The Story of My Family 

and 

Pioneering Experiences 

in Western Nebraska

BY Minnie Belle (Smith) McGaughey - Spring 1960

I was born in Meigs county Ohio, October 6th 1881, being the last of three daughters of Giles Henry and Francena Hull Smith. My paternal grandmother who lived with us for many years has told us many times of her father's family who came from Pennsylvania and bought 300 acres of government land in Southeast Ohio at $1.00 per acre, heavily wooded and they had to clear the land to have farming land. There were twelve children, five sons and seven daughters. Grandmother Smith's maiden name was Hannah Hill. She married a nephew of her oldest sister's husband, Josiah Smith. His name was also Josiah. Grandmother had three sons of whom my father was the oldest; Giles, Furman and Nelson.

My father was eight years old when his father died. He was a Union soldier and died from a dysentery contracted in the service. He left the family a small unencumbered farm but little else. Grandma was twenty eight years old when widowed. It was before the time of soldiers pensions so she struggled along and by the help of my father then only eight years old and some help from kind neighbors she managed to get along, but misfortune struck them and their house burned down and all that was in it. The insurance built another quite comfortable house and by hard work and gifts from friends they got together equipment to start housekeeping again. It was in this house in Meigs County, Ohio, that we three girls were born.

Times were hard in those days, the farm was small and the chore of continually grubbing out stumps and clearing off stones from the farm land was discouraging. It was at the time when the urge to "go west" seemed to strike the young farmers and my father got the fever to try his hand at homesteading. So in February 1886 he went to western Nebraska and filed on one hundred sixty acres of bare prairie, not a tree or a stone in sight. He left mother and us three girls and grandmother and her brother Samuel, who, unfortunately was a deaf mute, in a little cottage in Chester, but as soon as the weather was fit he sent for us; so we and father's brother Furman and his family of three children and his wife Lizzie Mooney Smith came also. We traveled in what they called an emigrant train.

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In April my mother received a letter from father, and while I do not have the letter verbatim, this could have been something like it. "Dear Fannie and all: (the "all" referred to his mother and us three girls of course.) This is late February; almost spring now but one wouldn't have thought so last week; We had one of the worst blizzards in years, so they say; it snowed and blew for three days. I think I told you before that four of us homesteaders are all living together here in Jake Huddlestone's little dugout house. It's fairly comfortable but too small for the bunch of us. That is, it was comfortable until the blizzard came, and the snow blew in thru every little crevice in the door and around the windows. We had food enough by using strict economy and fuel but was getting pretty low by the time the storm was over. It sure was a chore to dig ourselves out when it ceased. We had to pile the snow right in the room until we could make a tunnel and crawl out, then we hurried to shovel the snow out of the entry and off the steps, and get the snow out of the room before it all melted. I have to walk two miles to my homestead every morning to work. It's slow going, with no team and just one pair of hands, but things are coming along. I'm digging away at our house, a "dugout" as they call them here in Nebraska.

It won't be pretty but the wind won't blow thru the walls, Ha! ha! I wish I could describe the beautiful scene here that morning when we shoveled ourselves out after the storm. The sun shining on a white world of snow, no trees or shrubs to catch it, only low sagebrush and clumps of grass where little drifts piled up and rippled away, almost like wavy hair.

I'll be glad to have you all out here with me. It's a nice country, and just think, a hundred and sixty acres of my own! We can make it here if in any place it seems to me. Anyway I won't have to grub stumps or carry off stones from my fields here.

Don't start west until the weather gets settled, maybe in May, and ship to Benkelman it's a little closer than Ogallala. I'll hire a team and wagon and meet you there.

I will close now. Most Sincerely, Giles."

Perhaps right here I should tell what I can about mother's people. Her parents came from Athens, Ohio. In fact mother and some of the older children were born in Athens. Her father, Silas Hull, came from Germany with his parents. He was only six weeks old when they left the old country. Her mother's name was Harriet Cathers or something like that. They had six children, four girls and two boys. Their oldest was a son and he was given the name of his father "Silas." Then there was Elizabeth, Miriam, Francena (my mother, they always called her Fanny) and Mary and Charles, whom they always called Charley. Grandfather Hull owned a small farm in Wigs County and raised his family there. He and grandmother both passed away on the farm where they had lived so long.

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THE TRAIN RIDE

We girls were excited and thrilled at the thought of a real train trip to western Nebraska and tried in our most persuasive way to make mother feel the excitement, too. After a lot of hard work on her part and the paying of farewell visits to the many relatives and friends, we were ready to go. There were eleven of us in the company. My father's brother Uncle Furman and his wife and three children, who were quite small, grandmother Smith and her brother Uncle Sam Hill, who was deaf and dumb. Grandmother had taken him because she felt her brother Robert was not giving him the care he should have. Great grandfather Hill had given Uncle Rob a farm for his care of this unfortunate brother and grandmother felt that they imposed on him too much. These were to go, with the members of our family; my mother Fannie, Zillah my oldest sister was 4 at that time, my sister Alta 6 and I the youngest 4 1/2. Uncle Furman's oldest daughter Alice was nine months older than I, and cousin Giles was nine months younger than I and their baby Lola was two years old.

