Indian. It was at Boveas Ranch where the Indians crossed every few days. So the next morning about three o’clock we drove them in the Platte River and started across the river. We got them across and yelled “chain up. ” What we meant was to make a corral of our wagons by circling them around and running a heavy log chain from one wagon to the other and have an opening at each end and have a man stand at each end. Why I was so anxious to get across so early was that the Indians might make a break. They generally do when it is getting daybreak. That is the time they always commit most of their depredations. We yoked up and started on and got quite a distance before daylight. We got down the Platte River where soldiers were stationed at different places. One day the soldiers overtook us and took us back twenty miles to the fort, where they were stationed, and told us we had to stay there until a hundred wagons or the same amount of men were well armed to go down. We did not want to wait, so that night we
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Started on and got away from them. Travelled twenty miles before daybreak. They did not follow us. We were very anxious to get home, so we ran the risk and it surely was a big one.
These soldiers were some that were in the Southern Army called Galvenized soldiers, and stationed on the plains to guard the emigrants and freighters from the Indians. We went on down the Platte River and was not molested by the Indians.
One day on the Platte came a fearful hailstorm and drove the cattle in all directions. It came so fast and pelted the cattle, so I got around them and drove them over on an island of the Platte where there were some timber and brush. But I was pelted good and plenty before I got back to the wagons . I left the cattle there until the next morning, and we camped there that night. The hail covered the ground, in some of the ravines you could scoop it up by the wagonload.
We started on the next morning and nothing of importance transpired the next trip. Reached home about the middle of November in a cold rain.
That winter I went to school for the last time. The next spring we loaded with corn and started for Denver, Colorado. My two younger brothers and myself. I took my same out-fit, the six yoke of oxen and trail wagon. One of my brothers took one wagon and four yoke of oxen, the other brother took a team of ponies, and my neighbor boy sent five yoke of oxen and trail wagon along with us and hired
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A man to drive it.
This man never being away from home before, so when we got out on the Platte River, every little while in the night he would take his revolver out and look around to see if he could see anything to shoot at. We were afraid he would kill one of the ponies or a young colt we had with us. So after all of us got in bed one night and got quiet, one of my brothers and myself decided to have some fun and maybe break him of getting scared and thinking everything in the night was an Indian. We crawled around and got a stick about as long as a man, and put a coat and hat on it, then crawled back in bed very carefully and put our fingers in our mouths to keep us from laughing. We knew he would see it soon. He rose up after a time and saw it, got out of bed and advanced a few steps nearer to the object, then fired his revolver at it and it never stirred. We could not hold in any longer and laughed outright. He became mad about the trick and said he would not watch anymore if all the ponies were stolen. That almost broke him of drawing his revolver at almost anything he saw in the night.
We traveled on until we reached old Fort Kearney. There we heard that the Union Pacific railroad was completed. It went through Cheyenne, Wyoming, one hundred and ten miles from Denver. We thought we would have to sell our corn in Denver very low so we sold out at Fort Kearney. We found out our mistake afterwards. We heard later that we could have gotten a good price in Denver, but it was too late.
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We unloaded and started back. The hired man was taken sick so my younger brother had to take the pony team and started ahead, taking the hired man with him. He was away from home with the pony team four weeks. We were away with the ox team five weeks. The hired man never washed in all that time. When they got to my Mother’s house they told him he would have to wash or it would be necessary to souse him in the creek.
So then my brothers and I went to farming for about 4 years. In the summer of 1868 we thought we would get a threshing machine and ran it two years and did not make very much. In the spring of 1870 my younger brother and myself and three other young men thought we would try our fortune in Colorado again. We started with a span of horses and wagon and two ponies. Before we left we had a rousing time in a debate at our old school house. Such a crowd there that it was impossible for all of them to get inside. The debate was of different things such as the Sword versus the Pen and the Indians versus the whites.
We bid farewell to our relatives and friends and left. Struck the South Platte River and followed it up almost to Cheyenne. Then the railroad was almost completed through from Cheyenne to Denver. Then they could take the freight through on the Union Pacific . My brother and two other boys who went
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With us stopped and worked on the railroad until it was completed. The other boy that started with us was scared off by the Indians and turned back at Fort McPherson.
I got a little ahead of my story, in going past where the sand hills reached to the Platte, and where the hills reached down to the road and afforded the Indians a good place to hide. My brother and I saw some Indians on the South side of the Platte so we told the boys to hurry past those sand hills with the wagon, and we took our guns and went across the bottom to the river to keep the Indians back. They had raided a station close by a few days before, but did not cross the river because we kept them back. There was a good bit of trouble with the Indians on the Platte River at that time. When in camp at night we would build a fire and eat our supper and then go back a piece from the camp fire and camp for the night in the big grass where they could not find us if they came.
When we reached Fort McPherson we left our wagon by advice of the people from the Fort. And we rode horseback, each having a horse. Sometimes we would get into a station quite late at night. If there were any soldiers there they would look our horses over to see if there were any brands on them. They thought it might be that we had stolen them.
Sometimes we would cause the section men along the Union Pacific railroad to get on their handcar and run into the station and get their guns and be ready for us. They would get quite excited, thinking
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We were Indians coming. The cowboys would make a stand with their Winchesters across their ponies.
We crossed over on the South side of the Platte River and traveled the rest of the way. One time there was a camp of soldiers, when we got about opposite the camp we could see some of them go out and cross the river and come after us. An officer came over with about twenty men, thought we were Indians. They rode up until they got pretty close. After discovering what we were they turned around and went back. They felt bad to see how they were fooled.
I left the boys below Denver a few miles and stayed in Denver that night. As I was passing a livery stable I heard a voice I thought I knew so I went in and saw a boy I had not seen since the Civil War. He had lived a neighbor to us thirty miles above Denver. It had been nearly nine years since I had seen him. Both of us were quite excited for awhile. He was the boy who I was talking of going into the army with me. He went South with the Colorado Third Cavalry. I stayed all night with him and had a good time. We had been apart so long it seemed like I had found a brother. The next morning we parted and I have not seen him since that. It was in May, 1870, nor heard from him.
I went up into the mountains, working for awhile. About July 1 the other boys came up, and on July 4 we concluded to go over the snowy range. Starting in the morning we went up the South Boulder River
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Canyon until we got up close to the range. Then we sat on our ponies and held out our tin cups and got a drink of water that comes from a mountain spring, through the snow off the range. Just before reaching the top of the range we stood on a narrow strip of land. It was between North and South Boulder Rivers. The heads of the two streams were just like lakes. It was about five hundred feet down to the water, and the West half of the lakes were frozen over and the East end was open. The lakes were in the shade of the mountains and trees. .
Then we went on to the top away from the timber line. The first snow we came to was not more than three or four inches deep, and little flowers were blooming in the snow in abundance and a little farther on we came to where it was from twenty to forty feet deep. Some of it had been lying there for ages. Some of it was so solid it made it possible for us to walk on top of it. We crossed over the top of the snowy range and went down the other side and as we reached the bottom we saw nice meadows of wild timothy and clover. There were no roads over the Boulder River or over the range. We followed an Indian trail. Sometimes it would be necessary for us to climb over logs and fallen trees. A great many streams running West into the Rio Grande.
We traveled on a mile or two and found an empty cabin with a fireplace in it. It was in that beautiful valley with a mountain stream running past it. We stayed in it overnight.
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The next day our provisions ran out, and we turned back. We left the stars and stripes sticking in about fifty feet of snow. As we were going up the side of the range we killed a grouse. I found two matches in my pocket but they wouldn’t strike so we could not cook it. We got very hungry and tried to eat it raw but could not on account of it being so tough. The grouse is almost like a prairie chicken.
