© R.J. Christensen
Maywood Eagle or Curtis newspaper Thursday, Aug 21, 1969
Memoirs of Pioneer Days near Maywood
by Israel Wood
I was born in Canada and lived in Wisconsin when young. We went from there to Harvard, Illinois and that place was my home for some years. I came from Harvard to Nebraska in a covered wagon in 1880. We brought some cattle and all our goods with us. Nebraska was just three years old as a state and very thinly settled. We stopped at Fall City and looked around for a location but the country did not please us. We camped at Wymore for the night on the first anniversary of that towns existence. There was one house in the town of Harbine east of Hardy. Not a house or settlement was to be seen between Fairbury and Beatrice.
We fell in company with the Wils Furnas family at Hardy and came on together. They went on up the Medicine near Wellfleet and I took possession of a log shack on the creek just below the present town of Maywood. The land that belonged with the shack included most of that which was later used for the town. Someone had taken the homestead and then left and I jumped the claim and so that shack was my first Nebraska home. Later I built a larger log house and how big we all felt when we moved into it. Charles Crosby hewed the logs for my house and it had a floor.
Before this we had no floor and one time we went to visit a neighbor, whose wife and mine had been school friends years before we came to Nebraska. These peoples name was Scott and they were Herb Sanders grandparents. Our children thought it was wonderful to have a floor and afterward cried to go back to the place where the house had a floor. My house was plastered with canyon lime. There was a ledge of this between here and Curtis and it could be dug off in chuncks and used like real lime though it did not get as hot when slacked. It served very well for plaster, however, people came from miles away to get it to plaster their houses with.
It was too expensive to haul building material from Indianola so the sod, logs natives lime and anything of the sort were made use of to make out homes as comfortable as possible.
When we first started a school I was the first director in the district. There were some who did not want school and they would come with cowboys and break up our meetings. We finally got the district legally organized in spite of interference. At first I wrote to W. W. Jones, who was state superintendent of Public Instructions, to inform about conditions here. I told him our district was bounded on the north by Lincoln County line on the south by the Red Willow line and on the west by the Colorado state line and that in that territory we had 14 pupils. At first election held in this precinct there were 14 votes cast and the cost to the county was $16. Jasper Twiss took the ballots to Stockville. Among the county officers were A. C. Shelley, who came here in 1869, county treasurer, Westgate, county clerk and John Saunders county judge. Another early judge was Judge Gaslin.
Of course there was much lawlessness. One time there was a Colorado cattle outfit in this part of the country. They were a drunken, quarrelsome bunch and finally one of them shot and killed another and also hit his horse. Paddy Miles who was sheriff, arrested him and took him to Stockville for trial. When asked if he was guilty, he said, "Yes" and T. Jay was appointed for his attorney. After conferring with him the plea was changed to "Not Guilty" and the judge, without further evidence turned him lose which while not justice was probably best for the county as they would have had to pay his board in a Hastings jail while he was held and the county was not able to stand the expense of a prolonged trial.
Con Donovan who lived on the Jack Morrow Flats killed a man in a quarrel over a claim and was in jail in North Platte for a long time but was finally turned lose.
I went over the road to Stockville recently and thought of the contrast between that road and the trail we used to travel to the county seat. One time I particularly remember when I had gone to get a coffin for a neighbor, Mr. Ross, who was killed in a well where a bucket of dirt fell 130 feet and struck him. In those days we angled across what are now field and fenced farms just north of Stockville. A blizzard came up and got so bad I could not see my team ahead of me and I had a hard time finding the road at all. It certainly took a man who kept his head working to find a trail across from the Republican before roads were made for one could go a long way up some of those canyons in the direction toward home and then find no way out and have to go back and hunt another route.
I was caught in a big hail storm over near Monte Cliffords ranch near Stockville one time. My wagon was half full of water in a short time. I couldn't make the ranch in time to get to shelter which was probably as well for Monte had a Sioux for a wife and she would not let a white person in the house if he was not at home. Monte had bought her from her people giving 40 ponies in payment.
There were no herds of buffalo here when I came but I had an experience with them anyway. A man by the name of Shroth came here and bought John Miller's cattle, taking the whole Cart Wheel Brand. He also bought two tame buffalo and wanted to ship them to Philadelphia to a park. He hired Oliver Baker and me to drive them to Indianola to be loaded for shipment. We thought if we drove a few cows with them there would be no trouble and we did get along fine for a while. Finally we came to a creek and one of the buffalo broke away and ran up the creek. I started after him and the first thing I knew he had run across a hill or bluff and broke through the roof of a dugout home and landed on top of the dinner table. Luckily the family had heard the noise of our approach and had run out of the house to see what was coming so no one was hurt but I felt ashamed to think I had not prevented such a ridiculous accident and so much damage to a home that was poor at its best.