I can see in my mind now how quaint and old fashioned we girls looked in our long hand-knitted stockings which were black and our high topped shoes. Dark dresses with tight belted waist and our little black velvet hats or caps set straight on our heads like pill boxes and our long braids hanging down. Only sister Alta had long chestnut curls and if I remember her little hat was blue (they were worn in those days.)

The trip was wonderful to us, as children it was the first time we had seen running water from faucets and indoor toilets, which were in the station at Pomeroy, Ohio. Yes, and it was the first time we had seen colored people. There were a lot of them working round the depot and the train.

I wish I had words to describe the old emigrant train. There were no luxuries, just the meager necessities. The seats were plain and hard, no upholstering, a small iron heating stove stood in the corner of the coach at the front. No floor covering of any kind and how it did rattle and bounce over those rails, but we were traveling and making amazing progress so we thought. I remember as we came to the Mississippi River, it was in the night but they awakened us children so we could see the giant river, for we might not ever see it again. Well, it was beautiful. The full moon was shining on the water and it looked so dark and foreboding only where the path of bright moon light shone on it.

At one stop they took on a new consignment of travelers, this made the small train so crowded that my mother gave up her seat to an older woman and stood in the aisle along with many others. This was in the night and ere long I became tired standing and mother took me in her arms and stood holding me asleep for hours.

Well, we finally arrived, not at our destination but as far as the train was to take us. This was the little pioneer town of Benkelman on the Republican River. How happy we were to see father; we called him "Pa" of course, but could hardly believe that this bearded man in his rough attire could be he.

It was a long dreary treck the forty or so miles across the barren prairie to our homestead. (It was the second day of May 1886 when we arrived on our own premises). Father had borrowed a team and wagon and had to take some lumber for a roof for our dugout and some tarpaper, a little iron cook stove, a few needed utensils and the baggage we brought which consisted of a few clothes, grandmother's feather bed, some pillows, blankets and some hand woven carpet. All this with eleven people was an overload for one poor old team so it was necessary for us all, including the children, to take turns walking. So traveling was slow. I don't recall how long it took us to get up to the homestead. We staid all night at least at another pioneer home on the southern line of Chase Co. We arrived in the evening at our homesite, but no home, only a hole in the ground with no roof but we had carpets and blankets and we made a tent from the wagon to the ground on either side and managed to bed us down for the night. The next morning as we were looking around we went down into the dugout where mother was preparing breakfast over an open fire. Baby Lola, smart as a whip, looked in surprise with wide eyes at a pile of buffalo chips near the fire and said in disgust, "Why you've got kack in your house." She had got the idea that it was to be the house, tho it didn't look one bit like any she had seen and the idea of cooking with a buffalo chip fire was unheard of to her then. As days came and went they got to be a very common sight in every wood box and door yard for there was no wood, nothing but grass. Buffalo bones and the chips were far more satisfactory as they did not burn up with a flash but were quite good for heat and held the fire longer and many an evening was spent sitting by the little old cook stove poking in the chips and rattling down the ashes.

Many were the stories told and incidents related of our old home in Ohio which no doubt has helped to fix some things in my mind. Many Indian tales were told and reports that the Indians were on the war path were coming our way which would almost cause our hair to stand on end. But they never came.

Herds of antelope and wild ponies were seen now and then but no buffalo (or bison) and no Indians for which we can be thankful. A rancher farther west and south of us (wild horse Berry) used to run down the wild horses and lasso them, then break them to ride and to drive, then sell them to the homesteaders, for horses were in demand and hard to get. It was a profitable business for him and helped out the settlers. They told that his method of catching them was to keep several horses ready and start by hitching one to a cart, something like a racing sulkey, single out the one from the herd that he chose to capture and chase him on a dog trot until his horse was tired, then another horse would be taken from his reserve and continue the chase until the horse was exhausted. Then, before he could resist he was bridled and saddled and allowed to rest with his trappings on and would be continually harnessed or saddled every day until he became domesticated. Some were very obstinate but others soon became faithful animals and were used by the settlers for a number of years.

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GETTING SETTLED

Our Uncle Furman took the homestead joining ours on the east and built his home just about an eighth of a mile up on a slight slope from us. They had a dugout and a sod barn as we did. Their family kept increasing until they had nine children; Alice, Giles, Lola, William, Bessie and Dessie (twins), John, Clarence and Ray.