We went up on the range and down the other side. As we were going down from the top of the snowy range, on the timberline, it commenced snowing, and when we got still further down it began hailing and when we got further down in the Boulder valley it began raining, then further down the sun was shining. We reached Collinsville, a hotel and post office on South Boulder in a nice little park. By that time we were pretty hungry, as it was about eleven o’clock and we had not had any breakfast. We went into the hotel and ate most everything they had in there. Then we started on and went on over to Sugar Loaf Mountain and stayed a few days. Then my brother and I started down the valley to try to get work. After we got down to the valley we took turns going into the house inquiring for work in the harvest fields. We had one pony with us and took turns about riding. One time my brother went in and asked for work. The man offered him one dollar a day and board.
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We sat down on the ground after he came out and he told me what they said and we rolled around on the grass awhile and laughed about it. We had just come from Nebraska that spring where we were used to getting two to three dollars a day in the harvest fields and nothing said about board. We went on down the St. Verain River and struck Boulder River, following it down to where an old man lived that we used to know by the name of Burage. He was putting up a lot of hay. He had several hands working for him but he wanted to hire us. He was paying them a dollar and a half a day but he said he would pay us a dollar and seventy-five cents a day but told us not to say anything about it to the other men. We worked for him until we got all his hay put up, then we hired him to cut a lot of hay for us. After we were done putting up hay I heard of a man by the name of Childs up by Golden City, about ten miles West of Denver, that had a lot of work oxen and wagons, quite a trading man, and I thought I might trade some of the hay for work oxen, so I started up there.
I arrived about noon, they were shoeing some of his oxen when I got there. I turned my pony loose on the prairie to graze and we soon went in to dinner. When we came out my pony was not to be seen, and never saw it afterwards, and I stayed there until the next day. I could not trade with him. He said he would rather sell them to me. I bought thirteen hundred and fifty dollars worth of cattle and wagons.
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I paid him one hundred and sixty dollars a yoke for the oxen and one hundred and fifty dollars apiece for two large wagons, Nager and Russel wagons, and I paid a hundred dollars for a pony to get the cattle in the morning. (In order to enlighten the rising generation as to how we transacted business in those days I will state as to how I secured my cattle and wagons and pony. The man allowed me to take this property without a scratch of the pen. Just my verbal statement trusting to my honesty to make good when the time came. Such a thing being very common in those days. )
We had two yoke of oxen and one wagon before we made that deal, now we were ready for hauling hay up in the mountains from St. Verain, about forty miles to Black Hawk, but we hauled the most of it up to Georgetown, up south Clear Creek about sixty miles, right up close to the snowy range. We had ten oxen when we started hauling hay. I drove four yoke of oxen myself to one big wagon and my brother drove four to another. We hired a man to drive two yoke to a lighter wagon. We would generally take three to four tons on the larger wagons and two ton on the lighter wagon. We would get from fifty to sixty dollars a ton for it. The bales would run in weight from three to four hundred pounds. It generally took us eight days to make the trip. We carried our provisions with us, camped and cooked on the road. Cold nights we would keep the fire all night, have a number of logs piled up.
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The first eighteen months we were there we never slept under a roof but a very few nights, never saw a sick day during that time. Some nights there would come a big snow storm and cover us up in bed. We wore big heavy cowhide boots and in the morning our boots would be full of snow, our hats also sometimes. Lots of snow would get in the bed, sometimes the wind would blow so hard in the night that we would have to put log chains around the outer edge of the beds, and ox yokes, to keep the bed close to the ground and keep out the wind and snow. One cold night it blew so hard that we took turns getting up to put chains and yokes on the outside of the bed. Our hired man got so cold he cried.
When we would get to the foot of the mountains we had to camp and get our oxen rough shod before going up into the mountains. We stopped at Mt. Vernon at the mouth of the canyon, a town of two hotels and one store and post-office and blacksmith shop. At that time there was a good deal of trouble over some of the mines. One day we met two different wagons taking a dead man on each one that had been killed the day before. The worst fighting was over the Diviese and Pilican mines. Parties would go there and try to fight it out with their guns. They also brought the matter into court.
Three brothers from Missouri claimed it, and a banker by the name of Snyder from Denver claimed it. The banker had the idea that his money would win and would not give up although the courts decided against him.
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One day the banker met one of the brothers on the street of Georgetown and had a little talk. Both were on horses. Soon the banker turned his horse around and ran, the other man followed him. They both ran their horses and the banker came to a livery barn. The banker started into the barn , and just as he was going in the door, the other man shot him in the head, and he fell dead in the door of the barn. It was a place belonging to Baily, and not the place where we sold most of our hay. After he shot him he rode up the street and went into a saloon and took a drink and talked a few minutes, then went out and rode off. The last he was heard from, he went up under the snowy range almost to the outskirts of timber line to a woodchopper’s camp, stopped and went in and told him to get him some supper. Then after eating he went on and was not heard from afterwards, only by friends. The United States Marshal went over the range after him, but did not find him. At that time they never looked much for a man if he killed another.
We sold our hay that trip to Baily and Knot, slept in the barn that night. In the night a man came in and slept in the same office. He was drunk, and proved to be our old company Bugler in the company of scouts. We did not let him know who we were, we got up and went out before he woke up. He used to get drunk while we were on the Indian expedition sometimes. He would get hurt sometimes pretty bad jumping his horse over a rope, stretched pretty high.
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That morning at the barn was the last time we ever saw him. The next year while intoxicated he got in front of an engine on the Union Pacific Railroad and the poor fellow was killed. He was the son of the Indian agent of the Otoe and Omaha Indians. When we first came to Nebraska he was a good bugler and all around musician and a very intelligent man but strong drink got the best of him. His brother Robert was in the wholesale business in Nebraska City.
We still kept hauling hay from the valley up into the mountains that winter. Towards spring we would go up with a load of hay and stop on the road back in the mountains and cut and load up with piling timber for the mouth of Cherry Creek, where there had been a big flood the year before, a cloud-burst or water spout as you might call it, and came down and tore up things. So we hauled many loads of piling timber to put in at the mouth of Cherry Creek to protect that part of Denver.
The next winter we went to getting out cord wood and followed that about a year, then the next winter we went to working in quartz mines in Black Hawk. The next year my brother went back to the States, and in June he came back with another brother who was sickly.
One day I went over to a family of English, and they had a young Texas cow that was very wild in a corral. It had very long sharp horns. Quite a crowd was collected around, and among them there was a cowboy who would not venture in as he had no horse.
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I told them I would try to drive it into the chute. The ground was sloping so I took a club and went in. The ground was sloping toward me, so just as I got inside it came for me. As it did I stepped to one side and hit it on the nose. That turned it, but my club broke , as it was rotten. One woman had courage enough to climb the fence and hand me another one. The cow took a circle and came down the slope again with her head down as if to go clear through me. I let her get her head within about a foot of my stomach then I stepped aside and struck her a blow on the nose. My club did not break that time, and that turned her. Then I followed her up and kept pounding her on the back and did not give her another chance to turn. That drove her into the chute, then I slipped up the bars behind her and got out of the corral. As I got out one man said I would make a good soldier. The cowboys would not go into a corral unless mounted on a bronco, as the cows were very dangerous especially when they were by themselves. The risk of life was very great when alone.
I had a great many broncos at that time and we broke some of them and went to hauling wood. Sometimes my brother and myself would make it a practice of breaking broncos for others. It was a hard and risky business. I have seen the blood run out of my brothers mouth and nose when the bronco would buck so long that he would be out of wind.
