Fanny Giddings was Charles and Clarissa Giddings' oldest daughter. Late in life,
one of her daughters interviewed her and captured the following memories:
Fannie
Clarissa Giddings
CHILDHOOD
In the little town of Newark Center, New York, on June
27, 1841, life began for Fannie Clarissa Giddings.
This new life was destined to become one of the loveliest and one of the
most wholesome characters that God ever knew. For
nearly 92 years, this sweet-dispositioned, home loving personality has been
spreading joy and happiness to all those with whom she came into contact. After
a visit with “Grandma,” for that is what we all call her, one leaves with
the idea that life is very worthwhile, especially if thoughts are of others.
For Grandma lives and thinks constantly of others. The happiness of her
loved ones is her happiness. Their
sorrows are her sorrows. When we
call her “Grandma.” It is with a feeling of reverence and respect – for to
know her is to love her and respect her – because of the life she lives.
Grandma’s life is filled with tales of adventure, romance, pathos,
courage, humor, and history. It is to
relate a few of such incidents that we reveal the results of a few interviews
with her.
As to her parentage, we refer you to the preceding pages
where you will find the names of her family for at least two generations back.
“What do you remember of your early childhood, Grandma?” she was
asked.
“I can’t seem to remember any good things,”
Grandma would reply in her modest way. “About
the first thing I remember was the time sister Louisa and I were sitting on the
step of the woodshed. I was three years
old then. Louisa had a candy apple
and I wanted it. So I pushed her off the step and knocked the wind out of
her.”
“Did you get the candy apple?” I asked her.
“No. All
I got was a whipping.”
“My father always believed in the saying, ‘Spare the
rod and spoil the child.’ He was a
Methodist minister and believed that his children should be a guiding pattern
for all other children. I guess that is
why I liked to have some real fun when he wasn’t around. I used to like to climb trees.
There were lots of trees where we lived, and I spent lots of time
climbing them. One day, I remember, my
young brother Giles and I were out in the yard playing. I climbed up a tree, and Giles tried to follow.
He climbed part way, then fell and broke his arm.
As usual, I got the whipping. I
guess I got a whipping most every day when I was young.
One day at the table, sister Lydia took a spoon and chewed it.
Father blamed me, and of course, I got a whipping.
He whipped me until I was almost sick.
I finally had to tell him I did do it so he would quit punishing me.”
“Father was very strict about what we read.
We had to let him read everything first before we were allowed to read
it. I once got the book, ‘Uncle
Tom’s Cabin,’ and forgot to show it to father first.
I started to read the story. Father
found it out, and I got a whipping for it. He
didn’t object if I read the book, but he whipped me for not showing it to him
first.”
“We had to move every two years. We lived in New York State until I was eight years old.
Then we moved to Troy, Pennsylvania, and later lived in Wyoming Valley.
Other Pennsylvania towns where we lived were Pittston, Honesdale, and
Carbondale. While we were living in
Carbondale, Father had a little school house on his circuit called Smoky Hollow.
This later became the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania.”
“We lived in Susquehanna Valley shortly after the
Indian Massacre. Pittston and Kingston,
where we lived, built monuments to commemorate this massacre.”
“The Methodist Conference Seminary that Father
attended was held at Kingston, Pennsylvania. This
was the home of former Governor Weaver. Mr.
Weaver’s mother attended this Seminary for four years.
This was called the Wyoming Seminary, and was attended, also, by Bishop
Keeney.”
EDUCATION
The most of Grandma’s education was received in her
home. She did not attend a school until
she was 13 years of age. Only three
months of her life were spent in a public school. She studied three and a half years at a Conference Seminary at
Kingston, Pennsylvania. This was a
privately owned school, and, of course, was not financed by public funds.
There were very few public schools at that time.
Most of them were private, and education was at a premium.
School discipline at that time was very rigid.
Boys and girls were kept separated constantly, with one exception.