Uncle Nelson (Pete) Smith, my father's youngest brother and family came out the second year after we came. My grandmother had taken a homestead about a mile south in order to reserve it for him lest all the land near might be taken up. They built a little sod house for her and a chicken house and she and Uncle Sam and my oldest sister, Zillah, lived there for over a year, but as soon as Uncle Pete came she gladly relinquished it to him. She was not very brave about living out on the prairie where the rattlesnakes crawled around the soddies and coyotes howled at night and terrific thunder storms came up in summer and deep snows, sometimes blizzards, in the winter. When she gave up her home she and Uncle Sam came to live with us, making seven in our family. The old dugout was 16 by 24, partitioned into rooms by curtains. Not much room for that many people but we had a home-made trundle bed that rolled away under the other bed so we managed to make out.

Uncle Pete and Aunt Georgia had four boys when they came out, Edson, Winfield, David and Seldon, but their family increased regularly until there were eight, Josephine, Chloe, Emma and Peter.

There were twenty cousins in the three Smith families and we really had some lively times when we all got together, but that wasn't too often in those days for they were busy days and no one thought it possible to stop for a whole day for picnic or party.

My first memory of us all getting together, and then it was just the cousins, was at a Christmas party and tree at our house. My oldest sister, Zillah, had gotten education enough to pass the teachers' examination required in the county and had been teaching a year or so. She planned the whole thing and from her meager wages bought each one of us a small gift.

The tree was the big problem, where to find a tree. There was a tree claim near and the trees had been planted entirely too close so they permitted us to cut out one of the runtiest ones. It was not an evergreen, it was an ash with bare gray boughs; it wasn't more than three feet tall. It was up to us to dress it up to look like a real Christmas tree, if we could. We had some cotton batting and some popcorn strings and I think some paper chains made from old wall paper catalogues, no lights or candles, but it looked wonderful to us who had never seen a real Christmas tree anyway; as I remember we sang songs and spoke pieces and had a real treat of candy and popcorn and each one a gift,thanks to a very dear self sacrificing sister.

For a number of years my father and Uncle Furman always worked in a partnership with horses, machinery and work, helping each other until they were able to afford the machinery and tools to work separately. I remember one year, I think it was in the summer of 1891, we had a wonderful crop and father bought a McCormack binder. They were just coming in, something new and wonderful. He cut his own wheat and Uncle Furman's and Uncle Pete's and for some of the neighbors. We felt that hard times were gone forever, or hoped so of course.

The next year the rains came and another bountiful wheat crop was almost ready to harvest. Father went to Champion one afternoon to get the binding twide ready to cut the wheat which stood high and beautiful almost ready to harvest. Mother and grandmother had ridden with him as far as Uncle Pete's and left us girls to play with Uncle Furman's children. We were playing house in a weed patch which had grown up big and lush. We pulled or tramped down the weeds leaving tall ones standing to make the walls of our houses. We had a store, using lots of imagination. We had herbs for commodities and were having loads of fun, too busy to notice the approaching storm. Suddenly Aunt Lizzie called to us and said, "Come to the house quick its going to hail, hurry!" Of course we ran as fast as we could. The older girls ran to our house to shut the windows and door and shut the little chickens in their coop, then ran as hard as they could. The storm was almost on us when they got into the dugout. The roar of the approaching hail storm was terrific and so was the terrible thunder and lightning. It was almost pitch dark save when the flashes of lightning came. The wind blew and it rained and hailed first from one direction then another. Uncle Furman tried to hold pillows against the East window to keep the panes from breaking and showering us all with glass but occasionally a pane would crash and glass and hail came flying down.

We were all huddled in one corner on a bed screaming and crying, expecting to be killed. A big hail struck a knot in a board of the roof and came bouncing through - hail, knot and all. I remember the cat ran and pushed the hail, playing around with its paw. The storm must have lasted an hour. It would seem to be almost over and would come again from another direction. I doubt if we youngsters were ever so scared in our lives.

When it finally ceased and we could get out and look around, there was no lovely wheat and rye standing. It had been completely mowed down and pounded into the ground. I remember running thru the rye before the storm and it was higher than my head. There was one thing to be thankful for that night, we were all alive and unhurt.

Father had gotten back to Uncle Pete's a mile away but they saw the storm coming and waited until it had passed to come on. It didn't hail at Uncle Pete's so when he got home and saw the devastation he was almost crushed. He had depended so much on this wheat crop to pay debts and put us through the winter. Well, we got thru the winter some how and the debts were finally paid but not that year, of course. The corn was beaten down but the rain that came with the hail helped to revive it and if I remember correctly we did have a little nubbeny corn. They planted turnips, squash and pumpkins which came on to help to supply food for the winter. Mother used to say, "Nothing is so bad that it couldn't be worse" and she always seemed to be right.