One time I was breaking a mule to ride. As I turned out to pass a freighter, I was just getting back in the road and the mule turned a somersault. I threw myself out of the saddle as he was going over. Another time I was hauling the mule, he got to cutting up pretty bad and I knocked one of my thumbs out of place. After that I got some broncos broke and went to hauling wood with four of them.
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Afterwards I went into partnerships with another man getting out wood and burning lime and shipping it to Denver. One time as I was going down a very steep mountain with a load of wood, I was riding the near-wheeler, one who worked on the tongue was called a wheeler. We used for a brake a piece of pine wood crossed behind and in front of the wheel. A chain ran from the rear to the front one to chain the pieces together with a stick between the chains to draw them together, with a lever behind to lift it up. This time the stick wore through and broke and ran the wagon up on the team, and it was impossible for them to hold it back, and they had to run. My partner was walking behind the wagon. He yelled for me to jump. A bank was so close to me on that side that I could not get away. There was a four horse team at the foot of the mountain and I was going straight toward it, and in another minute I knew that I would be right on to him. I pulled them a little out of the road the best I could and ran against a log and got them stopped without much serious damage, although it was a narrow escape.
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We kept hauling and shipping from Morrison to Denver and burning lime. After awhile I got ahold of thirteen broncos and left that fall with my two brothers, who were still in the wood business. I got ready and started across the plains for the States. I took two ponies and started down the Platte River, rode one and packed the other with blankets and provisions. I did not see any Indians for several days. One night as I camped on the banks of the Platte, I was on the North side at that time, I built a fire and cooked my supper. I looked across the river to the South side and saw some Indians. I ate my supper and just as it was getting dark they started to cross the river. I saddled up my ponies and as it grew a little darker I built up a big fire and left it burning and started right back from the river to the bluffs. Getting several miles back from the river, it got so dark I could hardly distinguish Indians from cattle. I ran into a large young herd of cattle and I think there must have been two hundred head that took after me. At first I thought they were Indians and I ran my ponies the best I could for several miles before I discovered they were cattle. It was a great curiosity to these young cattle to see a pack pony with a pack on its back. I camped for the night and the next morning I started on and it took me until eleven o’clock before I struck the Platte River again, twenty miles below. In a few days I began to see Indians again at a distance. It seemed they would cross the Platte a distance below me and seemed to be traveling
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Northwest. I came across a cowboy who said they were Sioux Indians going back home. They had been down to a camp of Pawnees whose young men had been out on a buffalo hunt leaving just old men and squaws in the Pawnee camp. The Sioux had massacred all of them and left and were on their way back. This cowboy went several miles with me on account of the young cattle bothering my pack pony. On account of the Sioux Indians passing through there I traveled on a few days longer and one day noticed some Indians a few miles down the Platte crossing and going to the hills They were traveling along and watching me. They would be on top of the hills for a few minutes peeping over the top. They seemed to travel along the top of the hill all day. When night came I camped and ate my supper, and as dark came I went down in the big grass. The blue stem grass grew very tall there, and I got my ponies down there out of sight. It was opposite an island on the Platte River. I thought if the Indians found me I would make for that island, but they did not find me, but I found something almost as bad. The mosquitoes almost ate the ponies and myself up. The next morning, just as I could see a bit of daylight, I started and hurried to get to Julesburg. I reached there about noon but did not see any more Indians that trip. Then I kept on down the Platte, crossed over on the South side when I got down near
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Plum Creek. One of my ponies dropped dead in the road. The one I was riding, so I went on with the other one.
I came in company with a boy at a station, about eighteen years old, who wished to travel with me. We traveled a few days and came to Fort McPherson, stopped for dinner there then started on. That evening about sundown some men came up behind us and called “halt” and “throw up your hands”. It was four soldiers from the fort. They took us to a ranch that was close by and guarded us all night, then took us back twenty miles the next morning to the fort and gave us our breakfast. Then the Sergeant who had command of the squad took us back and over to the command officer of the post and reported what he had done. He told him to bring the boy who was with me before him. He questioned him awhile then he locked him up and had me brought before him. He asked me several questions, then let me go where I pleased, or he said I could stay there. He told the Sergeant to bring that boy back again, he asked him what he wanted to lie to him for, so he told the Sergeant to lock him up again. The soldiers felt bad for him, they wanted me to stay there at the fort. The commander of the post told me I could go or stay there just as I pleased. The boys wanted me to stay there all winter, but I told them I wanted to get home. They gave me some provisions and I started down the Platte toward the States. What they wanted of us, I suppose they had gotten a telegram to watch for someone the description
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Of the boy who was with me, but he did not fill the description of the one they were looking for so that night they turned him loose and he came on after me. He overtook me and wanted to stay with me that night I did not want him to stay, finally I agreed to let him stay. He acted like he was guilty of something he had done. I think he tried to kill me several times in the night. He slept with me and when I would wake up in the night he would have a big butcher knife in his hand. The next morning I told him he better go, so he started out. I saw him in a little while going along with some emigrants, going back West toward Denver, so I started on again, down the Platte. The next day or two I fell in with two men walking. I think they were deserters from the fort. We traveled together for several days.
I reached home a few days after that, pretty tired and worn out. Stayed with my Mother that winter. The next summer I farmed my Mother’s place. The next year I got married on Oct. 13, 1876. (The marriage certificate says Oct. 11, 1877) I stayed with my Mother that winter. My Mother was killed in January of that winter, fell out of a wagon and broke her neck. (Her gravestone says she died Feb. 21, 1878). The next year I farmed the old place.
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The next September, 1878, my oldest daughter was born. I wintered there that winter. Then the government was selling off the West half of the Otoe Indian Reservation on Indian Creek seventeen miles from Beatrice between the two Blue Rivers, so one of my brothers and I concluded we would go there and buy some of that land. It was opened up for settlement for from $2. 75 to $15. 00 an acre. We took sixty-two head of cattle with us, each of us a team and wagon. Our other brother stayed on the old place, he had just gotten married. The one that went with me had just been married the year before. I bought one hundred and twenty acres, part of it on the Indian Creek bottom, plenty of timber and water. My brother bought a quarter-section up on the high prairie. His was in a strip a mile long, he paid $3. 25 per acre for his land. Mine was $6. 00 and $8. 00 an acre, very rich land, about twelve miles from Wymore.
My brother sold out in about a year and a half and went down to Missouri, and I stayed there for four years, and then sold out and went to the Territory of Washington (Washington being a territory at that time)
Sold out everything the last of March, then made a visit up to Otoe County, Nebraska for a couple of weeks and on May 14, 1883 I started for Washington Territory. Got on the train at Berlin, Nebraska (now Otoe, Nebraska) on the Missouri Pacific Railroad, and in Hutchison, Kansas I changed to the emigrant train on the Southern Pacific Railroad. Went down through New Mexico, through El Paso, Texas, and then to Fort Kuma (Yuma?), Arizona, then up through southern California. They had two engines to take the train over the Sierra Nevada Mountains.
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There were two cars filled with emigrants. They coupled us behind a freight train. The road was so crooked over the mountains that one man went out on the hind end of the car and came back and said he went out to get a chew of tobacco from the engineer. While going over the mountain no one slept but two Chinamen in the emigrant car. One afternoon we went through twenty-four tunnels. We reached Los Angeles and stopped there about a half a day. Going through Arizona we suffered greatly for drinking water, it being so warm we could not drink it. Several went to the conductor and asked for ice but he kept promising but did not seem to fill his promise very well, as he said after we got to Los Angeles we would have ice but after we left there it was the same old thing. At Los Angeles was the first time I saw oranges on trees, some blossoms, some green oranges and some ripe all on the same tree. After that we started on and reached San Francisco. The next morning as we were going into San Francisco we saw an emigrant car that the tracks were knocked from under. An engine had run into it. It was filled with emigrants asleep in their bunks. It knocked them all out of their bunks, but no one was killed.
