Franklin County, Nebraska

For Another Day

Mary and Ted Hill move near Lookout MT.

Ted and Mary and their small family moved from near Lost Creek to another farm in 1934. They lived there for four years. This time, they bought the farm (west 80 acres of the SE 1/4, section 16, Franklin township).

For a while, the Hill family lived in what their son, Howard, calls the tar paper shack. Fenton (Ted's dad) later moved in a house from Bloomington. Ted and Mary's newly moved house used to set across to the east from what some people know as the Pete Grout house in Bloomington.

I took a trip with the help of Stanley Copley, to this farm north of Lookout Mountain in the spring on 2000. It sits a long way north into the 80 acres. I ran down the now farm road to the farmyard. The house was all tumbled sown with just a bit of one room standing. Right outside the door was the pump jack, and to the east was a portion of a shed. I wouldn't call it a barn, but maybe a work shed. To the west of the house was the chicken house. It was in about the same condition as the house.

The yard was full of old parts of cars and machinery, Stanley told be, "Before Ted Hill lived on this farm by the mountain, Ray Palmer lived here. While He was living there, the house burned, so he built the little two-room tarpaper shack. John Nissen lived there for a while, then the Strayers spent some time there, and then Ted Hill.

Stanley has helped me so much with the history of Franklin Township. Several years age, in the spring, I spent two days with Stanley touring all the farms of that area. The inter view I did with him is another little book I wrote. When I do an interview, I immediately go home and rewrite all my notes and add the legal descriptions. I have many new leads to family names I have never heard of. There was especially one little place by a stream of interest to me that was someone's dugout. We know nothing about it. It's just a hole in the ground. This unknown person used rocks to define the area. And those rocks are still laying on the ground, just like he placed them there. Why the cows and elements haven't moved them is beyond me. Since I usually study the first 10 years or our county, I am looking forward to working on this site some day in the future. But for now, thanks to Stanley, I have seen this home and know where to go. There are a few sites in our county I would just love to take all my readers to see. These houses and schools are so old and we are blessed they lie there undisturbed by humans.

Chapter 21

After Ted lost this Lookout Mountain home place, as many did during the 1930's. Chris Copley owned it for a bit of time. Other owners were Lavon Shaffer, Joe Bach and Ivan Heer. In this remote part of our country the quietness is deafening.

Times were hard here for the Hills. They must have enjoyed the view to the south, since Lookout Mountain is the only place in the county that resembles mountains. While living on this place, Howard, Barbara and Kenny were born. Barbara was stillborn and her final resting place is under a bush in the yard north of Lookout Mountain. She still lies on this farm somewhere in an unmarked grave. I hope to be able to search for the baby's grave so that she might have a maker. Mary wrote about the farm by the mountain: "Ted's dad had a horse and buggy and he liked to take Gerry, Dot and Howard for rides when we lived by Lookout Mountain. Ted cut cottonwood trees to sell to Goldsbury Bakery in Franklin. They paid him $20.00 for a big wagonload, which he hauled for them. Cottonwood kept an even fire for baking. Elbert Berry lived with us there, but he lived in a covered sheep wagon. He parked it down behind a bank in the creek, just back of our house. He helped Ted and cared for the kids."

"Ted was a road overseer when we lived at Look out Mountain. He had Claude Bonham help him work with horses on the road. Copleys also helped, and so did Elbert Berry. Copleys were good to us there. Mrs. Copley kept the kids the day we went to Holdrege when Kenneth was born."

"Nobody had much to eat during those times, so we helped each other. They didn't have much water, but they had a lot of cattle, so we let them bring their cattle and water them, as we had plenty. They paid us back in beef. That looked really good when we didn't have much in the `30's."

"Back then, farming was terrible, because there was no rain for months. Every day we sat on the windmill platform and watched for clouds, but there was nothing anyone could do. The only good thing was we had plenty of water. We had help from the government for food and clothes. They gave us six to seven dozen diapers for the babies. The older ones got clothes."

"Dad (Ted) was caught in a dust storm in 1935. He had gone to the river bottom after corn. A huge dust storm came up. He left the horses in Archie Mankhey's barn and started out for home. The dust was so thick he has to guess by the fences where he went. Mankheys gave him wet towels to cover his face. The dirt was piled along the fencerows about as high as the fence wire. Later on, the Mankhey's buildings were swept away by the big flood of 1935."

"The Babies were little during the dust storm days. One time, during a storm, I picked one of them up and you could see the outline of where they had been laying on the sheet. We covered the windows with wet sheets to keep out as much as we could. That summer, Ted helped the Louis Janssens, who lived several miles away, bale straw. It was full of dust and Ted got dust pneumonia. If it hadn't been for Elbert Berry, Ted wouldn't of made it, but Elbert walked to the Reams and called Dr. Moore, and she worked with him all night."

One can acquire everything in solitude- except character. Henri Beyle.

Rena Donovan. For the preservation of history and other memories.

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