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INCIDENTS THAT I REMEMBER

There were no buffalo roaming our prairies by the time we got out to that part of the state but their carcasses were still there. Bones bleaching in the sun and buffalo chips bleached white were plentiful. There were no herds of cattle yet, so we roamed the prairies picking up buffalo chips for fuel.

I remember the first winter, the evenings were long and nothing to read or do to pass the time away and father had gathered up buffalo horns and would sit scraping them with a piece of glass until they shone like they were varnished. I think he had in mind to make a hat rack out of them but he never did get it done. They were around the house for years but never were utilized.

In those early years, I think at least one year, we had no well and had to haul our water from a spring down on the Frenchman two miles away. They had a barrel fixed on a home-made sled and hitched an ox or pony to it and would go for water about every other day. Of course it was great fun to go to the spring. We could have a really cool drink that day anyway if they permitted us to go and usually some of us children did go.

I recall on one occasion we three girls and Uncle Furman's three oldest went. Uncle let Giles drive and we were walking ahead and talking and having a great time, when suddenly I saw a big rattle snake coiled and right in the path in front of sister Alta. One step more and she would put her foot right on it. I was almost paralyzed. I couldn't scream or even speak. I just reached out to grab her but Uncle Furman saw it and yelled and grabbed her and pulled her back. Of course he killed the snake but all the pleasure had gone out of that trip. I was so weak I could hardly walk for a while. But how thankful we all were that she did not get bitten.

When we did not get rain enough that water would stand in the lagoons we would have to either take the live stock to the river or haul water for them. I think it was the second summer that we had lots of rain and the lagoons were full for a long time and father fixed a filter with lime and charcoal to cleanse the water and we used lagoon water for house use to save those long trips to Rock Spring.

We finally hired a neighbor to dig us a well. I can remember that so well. They would let him down in the hole with a windless and then as he dug the dirt loose they pulled it up in a large bucket with the windless. There was no guess work about getting water, the only thing to guess about was how deep will we have to go. It was "sheet water" not veins like in the East, but the depth varied from 15 to 65 feet or maybe more. Well they got water at 25 feet but dug on down four or five feet to have a good well. And it was a good well, the water pure clean and cool and how wonderful it was after water that would have to stand so long and got so warm.

Grandmother was a very nervous person. One night we had a downpour of rain which came so fast it couldn't run off, so it began to run down the entry-way and make a puddle on the kitchen floor. When she saw the water running in she threw up her hands and said, "0 mercy! mercy! I wonder if there is danger of this hole filling up and drowning us all. Of course that scared us youngsters and a wail of despair went up. It didn't fill up that night or ever.

One spring when the wind blew so continuously and fiercely, I think it was the same year that the wheat all blew out, I remember waking from a nap and seeing mother sitting on the edge of the bed. The air was full of dust and sand and the floor, beds, table and everything completely covered with dirt. Mother was crying and I felt as though the world was coming to an end. Mother never cried, at least we did not see her cry, but this was a discouraging spring and she had finally given up to tears, not intending that anyone should know, as no one was in the house but myself and perhaps she thot I was asleep. Then I awakened and found her crying I sure was sunk. She brightened up and tried to cheer me.

Mother had great faith in God and often repeated Psalms 37:3 "Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed." That was her favorite verse. Well, we were fed and clothed; we never failed to have food, tho not what we might have desired but what we had, and sometimes it was corn bread and black eyed peas. Clothes, too. I remember how I longed for pretty clothes and nice shoes, but we had the plainest and most serviceable things we could get. Father was a very practical man.

Another thing that was a real menace in those early days were prairie fires, how we feared and dreaded them; one came within a quarter of a mile of our premises but quick plowing of furrows along the north line of our fence stopped it. In the evenings many times after it had become dark one could look away in the distance and see the flicker and gleam of some fire that had spent itself and the embers were slowly dying. If there was a strong wind, and so often there was, the head fire would rage until it came to the river or some wide plowed field. All one could do to save their premises was to burn a strip around them or plow around them and often times the fences would hinder that. It was someone's back fire that had gotten out of hand that came so near getting us.

We often had terrific thunder storms if it was a wet year, but what fun it was for a big rain to go wading in the big lagoons that were found all around in that country. They claimed they were made by buffalo flocking to the little depressions. Water would stand right after a hard rain and their tramping and wallowing in them packed the ground in the bottom until water would stand for days and sometimes weeks. So with thunder and hail storms, winds and terrible rains, droughts, grasshoppers, blizzards and great snow drifts, prairie fires etc. with fears and dreads, we lived, but yet there were lots of pleasant things too, such as lush grass and beautiful prairie flowers, birds and baby rabbits often found all snug in their little nests; we had fun sliding down the snow drifts on our sleds, home-made of course. The only complaint was the snow drifts were not long enough for long runs, and there were no hills to slide down.