We had to stay in San Francisco two days and nights waiting for a boat to Portland, Oregon. We were two days and nights on the Pacific Ocean. The second night we had a big gale of wind.
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I could hear the captain yell in the night and give orders and hear timbers falling. The next morning the steward said he had been on the Pacific Ocean sixteen years and that was the worst night he had ever experienced. We reached the mouth of the Columbia River and near there the steward showed us the tip of the mast of a ship a little way off that went down with six hundred souls aboard the year before. We could see hundreds of fishermen in little sailing vessels around there. We then started up the mouth of the Columbia River. At the mouth is what they call the bar, and it is necessary to be very careful until they get through, just wide enough for a ship to pass. It was solid rock on each side, and if a boat goes a little off her course it would strike and injure the vessel It seemed as if almost everybody held their breath going through there, it seemed a long half hour.
After we got through the steward said now we are alright. While out on the Pacific I became seasick and thought I would vomite all I had eaten for a month. The Captain advised we stay up on deck. So I wrapped a blanket around me and walked around the deck. While up there a young man who was setting upon a pile of sacks laughed at me, and at the same time he was stricken with the same thing I had and had to hurry to the rail of the ship. I did not take the Captain’s advice any longer. I went down to my berth, where my wife and three little girls were and lay down on my back until we got up
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The Columbia River. That evening I ate a small piece of pie, the first I had eaten for two days.
Going up the Columbia was nice scenery and nice riding. We could see Mt. Hood from the ship, the top round as a sugar bowl and covered with snow. It looked like it was close to us. We soon passed ( ) Astoria, where they so much salmon. Just a few fishermen live there on the side of the mountain. We reached Portland, Oregon about eleven o’clock that night, six hundred and fifty of us got off there.
One officer was there to keep the people back the best he could to keep them from running over each other in the rush. I had to yell all the time and keep my hands throwed up , to keep my wife and three little girls from getting tramped down. We got off the boat and went up the plank, then went to a hotel and stayed there two nights, then took a train for Walla, Walla, Washington Territory. One man that was sitting in front of me on the train said while on the ship he was so sick he thought of everything mean he had ever done in his life.
We reached Walla Walla at eleven o’clock that night . . After breakfast I went up town to see what kind of a city it was. The first thing I saw was plenty of Chinamen, the next was plenty of Indians, the next was plenty of strawberries as large as plums.
The day after I rented a house, moved into it and in a day or two I bought two cayauses, then a wagon and harness and saddle. Then I went out into the country to the Blue Mountains on the North fork of the Walla Walla River and bought a mountain ranch. It was a claim that was filed on under the presumption law. I was to pay one thousand dollars for it. We went back into town that night and put up at a hotel. In the morning before I had gotten out of bed someone knocked on the door. It proved to be the man who put me on the track of my land. A young Frenchman I had bought out promised to pay him for sending me out to buy it, and would not pay him anything after he had made the sale. So this man had heard he had two mortgages on the land and came to tell me about it. After I arose from bed I went to a Jew merchant I had become acquainted with, a son-in-law of one of the Strawbackers, three brothers who had stores in almost all the large cities of the United States. So this merchant sent me to his lawyer. I had already given the young Frenchman a cheque for one thousand dollars. The lawyer told me to go to the bank when it opened and order the cheque cancelled as there were two mortgages on the property. One for two hundred and fifty dollars and the other for three hundred and fifty, making six hundred in all. And a little after nine o’clock I saw the young Frenchman walking down to the bank and he came out with his head down. I told him the lawyer wanted to see him. Then we called
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The lawyer, who had him sign up some papers, then we went over to the bank. The lawyer kept back the six hundred dollars and paid him the balance which was four hundred dollars. After we had finished the lawyer stepped outside the bank. I followed him out and asked him how much I owed him. He said ten dollars, as it was a pretty hard case. I was not long getting a ten dollar gold piece out of my pocket to pay him. I thought I was getting off very easy.
The next day I moved out to the ranch. We found plenty of strawberries and blackberries ripe and raspberries coming on and grapes. It was a nice place to live, but pretty lonesome. It was the farthest up the river of any ranch, above all settlements, and controlled all of the range. Also there was plenty of good mountain water, plenty of springs. The salmon had two runs a year, up from the ocean, they run up the Columbia River, then up the Walla Walla Rivers. Their runs are in November and March, but never go back. The first salmon I saw was in November. I was sitting on a mule in the Walla Walla River, watering him. I saw a fish trying to make his way over a ripple. I jumped off the mule, turned him loose and tried to catch the fish, but I was so excited it got away. The next morning I went to the river to get a bucket of water and saw a good sized salmon under the roots of a tree which projected over the water. I started to catch him with my hat. I finally caught him with my hand and pressed him against the roots of the tree, but was afraid he would slip away from me so I called my wife to come and help me.
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Both of us got our hands around it and lifted it out of the water. It was a large one. That was the first one I ever caught. That day I had to go to Walla Walla. The river rose that day and got rough and that stopped the run for that fall. My nearest neighbor caught quite a few that day and divided with us.
We stayed there that winter. Sometimes there would come a little snow and lay a day or two. If there came a snow on the mountains, then a Chinook wind would come and melt the snow and it would and it would run down the mountains and swell the rivers.
Quite a snow fell one night and I hitched a sled up the next morning and went down to one of my neighbors, about a mile. Snow went off so fast I had to make the return trip in the mud. On the North side of the mountain it would lay on a little longer . That fall I had the rheumatism pretty bad.
One day I was up on the river after wood and I saw an animal run into a bunch of brush, and I thought it might be a young deer at first. I could not think what kind of an animal it was. I picked up rocks and threw at it and chased it out from there and it ran into another bunch of brush. I stopped at that, and made up my mind it was not an animal I wanted to fool with. I let it alone and loaded my wood and in a few days my wife went up the river after the cows. Up at the other end of the ranch an animal ran in a bunch of brush and stood there and showed his teeth.
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In a day or two, two men and a boy came along and stopped and borrowed my double-barreled shotgun to take along. We had told them what we had seen but they did not say anything. In about two hours they came back. They were carrying an animal on a pole, a man at each end. They stopped outside the gate in front of the house, so we called my wife out to see it. It proved to be the animal I had seen. It was a cougar , what I would term the American panther. It was very long and had long crooked teeth and very sharp and very wicked claws. The Frenchmen took it to Walla Walla and sold it to a museum there. He told them it ran off with a child and hurt a woman very bad. They were pretty plentiful in that valley. Whenever we had a young colt there we would shut it up for the night. I would stand in the door of my house and see bears upon the top of the mountain digging roots.
A neighbor went about three miles from where I lived to lay out a man who had died. Just before he got there, there were two animals following him. He thought they were dogs at first. When he started home they started after him. They followed him. When it came out bright they would drop back, he said. He had on a big overcoat and looked pretty big. He would look over his shoulder occasionally, but did not even have a pocket-knife with him. He said he thought they were young cougars about two-thirds grown. He said he would look back at them every few minutes. They followed him almost to
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His own house, but did not attack him and that was the last he saw of them.
We stayed on the ranch all that winter. My wife * was taken sick in February, 1884. When she got up one morning she had a terrible pain. She had never complained much since I first knew her. I became very uneasy and went after a doctor and he came and wanted to call another doctor. I sent to Walla Walla, a distance of thirteen miles for another doctor. He came out and the two had a consultation, but did not do much for her. In a few days I sent a man to consult with another doctor. He wanted me to move her into Walla Walla, so I went in and rented a house and moved her into town. The doctor called to see her after she was in town. He called in another doctor to consult with him. He then took me outside and said she had one chance in a thousand to get well. But I got a little ahead of my story. When I got into town at the building where I was to take her, there were plenty of men and women to help carry her into the house. The women had arranged to take turns caring for her, and a girl to do the housework. The folks were ready to help at any time. It seemed as if they were some of the best people I had ever seen. She lived about seven weeks, then she passed away March 23, 1884.