About once a week, the school would sponsor a social function at which
both boys and girls were allowed to attend. These
affairs, of course were well chaperoned. Lights
were out at 9:00 every night. Monitors
checked up on all the girls both in the school dormitory and in private homes,
to see that school rules were obeyed. At the school social affairs, the entertainment consisted of
singing and games. Then a grand march
with the boys was allowed to the tune of the music. No dancing or eats were allowed. The
girls were not allowed boy escorts to their homes.
They were chaperoned on the way home by monitors.
“Whenever we left the school to go anywhere,” said
Grandma, “we had student monitors for chaperones.
One went in front and one behind us. Sometimes
we girls would run ahead and try to get away from the chaperones, in order to
get a little freedom. We used to dodge up
the alleys and try to get away from them.”
“Did you ever succeed in getting away?” I asked.
“Yes, once in a while.”
“What did they do about it?”
“I had to carry a cork arm around with me for awhile.
The principal tied a string around my arm and then fastened this to a
cork arm. Another time I was punished by
having to stand in the corner for awhile.”
“What subjects did you study in school?”
“I remember geometry. We
had to memorize every theorem, rule, and principle, and recite them word for
word. I studied French, Latin, and
German. I didn’t like Latin.
I liked German, but all I can remember is what I used to speak to our
German hired lady who worked for us. I
knew enough to put her to work, and keep her at it.
Other subjects taught at the Seminary included instruction in washing,
ironing, sewing, darning, embroidering, knitting, and most everything else in
homework, except cooking. We had to learn
that at home.”
WESTWARD
During those early years, men with a spirit of adventure
and pioneering had the longing to go west. One
man who had this desire was Charles Woodbury Giddings, the father of our
“Grandma.” He had gone west to the
plains of Nebraska and had found a location he thought was a suitable place for
his family to find happiness. Returning to Pennsylvania, Mr. Giddings organized a company of
pioneers and made plans for starting west. This
organization, called the Nebraska Settlement Company, was made up mostly of
Methodist ministers. However, men of
other occupations and professions were included.
There were blacksmiths, carpenters, masons, dentists, and others.
The members of the company bought land from the government at $1.25 per
acre.
“The first of May, 1858, we started west.
I was seventeen years old then. We
traveled by train to St. Louis. This was
the farthest point west the trains ran at that time.
There were only four cars on the train and they were very crowded. We had
to sit three and four in a seat. And we
had to sleep that way on the train for three different nights.
Our train was detained at one place in Indiana where high water had
washed out the tracks. They had to build
a narrow board bridge so that the passengers could be unloaded and taken to dry
land until the water receded. This was
the only time we were off the train during our journey.
Our rail trip ended at St. Louis and began at Scranton.
Ten years before this time, there was no city of Scranton.
Then they had a boom, caused by the building of this railroad and the
mining of anthracite coal.”
“We spent about two days in St. Louis.
During this time, Father bought a horse, wagon, and some supplies to take
with us. Our furniture was shipped from
Scranton. We took it up the river and stored it at Aspinwall [Nebraska
Territory] until we had a place for it. Later
we returned with an ox team and took our furniture to Table Rock.”
“We arrived in St. Louis about a week after leaving
Pennsylvania. Mother’s brother, Uncle James [Griffing], who lived in
Topeka [Kansas Territory], a missionary working with the Indians, met us at St.
Louis and went part way with us up the river. The
boat went up the river once a week from St. Louis to Omaha [Nebraska Territory].
Boarding this riverboat at St. Louis, we started up the Mississippi [and
Missouri Rivers] toward St. Joseph. All
went well until the boat struck a snag and tore off one of the big water wheels.
It also rammed a big hole in the prow of the boat.
This happened just a short distance from St. Joseph.
We were stranded here nearly a week awaiting repairs.
We stayed right on the boat most of the time. We took one trip to see an Indian camp, but the rest of the time we
just waited on the boat. At that time,
St. Joseph was just a few little old shacks. Indians would flock around the bank
of the river begging from the passengers on the boat, but the Indians were not
allowed on deck.”
“The Mississippi River was clear and the Missouri was
muddy. You would see clear and muddy
streams running along side by side in the river for many miles before
merging.”