I remember one long snowy winter we had a three day blizzard and it packed the snow so hard and drifted until the cattle could walk right out over the wire fences or one could walk up the drifts onto the roofs. There was a big drift right in front of the old dugout and we girls got the idea of making a play house in that drift. We shoveled out a room with holes for windows and we shoveled around, packed snow and made table, chairs or seats etc. It was a lot of fun but my how we did work. It didn't last long for spring was coming and the warm sun soon melted it all away. I made myself sick working in the snow.

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THE FIRST YEARS ON THE OLD HOMESTEAD

At last the roof was on and the rag carpets laid over the earthen floors which had first been covered with grass. Father made bed steads, table and cupboard out of rough lumber and we began to live. Uncle Furman's lived with us until they could get their dugout made. Crops were not so good the first year and were very small because of lack of seed and also of farm equipment and horses. Father's first team was oxen, two lumberly big animals. We called them Buck and Bright; they were faithful animals but slow and plodding and were exchanged in time for a team of ponies, then they in turn for a team of horses. We called them Fred and Nell and they served the family for years, doing the farming and hauling or whatever was required of them. Our first cow as a large white animal with one crumpled horn, we called her Old White, she was a good milker. The next one we called Spot.

I remember a laughable incident when I was still rather small. I was definitely required to wear my sunbonnet when out in the sum. But the minute I got in the shade off came my bonnet. I threw it in the feed box in the sod barn and forgot to get it out before the cows were brot from their pickets, they ran to the well to get their evening drink of cool water from the watering tub then hurried to the barn for their grain. Old White went into her stall and in snooping around for her grain she managed get her horns into the bonnet in a way that held it fast. It frightened her and she ran out of the barn wearing the bonnet on her horns, running down into the field. The girls laughed at her but I was scared and thot I'd never get it back again or the cow either maybe, but it finally fell off and she calmed down and allowed herself to be driven back to the barn.

Our first crop of wheat, perhaps ten acres, was just fair. Father cut it with an old fashioned cradle scythe and threshed it with a home-made flail, winnowed it in the wind (we had plenty of that), and took it to a grist mill in the community on the Frenchman River called Mussel's Mill. The next year crops were a little better and more to harvest. Then there were seasons when there were either drouth, or hail or grass hoppers, so things looked pretty dark. I think it was in the years 1893 & 1894that we had an almost complete failure of crops. We managed to have a little corn and black eyed peas or beans and that is what we lived on thru the winter, with flour for a rare batch of biscuits if companv came. I also recall that jack rabbits were so plentiful and very good eating in those days and they cut• strips from the thighs and hung them in the sun to dry or over the fire. The first year or two we had no hogs; all the meat we had was wild game and fish occasionally from the Frenchman. Then we finally had a few hogs we always butchered one or two in the fall for winter use. We a good cellar and put potatoes and other vegetables down in it if were fortunate enough to raise anything. Sometimes crops would be extra rood but oftener not. 1891 was a good crop year, but it was a struggle against many odds for years and our progress was slow. Seasons when we would get plenty of rain we were so liable to get devastating hail and of course when the rain failed to come everyone lost their crops.

When the hard years came many of the settlers moved away and left their farms and the once plowed fields grew up to weeds and sunflowers until the countryside looked yellow with blossoms.

Year by year our cattle herd increased until we had a dozen or so and it was my task to herd the cows and keep them out of other peoples fields and the many deserted fields that grew up to sunflowers and weeds that caused cattle to bloat and die. It was a task that demanded constant watching and a lot of riding in sunshine wind or rain.

Our first school was a subscription school. The patrons paid a small sum to send their children. One of the daughters of the community taught it, her name was Cordelia Smith. The next year there was no school. Then we organized the school district and hired a teacher. He was an old man and didn't prove to be much of a teacher. Terms were short in those days, usually a spring and fall term of three months. We were at the north end of the district so were about two and three quarters miles from the school house. Our first school building was sod and sometimes accommodated as many as twenty youngsters of all ages. Schools were not graded or limited as to age, so many times the older boys of the community would attend school when there was a slack time in work.

The two games that were the most popular with us were "Ante Over" with throwing a ball over the school house and those on the other side would try to catch it, and if we did we would all race around the school house and try to tag someone on the other side by touching him with the ball. It was exciting and plenty of exercise. Another was "Black Man" or "Pom pom Pull Away." In this game there were two bases at opposite ends, sides were chosen, and they chose one from each side as "chasers", they take their stand at the middle line between the two bases and at the call "ready" or "Go" the players all run for the opposite base and the "Chasers" try to tag someone from the opposite side. The game is complete when all are on one side.

Some of the names of families in the district I still remember. One family of Thompsons, three families of Smiths, two families of Goddards, one family of Bowles and one of Rhodens.