*Ida-(born in 1860)
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They had the undertaker there before daylight. They arranged everything for the funeral, the next day. My three little girls and myself followed the remains to the Walla Walla Cemetery and I was left with three little girls to take care of , One five years-1, one nearly three-2, and another a year and a half old-3. In a few days I went back on the ranch and got a woman to take care of the house until I could sell out. I sold out in May and went to town to pay the doctor, then the undertaker, then for the lot and digging the grave, for the tombstone and a grocery bill. Then the next thing I had to hunt up and straighten up, and begin to get ready to start that long journey over the mountains, a distance of twenty-five hundred miles. We had the privilege of being in the cemetery on Decoration Day. I sold the ranch to a man from Kansas about the last week in May.
Then I started back over the mountains over the Oregon short line, came over to Ogden, Utah, then took the Union Pacific to Omaha, Nebraska. A long tedious journey with those little girls. Had to use a good deal of patience and judgment. Got to Omaha and stayed all night in a hotel. The next day took the Missouri Pacific train to Berlin, Nebraska. Then got off the train and walked down to my father-in-laws. As we were passing my Mother’s place, went down to the old spring to get a drink. It was a very hot day and we were very thirsty. We had to walk slow, as the girls were very small.
1. Jennie 2. Minnie 3. Nellie
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We reached my Father-in-laws about eleven o’clock and stayed there all summer.
The old place had been sold for taxes so some of my folks and neighbors advised me to redeem it. I redeemed it but did not make much in the operation. That fall I made a trip to Colorado. I had one brother at the Fountain, about one hundred and twenty miles from Denver. We settled there on a ranch in 1870. (Not sure about this date. Jennie was born in 1878, Minnie-1880, and Nellie-1882)
I also had a brother in Denver running a dairy and tannery, and also was running a ranch a few miles from Denver. While on a visit there I told him I had camped where his tannery was standing many times. It was on the West side of the Platte. Since that time I had camped there, Denver had extended past there, now it is in the heart of Denver. My brother died in the year of 1900 and the one that lived on The Fountain died in 1894. While on that trip I went up into the mountains to visit some nieces I had. In about two weeks I came back to Nebraska. I stayed there on the old place all the next winter and part of the next summer. I took my little girls up on the old place. There was some trouble between my father-in-laws folks and myself and I do not wish to mention it in this volume. So I stayed by those little girls until I got them raised. I stayed on Otoe County four years. I farmed the old place two years, then sold out. The place was covered with cockleburs, so could not make much farming the place. I would not come out much ahead any year, so after I sold out I went up in Berlin (now Otoe) about a mile above and built some lots and built on them, about a mile from the old place, a small town on the Missouri Pacific Railroad.
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I started a butcher shop there, ran it until the last of July. I lost money by it and I sold out and quit the business. I spent about five hundred dollars in that short time and then had a sale, then I started for Missouri. While in the butcher business I had to run a meat wagon over the country. While on that trip
I got down to the big Newaha River and they were taking the old bridge out and the stream was up high. Almost up to the top of the bank. They had stopped people from crossing the bridge. But a boy about fifteen years old met me a little piece from the bridge and said he would try and get me across , so he told me to tell the men on the other side that I was going down to Missouri to see my sick Mother. So they let me pass alright. They seen I had three little girls with me. If they had not let me cross there I would have had to go up the river to another bridge. It would have been about twenty miles out of my way.
I got to St. Joseph, Missouri in about three days. Crossed the river on the railroad bridge. Went out to Easton, Missouri where I had a brother living. Stayed there that summer and went to huckstering. Also one of my brothers was in the same business with me. We did not make much at it so I went down to Agency, a small town on the Platte River. Stayed there that winter. The girls went to school there. I went into the timber and cut wood. The next July I started back to Nebraska. Went through Gage County, my old home on Indian Creek. Stayed there a few days, then went on up to Otoe County and went to buying apples and taking them out West into York and Seward Counties.
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Followed that until late in the fall. Did not make much at that. Then I concluded to go back to Gage County again. When I reached there I rented a farm in the old home settlement. I went to shucking corn that fall until late into the winter. On my trip near Beatrice, I traded off my ponies for an old team that was not worth much to some traveling traders. I was cheated out of my ponies so I got another old horse late in the winter. I lead them out in the timber and tied them to a tree and took an ax and knocked them in the head. I had to blindfold them first.
In the spring I rented a piece of ground, farmed some and worked out some. That year I worked for a bachelor and the girls kept house. They had gotten old enough by that time to cook pretty good and do some general housework. I had trained them the best I could and they had worked out some so we stayed there that year. The next year I rented a farm and moved on it and farmed . Cut my wheat and threshed it about July, and in the early part of July I concluded to take some to Steel City about ten miles away. I had in fifty acres of corn just started out in tassel
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That day ruined it. I would not produce a bushel to the acre. All it was good for was just the fodder. So in the fall I traded my share of the fodder for a team of horses, harness and wagon and started for Oklahoma with two wagons. I had three head of horses before, making five head in all. I was four weeks making the trip.
We started on September 26, 1894 and arrived there at Cordell on October 25, 1894, county seat of Washita County. Went over twelve miles from Cordell to my brothers. He had moved there the year before. I looked around awhile to find a piece of land to file on. I found out that a quarter section of land joining my brothers had been filed on by a railroad man who worked in the Eastern part of the state , and did not really want it and it was subject to contest and my brother and my neighbors advised me to contest it. So I did, and after I got it through, I filed on it. Before the seven years were up I proved up on it. I made a dugout on it the first year and moved in it. It was hard times the first year and not much of a paradise for two or three years. Sometimes the centipedes would come in the dugout, and tarantulas. We had a hard time the first summer. I raised quite a lot of Kaffir corn and maize that year, and sweet potatoes and watermelons. For a long time our main food was Kaffir corn and it was ground in a coffee mill, and melons. Had to go seventy-five miles to do our trading to El Reno. Just before we moved in the dugout the youngest girl was taken down with the fever and lay at the point
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Of death for several days with a doctor no nearer than twelve miles. When she was first taken down the only doctor lived at El Reno, seventy-five miles away. Had to wait until he came back. One night in November a sudden change took place. The wind blew from the North, what the people called a Northerner and our county judge came over the next morning, he lived about a half mile from there. He came over to see how my little daughter was, he generally came every morning. He said his son who lived about a mile from there had a pint of whiskey the day before, and for me to go over and get it and to hurry as fast as I could. He was very uneasy, she looked so bad that morning, such a change in the weather. I put on my overcoat and started, ran there almost all the way there and back. Then we gave her a little of the whiskey at a time. The doctor came home in a few days and I sent for him to come at once, and in a few days she changed for the better.
I was staying at my brother’s at the time, after she was able to move, I moved her into the dugout on the homestead. When I moved her, only half of the roof was on. Made a sod fireplace. She had to stay in bed for some time after I moved her. In the spring I began to break up ground for Kaffir corn, also planted a lot of maise and beans, dropped it in the furrow. The girls dropped it in every third furrow.
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When the girls were dropping it they would often run across centipedes and tarantulas. Sometimes I would step on it with my bare feet. There came a dry spell in May, making it too dry to break prairie, and they got up quite an excitement about gold being discovered on South Boggy about twenty miles away to the Southwest of us. Then myself and my brother and two neighbors concluded we would go out and see for ourselves as we could not do any work in the ground, it was so dry. Got there that night, on the road we met some returning, and they had a specimen of the gold they had picked up on the ground, they were quite excited over them. Someone had carried them there and throwed them down. They had picked them up in some mining country. They thought it would create some excitement. The man who started the excitement was our county surveyer, by the name of Williams. It was on his homestead and by getting the gold fever started, thought he could sell out for a big price. We stayed there that night, next morning we started back after staking us out each a claim out in the sand hills. It was a humbug from start to finish. He claimed he followed it from the Witchita Mountains. He went on home that day. That was the last gold excitement in Oklahoma.