Landing at Aspinwall, the remainder of the journey was
to be made by team and wagon, and afoot.
“Father, Mother
(Clarissa Griffing Giddings),
and four of us children made the trip together from Aspinwall.
I walked behind the wagon, holding on to it to keep from stumbling and
falling. This was during the rainy season
and in some of the bottom lands, we had to wade through water from shoe top deep
to deeper.”
Leaving Aspinwall at noon, at midnight, on May 25, 1858,
a tired, footsore, and I imagine a bit homesick family pitched camp at the
present site of Table Rock. This was to
be their future home.
Another company of settlers had preceded this party.
Included in the group were: Will Fellers, the father of Billie Fellers,
Andrew Fellers, and Ephraim Wheeler (Mrs. Wheeler was a sister of the Fellers).
In order to be granted a town site by the government, it
was necessary to have eight buildings. The
land was bought from the government at $1.25 an acre, and homes were soon built.
“Father had come out before – looked over the
country and decided on a place for the settlement.
There were already three buildings when we arrived.
Father built one for a store and post office.
The first building to be erected was a two-story frame hotel building.
This was built by the Settlement Company on the site where the present
Methodist church now stands. (Clara
Norris was born in this building.) Father
loaned the money to build the hotel, but it was unsuccessful and he had to take
it over on a foreclosure. Homes were
built of log or mud. Most houses
had a fireplace for cooking. We bought a stove while we were in St. Louis, so we didn’t need a
fireplace. We used wood for fuel most of
the time. We later dug up some coal down
in the pasture which is now located south of the railroad, by Edgar’s home.
We made our own candles from tallow gotten from cattle, which we
butchered.”
LIFE
IN NEBRASKA
“The first summer after we arrived [1858], Father
fixed up some seats in the front of the house, and I was the school teacher for
the neighborhood children. I started with
fourteen pupils. Some of my pupils were
older than me. School lasted all during the three summer months.
The only books we had to use were those we could gather up from the
families there. Some had brought a few
books with them. Pupils studied together
out of the same books. We studied
reading, writing, and arithmetic. First
we learned the A, B, C’s and the multiplication tables.
We learned the times tables by singing them.
One of my pupils did not know one letter from another.
He was older than me. Two of my
pupils were the McNeill boys. They were
cousins of Charlie Brock’s. Both
enlisted in the army during the Civil War. One
was killed. The other married a southern
girl and stayed in the South to live. One
of the McNeill girls was a wife of Gabe Morton, and the other was the wife of
Ben Herr.”
“What salary did they pay you for teaching,
Grandma?” I asked.
“One family who sent two boys to school gave me a sow
pig. Another family sent me some sorghum
molasses. That was all the salary I
got.”
“The first school building was built back off the road
where the Karas garage is now located. This
was a stone school building, erected in the spring of 1859.
The school was paid for by those who were interested, but most of the
building was paid for by Father. The
first schoolteacher in the building was a Mr. Tyler.”
“We held church every Sunday at our house.
We had several ministers in our company, so we had no trouble in getting
leaders for our meetings. George
Griffing, the father of Ole Griffing, and young George Griffing, was one of the
ministers who came out with our company. He
lost his wife during the first year in Nebraska.”
“We later held church service in the school house. It
was three years before our first church building was erected.
The first church building was the one that is now occupied by the
McKnight family east of the creek. Rev.
Arnold was the first to organize a church. He
later took typhoid fever and nearly died. He
returned to Pennsylvania shortly after that. Once
in awhile, we drove over to Pawnee City in an ox cart to attend meetings there.
We were quite a Methodist family. My
father, grandfather, and great-grandfather were all Methodist ministers.”
“Did anything exciting happen after you came here,
Grandma?”
“Well, I remember the first excitement after we
arrived was the hanging of some horse thieves. Two
fine horses belonging to Andrew Fellers were stolen. Two of the thieves were caught the next day and were hung from a
tree this side of the bridge, just north of the old mill by the Nemaha.”
“It was about the third year we were here that the old
mill was built down by the Nemaha. There
is where everyone took their grain to be ground.
