Franklin County, Nebraska

For Another Day

During the warm days of March 24, 25, I spent two full afternoons with Stanley Copley covering the history of Oak Grove and Franklin Townships.

My mind was so full of sites of those areas when I got home, and I am still in the process of complying those notes and diagrams. But, I just have to tell about a wonderful discovery south of Stanley's house, about ¼ mile on the east side of the road. We stopped to walk into a draw of trees. We dropped down in the draw and proceeded east to a place where the Reams Creek kind of ran northeast. Just up on a little knoll out of the creek water were two holes in the ground side by side running north and south. One of them bigger than the other. On the bigger hole, the front and back (north and south ends) were open with Kansas yellow rock scattered at both north-south ends. Some of the flat rock was embedded upright in the ground at the south of the hole. At the east west front sides of the dugout some of the rock was laid in a partial row. These appear to be someone's home and maybe barn? On the 1905 Atlas map I see this land was owned by James Bailey. This is Franklin Township, section 29, the southwest ¼. On the map it shows a house, but Stanley says he doesn't know of a frame house ever being on this property. I assume the black dot is a house, and this must be the place. It's a mystery with lots of avenues to follow to find out about these dugouts and the family that once lived inside…a story for another day.

Now it's on to something else. The following will be one last story of Mary Hublitz. Mary was past 80 years old when she contributed several interesting memories to the North Bend Eagle.

A Snow Blockade and A Coal Famine.

" I hear so much about a coal famine in these days that it makes me think of the year we came to Nebraska.

"We loaded our goods at Alexis, Mercer County, Illinois, on the 11th day of March, 1870. My husband started the next morning, and I stayed a day over to come with a neighbor woman who was loading their goods at Monmouth. We started in the morning and it sleeted in the afternoon and began to snow. We women got on the train about sundown and it snowed just as hard as it could. We passed the neighbor's car in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, and got to Friendsville the next day. My husband was there and had set up a wagon and loaded it and put the stock in the livery barn. There was a man there with a team and sled to take us women and two children. It was fourteen miles, and the snow so deep that it seemed as though we would never get there. We got to Mr. Shipman's about dark and took Mrs. Pratt to her daughter.

"The men had been out the year before and bought farms so we knew where we were going, and we were: stuck fast and tight within four miles of our place, and we didn't get any closer for eight days. Our neighbor got as far as Pacific Junction, but had his train stuck in a snow blockade and didn't get out for several days.

"It snowed all night and all day Friday and blew. Then it cleared up and quit blowing and was fine. But so much snow! The men got uneasy about the car not being unloaded so Monday they took a sled and scoop shovels and opened the road to Friendsville and piled our goods on the platform. Among other things, we had fifty-four quarts of canned fruit, among the canned goods, which burst. The lids stayed on the rest. Well, we were in for it, so made the best of it and had a visit. There were a couple of young people who came to see us that evening, and it snowed so hard they couldn't go home. They stayed as long as we did. There were eight grown people and a little girl in a house sixteen feet square, a lean-to bedroom big enough for two beds. We were to thick to stir, but we had plenty to eat and nothing else to do. Mrs. Shipman and I would cook in turns, for there wasn't room for two women to cook. Their house was small, but their hearts were big and we got along fine.

"On Friday, they took teams and went after our goods and we got home at last, but could get no coal. So we found a man who had husked his corn and he loaned us corn to burn until we could husk our own corn. After the snow went off, a good part of the corn was spoiled so that it wasn't fit for anything else but fuel.

" If our renter had done as he agreed and had picked the corn and cribbed it, it would have been alright, but he picked his own share and cut all the wood that would burn and then moved away. We got there in the worst time. The people in town moved together so one fire would do for three or four families.

"The men went to Friendsville as soon as the road was opened and stayed two days but didn't get any coal. I tell you, it was a pitiful time for everyone. There were no big cob piles to fall back on , but I think the men learned to pick their corn next time. I don't know how long the famine lasted. We did not try to get any coal after warm weather came, but there were not many hog fences or things left that would burn either in Saline County or Fillmore County that I know of. If this famine last long enough you may know how it goes, but I hope it won't.

"Yours, Mrs. M. Hublitz."

This concludes all I have for now on (1) Mary Sigman (Butterfield) Hublitz, (2) Sarah Maria Butterfield (Bixby) Johnson, and (3) Alva Bixby linage. I correspond with Robert Bixby, Alva's grandson, on the internet about his family history. He sent me this most appropriate closing.

"Consider a jigsaw puzzle. Each piece has it place and no other piece can fit that place. Yet, no one piece makes sense on its own, Each piece needs the whole for its integrity and coherence. The whole needs each piece to fulfill its purpose and bring meaning and order to the puzzle. Once a piece is in its proper place, it separateness is surrendered. We know a piece is in its proper place when it blends with the whole and disappears. What is true for puzzles is true for reality, with one exception: there is no hand putting us in our place. We must do that for ourselves. We must discover our place and take it. When we do this we discover the integrity and meaning of the whole; we discover the divine energy that flows through all things and links each to the other and all to God. Rabbi Rami M. Shapiro.

Rena Donovan, For Another Day.

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