We had some rain in a few days so we could go to breaking prairie and put in about five acres of beans and black-eyes peas on the sod. Times there were very hard and it was necessary for me to go to a great many towns to sell them in the fall. All of the towns in that country being small, made it hard to sell.
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Sometimes I would take beans to town to sell and sometimes corn. In the winter I would go to the Indian camp to trade Kaffir corn and Indian corn for clothing, and trade for wood and other things we could use on the farm. The Indians had the most of the timberland, the most of the land along the streams were all taken by the Indians on the Washita River. Large bodies of Indians would camp on the river the most of the winter in heavy bodies of timber. The first that settled up the Cheyenne County saw a great many hardships, a great many of them were folks that had been unfortunate in other states, people settled there from almost every state in the Union. Texas furnished a great many more than most of the states, and the Western states furnished a great part. Many soldiers settled in that country, both from the Union army, also a great many from the Southern army. They all made good citizens and improved the country rapidly.
Had a storm cellar for protection from the cyclones. After a few years we got a railroad within twenty miles of us and started a town called Weatherford. The first two or three years we hauled our wheat to El Reno, sold good wheat for forty-four cents a bushel, after hauling it that distance. We had to sell it in Weatherford for forty to fifty cents a bushel, but everywhere else was very cheap at that time.
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Flour was from a dollar and a half to two and a half a hundred, good salted pork from six to eight cents a pound, beef from four to eight cents a pound. Clothing was very cheap, all kinds of groceries was also cheap, horses and cattle were also very cheap, hogs on foot two cents a pound, wagons and all kinds of implements very cheap. Wages very low. I have seen big stalwart men work for fifty cents a day on a farm. The people that settled up that part of the country at that time were very healthy pioneers. Many had passed through the Civil War, or in other words the war between the states , and were prepared to stand the hardships, in later years the settling was done by the Germans. In two or three years we got the railroad within about eight miles, then we began to get a little more for our wheat, and in two more years we got plenty of railroads, almost at our door and still got more for our wheat. The first years I was in Oklahoma I raised good corn on upland. I hauled it ten miles and sold it at fifteen cents a bushel. Good corn, it weighed heavier than the northern corn. I have hauled it eighteen miles and sold it for twenty-two cents per bushel of later years. It failed some on the upland and sometimes on the bottom land. Hot winds would sometimes come and go through the field, taking quite a wide strip. The green bugs took the most of our wheat one year when we first settled there. The first two or three years the fleas were bad, we used to hold meetings in the sod school house, and the fleas sure worked on us pretty lively. They did not exempt the preacher.
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The first summer I was there a man living in a dugout about three miles from me was quite a hand to shoot dogs. He shot a dog as he was passing a house one day that belonged to a German. They brought him up before the court and fined him. He swore he would kill them, so one day in the fall of the year he was passing the old sod school house, got down a little ways from there in front of a house and this man met him. They were both on horses, this man being a witness against him in the suit and he swore revenge against him and another German. When he met him he commenced shooting at him. After he shot him he got off his horse and begged for his life, but he shot him twice more to be sure he had him killed. It was about a hundred yards from the school and the children saw him shoot him. He then went about a mile from there and met another German that had been a witness against him and shot him. The first one that he shot lived until the next day. They got him home and he died in his wife’s arms. One more German that he wanted to get left the country so he did not get him. He was running a sorghum mill, he was so scared he left the mill and his harness on the ground, and everything scattered around and started for Cloud Chief to get out a warrant for the man. It was the county seat at that time. He did not make any more sorghum molasses that year. He sold out and left the country. I went to Cloud Chief that day to get some kegs to put molasses in. I did not know anything about the trouble until I got into town and the first man I met was the county judge.
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He asked me about the trouble, he said he had just made out a warrant. I told him I had not heard anything about it. I came past to leave the kegs that evening but no one was there. Things were scattered around. Looked like a cyclone had passed through there. Most of the people in that country had started out to find the man who had done the killing but never did find him. The Germans of that part of the country carried their guns to church for some time. The next day they held the funeral, it being Sunday. It was a sad affair, they buried both of the men in one grave. They were the first that were buried in that cemetery. The man that did the shooting came from Texas, he had been practicing shooting at marks for some time. This cemetery was started like most of the cemeteries in the Western country, the first man being shot.
The county seat was moved from Cloud Chief to Cordell, the center of the county. Cordell had become quite a good sized town. A good farming country around it. Since then a town had sprung up on Indian Allotments about eighteen miles North, known as Clinton. The Frisco railroad running through it, and the CRI and P road and Orient railroad and a road called the C. C. W. Railroad running about fifty miles from there. A town called Bessie sprung up about eight miles South of there. They had a hard time to get around to build Clinton as it was built on Indian Allotment. They have several wholesale houses there now and it has become quite a center. They had a population of about thirty-five hundred in five years. A few years ago they paid an Indian squaw sixty thousand dollars for eighty acres of land to extend the town and someday it will become quite a city. A clean place, it is the state capitol. The capitol was Guthrie, they had quite a time of moving it. The governor at that time moved the records in the night , in an automobile. Tulsa is a nice city in the middle of the oil fields about a hundred miles Northeast of Clinton. Enid is another fine town a few hours drive from Tulsa and a fine farming country, about as nice as any in the state. Oklahoma has made greater progress than any other state for its age. Its fine cities and well improved farms, etc. is settled up by the most industrious class of people. At one time it was included in the great American Desert, it has been made to blossom as the rose it is, calling the attention of men with capital in there for starting stock ranches on its beautiful and fertile prairies, bring the best of stock and gradually doing away with the long-horn. The Texas long-horn has disappeared, not one to be seen. When this country was first opened up for settlement great herds of long-horn cattle grazed on the praires.
71 & 72
Jne. H. Segar was the man that brought the Cheyenne Indians down there from Eastern Colorado and Western Nebraska. He was an old soldier of the Civil War. A number of years later congress opened it up for settlement at so much an acre and allotted all of the tribe young and old a quarter section apiece, along the streams where there was timber and the balance was thrown open to the settlers. In two or three years afterward, Dennis Flynn, a congressman, introduced a bill into congress to bring it in under The Homestead Act. It was passed so all got their homes free. When it was first settled there were great buffalo trails over the prairies leading to the streams and buffalo heads and horns and bones lying around on the ground. When a plow turned them under, large fields of wheat and corn and cotton and alfalfa and cattle and hogs, and fine orchards were made. Sometimes we are visited by cyclones, but we all have good cyclone cellars built of concrete. Sometimes hot winds come, but we go on with a determination where there is a will there is a way. Most of the years we raise abundance of stuff. The years of 1917-18 were pretty dry. It cut the crops short in a great many places, but we made out alright. We have a great sub-soil in most parts of the state that holds the moisture so well.
About 1915, I sold my farm, then I concluded that I would travel a little more. I had made several trips to HotSprings, Arkansas, then I concluded to go to the World’s Fair at San Francisco. I started from Clinton, took the southern route. Stayed in San Francisco and took in the sights, but the grandest sight I saw there was the Odd Fellows marching. It was grand seeing all the different nations there. Then I took the northern route home, then I concluded to go to Florida. At Stillwater, Oklahoma I found a brother-in-law I had not seen in forty years. He was glad to see me. Then I went to Jacksonville, Florida, and on to St. Cloud, the old soldiers home and they seemed to be having a good time. I stayed there eight weeks then went to Tampa. On the way I saw them from the car windows hauling great loads of oranges to put on the ground for fertilizer.
Thereafter I spend most of my winters in Florida, the warm sunshine was so comfortable from the freezing climates north.