I remember one day a lady went to the mill to see her husband who worked
there. She was standing by the mill wheel
talking to him when her dress caught and she was thrown against the big wheel
and instantly killed.”
“We used to hold camp meetings down near ‘The
Rocks.’ Meetings were held here each year for several years. People would come from all directions to tent during the
whole season. At one of these meetings,
during his prayer the minister prayed for a (spiritual) cyclone.
That night a real one came and nearly blew everyone away.
All the tents were blown down, and the storm did lots of other damage.
After the storm had passed, the people ganged up and tried to run the
poor minister out of town.”
“Did you like it here in Nebraska when you first
arrived, Grandma?”
“I was homesick at first.
Father promised me when I came out that I could go back to Pennsylvania
after four years, but I never did get to. But
I didn’t care much. I liked it out here
after I had been here for a while. The
second year out here was a hard one. For three months we had no sugar or flour.
Most everyone had enough money they brought with them to last through the
first year. We had supplies sent up to us
from Brownsville. But the second year, no
one had any money, and crops were very poor. We
had lots of fruit, and got along as best we could.
There were some tomatoes, but we couldn’t eat them.
We thought they were poison. We
called them “Love Apples.”
“The trip to Nebraska as a whole was a disappointment.
It was more of an undertaking than Father had thought for.
We went through lots of hardships and competition.”
“Some Brownsville men had begun a town on the east
side of the Nemaha [River]. They tried to stake off a town on the west side, but
Father bought them off. A man had to stay
six months in order to prove up on a claim. During
the time some of the men were proving their claims, we kept them at our
house.”
“What did you do for good times?” I asked Grandma.
“We young ones had a good time all the time.
There were 20 boys in the neighborhood and only 6 girls.
Why shouldn’t we have a good time? We
had ox cart and horseback parties. Every
Sunday all the boys would come to see us six girls and we would have a big time.
I remember my first trip to Lincoln. A
group of men wanted to start a salt mill near Salt Creek where Lincoln is now
located. They wanted Father to invest,
and help promote the project. Father,
sister Lydia, and I drove to the place so Father could investigate.
There was no town of Lincoln then. It
took us the most of three days to make the trip one way.
We stayed at farmhouses at nights. We
looked over the salt mill proposition and Father did not accept it, so we
returned home.”
Grandma then went on to explain how a literary society
was formed the fall after their arrival in Nebraska. Both boys and girls were members. At the meetings, the first part was devoted to literary work, and
the rest of the time was spent socially. (This probably grew into a matrimonial
bureau.) However, Grandma, then Fannie
Giddings (left), was rated the finest looking girl in Pawnee County.
And she later carried off first prize on her darning work.
MARRIAGE
Fannie Clarissa Giddings became the wife of
Chauncey
H. Norris on March 1, 1860. The young
bride was 18 years of age.
“Chauncey boarded at our house. That is the way we became acquainted. But we young folks always went places in a group.
I had never been anywhere with Chauncey alone.
We were engaged to be married just one day.
He proposed marriage one night and we were married the next.
There were three couples of us who used to go places together.
We would vie with one another over which [of us] would be the first to
get married. We all planned together just
what we would do to the couple who got married first.
This all happened the night we became engaged.
Then we up and got married and skipped out the next night. Chauncey rode
horseback to Old Cincinnati on our wedding day to get the license.”
“We had a fruit cake for our wedding.
The fruit was dried tomatoes, dried plums, and dried grapes.
The tomatoes were soaked in molasses and then dried.
The cake was made from corn meal.”
“We were married at [Joseph] Griffing’s, with only
Mr. and Mrs. Griffing and one of my uncles, [Ossy Griffing] present.
We left shortly for Fall City where Mr. Norris managed a store for Mr.
Burbank. The business failed and Burbank
sold the store to Mr. Norris on credit. We
lived in Falls City for six years. One
and one-half years of this time Mr. Norris spent in the service during the Civil
War. The store building and the house
next to it burned down. We had some
insurance on it, but not enough.”