Rain or shine we walked the road to and from school unless by some rare chance someone would come along in a wagon and give us a lift, which seldom happened. After quite a number of years the old soddy was replaced by a more adequate frame structure which was bought and moved in. As I recall those old school days, they were good and happy times, but yet so much depended upon our teachers. If we did get a good teacher that the children all liked days went by like a song, but if the teachers were poor and crabby it dragged and all looked forward to the last day of the term.

Sometimes we would have a literary society which met once a month and gave the people of the community an opportunity to use their talents of singing, speaking, acting and debating. People from far and near came and what lively times we did have. An old bachelor by the name of Earn Walker wrote or edited our neighborhood newspaper which he faithfully read every session. Some things would be real interesting news but for the most part it was getting off gags on the various ones. But we always looked forward to having the newspaper read.

After the first few years the school held six month terms taught by one teacher. The wages were usually $20 or $25 per month but often times they had to accept script instead of cash. This was a note or promise to pay issued by the school board, which if they had to have cash they could use it as a check, only they would have to take a discount, so teaching in those days was not very remunerative. If a teacher had to pay board and room it would take half of her wages to pay "her keep." They didn't do any "boarding around" in our district. Ours was District 17 in Chase County, Nebraska. They now have a new, more adequate building which is not located on the same site as the old soddie or its successor. Later the District was consolidated with other districts.

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MEMORIES OF THE HOMESTEAD

We lived in the dugout for seven years, each year hoping that next year's crops would be good and we could build a frame house. By now there were a few frames and quite a lot of comfortable looking sod houses. The way they made a sod house was to find a level space where the prairie grass was thick, then with "breaking plow" and team plow strips about 16 inches wide and 3 or 3 1/2. inches thick. Then cut the sod in two foot lengths and haul it to the place where you wished to build and carefully lift the sod from the sled or wagon and lay them one on top of another around the area marked for the size you wanted to build your house, sometimes even the partitions were sod. They put in wood frames for doors and windows and laid rafters on a frame on top of the sod walls to support the roof, then nailed boards to the rafters and put tarred felt called "tarpaper" over the boards and then a layer of sod all over the roof. The roots of the prairie grasses matted in the sod and held it together and made it tough and durable. If it was too dry it wouldn't hold together much so it was necessary to wait for a wet spell to get sod for building purposes. The walls were shaved down smooth on the inside and

usually plastered and white washed, which made them very light and comfortable dwellings. Sometimes they were plastered on the outside, too but usually not. It was amusing to see weeds and prairie flowers and sometimes cactus growing on the sod roofs. These did not last long, except the cactus, for the dry weather and the hot sun soon scorched and killed most vegetation there. My father did not take to the idea of building a sod house, tho our first barn and hen house were sod. Sod makes a very warm house for winter and a cool house for summer.

Finally the time came when we had surplus enough to buy the lumber for a house. My father hauled it from our nearest railroad town, Imperial, Nebraska, twelve miles east of our homestead. He bought a few necessary carpenter tools and went to work to build it himself. He made a stone foundation, I believe, tho where he found the stone I can't remember for there were not many, even small ones, on the place. The house was 16x24 and 12 feet to the eaves so the house was a story and half high and there were two bedrooms upstairs and a living room and two small bedrooms and a front hall with the stairway going up. A door opened from the hall into a bedroom and one into the living room. We were very proud of our new house when at last it was done, tho it looked a long way from being nice, for one thing it never did get even one coat of paint and the lumber was not well seasoned So it shrunk and made cracks, in fact it was a cold house. It was like going to bed on the North pole to go upstairs in the winter time to bed. The windows were loose and rattled when the wind blew and of course let in the cold. The house was built in 1893. It is still standing and being lived in and has had an addition built on and all painted up. I imagine the old siding was removed and new put on for it stood without paint for about fifty years. Of course for many years there was intentions to paint the house but something always seemed to demand the cash and seem more important such as farm machinery and fences and windmill, yes and a new well since the house was built over a quarter of a mile from the old site where the first well was dug so a new well was imperative. It was much deeper than the first for we built on a rise or knoll north of the old dwelling site. Father built just a make-shift barn to keep his team and two cows in at first then added on sheds and built a granary, henhouse etc. so it took all we could muster of time and money to build up the place.

One August day we were all away, father was farming some distance from the house. He had been there at noon and fed his team and ate his dinner and we had gone to Uncle Pete's a mile and a quarter away to spend the day. Not long after he had gone back to work we saw that the barn was on fire. Of course we got there as soon as we could but walking we could not make much time. I presume we ran some but when we arrived the barn, granary and shed were all burned so that called for a new barn and father bought the lumber and built a real good commodious barn for a small farm. It was much better material and better built than the house but still the house had no paint. He painted the barn as soon as he could after it was built and that preserved the siding a lot.

We never did know what caused the fire. Father did not smoke and as far as we knew there were no matches in the barn. We thought it might have been spontaneous combustion.

We lived on the old homestead many years, in fact we three girls grew up there. My sister Alta was married in the old home and her first child, little Leta, died there when she was almost five years old. She had come home with her grandparents for visit and took pneumonia and passed away. Myoldest sister, Zillah, never married but taught school in the county for twelve years.

At the close of the First World War real estate took a boom and father sold the old homestead and they moved to Linn County, Kansas in 1918 and father's mother, Grandma Smith, my Mother and Zillah moved near Blue Mound on a little farm, until one by one they passed away. Father went first, October 1, 1929, Grandmother January 21, 1932, Mother January 17, 1933, sister Alta January 22, 1937 and Zillah March 29, 1943.

I am the last leaf in the family tree, and soon our family, like hosts of others will be history of the past and before long no one will be living who remembers who homesteaded the south east fourth of section 4, township 6, range 40 of Chase County Nebraska.

I should mention perhaps for posterity that I was married in 1908, September 7, to Lawrence Ray McGaughey, raised three fine children who are now all grown and married and in homes of their own doing well, and all active in church work. After we retired, (my husband was a Methodist Minister in the Nebraska Conference for 35 years) we came out to Southern California and bought a small cottage in Santa Ana, California, and have lived here for over twelve years. We are both in our 79th year and by God's grace and help we are still active and getting about on our own power, doing what we can in our church on Memory Lane.

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MY MEMORIES OF OUR RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCES IN OUR HOMESTEAD DAYS

My Grandmother Smith and father and mother were all members of the United Brethren Church in Meigs County, Ohio, but when we came out to Nebraska there was no church and no school house in which to hold services. We had Bible reading and prayer at night before retiring but no Sunday School for many years. Traveling preachers of various denominations came thru the country and stopped at our house for lodging and food and were always entertained and given the best we could afford. One summer some ministers came, I believe they were Presbyterians, and talked and worked up interest in trying to have a neighborhood Sunday School. This was after our sod school house was built. I must have been seven or eight years old. So they started a Union Sunday School and the first summer it went very well; we children thot it was wonderful, and the professing Christians worked together nicely but by the next summer when it was warm enough to start a Sunday School they met and organized and started again but there were several families of "Campbellites", they are the Christian Church now. They thot that because there were more of that denomination than any other it should be a "Campbellite" Sunday School. Of course others objected and it finally died.

They had one of their ministers from some place come every month and in between times if some other denomination sent a minister to preach to us they would get up and leave the Sunday School, so naturally it couldn't exist under that kind of treatment. After that experience we had no religious services, only occasionally, and they were not well attended. There would be revival services at some school house four or five miles away and we would go some but "Pa" only had one team to do all the farm work and hauling from town and so he felt it was too much for them to work all day and go at night, so for the most part we staid home. It was not till I was in my teens and sister Zillah was teaching school that she bought an old horse and single buggy and we girls drove six miles to Sunday School at Chase. Chase was too small to be called a town, there was a grocery store with post office in one end and two or three houses. We went there for mail and groceries etc. The school house was half a mile from the other buildings and it was there we met for Sunday School and preaching. The Methodist preacher came from Imperial every two weeks and held services after Sunday School.

One winter after Zillah had taught several terms we went to school to a very fine teacher, Mrs. Jennie Calkins, who was very good in helping young teachers improve in their work. We stayed at the same place that she and her small daughter did. She had housekeeping rooms in the house the family lived in and we lived in part of their old house (part of it had corn stored in it as I remember.) The people's name where we staid was "Money" so we celled it "Moneyville." It was a memorable winter, very cold and lots of snow. We enjoyed the school and the Church. The "Pleasant Vallev" or "State Line Church" as it was called. They had a young preacher, Rev. Frank Harmon, from south of us in the sandhills, that year and he held a revival service and my two sisters and I and my husband (afterwards) and a quite a number of others were converted and joined the United Brethren Church there. After that sister Zillah did a lot for two districts in reach of our place. At No. 1 about four miles N.W. she organized a Sunday School and carried it on for a number of years. Of course we girls went with her to Sunday School and helped what we could. When this school became established and others came in to help she went to the "Crete", school five miles south of us and conducted Sunday School there for years. They now have a church there and the minister from Lamar preaches there every Sunday. They also have a church at "Chase" where the E.U.B. pastor from Lamar preaches, but the No .4 school house has been first moved farther away, then later went into a consolidated school, with other districts and the ones who are interested enough either go to Lamar or Chase to Church now in the days of the automobile.