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Voorouders (en nakomelingen) van John Joshua Corbin

Joshua Corbin
1757-1851
Rhoda Matilda Wood
1763-1832

John Joshua Corbin
1844-1927

1877

Ida L Felkner
± 1859-1885

Minnie Grace Corbin
1880-1946
Jennie Corbin
1878-????
Nellie A. Corbin
1881-1950

    Toon totale kwartierstaat

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    Visualiseer een andere verwantschap

    Bronnen

    1. Find A Grave Union Hatchett Cemetery, Bessie, Washita Oklahoma, USA / Find A Grave
    2. Florida Death Index, 1877-1998, Ancestry.com, Database online.
      Record for John J Corbin
      / Ancestry.com
    3. Find A Grave Saint Joseph Memorial Park, Saint Joseph, Buchanan, Missouri, USA
      Record for John Joshua Corbin
      / Find A Grave
    4. 1900 United States Federal Census
    5. Iowa, Select Marriages Index, 1758-1996, Ancestry.com
      Record for John Corbin
      / Ancestry.com
    6. U.S., Headstone Applications for Military Veterans, 1925-1963, Ancestry.com
      Record for John Joshua Corbin
      / www.ancestry.com
    7. 1880 United States Federal Census / Janis G. Winkler
    8. 1850 United States Federal Census; Courtesy of Diane (Young) Decker
    9. 1880 United States Federal Census
    10. Hutchin Genealogy, Janet L. (Dick) McMullin, Deceased

    Historische gebeurtenissen

    Geboortedag 12 januari 1844

    • De temperatuur op 12 januari 1844 lag rond de 1,0 °C. De wind kwam overheersend uit het oost-zuid-oosten. Typering van het weer: betrokken mist. Bron: KNMI
    • De Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden werd in 1794-1795 door de Fransen veroverd onder leiding van bevelhebber Charles Pichegru (geholpen door de Nederlander Herman Willem Daendels); de verovering werd vergemakkelijkt door het dichtvriezen van de Waterlinie; Willem V moest op 18 januari 1795 uitwijken naar Engeland (en van daaruit in 1801 naar Duitsland); de patriotten namen de macht over van de aristocratische regenten en proclameerden de Bataafsche Republiek; op 16 mei 1795 werd het Haags Verdrag gesloten, waarmee ons land een vazalstaat werd van Frankrijk; in 3.1796 kwam er een Nationale Vergadering; in 1798 pleegde Daendels een staatsgreep, die de unitarissen aan de macht bracht; er kwam een nieuwe grondwet, die een Vertegenwoordigend Lichaam (met een Eerste en Tweede Kamer) instelde en als regering een Directoire; in 1799 sloeg Daendels bij Castricum een Brits-Russische invasie af; in 1801 kwam er een nieuwe grondwet; bij de Vrede van Amiens (1802) kreeg ons land van Engeland zijn koloniën terug (behalve Ceylon); na de grondwetswijziging van 1805 kwam er een raadpensionaris als eenhoofdig gezag, namelijk Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck (van 31 oktober 1761 tot 25 maart 1825).
    • In het jaar 1844: Bron: Wikipedia
      • Nederland had zo'n 3,1 miljoen inwoners.
      • 23 mei » Een jonge man, die later bekend werd als de Báb, kondigt in Shiraz (Perzië) de op handen zijnde komst aan van de door alle volkeren der aarde verwachte Boodschapper van God.
      • 24 mei » Het eerste telegram ooit wordt door Samuel Morse van Baltimore naar Washington D.C. verstuurd, met als inhoud: "What hath God wrought?".
      • 15 juni » Aan Charles Goodyear wordt een octrooi verleend voor het vulkaniseren van rubber.
      • 27 juni » Joseph Smith, leider van de Mormonen, en zijn broer Hyrum worden in de gevangenis te Carthage, Illinois, door tegenstanders van de Mormoonse Kerk gelyncht.
      • 1 augustus » De Zoologischer Garten Berlin, de eerste Duitse dierentuin, wordt geopend.
      • 22 oktober » William Miller voorspelt dat de Wederkomst van Jezus op deze dag zou plaatsvinden. Toen de voorspelling niet uitkwam, leidde dit tot de "Great Disappointment" ("Grote Teleurstelling").

    Trouwdag 11 oktober 1877

    • De temperatuur op 11 oktober 1877 lag rond de 11,9 °C. Er was 3 mm neerslag. De winddruk was 16 kgf/m2 en kwam overheersend uit het west-noord-westen. De luchtdruk bedroeg 76 cm kwik. De relatieve luchtvochtigheid was 60%. Bron: KNMI
    • Koning Willem III (Huis van Oranje-Nassau) was van 1849 tot 1890 vorst van Nederland (ook wel Koninkrijk der Nederlanden genoemd)
    • Van 27 augustus 1874 tot 3 november 1877 was er in Nederland het kabinet Heemskerk - Van Lijnden van Sandenburg met als eerste ministers Mr. J. Heemskerk Azn. (conservatief) en Mr. C.Th. baron Van Lijnden van Sandenburg (AR).
    • Van 3 november 1877 tot 20 augustus 1879 was er in Nederland het kabinet Kappeijne van de Coppello met als eerste minister Mr. J. Kappeijne van de Coppello (liberaal).
    • In het jaar 1877: Bron: Wikipedia
      • Nederland had zo'n 4,0 miljoen inwoners.
      • 20 juni » Alexander Graham Bell zet de eerste commerciële telefoondienst op in Hamilton, Ontario.
      • 18 augustus » De Amerikaanse astronoom Asaph Hall ontdekt de manen van Mars. Hij noemt ze Phobos en Deimos.
      • 16 november » Paus Pius IX roept de Heilige Franciscus van Sales (1567-1622) uit tot kerkleraar.
      • 29 november » Thomas Edison demonstreert voor het eerst zijn fonograaf.
      • 6 december » De eerste editie van The Washington Post verschijnt.
      • 6 december » Thomas Edison maakt de eerste geluidsopname.

    Dag van overlijden 16 maart 1927

    • De temperatuur op 16 maart 1927 lag tussen -2.7 °C en 12,0 °C en was gemiddeld 4,6 °C. Er was 8,8 uur zonneschijn (74%). De gemiddelde windsnelheid was 3 Bft (matige wind) en kwam overheersend uit het zuid-oosten. Bron: KNMI
    • Koningin Wilhelmina (Huis van Oranje-Nassau) was van 1890 tot 1948 vorst van Nederland (ook wel Koninkrijk der Nederlanden genoemd)
    • Van 8 maart 1926 tot 10 augustus 1929 was er in Nederland het kabinet De Geer I met als eerste minister Jonkheer mr. D.J. de Geer (CHU).
    • In het jaar 1927: Bron: Wikipedia
      • Nederland had zo'n 7,5 miljoen inwoners.
      • 14 maart » Joop Wolff, Nederlands verzetsstrijder, journalist en communistisch politicus († 2007)
      • 9 mei » Canberra vervangt Melbourne als hoofdstad van Australië
      • 21 mei » Charles Lindbergh voltooit de eerste non-stop solovlucht over de Atlantische Oceaan.
      • 17 juli » De Luxemburgse wielrenner Nicolas Frantz wint de 21e editie van de Ronde van Frankrijk.
      • 23 augustus » In Boston worden de Italiaans-Amerikaanse anarchisten Sacco en Vanzetti terechtgesteld.
      • 20 november » Het Argentijns voetbalelftal wint voor de derde keer de Copa América door in de voorlaatste wedstrijd met 3-2 te winnen van titelverdediger Uruguay.

    Dag van begraven 18 maart 1927

    • De temperatuur op 18 maart 1927 lag tussen 1,8 °C en 14,2 °C en was gemiddeld 6,6 °C. Er was 1,3 uur zonneschijn (11%). De gemiddelde windsnelheid was 2 Bft (zwakke wind) en kwam overheersend uit het zuid-westen. Bron: KNMI
    • Koningin Wilhelmina (Huis van Oranje-Nassau) was van 1890 tot 1948 vorst van Nederland (ook wel Koninkrijk der Nederlanden genoemd)
    • Van 8 maart 1926 tot 10 augustus 1929 was er in Nederland het kabinet De Geer I met als eerste minister Jonkheer mr. D.J. de Geer (CHU).
    • In het jaar 1927: Bron: Wikipedia
      • Nederland had zo'n 7,5 miljoen inwoners.
      • 13 februari » Oprichting van de Colombiaanse voetbalclub América de Cali.
      • 20 mei » Saoedi-Arabië wordt onafhankelijk van het Verenigd Koninkrijk.
      • 13 juni » Op Fifth Avenue wordt een ticker-tape parade gehouden ter ere van Charles Lindbergh die enkele weken eerder de eerste non-stop solovlucht over de Atlantische Oceaan had uitgevoerd.
      • 5 september » In Delft wordt het Waterloopkundig Laboratorium geopend.
      • 31 oktober » Openstelling van de oude spoorweghefbrug De Hef over de Koningshaven in Rotterdam.
      • 14 december » Irak wordt onafhankelijk van het Verenigd Koninkrijk.
    

    Dezelfde geboorte/sterftedag

    Bron: Wikipedia

    Bron: Wikipedia


    Over de familienaam Corbin

    • Bekijk de informatie die Genealogie Online heeft over de familienaam Corbin.
    • Bekijk de informatie die Open Archieven heeft over Corbin.
    • Bekijk in het Wie (onder)zoekt wie? register wie de familienaam Corbin (onder)zoekt.

    De publicatie Descendants Clement Corbin is opgesteld door .neem contact op
    Wilt u bij het overnemen van gegevens uit deze stamboom alstublieft een verwijzing naar de herkomst opnemen:
    Joan Hamilton, "Descendants Clement Corbin", database, Genealogie Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/descendants-clement-corbin/I82161.php : benaderd 29 april 2024), "John Joshua Corbin (1844-1927)".