Chauncey H. Norris' Store
Table Rock Historical Society
(click on picture to enlarge it)
AT
THE INDIAN RESERVATION
At the time of the Civil War, Mr. Norris organized
Company G, with men from Richardson County. He
ranked as First Lieutenant. The company
stayed at Falls City during the winter. They
were then mustered in at Omaha and sent on up to Sioux City [Iowa].
From here they went to South Dakota to fight Indians.
The Indians took advantage of the war period and had an outbreak at the
same time. The Otoes and Potawatama
Indians camped near Table Rock that winter.
Following the war, Mr. Norris was given the rank of
Major, and was sent to the Indian Reservation down between Rulo and White Cloud,
Kansas. He was given the Agency of
this reservation by the government. This
“Agency” included the territory where Hiawatha, Kansas now stands, on this
side of the Nemaha [River].
“When Grant was elected president, he placed Quakers
in charge of all Indian Reservations, so we stayed at the Agency just three
years. We took four children there with
us: Charlie, Sue, Clara, and
Frank.”
“The Indians were very friendly most of the time.
I remember one time I was awfully scared.
I was alone with the children. Mr.
Norris had gone to Washington. The
Railroad Company wanted to buy some land belonging to the Reservation.
Mr. Norris and the Chiefs had to go to Washington to consult officials.
The young Indians wanted to go too, and they did not like it that they
couldn’t. It was necessary for Mr. Norris to meet the chiefs at the station
at night so the young Indians would not know when they left.
The young fellows found it out, and they were angry.
They called a mass meeting, donned war paint and had war dance.
They would come up close to the house and open their blankets to show
their war paint in order to scare us. They
did scare us. Nothing happened and when
Mr. Norris returned, the Indians quieted down.”
“One time while we were living on the Agency, I
started on horseback to the post office. Sue,
then three years old, followed on foot. I
turned at the fork of the road and she went the wrong way and became lost.
An Indian found her crying and took her to his home.
A girl at the Indian’s home who had worked for us recognized Sue and
the Indian brought her home after she had been gone about three hours.
Mr. Norris gave the Indian two dollars. A
few days later, another Indian came to our home bringing Frank, thinking he
would get paid. Frank had not been lost,
however. The Indian said, ‘Squaw two
dollars, little chief worth five dollars.’ Mr.
Norris told him to get out, and he got out. None
of the children needed bringing home after that.”
Another time Grandma was alone in the house working on a
pattern on the floor. The children were
out in the yard playing. An Indian walked
boldly into the house, planed himself in an easy chair, and got out his big
whip. He waived this back and forth in
front of Grandma and demanded that she give him some money.
He kept this up for awhile until Grandma slipped out and called a man who
was outside working. The Indian quickly
left, but he was reported to the chief. The
guilty Indian was forced to leave before nightfall.
It was lawful for Indians to have as many wives as they
wanted. And since the government was
paying for each male Indian according to the number of children he had, the
Indians took on plenty of wives in marriage. It
was a good financial arrangement.
“The Indians used to play ball much of the time. They
used a stick with a small basketlike affair on one end, and they would catch and
throw the ball with the use of this. They
did not touch the ball with their hands.”
“Indians would travel constantly between the White
Cloud Agency and Barneston. There was
another Reservation near that place at that time.”
“The first time Indians ever visited our home, we
learned lots about Indians. There were
several who had stopped at our house for breakfast.
We passed them a plate of griddlecakes. The
first Indian took the plate, unfolded his blanket, and dumped the whole plate
full in it. When the sugar was passed,
the first one dumped the whole bowl full in his blanket.
They took all the doughnuts we had. So
the next time we had Indians at our house, we pro-rated all of the food and none
was passed.”
“A few men from Table Rock had gone to Kansas near the
Reservation to homestead. At this time
sister Lydia and her husband were living at the Agency.
Lydia’s husband, John Gere, was a teacher on the Reservation.
This was in 1871. The Indians had
become angered because of the white man taking so much of the land, and driving
so many buffalo from their land, so the Indians did not have any hunting. John Gere and four other men were out planting corn at one time.