People were not always what they seemed in those days any more than they are now. I was at the sale when the old Van Brocklin ranch holdings were sold and saw an amusing incident which proved the fact. Chug Chamberlain owned the mill here and was at the sale to bid on horses. Guy Lany, a saloon keeper of North Platte, was there for some purpose. He told Chamberlain that as long as they were the only two in the crowd who had any money who would be foolish to run the horses. For once Mr. Lang did not know the crowd. There was a fellow there whom no one seemed to know. He was ragged and dirty. Looked in every way a bum or starved-out homesteader.
He ran 50 head of horses up to more than Lang or Chamberlain thought they were worth and when it came time to pay for them he pulled out a roll of old greenbacks, peeled off enough to pay for his horses and had a bigger roll left than Mr. Land had probably ever seen. That horse buyer drove his horses away and I never did hear who he was or where he came from.
Anybody who lived in this or any other community, while it was new and undeveloped had to learn to take care of themselves and stand for their right if they expected to last as long as a pioneer. Some of them, especially women, were not strong enough to stand the test but many of the women could protect and defend themselves and their children as well as a man and could handle a gun with the experience it was not devisable to defy.
One of the later type was Mrs. Blazer who kept a store, dealt honestly with all and compelled those who dealt with her to do likewise. One time a fellow went to her store and asked for a plug of tobacco and while she was wrapping it up he put four more plugs in his pocket. He gave her a bill in payment and she kept out change for five plugs. He protested that he only asked for one and she said the balance was for the four he put in his pocket. He asked how she knew and she pointed to a mirror back of her counter and said she had it there on purpose for folks like him so he had no more to say.
I might as well own that I got the worst of an argument with Mrs. Blazer, one time. I wanted to haul a load of logs across her land and she forbid me to do it. I thought I'd just go across anyway as it would save me going a mile or two around and pull up a big hill. So I cut across to the gate by her house. But I never went through the gate. She met me there with a shot gun and ordered me to turn around, go back and go around by the road and I did. She could shoot as straight as a man. She said she would do as she said, so I considered the joke was on me.
When the railroad went through Maywood, A. H. Phillips who was town site man, stayed at our place. As the postoffice here was called Laird the station here was also named Laird at first. There was a town of Laird over the Colorado line on the main line of the Burlington and it caused much confusion. Our freight and mail was often sent on the main line to Laird, Colorado. One night Mr. Phillips accompained (sic) by Ed Murphy, Miles Gallon and Job Norwood came to my place to talk about changing the name of the town. I suggested they call it Norwood buy (sic) they had been looking up the names of post offices already in Nebraska and said there was one by that name. So we suggested on name and another but could not agree. Finally Mr. Phillips said, "I'll tell you what we will do, We will call it Maywood after Mr. Wood's girl and so they did. It seems many think it was named for May on account of her being the first child born here but that was not the fact. John Sanders of near Stockville had a girl who was the first child born in the county and Minnie Twiss was the second.
There were a good many soldiers of the Civil War amoung the first settlers here and I was treasurer of the Soldiers Aid Commission for the county for some time so I became acquainted with all of them. An old man named Meyer who had been in the Union Army for 29 years was one of them. He and his wife came out here and took possession of a log dugout house that someone had left over northeast of my place. I often went to see him and knew he was a great poker player. One evening I heard them laughing and talking excitedly before I reached the house and they were anxious to tell me the cause of their glee. They had that day found $400 in an old leather trunk and remembered it had been put there for safe keeping twenty years before, when he had won it in a poker game. Then the war came and so they had forgotten all about it. But there it was and they had to show it to me. $400 in crisp new looking bills. They surely could never have needed it worse than they did then.
When Mr. Meyer died he was buried at Fort McPherson as were many of the other old soldiers from the vicinity. I do not remember the year the soldiers were removed from the Fort, but I visited there soon after their removal. They left a pile of horse shoes big enough to fill a wagon box. The outfit which had bought the horse barn was preparing to move it. It was one of the best, most solidly built log structures I ever saw and was a big one, being made to shelter 400 horses.
I have always been more or less interested in politics and I suppose on account of various campaigns and their outcomes would be interested but cannot recall names and dates accurately enough to attempt such a narrative. I have served on many election boards and have quarreled with John Miller, who was as staunch a Democrat as I was Republican, over the counting of certain votes but we always managed to decide by referring to the law, without serious trouble.
Like many other old settlers, I moved to town to spend my last years and left the farm to my son. He has built a comfortable frame home but the old log house still stands and is the only one I know of in this part of the country.
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