The winter that my sisters and I attended school at Pleasant Valley school and stayed at Moneyville I became very well acquainted with Ray McGaughey. We had met earlier but were not close neighbors, however he was more interested in another girl then. I went with two other fellows and it was a few years before we went together much, but when he started to attend school in Nebraska Wesleyan in 1902 we became quite regular in correspondence and for the following five years we "kept company" whenever he was home from school. We hadn't decided to get married, at least not until he had finished school, he still had two more years. But one Sunday evening we went to the home of our pastor, Rev. Harmon, and talked it over with him. He thot it would be O.K. for us to get married and both go to school so that is what we did. We planned to drive to Imperial the next day, 23 miles, and get our license and be married in Imperial as our pastor was taking the train to attend Conference that day. The team was slow and the judge was out to lunch (of whom we had to get our license) and soon our time slipped by. We were to have met Rev. Harmon down the street at the Hotel but it was getting so near train time that he went on down to the depot. We hurried to the depot and he had gone into the coach. The baggage was being loaded so we stepped inside the coach and said we wanted to get married. I said, "I want you to do a good job, but do it quick." So there, standing in the aisle he repeated the vows for us to become man and wife and Mrs. Harmon, Rosa, and Thomas Brag, a man who had been our Sunday School Superintendent, were our witnesses. Just as we stepped off the conductor called "all aboard!" and the train pulled out. We went to the hotel and ate and took our time to drive back to my father's house where we staid that night.

We went down to Lincoln in a couple of weeks and were both in school for two years. After Ray graduated we moved back to eastern Colorado, south-east of Holyoke, Colo, where he lived and set up housekeeping in a small sod house his father had built and lived in so he could prove up on a strip of unclaimed land between his land and the Nebraska State line. We both taught country schools that winter and the next year our daughter Alberta was born in the little soddie.

In the fall of 1912 we moved on our first charge, the Mt. Zion and Highland Circuit where he preached at four country churches. Mt. Zion, where the parsonage was located and Highland one Sunday and Valley (or the Sleeper Church) the next Sunday morning and Mt. Emmet 71/2 miles on south in the sand hills, or sixteen miles from the parsonage.

We retired after preaching thirty-five years and came out to Santa Ana, California in December 1947 and bought a comfortable little cottage on Riverine Ave. where we have lived for twelve years.

We have made a number of long drives; going back to Vermont twice and to Springfild, Oregon twice, and took on air plane trip to Honolulu where our daughter Ester lives with her husband and daughter. Our son, Melvin, preached in Morrisville, Vermont almost eight years and is n-w at Peru, New York near Lake Champlain. Alberta and her family live in Springfield, Oregon. have three fine children and eight grandchildren. Our children are all sincere Christians active in their work.

I remember the first time I ever saw a dead person. I must have been four years old, and why mother took me with her I do not know, perhaps there was no one to leave me with or I might have insisted on going, I can't remember, but this neighbor man was killed in a hunting accident. It was before the time of mortuaries in small villages. He was "laid out" in a room at the home. All the furniture was removed and boards laid on two chairs, at the head and foot, and he laid there covered with a white sheet, his face ashen white. It made a picture in my mind that I'll never forget. I can see it yet plain as day.

I remember one time about the first or second summer we were out on the homestead in Nebraska Uncle Sam was so restless and nothing to do. He loved to go fishing and had gone several times with other members of the family so they thot he was capable of going alone so they fixed him a lunch in a little pail and gave him pole and bait and let him go all alone. Well, he didn't return when they expected him to, in fact he didn't come that night nor the next morning so they started looking for him. But the country was so sparsely settled in those early days and neighbors were far apart. The Frenchman creek was two miles south and he must have crossed the stream, it wasn't very deep and started South instead of North to come home; anyway they searched two days and finally found him at the ranch house of "wild horse Barry"; his men had come across him a mile or two, wandering in the sandhills, north of their house. They put him on a pony and brot him in. Of course he could not communicate with them to tell them who he was, as he was a mute, and he was so worn out and hungry he could hardly stand but he was so peculiar, he never would ride on a horse or in a vehicle and he protested about getting on the pony but they put him on for he was too weak to walk. He never tried to go fishing alone anymore but was glad to go if someone could go with him. He had many strange notions, never would eat light bread, must have biscuits or cornbread, but one day when the family was all gone and his lunch was left on the table he didn't eat the cold biscuits but went to the bread box and got light bread and ate it. He was very fond of Maple sap and always drunk it at meals in the spring in Ohio, but out in Nebraska there were no maple trees or even honey so he liked to drink water sweetened with sugar. He was quite good with sign language so could make himself understood to people who knew him and he liked to joke with the girls who came to visit us. He died of pneumonia several years after we moved up into the new house. As I remember he was 68 at the time of his death. He was buried in the Chase Cemetery, Chase County about six miles northeast of the old homestead.

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