Usually they took their guns with them for protection but this was the
first day they had left their weapons at home. They
had just a few more rows of corn to plant, when they were attacked by Indians.
Having no means of self-defense, they were at the mercy of the Indians.
Three of the men were killed. The
other two escaped down the creek and crossed over under cover of the
underbrush.”
“Lydia and her husband lived at the Agency about a
year and a half. Mr. Gere was hired
by the government to teach the Indians how to farm.
All of the Indians had houses, but they would build tepees in their front
yard to live in. They did not like the
house. Lydia taught school for six months
on the Agency while we were there. Clothes
were given all those who attended school. Some
Indians would just come long enough to get the clothes and would then quit.
They did not attend school if they didn’t want to.”
“Indians were given their pay allotment twice a year.
At this time, all kinds of swindlers would be on hand to try to get as
much of the Indian money as possible. These
men would offer the Indians liquor for their extra money.
Swindlers became such a nuisance; the Indians would not have enough money
left to pay for their groceries, etc. The
storekeeper was finally compelled to charge to the Indians, and then he would
get his pay first, before they had time to spend it for liquor, or other things.
Some times it was necessary to have State Troops on hand pay day in order
to keep order and see that justice was done. One
Indian got dead drunk on payday. Some of
the other Indians were drunk also, and they thought the one poor fellow was
really dead. So they took him and buried
him. It was not discovered until a day
and a half later, and then it was too late.”
After leaving the Reservation, Grandma and her family
returned to Table Rock where Mr. Norris entered the mercantile business, which
he managed for the rest of his years.
THE
UNDERGROUND RAILWAY
One of the most interesting tales of early life in Table
Rock is that of the “Underground Railway” for run-a-way slaves.
Congress had passed a law making everyone responsible for picking up and
arresting run-a-way slaves. A reward of
$300 each was offered for the return of these slaves.
No slave dare be away from home without a written permit from his master.
He would be liable to arrest if he did not have this permit. Many were
not in sympathy with this action, and since others were on the constant lookout
for the run-a-ways, an “underground railway” was established with Table Rock
as one station. At each station were
those who were sympathizers of the slaves, and would conceal them from reward
seekers, then send them on to the next station enroute to Canada where they
would have permanent freedom.
“Father had charge of the station at Table Rock and
used the basement of the house for this purpose.
Mr. Norris was not in sympathy with the run-a-ways, and this is the main
cause for the two men not being on such friendly terms.
One cold winter night, four Negroes stopped at our house for protection
and food. One was an old man, and father
could not turn them out. He gave them
warm straw beds in the basement. They ate
their meals in the kitchen. We had to
keep them four days. When they were ready
to leave, some friends took their clothes and belongings and put them in bags
making believe they were going to the mill with grain. In the meantime, the slaves crept down the creek to the mill where
the wagon awaited to take them to Peru and on to the next underground station.
The Negroes were always well-armed and ready for anything.
They were willing workers, cutting wood or anything else that should be
done in return for their keep.”
GRASSHOPPER
DAYS
About the 20th of July, 1874, Nebraskans
witnessed a plague caused by one of man’s worst enemies.
It was in the late afternoon. The
sun grew dim and a haze covered the horizon. Everyone
thought a storm was brewing. A cloud rose
higher and nearer. The next thing they
knew a myriad of grasshoppers stormed in from the northwest and covered
everything. Within a short time,
there was not a bit of living vegetation. The
thriving crop of tall corn became short, bare stocks.
Houses were plastered up to a foot thick with the insects. Trees were
literally covered. The following
description of “Grasshopper Days” in Nebraska is taken from the book, “A
Lantern in Her Hand,” by Bess Streeter Aldrich.
“For a moment they stood together looking out over the
raw rolling acreage. Even as they looked,
the sun darkened and the day took on a grayness. They looked for the storm, and heard it as soon as they saw it, a
great black cloud roar out of the west, with a million little hissing
vibrations. Their eyes on the sky,
neither moved. Then there was a cessation
of the roaring, a soft thud of dropping things, and the cloud of a billion wings
lay on the fields. ‘Grasshoppers,’
they said simultaneously.
The grasshoppers swarmed over the young waist high corn
and the pasture and the garden. By
evening the long rows of corn had been eaten to the plowed ground.
The tender vines of the tomatoes were stripped down to the stalk.
The buds of the fruit trees were gone. Part
of the garden was a memory. The chickens
had feasted themselves to the bursting point. The
farm was a squirming, greenish-gray mass of them.
By the next night the stalks of the field corn were
skeletons, a few delicate veins of leaves left, like so many white ones
bleaching on the desert of the fields. At
the end of three days the oat field was stripped almost as bare as the day the
plow had finished its work. The young
orchard was a graveyard of hopes. Some of the small grain previously harvested had been saved, and
luckily, one digging of early potatoes was in the hole of the ground where they
were stored. But everything else went
through the crunching incisors of the hordes. It was as though the little
grayish-green fiends became a composite whole – one colossal insect into whose
grinding jaw went all the green of the fields and the gardens, all the leaves
and tender twigs of the young fruit trees, all the dreams and the hopes of the
settlers.”
There being no doctor for several years after returning
from the Agency, Grandma seemed to be the one who was called on whenever anyone
was sick. She would be called out at most
any time. And she did this at the same
time she was caring for her ten children and doing her home work. Every case of
sickness found Grandma there doing what she could. Grandma became mother to ten children in twenty years.
Charlie, the oldest, was 20 years of age when Gertrude, the youngest, was
born.
After the Burlington had first put through their first
road, Grandma was a passenger on the first train which ran from Atchison to
Lincoln. This was a free excursion and
made the trip up and back in one day. All
of the passengers had their names in the papers.
Mr. Holmes, the second husband of Grandma’s sister Lydia, was the
engineer who laid out the track to Lincoln and Wymore from Table Rock.
The first road was built from Atchison to Lincoln.
The road to Wymore was built later. The
superintendent of the road, Mr. Firth, was a very good friend of Mr. Holmes.
The town of Firth was named for him. While
riding on the cowcatcher of the engine one time, the train plunged into an open
river where the bridge had been washed out by high water.
The superintendent was killed.
Grandma attended the laying of the cornerstone of the
Nebraska Wesleyan University. At this
time Lincoln had horse cars. One
line ran from Lincoln out to the Wesleyan campus.
Grandma subscribed to the first State Journal ever
published.
“What about your mail and the general news in the
early days, Grandma?”
“We got our mail once a week from Old Cincinnati south
of Dubois. Of course there was no Dubois
then. It took about two weeks to get a
letter from Pennsylvania. The mail came
by train and boat as far as Brownsville, and then the pony express or stagecoach
took it on west. There was a stage line
from Brownsville to Beatrice and on west. We got a weekly newspaper from Brownsville.
We didn’t know about the death of President Lincoln until about a week
after it happened. There were no roads at that time.
Everyone traveled the ridges, and forded the streams.”
"We had the first Woman’s Club in the state.
Our purpose was mainly in working for Woman’s suffrage.
Other clubs formed later would not let us affiliate with them because of
this. A few years later we started
a drive to try to drive out the saloons. One
saloon in Table Rock was reported as selling liquor to young boys.
We were going to investigate to see if this was true, and see what we
could do about it. We worked shifts.
Two ladies would go down and sit in the saloon for a day at a time.
They would take fancy work and stay there all day long.
Mrs. Griffing and I spent one day there. The
men would laugh at us and make fun of us in order to try to get us to leave.
The next day we noticed the front door was locked but we saw young boys
go in the side door. We went around to the back door and got in that way.
After the second week of this, the saloon closed and the men got out of
town. There was a clause in the town
agreement that there was to be no liquor sold on the town site.”
Grandma may not possess many gold medals or flowery
titles, but her record of service to her community, and to her people stand as a
tribute to her that never could be expressed by words alone.
Following are some of the ways in which she quietly and modestly served
her community:
